It reads like a parody of journalism.
Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out
81–90 of 270 posts
Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No-one got hurt. No damage was done. If a burglar is sneaking out of a house with a sack of stolen goods, and the police catch him and return everything to the owner, you'd still consider that a crime, right? If so, then you agree that situations where nobody is hurt and no permanent damage done can still be crimes.
So many holes with your analogy. Rather than wasting my time explaining to you why it is wrong, I rather just tell you that you are showing extreme stupidity.
Rather than wasting my time explaining to you why it is wrong...
As a matter of fact, explaining why someone is wrong is generally less of a waste of time than insulting them.
Consider the benefits: they might learn things they didn't know, you will have a better understanding of your own feelings, and you may both get some insight into a different point of view than your own. These are, in my opinion, more valuable things than the fleeting satisfaction one gets from telling someone off.
Suppose it takes five times as long to write a decent comment as it would an insult. Would you rather look back at some point in the future and say "I wrote 50 insults", or "I wrote 10 good comments"?
Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is absolute bullshit. There is no way in hell any university in a developed nation would drop their subscription to JSTOR. JSTOR keeps them on the right side of copyright law, keeps itself up to date, and provides infrastructure that the vast majority of university users find essential. Individuals not affiliated with universities may find such a pirated collection useful, but such individuals currently make up…
Journals in the library + interlibrary loan keep them on the right side of copyright law. And many more expensive subscriptions provide universities with access to parts of the JSTOR archive. What's more, there are no university copyright investigations to fear: no one is going to force grad students to prove that they legally obtained every paper they ever read (how could that even work?), but even if they did, grad…
Unless the university library it itself providing a unified accessible system to access a torrented (and somehow constantly up to date?) archive of JSTOR, then JSTOR will not be dropped. You are having serious tunnel vision if you think all grad students and professors want to spend their time fucking around with that, or even know how to do that.
Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is probably the most worrying issue with this article. It places the blame on two individuals who are characterized as out of control instead of a system that is out of control. The entire system needs to be held accountable and corrected and those highlighted as having benefited their careers through this widespread misconduct should be individually held accountable just like individuals were held accountable a…
Ortiz specifically has brought other cases that have made me furious. Check out this one where she is trying to seize a family owned budget motel. There is no complaint whatsoever against the owner, but about once every other year the cops bust some low-level drug deal. The motel is paid-off and owned by the son of the founder and is worth 1.5 million, therefore she saw an easy civil forfeiture target. She is out of…
This was written over a year ago. Do you know the resolution of this case?
Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mother Theresa once said that when she looked upon the many she could do nothing, but when she focused on the one, she could do something. The same applies here. Someone needs to be held accountable. Change needs to start somewhere.
I'm not sure Mother Theresa is a good example for anything, but regarding the general argument you are making here: There is a huge difference between helping one person (decreasing the general suffering by a tiny but attainable amount) and making one person an example (hoping this changes the status quo somehow).
I was referring to her strategy, and how she learned to make positive change.
Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out
#86"Her prospects look grim. Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.)"... And that's when everyone should stop reading. Issa is a tea party loon.
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Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is the hardest part. Ortiz is obviously disgusting, but she's not really different than anyone else in her position. These kinds of tactics are employed every day. So what do we do? I support the demonization of Ortiz purely on the level of revenge. In a world where we typically have no agency, it's satisfying to make someone like her uncomfortable. But on another level, it's frustrating that it's imposs…
I get that vengeance can be satisfying, but it means sending a message. And the message that US attorneys are going to hear is "don't fuck with young affluent white hackers with powerful friends". I never met Swartz, but I'd be surprised if he'd have wanted his legacy to be people that look like him getting a pass while everyone else suffers the same as before.
There is no reason to suppose that this will be taken as a reason not to prosecute white people. The specific act and its context are clearly more important.
Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Little to no commercial value? Have you ever tried to sell a diamon, err, scholarly article?
JSTOR sells access to its archive for $50K/year. That seems pretty damn valuable. I think that if Swartz successfully released the JSTOR archive, their entire business would have withered and died. Once you can buy a DVD on the street for $3 that held the entire thing, it gets harder and harder for university libraries to justify paying $50K/year. Their customer base wouldn't dry up overnight but over a few years, yo…
You NEED access to journals and conferences if you are silly enough to become a research student (like I did) or even sillier and become a professional researcher.
Also, there is no way on earth you can pay for it on a researcher's salary or stipend. Hence, the Universities and Laboratories are BLACKMAILED into paying for it on the researchers' behalf. (So the 50K/year thing applies to MIT, Harvard and a couple of other "customers".)
However, outside of that context, J. Random Hacker might quite like to read a paper - his taxes paid for it after all, and there are like 3 good papers in existence. But JRH would never pay 50K for it. He probably CAN'T; JRH might need to take out a mortgage to pay that much.
So if you want to pretend that the 50K multiplies by the potential readership as "loss due to copyright theft", you are committing a basic economic fallacy, which is normally debunked in Econ101.
So I advise you to drop the whole 50K/year argument.
Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out
#89So serious question, what prevents Aaron's family from suing the pants off of the DOJ parties responsible?
Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Journals in the library + interlibrary loan keep them on the right side of copyright law. And many more expensive subscriptions provide universities with access to parts of the JSTOR archive. What's more, there are no university copyright investigations to fear: no one is going to force grad students to prove that they legally obtained every paper they ever read (how could that even work?), but even if they did, grad…
Unless the university library it itself providing a unified accessible system to access a torrented (and somehow constantly up to date?) archive of JSTOR, then JSTOR will not be dropped. You are having serious tunnel vision if you think all grad students and professors want to spend their time fucking around with that, or even know how to do that.
I know that every university, there are multiple servers where students share terabytes of pirated movies, TV shows and music.
And every university already has a unified accessible non-JSTOR system for reading old journal articles: its called the journal stacks in the library basement + interlibrary loan. Everyone already knows how to deal with that: its just less convenient.