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Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

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Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#201

Post by jhart3333 »

mpyne wrote: post #194
jhart3333 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The charges weren't ridiculous They were according to a retired federal judge: http://www.wbur.org/2013/01/16/gertner-criticizes-ortiz-swar... from the article: "She says she was troubled by much of what she learned and saw from the bench before leaving in 2011. And she says Ortiz should not have prosecuted Swartz." ... When asked if she was referring to the bad judgement of Carmen Ortiz, Gertner responded, “That’s…

Oh look, I can find a convenient mouth piece too (one who has defended a famous CFAA case, no less): http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains... You might instead argue that the law is ridiculous (e.g. I would agree that Swartz's conduct is not serious enough to warrant a felony conviction). You might argue that there were certainly other case…

Ad Hominem.

You might try responding to the statements she made. For a retired judge to step into the public arena like this is quite out of the ordinary and it indicates to me that the behavior she witnessed in Ortiz was so egregious that extraordinary measures were called for.

So much for business as usual, happens all the time, nothing to see here, move along, move along..

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#202

Post by jessaustin »

alexqgb wrote: post #147
malandrew wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

Really not getting the impression that Ortiz was a good soul trappend in a bad system. To the contrary, she seems to be the embodiment of the bad system. To the good souls who are actually trapped alongside her, she's a prime example of the problem they're facing, in that monsters like her are what gets promoted, leaving people who are better than her no choices beyond going along quietly or exiting altogether. I mea…

Keep in mind that all federal prosecutors are 100% committed to putting (especially poor and minority) citizens in prison for years for the victimless crimes of drug possession and distribution. This practice has destroyed hundreds of communities and millions of lives. There are no good apples in this barrel. Every federal prosecutor should get some portion of the punishments they're so eager to mete out.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#203

Post by alan_cx »

raldi wrote: post #35
DanBC wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No-one got hurt. No damage was done. If I have to chose between "prank" or "federal crime" I'm going with prank. 'Pranks' have a history in political activism - see La Barbe or Pussy Riot or others.

> 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.

A private residence is not an institution. There for there is no parallel.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#204

Post by betterunix »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #186
betterunix wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the law cares" ...and the law is wrong. It is wrong, because it is no longer serving the interests of the people governed by it. The entire basis for the US legal system is that laws serve the interest of the people, not that laws are handed down from above or that the law itself has any moral or ethical justification. If society's interests are no longer served by a law -- and it is hard to argue that in the case o…

Here's a suggestion: exclude scientific articles from copyright restrictions. Your proposal is unconstitutional. "Takings" must be compensated or you run into 5th amendment issues. If you want a compromise, how about this: exclude those articles for which the research was paid for with tax dollars from copyright. At my school, I owned the copyright to anything I published unless I used school resources. Even if I pub…

"Your proposal is unconstitutional. "Takings" must be compensated or you run into 5th amendment issues."

Copyrights can only be granted for a limited time according to the constitution. The fifth amendment only applies to property and despite the use of the term "intellectual property" by lawyers and those who profit from copyrights, copyright is not actually a form of property. What is unconstitutional is copyrights that last forever, which is why Congress periodically extends copyright terms as an end-run around the constitution.

"How can you justify forcing people to give up copyright when the public only paid for one third of the research?"

Simple: the entire point of copyright is to ensure that American society will have access to creative work. It is not meant to be a form of property, it was never meant as a form of property, and researchers' copyrights on their work are doing nothing to ensure public access to those works.

Further, it is not at all out of line for researchers to give up their copyrights. I cannot speak for your field, but in my field, we routinely assign copyrights to journals and give up any copyright claims thereafter. The entire point of publishing researcher is for other people to read it, cite it, and build on it. Researchers gain nothing by restricting access to their published work, and researchers benefit from their work being made more widely available.

Don't swallow the propaganda that the copyright lobby has been shoving down our throats. Copyright is not about ensuring that authors can control who reads their work or how many copies exist in the world. Copyright is about monetizing the production and distribution of creative work. In the case of research, copyright has nothing to do with monetizing the work, because it is paid for regardless of copyright, and so the only point of copyrights on published research is to monetize the publishing system. We forgot the point of copyright long ago, thanks to decades of lobbying effort by the people who profit from the copyright system.

Why are you publishing your research, exactly? Is it not so that other people can read it, and if that is the reason, why would you care about receiving copyrights on that work? I cannot speak for you, but when I publish my work, I do so with the intention of other people reading it -- something that copyright does nothing to encourage these days.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#205

Post by mpyne »

jhart3333 wrote: post #201
mpyne wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh look, I can find a convenient mouth piece too (one who has defended a famous CFAA case, no less): http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains... You might instead argue that the law is ridiculous (e.g. I would agree that Swartz's conduct is not serious enough to warrant a felony conviction). You might argue that there were certainly other case…

Ad Hominem. You might try responding to the statements she made. For a retired judge to step into the public arena like this is quite out of the ordinary and it indicates to me that the behavior she witnessed in Ortiz was so egregious that extraordinary measures were called for. So much for business as usual, happens all the time, nothing to see here, move along, move along..

Appeal to authority.

I at least bothered to respond with arguments at all (both mine and links to Olin Kerr's), and I did so without reciting high school debate knowledge under the assumption that HN readers are smart enough to figure out the difference between debating tactics and logical argument.

You have responded with a doubling-down of the appeal to authority, as if it would really be that unusual for a judge interested in a case which has lit the Internet and media on fire for a whole week now to get her name out there as well. In fact, the very article you linked calls it a "chorus of criticism". Oh, and a couple of clichés.

On the other hand, I did respond to the opinion you linked in by linking in other opinions. Yay, opinion war, go me.

I will say thanks for the article though, as even your talking head confirms that the 35-year sentence was never going to happen (and by extension, the 50-year sentence I must assume).

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#206

Post by jessaustin »

nitrogen wrote: post #159
MichaelSalib wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swartz wasn't profiting, it was civil disobedience As I've explained above, I don't think Swartz was trying to profit from this scheme. But I do think he was trying to destroy significant financial value (yes $50million/year is significant for me). And from a legal perspective, that's extremely serious. Now that's what I call "serious commercial value". JSTOR, not so much. So if I rob a bank and steal $30 million, th…

It seems to me you are arguing four separate points: 1. JSTOR has a commercial value of $50mil/yr. This is a fair point, if that is indeed JSTOR's revenue (though "commercial" isn't exactly the right word to describe a non-profit organization's activities). 2. Aaron's intention was to destroy JSTOR. Unless you have another source beside the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto[0] and the recent summaries posted online by…

What on earth does this non-profit spend $50M/yr doing? I've come up with the following:

  - scan old articles (this really shouldn't be accounted as
    a business expense: once you've scanned an article you
    never need to scan it again and there are a finite
    number of articles in existence, thus this is that rare
    sort of capital spending that can be depreciated over
    an essentially infinite period)
  - serve saved content and related services online (the
    price of this activity is dropping all the time)
  - sales, accounting, legal (these activities would be much
    less costly for a free service like arXiv.org)
  - license payments (hard to get around this without some
    [justified IMO] changes to the law, but I'm sure JSTOR
    is also marking up these charges and besides most
    education institutions already make equivalent payments
    to extant journals)
Granted, I've left out the gold-plated executive washroom and first-class airfare for lobbyists, but it's reasonable for society to question why JSTOR is an entity that deserves its tax exemptions.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#207

Post by jlgreco »

mpyne wrote: post #205
jhart3333 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad Hominem. You might try responding to the statements she made. For a retired judge to step into the public arena like this is quite out of the ordinary and it indicates to me that the behavior she witnessed in Ortiz was so egregious that extraordinary measures were called for. So much for business as usual, happens all the time, nothing to see here, move along, move along..

Appeal to authority. I at least bothered to respond with arguments at all (both mine and links to Olin Kerr's), and I did so without reciting high school debate knowledge under the assumption that HN readers are smart enough to figure out the difference between debating tactics and logical argument. You have responded with a doubling-down of the appeal to authority, as if it would really be that unusual for a judge i…

So on one hand you accuse people of being unqualified to hold an informed opinion, then when people come with people who are qualified, you say they are making an appeal to authority.

You are so full of shit.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#208

Post by danenania »

monochromatic wrote: post #113
moxie wrote: post #54

Earlier 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…

Why is Ortiz "obviously disgusting"?

Because she abused her official capacity to hound a much more honorable and talented person than herself to the point of suicide?

Honestly, for all the jaded and cynical people trying to play 'the adult' by defending the corrupt and immoral actions of the justice system and its officials based on legal technicalities--you don't come across as knowledgeable or reasonable, just spineless and enabling.

Hiding behind rules and technicalities to commit evil is the oldest and most cowardly trick in the book.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#209

Post by nitrogen »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #168
nitrogen wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me you are arguing four separate points: 1. JSTOR has a commercial value of $50mil/yr. This is a fair point, if that is indeed JSTOR's revenue (though "commercial" isn't exactly the right word to describe a non-profit organization's activities). 2. Aaron's intention was to destroy JSTOR. Unless you have another source beside the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto[0] and the recent summaries posted online by…

There's a nice two step shuffle here. On the one hand, people say "JSTOR is keeping this vitally important knowledge away from THE PEOPLE!" and imply that Swartz was going to rectify that by releasing the JSTOR archive. Then, when I point out that releasing the JSTOR archive would completely undermine JSTOR's viability as a going concern, the same people argue that "there's no way that the JSTOR archive Swartz was go…

After all, if the archive torrented is completely inferior to the JSTOR service, then no one would find it valuable. It wouldn't help anyone.

An analogy: margarine is inferior in taste to butter. To those who can afford butter (universities), margarine is undesirable. To those who cannot (laypeople, journalists), margarine may be an acceptable substitute.

Inferior does not mean valueless, nor does it mean the value of the superior product is diminished.

Of course not. But violating the CFAA is. Copyright infringement, on a large enough scale certainly is.

This is a completely separate debate, and addressed elsewhere. Summarized, it is debatable whether Aaron's actions (changing MAC address) do or should constitute Wire Fraud or CFAA violations. It is also debatable whether any nonviolent crime should ever have a penalty larger than any violent crime. I will not address any of these points further in this thread.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#210

Post by monochromatic »

danenania wrote: post #208
monochromatic wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Ortiz "obviously disgusting"?

Because she abused her official capacity to hound a much more honorable and talented person than herself to the point of suicide? Honestly, for all the jaded and cynical people trying to play 'the adult' by defending the corrupt and immoral actions of the justice system and its officials based on legal technicalities--you don't come across as knowledgeable or reasonable, just spineless and enabling. Hiding behind rul…

Have you read Orrin Kerr's two posts? They're long, but absolutely worth reading. It is by no means clear that Ortiz is some kind of demon.
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