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The four lamest excuses in MIT’s report on Aaron Swartz

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Re: The four lamest excuses in MIT’s report on Aaron Swartz

#21

Post by v1tyaz »

chaostheory wrote: post #20
v1tyaz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Putting him behind bars for downloading bits is ludicrous Unless it's your data that's being downloaded unlawfully, right?

Well in this case, it's publicly funded research data. US citizens should have easy access to this data since we already paid for it. So yes. It is our data. "JSTOR told the Chronicle that each and every year, they turn away 150 million attempts to gain access to articles."

Then tell your government to either provide it to the public themselves, or pay someone else to provide it to the public. Either way, funding one half of something and then demanding the rest is ridiculous.

Re: The four lamest excuses in MIT’s report on Aaron Swartz

#22

Post by mitmatt »

chaostheory wrote: post #14
mitmatt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From http://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pd... , Appendix 14, Question 35: > 35. What influence, if any, did MIT exercise or could it have exercised in the plea negotiations? Did MIT really scuttle a plea bargain with no prison time? > Answer: MIT played no role in any plea negotiations related to the Aaron Swartz case. For a description of these negotiations, please see the Report, section II.B…

I really don't know since MIT has objected to FOIA requests in Aaron's case. A lot of details are missing. Personally I trust Aaron's lawyers more than MIT's administration.

If by "objected to FOIA requests" you mean "filed a motion, just like JSTOR, proposing the ability review and suggest redactions to the requested documents over a window of five days for the explicit purpose of ensuring the privacy and safety of its employees, especially in light of the threatening communications it has received". MIT never proposed preventing the documents from being released.

http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N29/swartz/MIT-motion.pdf http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N29/swartz.html

But based on your comments in the other threads, I'm not sure you're interested in the actual facts...

Re: The four lamest excuses in MIT’s report on Aaron Swartz

#23

Post by pdonis »

latj wrote: post #19
chaostheory wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound like MIT was really neutral. http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/01/15/humanity-deficit... "Marty Weinberg, who took the case over from Good, said he nearly negotiated a plea bargain in which Swartz would not serve any time. He said JSTOR signed off on it, but MIT would not. 'There were subsets of the MIT community who were profoundly in support of Aaron,' Weinberg said. That support did not overri…

The report seems to be saying "MIT didnt interfere", "MIT didnt get involved", "MIT didnt do anything wrong". Who is this MIT? Why dont we just talk about human beings and address them by the names they are known by.

"MIT didnt do anything wrong".

The report doesn't really say that. It says MIT did nothing illegal and acted prudently, but it doesn't say that MIT couldn't have done better. Item 4 in the introduction (p. 14) specifically says MIT could have done better.

Why dont we just talk about human beings and address them by the names they are known by.

The report explains why: to protect the privacy of the people involved. It's up to MIT to take whatever action might be warranted involving those people; the public doesn't need to know their names. (The report also points out that the names of key people at MIT who were involved are already matters of public record since they appear in court documents; but that there is no reason to further erode those people's privacy.)

Re: The four lamest excuses in MIT’s report on Aaron Swartz

#24

Post by pdonis »

chaostheory wrote: post #9
uhno wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not signing off on the plea bargain is precisely the definition of remaining neutral: not influencing the proceedings.

First you shouldn't have to hide under a new throw away account. Second, since MIT initiated the proceedings I wouldn't call that neutral either.

since MIT initiated the proceedings I wouldn't call that neutral either.

MIT initiated a process to find out who the laptop they found belonged to. MIT did not initiate any legal proceedings, and did not tell anyone that they were in favor of doing so.

Re: The four lamest excuses in MIT’s report on Aaron Swartz

#25

Post by chaostheory »

mitmatt wrote: post #22
chaostheory wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't know since MIT has objected to FOIA requests in Aaron's case. A lot of details are missing. Personally I trust Aaron's lawyers more than MIT's administration.

If by "objected to FOIA requests" you mean "filed a motion, just like JSTOR, proposing the ability review and suggest redactions to the requested documents over a window of five days for the explicit purpose of ensuring the privacy and safety of its employees, especially in light of the threatening communications it has received". MIT never proposed preventing the documents from being released. http://tech.mit.edu/V1…

> MIT never proposed preventing the documents from being released. I'm not sure you're interested in the actual facts

Ok they blocked and prevented FOIA access to documents until Aug 23. What I posted wasn't inaccurate. If what I posted before weren't facts, maybe you should dispute them instead just making one generalized statement. I've been wrong before, and I don't mind being proven wrong.

Re: The four lamest excuses in MIT’s report on Aaron Swartz

#26

Post by chaostheory »

v1tyaz wrote: post #21
chaostheory wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in this case, it's publicly funded research data. US citizens should have easy access to this data since we already paid for it. So yes. It is our data. "JSTOR told the Chronicle that each and every year, they turn away 150 million attempts to gain access to articles."

Then tell your government to either provide it to the public themselves, or pay someone else to provide it to the public. Either way, funding one half of something and then demanding the rest is ridiculous.

It's not ridiculous to demand public access to public data post Internet, when almost everything is electronic.

Other people and other organizations are willing to provide this data to the public at their cost. However they can't publish data that's under lock and key.

Re: The four lamest excuses in MIT’s report on Aaron Swartz

#27

Post by D_Alex »

mitmatt wrote: post #12
chaostheory wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound like MIT was really neutral. http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/01/15/humanity-deficit... "Marty Weinberg, who took the case over from Good, said he nearly negotiated a plea bargain in which Swartz would not serve any time. He said JSTOR signed off on it, but MIT would not. 'There were subsets of the MIT community who were profoundly in support of Aaron,' Weinberg said. That support did not overri…

From http://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pd... , Appendix 14, Question 35: > 35. What influence, if any, did MIT exercise or could it have exercised in the plea negotiations? Did MIT really scuttle a plea bargain with no prison time? > Answer: MIT played no role in any plea negotiations related to the Aaron Swartz case. For a description of these negotiations, please see the Report, section II.B…

Thanks for stepping up to argue MITs case. I understand you personally hold the view that MIT is not to blame for very much at all.

IANAL... I just notice that other people said that MIT could have put an immediate stop to the proceedings:

"Here are the facts: This report claims that MIT was “neutral” — but MIT’s lawyers gave prosecutors total access to witnesses and evidence, while refusing access to Aaron’s lawyers to the exact same witnesses and evidence. That’s not neutral. The fact is that all MIT had to do was say publicly, “We don’t want this prosecution to go forward” – and Steve Heymann and Carmen Ortiz would have had no case. We have an institution to contrast MIT with – JSTOR, who came out immediately and publicly against the prosecution. Aaron would be alive today if MIT had acted as JSTOR did. MIT had a moral imperative to do so."

(from http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/56881327662/mit-report-is-a-w...)

Re: The four lamest excuses in MIT’s report on Aaron Swartz

#28

Post by mitmatt »

D_Alex wrote: post #27
mitmatt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From http://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pd... , Appendix 14, Question 35: > 35. What influence, if any, did MIT exercise or could it have exercised in the plea negotiations? Did MIT really scuttle a plea bargain with no prison time? > Answer: MIT played no role in any plea negotiations related to the Aaron Swartz case. For a description of these negotiations, please see the Report, section II.B…

Thanks for stepping up to argue MITs case. I understand you personally hold the view that MIT is not to blame for very much at all. IANAL... I just notice that other people said that MIT could have put an immediate stop to the proceedings: "Here are the facts: This report claims that MIT was “neutral” — but MIT’s lawyers gave prosecutors total access to witnesses and evidence, while refusing access to Aaron’s lawyers…

What have I said that suggests "MIT is not to blame for very much at all"? My comments have dealt with factual issues; I don't see where I advanced any opinions on MIT's deserved level of blame.

The MIT report lays out facts (and not conclusions or judgements) for the express purpose of informing the debate. Many here would probably be interested in its contents if they weren't so busy expressing opinions about it.

It's not clear to me what Ms. Stinebrickner-Kauffman meant by her comment, since prosecution was entirely at the discretion of the DA (as with all criminal charges) and MIT (like JSTOR) had no involvement in the criminal charges. The report explains as much in careful detail and my poor paraphrasing is no substitute.

(Judging by tweet timestamps, Ms. Stinebrickner-Kauffman's statement may have been made about 18 minutes after the release of the report (8:31am @TarenSK vs 8:13am @MIT), so it's possible that the statement was not based on the entirety of the report's content. That is not based on precise knowledge of the report's actual time of release.)

Here is a personal opinion: Hal Abelson, founding director of both the Free Software Foundation (with RMS, GJS, and others) and Creative Commons (with Lawrence Lessig and others) and lead author of the MIT report, produced a thoughtful and thorough document and it should not be ignored.

Re: The four lamest excuses in MIT’s report on Aaron Swartz

#29

Post by strathmeyer »

mitmatt wrote: post #28
D_Alex wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for stepping up to argue MITs case. I understand you personally hold the view that MIT is not to blame for very much at all. IANAL... I just notice that other people said that MIT could have put an immediate stop to the proceedings: "Here are the facts: This report claims that MIT was “neutral” — but MIT’s lawyers gave prosecutors total access to witnesses and evidence, while refusing access to Aaron’s lawyers…

What have I said that suggests "MIT is not to blame for very much at all"? My comments have dealt with factual issues; I don't see where I advanced any opinions on MIT's deserved level of blame. The MIT report lays out facts (and not conclusions or judgements) for the express purpose of informing the debate. Many here would probably be interested in its contents if they weren't so busy expressing opinions about it. I…

Your comments seems to be ignoring both the facts and the issues.

Re: The four lamest excuses in MIT’s report on Aaron Swartz

#30

Post by D_Alex »

mitmatt wrote: post #28
D_Alex wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for stepping up to argue MITs case. I understand you personally hold the view that MIT is not to blame for very much at all. IANAL... I just notice that other people said that MIT could have put an immediate stop to the proceedings: "Here are the facts: This report claims that MIT was “neutral” — but MIT’s lawyers gave prosecutors total access to witnesses and evidence, while refusing access to Aaron’s lawyers…

What have I said that suggests "MIT is not to blame for very much at all"? My comments have dealt with factual issues; I don't see where I advanced any opinions on MIT's deserved level of blame. The MIT report lays out facts (and not conclusions or judgements) for the express purpose of informing the debate. Many here would probably be interested in its contents if they weren't so busy expressing opinions about it. I…

> What have I said that suggests "MIT is not to blame for very much at all"? My comments have dealt with factual issues; I don't see where I advanced any opinions on MIT's deserved level of blame.

My comment should have been a question, let me put it explicitly: What is your personal opinion on MIT's deserved level of blame?

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