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Ask HN: What can we do to show we don't support the response to Aaron Swartz?

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Re: Ask HN: What can we do to show we don't support the response to Aaron Swartz?

#51

Post by phaus »

rilita wrote: post #25
jeremysmyth wrote: post #12

Two things. Firstly, please spell his name correctly. It's Aaron Swartz. That respects him and makes sure that your audience isn't distracted by that tiny detail and can focus on your message. Secondly, the petition was too narrow and targeted the individual prosecutor for that case. Even if she was removed, it wouldn't prevent the same sort of thing happening again. The larger issue (and one closer to the point) is…

Minimum sentences for certain non violent IT related "crimes" are also excessively long. I've been told one of the things I did in the past that hurt absolutely no one and had almost zero effect is punishable by a minimum 1 year sentence...

What exactly did you do? While I agree that the penalties under US law are often unrealistically severe, it is very likely that you caused unintended harm(Even if it was only money spent to investigate what you did.)

Re: Ask HN: What can we do to show we don't support the response to Aaron Swartz?

#52

Post by phaus »

fmdud wrote: post #9
skidoo wrote: post #3

Stop paying taxes, stop voting. Stop enabling the government altogether. If they refuse to accept that the people own the government, and not the other way around, then there is no reason to recognize its supposed authority. Live a moral and ethical life, but live as though the government does not exist. It will never willingly relinquish its power. You cannot change the system from the inside out. Every politician i…

>Stop voting. Being "apolitical" actually turns out to be a pretty naïve stance on politics. There's a great David Foster Wallace quote about "protest by non-participation" like this: “If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in thei…

DFW would be correct if it weren't for the fact that every candidate for a major office that you are likely to encounter in your lifetime will be one of the garden-variety shitbags that's already a part of the entrenched establishment.

On paper, voting for a president vs not voting increases your chance of changing the world by about 1 in 50 million. In actuality, no matter who you vote for, its essentially going to be the same type of person.

I think that we are at a point where its still useful to vote in local elections and even in the presidential primaries (in some states, only a few thousand people show up for presidential primaries), but after that, the odds of making a meaningful impact are astronomical.

I still vote in all elections, but when I do it I fully understand that I am wasting my time.

Re: Ask HN: What can we do to show we don't support the response to Aaron Swartz?

#53

Post by tzs »

sarciszewski wrote: post #30
rilita wrote: post #27

Swartz was a member of a group that was intentionally pirating and distributing large amounts of copyrighted material to which he did not have permission to do so. He is also an idiot for killing himself. If he believed what he was doing was right he should have been willing to face the consequences. To me, killing himself is an admission that what he did was wrong and stupid. Should he have been thrown in jail for 7…

> intentionally pirating and distributing large amounts of copyrighted material to which he did not have permission to do so Pirating is bad because it supposedly takes money out of the content producers' pockets (let's ignore the studies that suggest the contrary). The people who produced the content for the journals he "intentionally [pirated]" were not paid for the content they created. They, the content creators,…

He wasn't pirating directly from the journals, though. He was pirating from JSTOR. JSTOR spends a lot of money to legally take journals that are not available online and make them available. They pay for the rights to do this, and then they pay for the costs of digitizing the material.

JSTOR are good guys, with the same mission Swartz claimed to have--they were making journals more available and at less cost than they would have been without JSTOR.

Re: Ask HN: What can we do to show we don't support the response to Aaron Swartz?

#54

Post by sarciszewski »

tzs wrote: post #53
sarciszewski wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> intentionally pirating and distributing large amounts of copyrighted material to which he did not have permission to do so Pirating is bad because it supposedly takes money out of the content producers' pockets (let's ignore the studies that suggest the contrary). The people who produced the content for the journals he "intentionally [pirated]" were not paid for the content they created. They, the content creators,…

He wasn't pirating directly from the journals, though. He was pirating from JSTOR. JSTOR spends a lot of money to legally take journals that are not available online and make them available. They pay for the rights to do this, and then they pay for the costs of digitizing the material. JSTOR are good guys, with the same mission Swartz claimed to have--they were making journals more available and at less cost than the…

> JSTOR are good guys, with the same mission Swartz claimed to have--they were making journals more available and at less cost than they would have been without JSTOR.

Most scientific research done in the United States is publicly funded and therefore should be publicly available at no cost to the public. Less cost might sound like a good idea on paper, but no cost is fair.

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23canhazpdf&src=typd

I support what Aaron wanted to do, and hope to dissuade as many people as I can from publishing their research in closed-access journals.

Re: Ask HN: What can we do to show we don't support the response to Aaron Swartz?

#55

Post by logfromblammo »

eli wrote: post #48
logfromblammo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your vote has less value to you than the time it takes to cast the ballot, it has zero economic value, and will therefore not happen, regardless of its nonzero absolute value. A cynical potential voter may recognize that the net effect of laws and rules set up around the voting system is to alienate his or her opinion from the results of elections. In that case, declining to vote is a rational and reasonable decis…

> If you cannot detect a change in public policy as a result of your votes, your vote does literally have zero value. So the person who casts the deciding vote in a race decides 100% of the election and everyone else 0%? That doesn't sound right... I'm all for making it easier to vote, though.

The person who casts the deciding vote probably won't know that they had done it, so that vote could also have zero value. All they know is that the voted for the winner.

Every vote in the entire election could have zero value, if none of the winners change their political stances as a result, and public policy is essentially unchanged from the period before the election.

That's why I see votes on a binding referendum to have more value than races for office between two essentially indistinguishable candidates.

Re: Ask HN: What can we do to show we don't support the response to Aaron Swartz?

#56

Post by fmdud »

crdoconnor wrote: post #34
fmdud wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Stop voting. Being "apolitical" actually turns out to be a pretty naïve stance on politics. There's a great David Foster Wallace quote about "protest by non-participation" like this: “If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in thei…

If you attend a protest you probably have 100x as much impact on the political system as somebody who votes. If you strike you probably have 200x as much impact on the political system as somebody who votes. If you are ready and willing be tear gassed, arrested or beaten up for your beliefs you can help shape politics in a way no voter ever has or will. Non voting isn't some radical new way of showing your disapprova…

I agree but the idea of "voting" here can be extrapolated into striking, attending protests, etc. as it's really a stand-in for the idea of "making your voice heard", as opposed to "completely opting out of the political process and telling yourself that doing so is making your voice heard".

Re: Ask HN: What can we do to show we don't support the response to Aaron Swartz?

#57

Post by rilita »

phaus wrote: post #51
rilita wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum sentences for certain non violent IT related "crimes" are also excessively long. I've been told one of the things I did in the past that hurt absolutely no one and had almost zero effect is punishable by a minimum 1 year sentence...

What exactly did you do? While I agree that the penalties under US law are often unrealistically severe, it is very likely that you caused unintended harm(Even if it was only money spent to investigate what you did.)

I confessed to the "crime" on the spot, and provided all proof that I did it immediately. There was a clear documented log of what I did. No "investigating" was necessary.

I would have been chucked into jail for a year in theory, if they could get it past a grand jury, since there was/is sufficient evidence. The only reason it never went that far is because I cooperated with the FBI in other regards that I cannot disclose.

I can assure you that no harm was done to anyone. It was/is a technical violation of the letter of the law.

Re: Ask HN: What can we do to show we don't support the response to Aaron Swartz?

#58

Post by tzs »

sarciszewski wrote: post #54
tzs wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn't pirating directly from the journals, though. He was pirating from JSTOR. JSTOR spends a lot of money to legally take journals that are not available online and make them available. They pay for the rights to do this, and then they pay for the costs of digitizing the material. JSTOR are good guys, with the same mission Swartz claimed to have--they were making journals more available and at less cost than the…

> JSTOR are good guys, with the same mission Swartz claimed to have--they were making journals more available and at less cost than they would have been without JSTOR. Most scientific research done in the United States is publicly funded and therefore should be publicly available at no cost to the public. Less cost might sound like a good idea on paper, but no cost is fair. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23canhazpdf&s…

> Most scientific research done in the United States is publicly funded and therefore should be publicly available at no cost to the public. Less cost might sound like a good idea on paper, but no cost is fair

It costs JSTOR money to get permission to use the material from the publishers. It costs JSTOR money to digitize print journals. How would you suggest that JSTOR get the money for that?

Because of JSTOR, public libraries, community colleges, non-profit research institutions, and many universities outside of the top tier research universities can get organization wide access to large collections of journals for orders of magnitude less than it would cost them without JSTOR, and they can let the general public use their access for free.

Individuals can buy JSTOR subscriptions covering thousands of journals for less than it would cost to subscribe to one individual journal directly.

Yes, that's not as good as no cost, but it is a tremendous improvement over what the world would be like without JSTOR, and that's a good thing.

Re: Ask HN: What can we do to show we don't support the response to Aaron Swartz?

#59

Post by sarciszewski »

tzs wrote: post #58
sarciszewski wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> JSTOR are good guys, with the same mission Swartz claimed to have--they were making journals more available and at less cost than they would have been without JSTOR. Most scientific research done in the United States is publicly funded and therefore should be publicly available at no cost to the public. Less cost might sound like a good idea on paper, but no cost is fair. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23canhazpdf&s…

> Most scientific research done in the United States is publicly funded and therefore should be publicly available at no cost to the public. Less cost might sound like a good idea on paper, but no cost is fair It costs JSTOR money to get permission to use the material from the publishers. It costs JSTOR money to digitize print journals. How would you suggest that JSTOR get the money for that? Because of JSTOR, public…

> Yes, that's not as good as no cost, but it is a tremendous improvement over what the world would be like without JSTOR, and that's a good thing.

I agree, but that's not really my concern.

> How would you suggest that JSTOR get the money for that?

I don't suggest they get the money for that. I'm more of a "let's topple the giants" sort of guy.

JSTOR's survival/profitability is not my concern. The free diffusion of publicly funded research is. And, frankly, I don't care if that makes me a bad person.

I feel the same way about the for-profit closed-door academic research publishing model as I do about the fossil fuel industry. :)

> It costs JSTOR money to get permission to use the material from the publishers. It costs JSTOR money to digitize print journals.

JSTOR can keep doing what they're doing. I have no problem with their existence. I just want to stop people from publishing exclusively in journals that can only be made available to the public for a cost.

Then eventually we won't need JSTOR anymore.

> Because of JSTOR, public libraries, community colleges, non-profit research institutions, and many universities outside of the top tier research universities can get organization wide access to large collections of journals for orders of magnitude less than it would cost them without JSTOR, and they can let the general public use their access for free.

But it's still a cost that can be avoided by scientists boycotting the publications that JSTOR has to spend money to obtain permission from and digitize.

Re: Ask HN: What can we do to show we don't support the response to Aaron Swartz?

#60

Post by sarciszewski »

tim_hutton wrote: post #45
sarciszewski wrote: post #23

What is the exact problem you want to solve? What are some of the causes of the problem? What are some of the effects of the problem? If the problem disappeared today, what side-effects would it have on the rest of the world? What, given all of the answers to these questions, would be a solution that solves the commonly agreed upon problem (usually by solving the causes for said problem rather than the problem itself…

The root cause of this is the influence of money on our politicians. Symptoms include laws written for the rich and the corporations rather than for the people, causing the continued growth of inequality and a drag on the economy. Support Lawrence Lessig in his efforts to solve this root problem! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g He departs on the second of his New Hampshire Rebellion walks on Sunday.

This is an excellent response. I agree with his message; his might not be the most important cause to address, but it must be the first one, because without it no meaningful changes can follow.
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