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Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

harpers.org

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Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#101

Post by smsm42 »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #58
OmarIsmail wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point is that the scholarly articles (like diamonds) can be easily tracked, and therefore determined if illegally sold or not. Since legitimate buyers - University professors, etc - want to be sure they are on the up and up, the won't purchase illegally obtained goods. Therefore, there would have been no buyers for the articles "stolen".

That doesn't make sense. Imagine a world where Swartz managed to destroy JSTOR. A professor asks his grad students to read an article. They can either dig it out of the archival stacks and read it there or wait for interlibrary loan or...use a torrented copy or illegal DVD they bought on the street at their last academic conference. There is no way to track which one they did. No one will ever know. And no one will c…

Swartz never intended to destroy JSTOR. He wanted to provide access to the articles (many of them, I'm sure, public financed and should be publicly accessible anyway) to people that do not have 50K/year to pay to JSTOR. That would by no way destroy JSTOR, but if the access to the storage could be provided much cheaper - in theory, if it would be possible to do all the functions of JSTOR without JSTOR - I see no reason why JSTOR should be sacred.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#102

Post by jlgreco »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #90
jlgreco wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A university officially providing a pirated archive of JSTOR would be opening itself up to legal liability itself worth more than 50k. Add to that the cost of maintaining a digital archive comparable to JSTOR, the cost of training, and the cost of keeping it up to date, and you have to be absolutely insane or intellectually dishonest if you claim even a struggling school with limited resources would go with that.

> I know that every university, there are multiple servers where students share terabytes of pirated movies, TV shows and music.

You are being delusional if you think such a system is at all comparable to what it would take to replace JSTOR for all but a fraction of university JSTOR users.

I was a technically inclined CS guy with far to much free time while in university and I would be royally pissed if my university had dropped JSTOR for some sort of ghetto fileshare with an aging torrent. Anyone a less ideal user than I would be crippled by that.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#103

Post by anonymouz »

ucee054 wrote: post #92
anonymouz wrote: post #79

I've rarely read a more sensational and one-sided piece. At this point, the bending of facts to serve the idealization of Swartz and the demonization of Ortiz starts to seem like nothing more than throwing gasoline into the fire of an enraged lynch mob.

Enraged lynch mobs are why you have democracy and justice systems and human rights rather than the Diktat of the King, which is what we used to have before enraged lynch mobs.

It is a fallacy to assume that just because some lynch mobs took part in an effort with ultimately positive outcome (it took much more than a mob to establish democracy or justice systems), all, or even most, of them are positive.

A vendetta against a prosecutor, carried by hugely one-sided, unreflected and self-reinforcing blog-posts does not even come close.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#104

Post by drcube »

I'm 100% behind changing the laws and punishing the overzealous prosecutor. Don't get me wrong.

But I'd like to see the millions of poor black kids whose lives are destroyed by the justice system every day get this kind of response, and not just when it's a handsome rich white kid like Aaron.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#105

Post by lhnz »

tosser23 wrote: post #18

It is now taken as an article of truth that Ortiz drove him to suicide. Is there any direct evidence that he did it because of the prosecution or is it only assumed?

Not sure what the purpose of that question is as it seems fairly obvious that without Aaron around it would be impossible to prove with 100% certainty that the suicide was due to the prosecution.

However, I am sure you agree that it is highly-likely due to the aggressive nature of the prosecution and voiced opinions by his family and friends that this was having a very negative affect on his emotional well-being. That might be conjecture but it's better conjecture than believing he committed suicide for no new reason.

edit; I noticed you just down-voted me; I understand it's difficult to deal with being called out online. That said, I would like to point out that your implication that the burden of proof should be on proving Ortiz has some responsibility for his suicide in your insinuation that ”It's now taken as an article of truth that Ortiz drove [Aaron] to suicide” is false. There has been a lot more evidence that there the prosecution was over-reaching and that Swartz was affected negatively by this than there has been otherwise. Obviously your intention by asking that question was to create an easily discredited strawman and perhaps it's a shame I gave you the benefit of doubt when I responded...

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#106

Post by kragen »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #62
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…

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.

Having grown up in New Mexico, I didn't classify Aaron as "white". I don't know if he did.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#107

Post by tzs »

DanBC wrote: post #28
Fishkins wrote: post #3

Why do they call it a prank? My impression is what was nothing of the sort.

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.

Wouldn't MIT losing all JSTOR access for several days count as damage done? Given MIT's research focus and its size, it is hard to imagine how that could not have disrupted the work of a lot of researchers.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#108

Post by jlgreco »

smsm42 wrote: post #101
MichaelSalib wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make sense. Imagine a world where Swartz managed to destroy JSTOR. A professor asks his grad students to read an article. They can either dig it out of the archival stacks and read it there or wait for interlibrary loan or...use a torrented copy or illegal DVD they bought on the street at their last academic conference. There is no way to track which one they did. No one will ever know. And no one will c…

Swartz never intended to destroy JSTOR. He wanted to provide access to the articles (many of them, I'm sure, public financed and should be publicly accessible anyway) to people that do not have 50K/year to pay to JSTOR. That would by no way destroy JSTOR, but if the access to the storage could be provided much cheaper - in theory, if it would be possible to do all the functions of JSTOR without JSTOR - I see no reaso…

> if it would be possible to do all the functions of JSTOR without JSTOR

And spoilers: it's not. In order to make it would you would have to recreate everything JSTOR currently does, which would result in a JSTOR not called JSTOR. One with legal liability at that.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#109

Post by MichaelSalib »

jlgreco wrote: post #102
MichaelSalib wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A university officially providing a pirated archive of JSTOR would be opening itself up to legal liability itself worth more than 50k. Add to that the cost of maintaining a digital archive comparable to JSTOR, the cost of training, and the cost of keeping it up to date, and you have to be absolutely insane or intellectually dishonest if you claim even a struggling school with limited resources would go with that. > I…

As I wrote earlier, I don't think universities would ever provide a pirated archive. They wouldn't need to. Grad students talk. They pass around USB drives. And pretty soon, everyone has the archive on their laptop.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#110

Post by illuminate »

drcube wrote: post #104

I'm 100% behind changing the laws and punishing the overzealous prosecutor. Don't get me wrong. But I'd like to see the millions of poor black kids whose lives are destroyed by the justice system every day get this kind of response, and not just when it's a handsome rich white kid like Aaron.

It's easier to take on a specific cause than address every systemic ill at once.

"But I'd like to see the millions of poor black kids whose lives are destroyed by the justice system every day get this kind of response"

People are taking on the war on drugs, what else is clear-cut and concise enough to address? "Poverty" and "racism" are wayyyyyyyyyyy too complex for anyone to easily identify around it, and the conditions and systems built around both are evasive enough for politicians and lawmakers to blame the systems on "a few bad eggs".

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