Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or he read the article.
Maybe you are missing the point?
Yes, I am sure you are right.
It's TCO though, because no matter what, Aaron will not be alive, and cannot be considered for the prize.
MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
121–130 of 170 posts
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unpopular opinion: Aaron Swartz abused the trust which was placed in him by MIT as its guest when engaging in his civil disobedience, and MIT was perfectly justified not to intercede in his case. A bit like if your friend comes to your house, you tell him, "don't smoke weed outside, the cops around here will arrest you," and your friend says "I support marijuana legalization, so I'll smoke wherever I want." Your frie…
That is simply not what happen. He was never warned off MIT campus. The case was never one of trespassing with MIT - otherwise he'd have been slapped on the wrist with a local case. Rather he was arrested by a federal secret service agent for CFAA violations that were based on extremely tenuous arguments that at the least most legal commentators concede was an egregious case of over-prosecution. I'd love to hear your…
I'm not talking about violating trespass laws or any other legal principle---I'm talking about guestright. Aaron Swartz abused MIT's institutional journal subscriptions, which he had access to as a guest of the institution. He was warned to stop by MIT IS&T to an e-mail address he wasn't monitoring. When his IP was blocked, he got a new IP and kept downloading. He knew, or should have known, that his behavior was out of line, and yet he continued.
Do I think he should have been rung up on federal charges? No. But he wasn't a student, or a teacher, or a visiting researcher, or an alum. He had no official affiliation to MIT, and he showed no understanding of or respect for our culture. The flip side of an open culture is respect for and maintenance of the commons, and instead he exploited ours. It was really hard to defend him at the time for abusing the openness of the MIT community.
(And now, in fact, MIT affiliates like Aaron and me no longer have access to MIT's institutional subscriptions, in what I can only assume is partly a response to his actions.)
MIT's history has no shortage of people who were part of the institution and part of the culture, who the administration failed to support when that support was more justified and more needed than it ever was in Aaron's case. I'm sorry for the outcome, and I don't think he deserved it, but I don't think he deserves either some kind of posthumous award, nor does MIT deserve the scorn heaped on it by those who would canonize him.
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#123It doesn't matter if Aaron Swartz is ineligible. We should still nominate him. We should nominate him so many times that granting the award to anyone else makes this award an obviously disingenuous publicity stunt.
interesting titbit:
aaron's dad (Bob Swartz) worked as a patent attorney at the media lab. Not sure if he still does, but he did.
some external reference: https://www.media.mit.edu/videos/aaronsw-2013-03-12/
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#124Todays radical act of disobedience for me was disabling JavaScript on this site. Quelle surprise, it promptly broke and was all black, despite being literally a form.
It looks like Typeform which depends pretty heavily on interactivity, like for keyboard shortcuts. It's somewhat surprising they wouldn't have a no JS fallback but on the other hand the experience would be markedly worse than those with JS on.
The default HTML form experience is still way better than a black page. I don't see the form really needing any more functionality than that.
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unpopular opinion: Aaron Swartz abused the trust which was placed in him by MIT as its guest when engaging in his civil disobedience, and MIT was perfectly justified not to intercede in his case. A bit like if your friend comes to your house, you tell him, "don't smoke weed outside, the cops around here will arrest you," and your friend says "I support marijuana legalization, so I'll smoke wherever I want." Your frie…
Exactly The AS widows are becoming annoying
Look: there were a lot of people to whom he mattered, whom he left behind, and they're good people, a number of them my friends, and I care a lot about them. Their voices and concerns deserve to be heard, whether or not I agree with them.
The people who never knew him, and who don't know MIT or MIT culture, and who want to turn Aaron into some kind of Internet freedom martyr all out of proportion to who he was and what he actually accomplished, those are the folks who I have a beef with.
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#126Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the main thing that should disqualify him would be his lack of intention. But yes, that's the best-case result of his presidency.
Trump intentions are absolutely clear if you listen to him. I vote for Trump as well, he is going to make this country truly great.
Coal industry is dead, pretending otherwise is not healthy or helpful.
Attacking the media is not healthy or helpful.
His most egregious crime is destabilizing public trust in climate change facts. The world climate is changing because of human actions, and drastic action must be taken by world leaders to prevent catastrophic damage (aka, human extinction events). Leaders like Trump that deny the facts contribute to the damage that may cause these extinction events.
So if you call contributing to effects that could lead to flooding most of our major population centers with rising sea water over the next hundred years "making america great," by all means support the man.
EDIT: Because Trump supporters always say "but Trump didn't say x y z!"
Let's listen to the man: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/26589529219124838...
"Listen to what he says, he's going to make america great." Yea, I'm listening.
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trump intentions are absolutely clear if you listen to him. I vote for Trump as well, he is going to make this country truly great.
Coal industry is dead, pretending otherwise is not healthy or helpful. Attacking the media is not healthy or helpful. His most egregious crime is destabilizing public trust in climate change facts. The world climate is changing because of human actions, and drastic action must be taken by world leaders to prevent catastrophic damage (aka, human extinction events). Leaders like Trump that deny the facts contribute to…
There is no human organization that should be free from scrutiny. Actions taken by members of the media and academia have significantly contributed to public distrust, long before Trump entered the political arena. He is simply capitalizing quite effectively on those, and other, sentiments.
If coal is dead, so are millions of humans. It remains a significant source of global energy, especially in developing countries.
We can craft strawmen and knock them down with cherry-picked quotes all day long.
Exhibit A: Hillary's "super predators" comment - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0uCrA7ePno
Exhibit B: Bernie's "white people don't know what it's like to be poor" comment - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6IlGoeDIUQ
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly The AS widows are becoming annoying
Look: there were a lot of people to whom he mattered, whom he left behind, and they're good people, a number of them my friends, and I care a lot about them. Their voices and concerns deserve to be heard, whether or not I agree with them. The people who never knew him, and who don't know MIT or MIT culture, and who want to turn Aaron into some kind of Internet freedom martyr all out of proportion to who he was and wh…
Thanks, my thoughts exactly. Especially the 2nd paragraph
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#130I see a lot of support for nominating Aaron Swartz on this page. Why not Chelsea Manning instead?
Consider this: her actions parallel Swartz's actions (she liberated information), except that they could potentially benefit many, many more people the world over; Swartz's disobedience would primarily benefit academics (though of course the benefits would sort of trickle down to the rest of the population, eventually).
Additionally, Chelsea Manning is alive, and would benefit from the award. Nominating Aaron Swartz post-humously seems to me like nothing more than an attempt to rub MIT's nose into its own mess ...except of course that the people involved with the award are not the people responsible for Aaron Swartz's treatment.