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Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

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Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#21

Post by gertef »

rabidonrails wrote: post #12
nickbauman wrote: post #5

This historical event is what tipped me into the direction of being much, much more concerned about government overreach and find some sympathy with my libertarian-leaning friends for the first time. Swartz's story will be part of The Fire Next Time that James Baldwin wrote about 40 years ago. Swartz is part of the same story that includes Eric Gardner, Sandra Bland, et al.

A Swartz is more closely related to general government overreach like Snowden or Katherine Mitchell; people who saw a system that needed fixing. Comparing A Swartz with Gardner is a somewhat unfair comparison for Swartz.

Is downloading information less worthy of government regulation then trading cigarettes?

Is hounding someone through the courts more of an overreach than killing in the street?

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#22

Post by hkmurakami »

Seems like an apt time to reupload the markdown dump of his blog that was made by a HN'er 3 years ago. (we were concerned that his blog would cease to be a going concern)

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=673004338877052...

(not really sure where the best file hosting venue is these days)

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#23

Post by wolfgke »

jason_slack wrote: post #19
david927 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, Aaron was as much our country as the people who persecuted him. He cared about it; you should too. You can react two ways: 1) impotent anger or 2) stand up and continue his fight. Which will it be? Find friends and others and we can all pitch in to create a method of distributing knowledge in a way that can't be controlled. The internet makes it possible, the only thing missing is the will and the effort. Anyo…

I'm not angry. But I am disappointed to the point I think we need serious reform. This means a call to action. This is what Aaron did.

> I'm not angry. But I am disappointed to the point I think we need serious reform. This means a call to action.

Aaron can't do this an anymore since he was driven into suicide by the criminal prosecution of his country, he can't do it anymore.

So: Don't call for action - act instead!

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#25

Post by wolfgke »

rabidonrails wrote: post #12
nickbauman wrote: post #5

This historical event is what tipped me into the direction of being much, much more concerned about government overreach and find some sympathy with my libertarian-leaning friends for the first time. Swartz's story will be part of The Fire Next Time that James Baldwin wrote about 40 years ago. Swartz is part of the same story that includes Eric Gardner, Sandra Bland, et al.

A Swartz is more closely related to general government overreach like Snowden or Katherine Mitchell; people who saw a system that needed fixing. Comparing A Swartz with Gardner is a somewhat unfair comparison for Swartz.

While Swartz was surely a lot more of a hero then Eric Garner, both were each in their own way murdered (or left for dead) by the same system of criminal prosecution.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#28

Post by cinquemb »

david927 wrote: post #18
jason_slack wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had known growing up that the country I lived in was like this, I'd of not cared about it so much. I used to stand when the national anthem would come on and deeply be thankful for what I had.

First, Aaron was as much our country as the people who persecuted him. He cared about it; you should too. You can react two ways: 1) impotent anger or 2) stand up and continue his fight. Which will it be? Find friends and others and we can all pitch in to create a method of distributing knowledge in a way that can't be controlled. The internet makes it possible, the only thing missing is the will and the effort. Anyo…

I think projects like sci-hub are definitely a step in that direction, and the more projects that leverage the legal arbitrage and technical capabilities that exist today the better.

I'd be interested in trying to help someone who lives outside of the US figure out how to come up with something similar but for all the data that is trapped behind the facebooks and the like. I did something like this before, but I got hit with a C&D, but the technical capabilities are still available to leverage to weaken facebooks hold on personality information if one can side step the jurisdiction of such legal tools.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#29

Post by rpgmaker »

hkmurakami wrote: post #22

Seems like an apt time to reupload the markdown dump of his blog that was made by a HN'er 3 years ago. (we were concerned that his blog would cease to be a going concern) http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=673004338877052... (not really sure where the best file hosting venue is these days)

Someone actually made a perfectly indexed epub back then but I think HN frowns upon the reformatting of someone's public blog, which I guess is why more people don't upload an epub of pg's blog.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#30

Post by andrepd »

xiaoma wrote: post #9

He was a pretty argumentative guy, but he was right about so much. He genuinely put his heart into what he believed in. Without him (and Lessig), SOPA easily could have gone the other way. He didn't deserve what the justice system did to him. Let's be honest. Almost no one does. Aaron is definitely missed.

>Almost no one does.

That's not even remotely true. Our justice system may be severely fucked in many ways, but it's not completely nonfunctional. But we hear about the problems whenever something goes wrong. The other 99.9 percent of the time when things go smoothly we don't even notice...

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