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The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"

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Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"

#21

Post by drzaiusapelord »

erichocean wrote: post #7
danso wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't even realize that. The most salacious and unsympathetic of the allegations is how Swartz got physical access...othherwise, how different is what he did than what people who go to Starbucks and torrent illegally? Just magnitude?

It's that the U.S. got their asses handed to them in a previous case involving PACER, and were out for blood. Sadly, that's what they got.

I'm not seeing any reference to PACER in any obit articles and in a lot of the stuff on reddit and elsewhere. This is a very important point. Essentially, Aaron had already defeated the feds for open access and was trying again. I imagine the petty bureaucrats burned by PACER really were out for blood this time.

Apparently, our government's mission is to destroy young people over petty grievances its employees have with American citizens. Christ, there are so many levels of wrong here its unbelievable. I just wish Aaron's case got more attention before he died. There was next to nothing about it, but jerks like Kim Dotcom seem to have articles and public sympathy locked, while real heros like Aaron were margalized because he was working on a level more much complex than "herp derp free moviez" and didn't have the crass marketing and bullshitting skills guys like Dotcom have.

We live in a very unfair world. Whatever American exceptionalism I believed in was steadying chipped away by the horrid Bush years and Obama's bizarre assault on medical marijuana, patent violators, and now 20 somethings downloading lots of PDFs.

I was just thinking how well a young Bill Gates or a young Bill Joy or whoever would fare in 2013 America? These guys have all admitted to doing stuff like stealing mainframe time, ripping off code, causal hacking, pushing around the old guard, violating all manner of rules, etc. Its just back then you didn't go to jail for it. I imagine most of them would have gotten crushed somehow, just like Aaron.

I know I am being dramatic, but this whole thing is very upsetting. The worst is, there is no reform over the horizon. Whatever reformist potential Lessig and the EFF and others had in the late 90s and early 2000s is long dead. If anything, things have somehow gotten worse for those who believe in open information and sensible prosecution of computer crimes since the Bush years. How did we get here? Why is Aaron dead? Why is my side always losing? This is too fucking much.

Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"

#22

Post by d0m »

Is this the reason why he committed suicide? As far as I understand, there really was no crime at all. Hell, by these standards, Mark Zuckerberg should get 70 years in prison for downloading some pictures. It's hard to believe he was persecuted for years because of that. Still, a part of me believes there had to be a stronger reason to commit suicide. I mean, we're not talking about a random stranger.. it's Aaron. He's fought all his life for things and menaces way bigger than that. This is odd.

Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"

#23

Post by rprasad »

todayiamme wrote: post #13

The only conclusion I can draw from his life and the events leading up to his demise is that he must have upset someone deeply entrenched in the circles of power. Otherwise the witch-hunt just doesn't make any sense. After all ask yourself what motive did the prosecutor possess for going after him like that?

No conspiracy, guys.

The prosecutor was just doing her job. A simple case like Aaron's probably took up less than 1% of her week. It may have been a big case to Aaron, but compared to their normal cases, it was a relative vacation for the prosecutors working on it.

The problem was not that Aaron "upset someone deeply entranched." The problem is that Aaron's activities fall into the definition of a particular form of electronic crime which may be overbroad. Federal prosecutors don't get to decide if laws are overbroad or unconstitutional and choose not to enforce the law (because this discretion was historically used to excuse many white defendants accused of lynching black men in the South). They enforce all of the laws on the books unless someone with legal discretion (i.e. ,the head of the DOJ or the president) issues an order telling them not to enforce a particular (set of) law(s).

Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"

#24

Post by MichaelSalib »

danso wrote: post #5
theevocater wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but the actual trespassing charge was dropped. So it wasn't even part of the case!

I didn't even realize that. The most salacious and unsympathetic of the allegations is how Swartz got physical access...othherwise, how different is what he did than what people who go to Starbucks and torrent illegally? Just magnitude?

Starbucks torrenters generally don't cause a community of 20,000 scholars to lose access to a major journal archive for days at a time. And they generally don't require university staff to burn hours trying to hunt down hidden machines that are disrupting their network.

Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"

#25

Post by danso »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #24
danso wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't even realize that. The most salacious and unsympathetic of the allegations is how Swartz got physical access...othherwise, how different is what he did than what people who go to Starbucks and torrent illegally? Just magnitude?

Starbucks torrenters generally don't cause a community of 20,000 scholars to lose access to a major journal archive for days at a time. And they generally don't require university staff to burn hours trying to hunt down hidden machines that are disrupting their network.

That's besides the point. I'm asking if in which way is the crime, as described in the official charges, different than the Starbucks scenario. The denial-of-service to MIT may have helped spur the case, but wire fraud doesn't seem to depend on whether a DoS happened (or at least from what I can tell)

Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"

#26

Post by notatoad »

todayiamme wrote: post #13

The only conclusion I can draw from his life and the events leading up to his demise is that he must have upset someone deeply entrenched in the circles of power. Otherwise the witch-hunt just doesn't make any sense. After all ask yourself what motive did the prosecutor possess for going after him like that?

Does the US Federal Court count as 'someone deeply entrenched in the circles of power'? They tried to go after him for freeing documents from PACER and failed, so they had to find some other way to get at him. And then when he committed the same crime (freeing information) again, the government had the perfect opportunity.

Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"

#27

Post by zapdrive »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #24
danso wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't even realize that. The most salacious and unsympathetic of the allegations is how Swartz got physical access...othherwise, how different is what he did than what people who go to Starbucks and torrent illegally? Just magnitude?

Starbucks torrenters generally don't cause a community of 20,000 scholars to lose access to a major journal archive for days at a time. And they generally don't require university staff to burn hours trying to hunt down hidden machines that are disrupting their network.

Apparently, the MIT and/or JSTOR staff took down the service themselves when they detected the mass downloads. It was not Aaron's "attack" that brought down the access.

Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"

#28

Post by hkmurakami »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #21
erichocean wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's that the U.S. got their asses handed to them in a previous case involving PACER, and were out for blood. Sadly, that's what they got.

I'm not seeing any reference to PACER in any obit articles and in a lot of the stuff on reddit and elsewhere. This is a very important point. Essentially, Aaron had already defeated the feds for open access and was trying again. I imagine the petty bureaucrats burned by PACER really were out for blood this time. Apparently, our government's mission is to destroy young people over petty grievances its employees have w…

The Internet Archive's obituary makes prominent note of Aaron's volunteer work in creating RECAP, which is what Aaron helped create / used in the PACER incident.

http://blog.archive.org/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-hero-of-the-...

Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"

#29

Post by MichaelSalib »

zapdrive wrote: post #27
MichaelSalib wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starbucks torrenters generally don't cause a community of 20,000 scholars to lose access to a major journal archive for days at a time. And they generally don't require university staff to burn hours trying to hunt down hidden machines that are disrupting their network.

Apparently, the MIT and/or JSTOR staff took down the service themselves when they detected the mass downloads. It was not Aaron's "attack" that brought down the access.

So what? Aaron violated MIT's policies and JSTOR's policies and the result was that a large community of scholars lost access. Those scholars would have had access if Aaron hadn't done what he did.

Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"

#30

Post by jlgreco »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #29
zapdrive wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, the MIT and/or JSTOR staff took down the service themselves when they detected the mass downloads. It was not Aaron's "attack" that brought down the access.

So what? Aaron violated MIT's policies and JSTOR's policies and the result was that a large community of scholars lost access. Those scholars would have had access if Aaron hadn't done what he did.

The only harm was manufactured by the "victims". Were it not for the "victims" manufacturing this harm, they would not be called victims at all. They essentially bootstrapped their own victim-hood. If you don't see why that is relevant in an ethical consideration of his actions, then I cannot help you.
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