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Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

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Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#251

Post by mpyne »

lilsunnybee wrote: post #246
mpyne wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said it wasn't discussed, I said there has been very little discussion. And either way, Bob Swartz is not exactly a disinterested party here. I've lost a child to SIDS. I can guarantee you as a fellow parent who has lost a child that being able to point a finger at some person or persons who are responsible feels much better. You lose a child to something like SIDS or depression and you feel helpless, just ut…

Being charged with a felony is a life sentence in the US. You're forever part of an underclass of 'convicted felons', and your opportunities in life are greatly diminished.

I've worked with a 'felon'. Hacker News was co-founded by a 'felon' convicted under CFAA. The first one convicted, in fact, so if anything aaronsw had the advantage of having it proven before he did what he did that it could possibly result in felony charges. If that's really something he didn't want to have as a possibility, if he would really be so ashamed to be convicted of a "bullshit felony" then it makes you wonder why he went about his business the way that he did. If the law is as stupid as Aaron thought it was then he'd be able to wear the felon tag as a badge of pride.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#252

Post by mpyne »

Volpe wrote: post #248
lilsunnybee wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the right circumstances, almost anyone can be made to want and try to commit suicide. Intense, prolonged isolation and other types of torture can cause that, but that does not mean anyone subject to such things has a depressive disorder requiring treatment. Sometimes the situation is the only problem.

I would challenge that... Julian Assange has faced a lot more isolation, much larger potential charges... And still lives...

Not to mention a certain Private First Class currently undergoing court-martial at Ft. Meade, MD...

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#253

Post by smsm42 »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #115
smsm42 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

With respect, the fact that he wrote the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto suggests that he did want to destroy JSTOR as a going concern. Now, maybe he didn't think releasing their archive would be enough, but he was clearly gunning for them. He wanted to provide access to the articles to people that do not have 50K/year to pay to JSTOR. That would by no way destroy JSTOR JSTOR prorates its fees so that poor institution…

>>>> If the JSTOR archive was released to the world, why would journal owners continue licensing their content to JSTOR?

I'm not sure how this question makes sense. If the content that is accessible via JSTOR would be also accessible otherwise, which journal owners would withhold permission from JSTOR to publish their content? That's like saying if the book is available in the library, nobody would ever buy it. Obviously, it is not so.

Also, surprisingly, in September 2011 JSTOR made public domain content available to everybody and shortly after that instituted free individual access programs - which they didn't do before, and which by your words should be impossible due to high costs that can not be supported in any other way but by charging for any access. Somehow it turned out to be possible still, and JSTOR did not collapse.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#254

Post by illuminate »

drcube wrote: post #122
illuminate wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 condit…

Sure. I agree, it's a hard problem. Doesn't mean it shouldn't get attention.

Getting attention doesn't always identify easily addressable factors, there's a lot to un-knot. Granted, I don't think the slactivism and internet petitionry is going to do a heck of a lot with Aaron's case either.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#255

Post by visarga »

mpyne wrote: post #250
visarga wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> logically unsound things about this case such as ... he didn't commit any crimes Please consider the notion of civil protest. After all, this great country started by throwing the English tea overboard. To defend this view I would like to say that: 1. he was not personally profiting from the act 2. he was doing it for the betterment of society Illegal things are sometimes morally right, and legal things morally wro…

The most religious people refuse personal profit and earnestly and honestly believe they are doing it for the "betterment of society". This is the logic that was used to colonize (er, "civilize") the "savages" of Africa and the Pacific. So no, I refuse to subscribe to the idea that because he felt that it was better for everybody that it was his job to force it on everyone else. You know what else the American coloni…

I agree with you, letting people think they can change society as they wish by civil disobedience might easily be destabilizing and a bad thing, yet, the opposite is also true. From time to time we need to protest, voting doesn't change shit.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#256

Post by kragen »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #125
kragen wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What do you mean?

I mean that, since his skin was brown, he didn't fit into my "white" mental category, because in New Mexico, people whose skins are brown typically identify as "Indian", "Hispanic", or "Black", not "White" (aka "Anglo"). Classifying people into separate "races" is pretty much racist bullshit anyway, but the fact that the classification varies so much from place to place makes that even more obvious.

I didn't actually know he was Jewish until last week.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#257

Post by jlgreco »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #214
pekk wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The race of the defendant isn't a salient part of this. We don't have to wait for a black Aaron Swartz to act, on the far-fetched premise that the only thing that will be noticed by prosecutors was his color. This is a far-fetched idea. Federal prosecutors are certainly intelligent enough to understand many of the factors which make this sensitive, including a suicide, internet backing, the specific alleged crime and…

Are we really going to pretend that federal prosecutors are colorblind, that aren't significant racial disparities in federal sentencing already?

Did he say anything of the sort?

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#258

Post by smsm42 »

jlgreco wrote: post #108
smsm42 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It may very well be so, then the project of copying JSTOR would be marginal and would descend into oblivion without any external intervention.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#259

Post by dromidas »

Volpe wrote: post #248
lilsunnybee wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the right circumstances, almost anyone can be made to want and try to commit suicide. Intense, prolonged isolation and other types of torture can cause that, but that does not mean anyone subject to such things has a depressive disorder requiring treatment. Sometimes the situation is the only problem.

I would challenge that... Julian Assange has faced a lot more isolation, much larger potential charges... And still lives...

Julian Assange also already has the martyr thing going. He seems to feel like being persecuted as publicly as he is is just adding to his cause. He may be right, who knows. Point is that Aaron wasn't a martyr until after his death. Assange is different.

Re: Carmen Ortiz Strikes Out

#260

Post by rhizome »

mpyne wrote: post #193
rhizome wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your quotes are selective, so I hope this doesn't just devolve into people battling their own predilections through their HuffPo/Drudge filters. There's lots to be said for the entire process. As for depression, the federal case is the only part that is any of our business, and is the only part (that I know of) that provides some commonality of experience and results, as the feds can come after any of us for whatever…

> As for depression, the federal case is the only part that is any of our business If by "business" we mean keeping our brightest minds around to drive progress on the difficult issues of our times then we absolutely must take a holistic view. If by "business" we simply mean advancing the goals of hacktivism then a focus on depression would certainly not help, I agree.

3. "business" to refer to a specific human experiencing their own life and the factor(s) that applies to the general case. There were non-case factors, sure, but those are different for everybody, so dragging them into the argument is to strive to compare apples and oranges.
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