The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

Post by decebalus1 » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

prirun wrote: post #23

photochemsyn wrote: post #18

This article carefully avoids any analysis of the reasons why MIT chose to persecute Aaron Swartz. Here's a quick take on the actual situation, off the top of my head: "The Darker Side of MIT and the Academic Publishing Industry" While the Internet has been hailed from its inception as a tool that would open up access to information for the whole world, the reality has not matched that expectation. Much of the most i…

If you ever see this phrase: 'public-private' partnership, you can be assured that the losses/costs will be public while the gains/profit will be private.

Post by pm90 » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

NoGravitas wrote: post #30

> It is commonly assumed that the debate over what Swartz did, and, more generally, the debate over whether information does or does not want to be free, is between hacker culture and copyright culture, young people and old people, but this is not true. On the Hacker News site in the fall of 2012, many commenters disagreed with what he’d done, and argued with his supporters on the site that in a nation ruled by laws…

Post by anonporridge » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

NoGravitas wrote: post #30

> It is commonly assumed that the debate over what Swartz did, and, more generally, the debate over whether information does or does not want to be free, is between hacker culture and copyright culture, young people and old people, but this is not true. On the Hacker News site in the fall of 2012, many commenters disagreed with what he’d done, and argued with his supporters on the site that in a nation ruled by laws…

Post by stathibus » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

santoshalper wrote: post #32

SavantIdiot wrote: post #24

> The irrationalities of power fascinated him, but he found the irrationalities of activism exasperating. Most activists, in his experience, would launch big campaigns about big issues and do things that they guessed would be beneficial, like running television ads or sending out direct mail, but they never did the work to figure out whether what they were doing was actually changing policy. This is the frustrating t…

Or maybe he was right and most activism is emotionally driven rather than rational or data driven, and is ultimately ineffective.

Post by tonguez » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #33

NoGravitas wrote: post #30

> It is commonly assumed that the debate over what Swartz did, and, more generally, the debate over whether information does or does not want to be free, is between hacker culture and copyright culture, young people and old people, but this is not true. On the Hacker News site in the fall of 2012, many commenters disagreed with what he’d done, and argued with his supporters on the site that in a nation ruled by laws…

> Or, possibly, Hacker News doesn't represent hacker culture, but finance-adjacent right-wing techbro culture, which knows perfectly well which side of the copyright issue its bread is buttered on. Spot on. I like HN for certain topics, but it’s by no means representative of the Hacker culture. Even the name seems like duplicitous marketing at best. As an example, the topic of immigration will bring out the nastiest…