41–50 of 213 posts
He did not "die", he was murdered.
The news is still confined to the dead dogs section in local news.
I guess that cemeteries are full of important people we all care about, sometimes much more than the yet to be important that are still alive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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...
I'm not sure what the original commenter meant, but some of us (a minority I'm sure) believe that no person deserves arrest, prosecution and jail in the forms they exist today even if that person is guilty of a crime. Things can go "smoothly" but still result in people being subjected to intimidation, cruelty and violence.
He did not "die", he was murdered.
No he was not murdered; he committed suicide rather than face jail and fight. Using hyperbolic language and calling a suicide murder doesn't do anything useful.
For dark fabric: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6fL4G1FVF-AdHhCdVU4UHhCNk0...
For lighter fabric: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6fL4G1FVF-AblFNYlBrWTJmems...
Source Inkscape SVG: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6fL4G1FVF-AbHB3ZW9CZWNDVmc...
Based on a photo by Sage Ross (CC BY-SA) http://ragesoss.com/blog/2013/07/12/the-use-aaron-swartz-pho...
I printed one on zazzle.com on a dark t-shirt but it seems I can't share the design without becoming some kind of t-shirt vendor and take a royalty which I don't care to do. If you want one, you will have to upload the image yourself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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...
There is a huge difference between things going smoothly and things being just . Something like 95% of cases in the US don't even go to trial. They're ended in a plea bargain, which allows the prosecutor to serve as both judge and jury. I do not think that is a sign of a healthy justice system, nor a sign of a justice system that actually pursues justice .
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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...
There is a huge difference between things going smoothly and things being just . Something like 95% of cases in the US don't even go to trial. They're ended in a plea bargain, which allows the prosecutor to serve as both judge and jury. I do not think that is a sign of a healthy justice system, nor a sign of a justice system that actually pursues justice .
I don't live in the US, though. I was referring to the judicial system in the western world in general, not the US in particular.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No he was not murdered; he committed suicide rather than face jail and fight. Using hyperbolic language and calling a suicide murder doesn't do anything useful.
He wouldn't have attempted suicide if he hadn't been confronted with the merciless system of prosecution.
I just watched "The Internets Own Boy" again last night. It amazes me what our justice system can do to people and not be held responsible. Had I done the same thing to Aaron, I'd have been given lethal injection by now.
> It amazes me what our justice system can do to people and not be held responsible. Just to play devil's advocate here (and I understand this goes against prevailing opinion), but he did break the law. That much isn't in dispute, they had a video of him entering the MIT network closet. And he didn't commit misdemeanors, he committed a half dozen felonies (actually more, but the prosecution dropped a few of them). Th…
He absolutely did break the law. I, personally don't dispute that, nor do I think that that's a controversial fact here. The trouble that I and many other commenters here have with what happened to Aaron Swartz is the gross disproportionality of the punishment he was facing. For downloading academic papers, he was facing a punishment that could have gone to literally millions of dollars in fines and up to 35 years in prison. That is the sort of punishment that I would expect for ending a life (i.e. negligent homicide), not downloading a few thousand academic papers and publishing them on the Internet.
Should Aaron have gone to jail? Should he have been forced to pay some restitution? Probably. But I don't think that holding the spectre of millions of dollars in fines and the rest of his adult life in jail over his head was the right thing for the prosecutor to do. Its very rare for a crime to break just one law. Prosecutors almost always have a choice of laws to prosecute under. In this case, the prosecutor chose the heaviest, most punishing law, when she could have chosen a lesser charge.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a huge difference between things going smoothly and things being just . Something like 95% of cases in the US don't even go to trial. They're ended in a plea bargain, which allows the prosecutor to serve as both judge and jury. I do not think that is a sign of a healthy justice system, nor a sign of a justice system that actually pursues justice .
Alternatively, it is the sign of a very healthy justice system. When cases are cut and dry there's no reason to go to trial. A basic example: I know I jaywalked, and I got caught, so I pay the already predetermined fine. Why wasted tons of resources taking everything to trial and redifing the system with every case?
Why punish jaywalking?