41–50 of 95 posts
>The two MIT officers and Special Agent Pickett then tried to stop Swartz, who jumped off his bike and ran away, only to be caught and handcuffed by the Secret Service Agent, according to the report. RUN FASTER. I really can't stress this enough. The reason he got caught is because he didn't run fast enough. If you're going to do stuff like this, LEARN TO RUN FAST. Cops are fat and slow. You can usually get away from…
Got COM?
>The two MIT officers and Special Agent Pickett then tried to stop Swartz, who jumped off his bike and ran away, only to be caught and handcuffed by the Secret Service Agent, according to the report. RUN FASTER. I really can't stress this enough. The reason he got caught is because he didn't run fast enough. If you're going to do stuff like this, LEARN TO RUN FAST. Cops are fat and slow. You can usually get away from…
Ha, I was just thinking the same thing. Also, if we're talking pure logistics, don't jump off the BIKE either. Perhaps we should consider the fact that the secret service was involved.. I bet that guy is pretty fast. I don't know why I think that though, just seems more "tough". Another thing: Aaron is a really important person to have writing/researching/hacking outside of prison. Surely it's a net win to just pay a…
So... where is tptacek assuring us all that he won't spend a night in jail?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They might ask for 35 years but if the judge gives him 35 years i'd go out to the prison with some free Aaron signs and do a hunger strike. I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one. That would be outrageous. Actually any jail time would be ridiculous, he's not a dangerous person at all.
There are many crimes for which you can go to jail even though you are not a dangerous person.
35 Years seems a little over the top. Gilbert Bland Jr traveled to university libraries around the country for years, stealing maps from irreplaceable antique books, by physically removing them with a razor blade. The total value of the maps that the FBI was eventually able to recover was over $500,000. In the end he paid $70,000 and served 17 months in prison.
For comparison, Bland was facing a maximum sentence of 120 years. (Six charges of up to twenty years each.)
>The two MIT officers and Special Agent Pickett then tried to stop Swartz, who jumped off his bike and ran away, only to be caught and handcuffed by the Secret Service Agent, according to the report. RUN FASTER. I really can't stress this enough. The reason he got caught is because he didn't run fast enough. If you're going to do stuff like this, LEARN TO RUN FAST. Cops are fat and slow. You can usually get away from…
I see the anti-cop contingent from reddit has finally arrived. Seriously, for your sake, I hope you are just trolling.
Throwing a constant stream of criticism at those in power keeps the system healthy. There is no reason to let them rule over us and heap them with praise.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to believe they'd go to all of this effort to catch someone who'd placed a laptop in an unmarked closet. There was no indication that a student was not allowed in the area, according to my reading. In hindsight we can think of lots of ways to defend against this kind of detection, but which of us would really think they would get the Secret Service involved to catch a person who was downloading public domai…
...person who was downloading public domain documents... I hate being pedantic[1] but I keep seeing people make this mistake: JSTOR is not just public domain works, and there is no indication that the downloading was limited to public domain works. I think people are getting confused due to the release (by someone else) of a torrent of public domain material from JSTOR, but that's not a torrent of what Aaron download…
I'd like to tweak the presentation here. Many of the comments I keep seeing (including here on HN) seem to go with the take that
1. That it positively did include works that weren't in the public domain. There doesn't seem to be any indication that this is the case. 2. That Swartz intended to distribute content downloaded from JSTOR not in the public domain. Given the credentials and history of the person in question, it just doesn't seem to be a rational conclusion that Swartz's visions of the future included consciously distributing infringing material (nor the consequences that would go along with it).
Sentencing a criminal to jail is theoretically supposed to be for the good of society. So in a case like this, they'd better ask themselves if society would ultimately benefit from having him behind bars. The actual damage done here was negligible, especially considering the questionable locking-down of the content in the first place (i.e. maybe it should always have been free, and it was still valued at only $50,000…
I feel that deterrence is a stronger argument here - maybe you are right in that he'll be a net positive anyway as a free man, but there is some validity in that it will make the next guy who wants to secretly install laptops in server closets to think twice.