81–90 of 170 posts
Like 2muchcoffeeman commented:
>>The award is clearly for people who are being disobedient for the benefit of society. Breaking rules for the sake of breaking rules is just anarchy or trolling. You're just inconveniencing people who set out to recognise real contributions to society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd vote for Swartz or Snowden any day. But IMO voting for Swartz would serve mostly to shame MIT. Voting for someone else might make a difference to a live person.
MIT needs to be shamed publicly, regularly and continuously until they publicly apologize for their shameful behavior. Giving this award to Swartz, and giving the money to his parents, along with a public statement of remorse and a public commitment to behaving more honorably in the future, would be an excellent way for them to do this.
http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N12/swartz.html
The rest of MIT might deserve shaming, but please don't punish the Media Lab.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's just stupid. The award is clearly for people who are being disobedient for the benefit of society. Breaking rules for the sake of breaking rules is just anarchy or trolling. You're just inconveniencing people who set out to recognise real contributions to society. Unless there is an Aaron Schwartz foundation or something, nominate people who are still doing work.
This isn't about Aaron. It's about the next person who downloads too much free stuff doing it emboldened by the thought that MIT will have their back when the feds come knocking. If only because not doing so costs MIT 250 thousand dollars. That would be a much bigger contribution to society than any one person walking away with this award.
We must repeal (and not replace) the cfaa. Of course, we should name and shame MIT at every junction (shame on you, MIT!) However, we shouldn't lose sight of the bigger picture. CFAA is evil.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't about Aaron. It's about the next person who downloads too much free stuff doing it emboldened by the thought that MIT will have their back when the feds come knocking. If only because not doing so costs MIT 250 thousand dollars. That would be a much bigger contribution to society than any one person walking away with this award.
While we are on this topic, let's not forget the real culprits: cfaa and widespread abuse of discretionary power by prosecution. We must repeal (and not replace) the cfaa. Of course, we should name and shame MIT at every junction (shame on you, MIT!) However, we shouldn't lose sight of the bigger picture. CFAA is evil.
http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N12/swartz.html
Perhaps the rest of MIT deserves shaming, but please don't punish the Media Lab.
As someone that actively engages in disobedience it is disheartening that they'd award $250k to a single winner instead of $50k to five, $10k to twenty-five, etc. So many people struggle to make a difference, no matter how small, and being honored for their efforts, when it's most likely that it rarely if ever happens in real life, would be inspiring to them to keep up what they're doing. For those interested in read…
＊＊＊Aaron Swartz＊＊＊ Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
(From archive.org: https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj...)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
MIT needs to be shamed publicly, regularly and continuously until they publicly apologize for their shameful behavior. Giving this award to Swartz, and giving the money to his parents, along with a public statement of remorse and a public commitment to behaving more honorably in the future, would be an excellent way for them to do this.
Joi Ito, the current director of the Media Lab, highly praised Aaron during the memorial held at the Media Lab in 2013: http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N12/swartz.html The rest of MIT might deserve shaming, but please don't punish the Media Lab.
> The mood changed later in the memorial when speakers began criticizing MIT’s involvement in the Swartz case. Swartz’ partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, asked MIT to consider whether it considered itself a “scientist” or “bureaucracy” and expressed skepticism about the Abelson report.
It's clear from the dialogue in here that this was not a sufficient response for the wider community, and that more reform and response was (and still is) expected. The perception is that there was a largely neutral response from a part of MIT that should have been one of the loudest.
I just spent a month in Cambridge, and while I met some great people working on important things, I have to say, there's definitely some ossification over there and it's a real problem. We need some very loud advocates for online and software freedom in the academic world right now, perhaps more than we've ever needed them. And yes, we still need the right to read research produced with public funding.
I agree with many of the people in here that this should have been named the Aaron Swartz Disobedience Award, in his honor. Or keep the name, but say that it being awarded in his memory. It would have sent a powerful message, both to future Aarons and to the MIT upper admins that have steadfastly refused to own up to what they did.
This award is a great idea, but the silence of not even mentioning his name in it when it's the thing on everyone's mind is deafening.