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The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

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Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#91

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

tptacek wrote: post #74
senko wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he was facing 13 felony charges and up to 50 years in prison[0] Pretty hard slap, that. [0] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/why-did-...

He faced nothing resembling 50 years, even on paper, even in the least charitable plausible analysis. You get to these nosebleed sentences by assuming that there are no sentencing guidelines, and no grouping of charges, and that instead you're likely to serve the sum of the maximum sentences spelled out in the statutes you violated. That makes no sense even as a story: the CFAA statutes capture behavior ranging from…

Overcharging offenses, with the ranges of any possible punishments, is done precisely to pressure people into settling for an outcome the DA finds politically expedient. There is a TERRIBLE amount of uncertainty in EVERY STEP you've outlined, and we see examples EVERY DAY of judges who throw the book at people, especially when they are unknown loners who have offended powerful corporations. PLEASE don't suggest that being accused in this situation wouldn't place someone under ENORMOUS fear and pressure about what could have happened, even if "everyone" thinks those outcomes were unlikely.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#92

Post by shkkmo »

ModernMech wrote: post #53
senko wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he was facing 13 felony charges and up to 50 years in prison[0] Pretty hard slap, that. [0] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/why-did-...

The article says they offered a 6 month jail time plea bargain though. It sounds like from his own writing that he was cognizant of the fact he broke the law, but didn’t agree the law should have been a law in the first place. It also sounds like he didn’t really expect there would be any consequences whatsoever. Look at this from the prosecutors point of view. They have hard evidence of a crime. They have evidence o…

They threatened him with much, much more than 6 months to try to get him to plead guilty as a felon. They drained his financial coffers and drove wedges between him and his support network.

If it was a slam dunk at trial and 6 months was a fair sentence, then why is there a need to threaten so much more to avoid granting him his right to a trial?

Aaron's case is not unique in this regard and is indicative of the casual brutality and inhumanity inherent in the way that our justice system works. We desperately need to threaten reform how plea bargaining works and the amount of power we give prosecutors.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#93

Post by ModernMech »

cowbellemoo wrote: post #80
ModernMech wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says they offered a 6 month jail time plea bargain though. It sounds like from his own writing that he was cognizant of the fact he broke the law, but didn’t agree the law should have been a law in the first place. It also sounds like he didn’t really expect there would be any consequences whatsoever. Look at this from the prosecutors point of view. They have hard evidence of a crime. They have evidence o…

> It’s a waste of everyone’s time and money. Isn't incarcerating a person who's not a danger to others and who's crime had no harmful outcomes a waste of everyone's time and money? > 6 months does not sound like the disproportionate punishment many make it out to be I encourage you to learn about the conditions in prisons. Imprisoned persons are frequently subject to physical and sexual violence at the hands of guard…

> Isn't incarcerating a person who's not a danger to others and who's crime had no harmful outcomes a waste of everyone's time and money?

Yes, but I think the solution is to make fewer things criminal through the democratic process first. Enforcement of laws is important.

It’s one thing to put people in jail who don’t belong there. But according to this article it kinda seems like Swartz did deserve some jail time.

He knowingly broke the law and showed no remorse. Instead his view was that the law should not apply to him because he did not agree with it. That’s a dangerous mindset to have for an individual with money and power.

It’s important to show remorse and contrition in these circumstances, otherwise we can just assume the behavior will continue. And Swartz had a history of this kind of behavior starting with PACER, so really it should have been expected that failing to prosecute in this instance would have been taken by Swartz as a signal to behave like this with impunity.

> I encourage you to learn about the conditions in prisons.

I 100% agree with you, and know all about this topic, but that’s really a different conversation.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#94

Post by tptacek »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #91
tptacek wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He faced nothing resembling 50 years, even on paper, even in the least charitable plausible analysis. You get to these nosebleed sentences by assuming that there are no sentencing guidelines, and no grouping of charges, and that instead you're likely to serve the sum of the maximum sentences spelled out in the statutes you violated. That makes no sense even as a story: the CFAA statutes capture behavior ranging from…

Overcharging offenses, with the ranges of any possible punishments, is done precisely to pressure people into settling for an outcome the DA finds politically expedient. There is a TERRIBLE amount of uncertainty in EVERY STEP you've outlined, and we see examples EVERY DAY of judges who throw the book at people, especially when they are unknown loners who have offended powerful corporations. PLEASE don't suggest that…

I think you stopped reading before the last paragraph of my comment. Or, really, one of the first ones, because, again: the prosecutors are on the record with the sentence they were actually threatening Swartz with, and, as I said, and Swartz's attorney said, and this New Yorker article said: it was nothing resembling 50 years.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#95

Post by pklausler »

honkdaddy wrote: post #7

Refreshingly well-researched and honest piece from the New Yorker. My favourite writing by Aaron is his explanation of what happens in the "ending" of Infinite Jest. [1] I'm of the opinion DFW deliberately left it somewhat open to interpretation, and that his famous quote "If no such convergence or projection occurred to you, then the book’s failed for you" was a tad tongue in cheek. That said, Aaron's explanation is…

I so wish Aaron were still around so that I could argue his Infinite Jest conclusions with him.

(My reading of IJ is that wherever a parallel to Hamlet can be credibly drawn, it's probably right, and that JOI was murdered by CT & Avril.)

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#96

Post by nathanvanfleet »

z3ncyberpunk wrote: post #79
pipeline_peak wrote: post #56

"His girlfriend Taren always dealt with taxi-drivers, with waitresses." "The guy in front of me’s leaning all the way back, but I’m in the last row so my seat doesn’t go back, and I have to lift my legs up to stretch out a muscle that was sitting funny while I was asleep" I feel like Aaron Swartz was never truly an adult, just a boyish intellectual. I can't imagine his submissive behavior was a net positive to his me…

So what? Why do you need to conform to a socially constructed persona?

I think if you speak about it like man/boy it seems sort of abstract. It's more that he wasn't so much of an adult. It seems like he was lacking a lot of responsibility that one would expect from an adult.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#97

Post by shkkmo »

gruez wrote: post #90
MereInterest wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A prosecutor choosing to seek a 6-month jail sentence is acceptable. A prosecutor choosing to seek a 50-year jail sentence is also acceptable. A prosecutor who is offering a 6-month jail sentence in exchange for waiving basic human rights, while threatening a 50-year jail sentence if those rights are exercised, has crossed the line into persecution. It's an analogous situation to blackmail. Suppose Alice has found ev…

>Plea bargains are a form of extortion, and should not be part of the legal system. So you think that every case should be tried, even if it's plainly obvious the perpetrator is guilty? After all, even if the perpetrator has a 1% chance of winning, there's no reason not to go to trial under that system.

> So you think that every case should be tried, even if it's plainly obvious the perpetrator is guilty?

If the perpetrator is willing to plead guilty, there is no need for a trial.

Threatening people with massively larger penalties if they exercise their right to a trial rather than take a plea deal (often time limited before the defense has a chance to see the evidence) is coercive extortion and is morally wrong. There is plenty of evidence of innocent people (especially poor people) taking plea deals due to these prosecutorial tacits of threat and decite.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#98

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

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…

>Hacker News doesn't represent hacker culture, but finance-adjacent right-wing techbro culture,

I disagree. Every time I criticize the (auth) left I get buried in downvotes. Big tech and a lot of HN seems to be vehemently left wing.

Let's see if they do it to this comment too.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#99

Post by MereInterest »

gruez wrote: post #90
MereInterest wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A prosecutor choosing to seek a 6-month jail sentence is acceptable. A prosecutor choosing to seek a 50-year jail sentence is also acceptable. A prosecutor who is offering a 6-month jail sentence in exchange for waiving basic human rights, while threatening a 50-year jail sentence if those rights are exercised, has crossed the line into persecution. It's an analogous situation to blackmail. Suppose Alice has found ev…

>Plea bargains are a form of extortion, and should not be part of the legal system. So you think that every case should be tried, even if it's plainly obvious the perpetrator is guilty? After all, even if the perpetrator has a 1% chance of winning, there's no reason not to go to trial under that system.

Yes, that is correct. A guilty plea may be given, but any incrementally added incentive for somebody to give a guilty plea also incrementally removes the right to have a trial.

Re: The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)

#100

Post by rcoveson »

cowbellemoo wrote: post #80
ModernMech wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says they offered a 6 month jail time plea bargain though. It sounds like from his own writing that he was cognizant of the fact he broke the law, but didn’t agree the law should have been a law in the first place. It also sounds like he didn’t really expect there would be any consequences whatsoever. Look at this from the prosecutors point of view. They have hard evidence of a crime. They have evidence o…

> It’s a waste of everyone’s time and money. Isn't incarcerating a person who's not a danger to others and who's crime had no harmful outcomes a waste of everyone's time and money? > 6 months does not sound like the disproportionate punishment many make it out to be I encourage you to learn about the conditions in prisons. Imprisoned persons are frequently subject to physical and sexual violence at the hands of guard…

Adding to this, there's the overwhelming despair of a young idealist being forced to accept an unacceptable situation. It's plain to the pragmatically disillusioned that the right course of action is to plead guilty. However, not all people, especially at that age, are prudent self-interested agents. Aaron had the choice to surrender to the system he was born into it or violently exit it.
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