MIT Media Lab giving out $250K cash prize for disobedience

Perhaps they could've given it to Aaron Swartz to support the legal issues they threw him in as a result of his responsible, ethical disobedience aimed at challenging our norms, rules, or laws to benefit society.

I'm half-tempted to nominate him as an act of disobedience.

Re: MIT Media Lab giving out $250K cash prize for disobedience

#5

Post by x1798DE » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 12:51 AM UTC

Assuming a posthumous grant to Aaron Swartz is not possible, I would think Alexandra Elbakyan from scihub would be a good choice for this award.

Re: MIT Media Lab giving out $250K cash prize for disobedience

#6

Post by NamTaf » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 1:23 AM UTC

x1798DE wrote: post #5

Assuming a posthumous grant to Aaron Swartz is not possible, I would think Alexandra Elbakyan from scihub would be a good choice for this award.

The rules state that the person must be living, but in the theme of disobedience I felt it pertinent to ignore that.

Re: MIT Media Lab giving out $250K cash prize for disobedience

#7

Post by allenleee » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 4:10 AM UTC

NamTaf wrote: post #4

Perhaps they could've given it to Aaron Swartz to support the legal issues they threw him in as a result of his responsible, ethical disobedience aimed at challenging our norms, rules, or laws to benefit society. I'm half-tempted to nominate him as an act of disobedience.

Can't agree more.

Re: MIT Media Lab giving out $250K cash prize for disobedience

#8

Post by webmaven » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 5:19 AM UTC

How fucking convenient that their timeline of examples ends in 2012, a year before Aaron Swartz committed suicide.

In a different way, it is rather interesting that Occupy Wall Street (2011) didn't make the cut.

Re: MIT Media Lab giving out $250K cash prize for disobedience

#9

Post by webmaven » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 5:28 AM UTC

Heck, rather than a prize, IMO a better idea would be to create a "Disobedience Legal Defense Fund", the sort of thing that might have helped Aaron Swartz.

Re: MIT Media Lab giving out $250K cash prize for disobedience

#10

Post by allenleee » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 5:43 AM UTC

＊＊＊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)