[HN Gopher] Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago
___________________________________________________________________
Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago
"Aaron is dead. Wanderers in this crazy world, we have lost a
mentor, a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down, we have
lost one of our own. Nurturers, carers, listeners, feeders, parents
all, we have lost a child. Let us all weep." - Tim Berners Lee.
Thank you for everything, Aaron. -- Discussions at the time: 1.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5046845 2.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5048820 Blog post in 2016 by
Noah, Aaron's brother:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10881413
Author : ignoramous
Score : 767 points
Date : 2021-01-11 16:48 UTC (5 hours ago)
| perfmode wrote:
| Thanks for this reminder. Miss you Aaron.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| To some degree, this is on us as well - for our failing to hold a
| reasonable PotUS accountable for bad Gov behavior, in a
| meaningful consistent way.
| IncludeSecurity wrote:
| Having worked with all of the founders of SecureDrop (Aaron,
| James, and Kevin) to audit the alpha version it was tough to see
| Aaron go. Also super sad that we lost James a couple of years
| later too
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dolan_(computer_security...
|
| Cheers to everybody out there working on Internet freedom
| software. Thank you all for everything you do, next time you're
| at FOSDEM or browsing around some issues on github for your fav
| secure comms projects, let them know they are appreciated and
| they aren't doing this difficult work in a vacuum.
|
| My .02 -Erik Cabetas-
| ainiriand wrote:
| Some years ago I prepared a (very short) list of people whom I
| want my future kids to know about. The first name I put down
| was Aaron's.
| tehlike wrote:
| i would like to hear about that list. I have a one year old
| daughter, and i want her to know the good people.
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| "On September 12, 2012, federal prosecutors filed a superseding
| indictment adding nine more felony counts, which increased
| Swartz's maximum criminal exposure to 50 years of imprisonment
| and $1 million in fines. During plea negotiations with Swartz's
| attorneys, the prosecutors offered to recommend a sentence of six
| months in a low-security prison, if Swartz would plead guilty to
| 13 federal crimes." -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Arrest_and_prosec...
| iKevinShah wrote:
| Indeed lost a child.
|
| The thing which shocked me equally was Reddit removing him from
| the official "about us"[1] as a co founder. As if he never
| existed in Reddit's history.
|
| 1: https://www.redditinc.com/#section-4
| khazhoux wrote:
| At some risk of stepping into a controversy I have nothing to
| do with... Aaron was not an original co-founder, and when his
| company merged into Reddit (with a "co-founder" title as per
| agreement) every indication is that that arrangement didn't
| work out for anyone. So I don't blame Reddit for not including
| Aaron in the company history, as it wasn't his idea, he didn't
| start it nor grow it, and his presence apparently never
| "clicked" with the others.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| From personal experience, Prozac can act as a suicide deterrent
| given the right conditions. It's not true for everyone, and
| perhaps not even for most people, but there is so much stigma
| against it.
|
| Please, if you're feeling anything along those lines, at least
| try some antidepressants. What have you got to lose? You have
| your whole life to gain.
|
| I miss Aaron. I ended up using some code by him a couple months
| ago, which made me smile. It's still the best library for the
| job, nearly a decade later.
| rozab wrote:
| Placebo controlled trials show that Prozac increases suicidal
| thoughts.
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i65
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3353604/
|
| https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/Antidepres...
|
| Eli Lilly notoriously buried the evidence of this from their
| own trials.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Interesting. I wasn't aware of this. Perhaps I got lucky, but
| the effect was immediate and life changing. I've never quite
| experienced anything like it, so I try to at least mention
| it.
|
| Not really sure how to proceed knowing it can make the
| situation worse for some people though. Perhaps I'll cite
| your comment in the future; thanks.
| rozab wrote:
| This is the issue with placebo controlled trials: the
| placebo effect is actually pretty damn useful. I don't mean
| to invalidate your experiences, and I don't doubt that
| without a placebo group the positive effect would be
| significant.
|
| It's a sticky situation for sure. Maybe it's unethical to
| tell people this, knowing it will worsen their clinical
| outcomes? I think HN can handle it, but I probably wouldn't
| tell this to somebody irl who is struggling with mental
| health issues and considering antidepressants.
| el_nahual wrote:
| Most antidepressants actually have it right there on the tin
| as a potential side effect.
|
| Paradoxically, starting an antidepressant regimen can
| _increase_ the odds of suicide for some people. The mechanism
| seems to be something like "doesn't completely cure your
| depression, but makes you un-depressed enough to actually act
| on suicidal ideation."
|
| This is why any competent psychiatrist will pair getting
| started on antidepressants with an increase in vigilance of
| the patient.
| worker767424 wrote:
| This hit me harder when it happened than now, but I was also in a
| weird relationship place back then, so some of those feelings got
| combined.
|
| I didn't know it then, but didn't have as big of a role in
| founding reddit as people usually think, and his activism was so
| obviously illegal.
| breck wrote:
| Snippets of one of my conversations with aaronsw way back when
| talking about the reason I wanted to help with Open Library:
| me: If it wasn't for my free city library growing up I would have
| never gotten where I am today. aaronsw: Precisely. I got
| into it for the same reason you did.
|
| He was a genuinely good truth seeker. I wish I had been smarter
| and better able to help him more when he needed it. Please
| support people like him and Alexandra Elbakyan and others who are
| persecuted for doing the right thing for the right reasons.
| [deleted]
| ljlolel wrote:
| Aaron inspired me so much with his clear ethos in his heart.
|
| I could feel his pain in his blog writing so clearly, almost as
| if he could feel the pain of the whole world and it crushed him.
| nojokes1 wrote:
| Another (absolutely horrible) reminder that mental health is
| complex and almost invisible, "justice" seems to mean "money to
| lobby" more and more, and that the parasitical industry of
| academic publishing aims to gatekeep knowledge (that we paid
| for!) from those who are unable/unwilling to pay them again.
|
| So read, learn, do, and don't forget the failings of the mental
| health system, justice system, and academic publishing industry.
|
| And as a final question: How can we do better in each of these
| areas? What can be made to help out?
| rglover wrote:
| Miss that guy a lot. When I was first starting out, I made a
| point to go and read his Raw Nerve series and it had a massive
| impact on my life: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve.
|
| One of those rare, brilliant lights in the world who left way,
| way, way too soon.
| pdevr wrote:
| Reddit's Lisp to Python port used web.py written by Aaron:
| http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit
|
| web.py source code - a framework in a single file:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20060106081029/http://webpy.org:...
|
| RIP Aaron.
| poxwole wrote:
| _Died?_ No. Murdered. Murdered by MIT and JSTOR
| tzs wrote:
| Can you point out what you think JSTOR did wrong?
|
| Here's what it looked like from their end:
| https://docs.jstor.org/summary.html
| elunico35 wrote:
| A true patriot.
| lucasgonze wrote:
| I have thought of him several times lately. I keep coming across
| his work in one form or another - some typically excellent
| writing on his blog, a history of Markdown explaining his key
| contributions.
|
| He made so many kinds of contributions. He was the Erdos of his
| generation.
| bobuk wrote:
| More than 10 years ago, I've asked Aaron about the best way to
| tell him "thanks for your job". He said what he has a big
| wishlist on Amazon, so I've chosen a couple of books and bought
| them to him. Since then, once a year I have an event in my
| calendar: "check out what's new on Aaron's wishlist". Don't know
| why I decide to write it today but this is a link for this
| wishlist, just for inspiration. I think it will help you to
| understand more about Aaron and his personality
|
| https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2A6HM9B19FOPW/
| OzzyB wrote:
| Always reading, always learning. To the point when asked what
| reward can I give you, it's more learning and reading.
| Beautiful.
| fsociety wrote:
| Wish you were here, RIP
| fossuser wrote:
| I commented this recently on a similar post a few months ago, but
| it's relevant here (lightly edited for accuracy).
|
| Even now you see comments in this thread pretending it was
| succumbing to depression rather than admit our responsibility and
| the immense pressure that was placed on him - supremely
| irritating.
|
| ###
|
| I remember seeing later that his legal defense fund was posted
| here for help because the cost of the defense for a federal crime
| (even though he'd likely win) was 1.5M, and the first comment at
| the time was someone being nasty to him. (post:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484 , comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529609)
|
| I remember the emails from MIT that showed the IT department
| going after him, and then when caught MIT choosing to do nothing
| rather than help.
|
| Even JSTOR backed down rather than move forward.
|
| It still makes me angry and MIT's reputation was seriously harmed
| in my eyes because of it.
|
| Journals blocking access to publicly funded research by extorting
| desperate academics for prestige is what's wrong. It's a broken
| system due to bad incentives that's worse for everyone except the
| journals that enrich themselves on the back of publicly funded
| research, by locking it away and charging enormous rent.
|
| The punishment was disproportionate to a crime that, while
| possibly illegal, was on the morally right side of a broken
| incentive structure. He didn't even get the chance to put the
| articles up, he downloaded them from a network he had rightful
| access to. His main crime was leaving a laptop running in an open
| closet, and downloading more than they wanted.
|
| Luckily Sci-Hub continued his work.
|
| The legal thing and the right thing are often not the same:
| https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
|
| Maybe the worst part was after his suicide reading comments here
| about how you can only blame the person who committed suicide
| since no one else is responsible for the ultimate act.
|
| If you choose not to see a causal link between the pressure of
| this prosecution and his death, I think that says more about your
| own motivated reasoning than it does about reality.
|
| This was a failure of our community.
|
| ###
|
| On a meta note, one thing that bothered me about 'The Internet's
| Own Boy' were his interviews on Russia Today. He didn't
| understand the extent to which he was being used by foreign
| adversaries to push a narrative favorable to them. That doesn't
| mean his arguments are _wrong_ , but they're in a quite
| misleading context. If you go on RT you should do it like Yascha
| Mounk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cucX1IO78lM
|
| In hindsight, wikileaks was more an arm of Russian propaganda
| than Aaron understood.
| rex_lupi wrote:
| > "We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our
| copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff
| that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy
| secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download
| scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We
| need to fight for Guerilla Open Access." - The Guerrila Open
| Access Manifesto by Aaron Swartz:
| https://openbehavioralscience.org/manifesto
| mlok wrote:
| The Internet Own Boy on Peertube :
|
| https://sepiasearch.org/search?search=the%20internet%20own%2...
| kgwxd wrote:
| Had never seen that quote from TBL. It's nice, but it falls real
| flat coming from the man that used his fame to push for DRM in
| browsers.
| neilv wrote:
| The DRM thing is complicated. Before you condemn a person who
| wrote something kind and thoughtful, if it helps you to
| reconsider: Tim Berners-Lee's recent work seems to be driven by
| ideas with which Aaron Swartz (based on his own work) might
| agree. (And there's the whole thing of him earlier choosing to
| sit out the Web gold rush billions, and instead focus on
| stewardship of this tech platform for the world to communicate,
| from a university position.)
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I was thinking about this the other day. MIT is dead to me.
| Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann should be ashamed for the rest
| of their lives.
| neilv wrote:
| MIT is a big and complicated place, and you'd be throwing out
| some good, including people who are probably closer to Swartz
| in sentiment than our average dotcommer.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| That sounds nice and all, but they have yet to issue a real
| mea culpa, although I think there was a "mistakes were made"
| noise later on. At some point, organizations have to accept
| accountability if they also want praise for their
| accomplishments. One without the other is a recipe for
| disaster.
| pseingatl wrote:
| Neither suffered any consequences.
| newscracker wrote:
| Such a colossal loss!
|
| If you haven't watched it, I'd recommend watching _" The
| Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz"_. [1] It's a bit
| difficult to watch it more than once or twice. It'll leave you
| sad and angry.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet%27s_Own_Boy
| boraoztunc wrote:
| + his blog: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/
| mlok wrote:
| And also on Peertube : https://sepiasearch.org/search?search=
| the%20internet%20own%2...
| boraoztunc wrote:
| edited my comment after yours, and removed the YT link.
| thank you.
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| >> It'll leave you sad and angry
|
| Indeed.
| [deleted]
| cbozeman wrote:
| Although Aaron made enormous contributions to many different
| technologies, I often think of reddit when I think of Aaron.
|
| I often wonder how he would feel, not just about censorship
| there, but about the direction the entire Internet has taken in
| regards to censoring of content. I can't - and wouldn't - speak
| for him, but I would be supremely interested in his thoughts.
| webXL wrote:
| Aaron seemed very opposed to large corporations and their
| control of information. The increase of control seems to be
| timed and in favor with the incoming administration. Government
| using business to do its bidding is very troubling, and I'm
| sure Aaron would have been very concerned about that. Remember,
| this increase of power can be wielded by the next populist
| leader and there are plenty of dark possibilities outside of
| the current Overton Window.
| jonathanlb wrote:
| > The increase of control seems to be timed and in favor with
| the incoming administration. Government using business to do
| its bidding is very troubling
|
| Is that really the case with Facebook, Twitter, et al.?
| Didn't Facebook and Twitter have favorable standing with
| Trump's administration (vis a vis keeping Trump on the
| platform despite his violating their ToS repeatedly)?
| cbozeman wrote:
| I've often spoken with my more left-leaning friends about the
| need to try and find middle ground with my more right-leaning
| friends, and quickly.
|
| Donald Trump was an incompetent, by almost any measure you
| want to use. However, he shifted the Overton Window
| dramatically. When the Republican version of Barack Obama
| bursts onto the scene - someone eloquent, competent, and
| thoroughly able to move effectively in the political sphere,
| there could be a very real problem for Democrats.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| I'm bullish on Democrats due to demographic shifts, but
| they'll need to gain more senators from rural states if
| they want to pass major legislation.
|
| GOP has to somehow consolidate Trumpists with Never
| Trumpers, may be tricky to do. How will independents
| respond to GOP after Trump is finished? Will they forgive
| and forget?
|
| So, in my view, both parties need to adapt or they will not
| achieve that much. Imagine if Dems had 49 senators, how
| little would get done in Biden's term, indeed that may be
| the case after midterms.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Or remove the electoral college (which is an anti-
| democratic contrivance originally meant to cajole then-
| slave states into remaining in the Union[0]) and make
| voting mandatory to completely nuke the GOP's strategy of
| voter disempowerment (which is their best hope as
| demographic shifts increasingly favor the Democrats).
|
| 0: https://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-
| slavery/
| cbozeman wrote:
| That's a single legal scholar's interpretation, not even
| a historian's.
| hajile wrote:
| The South could have a 3/5 slave vote with or without an
| electoral college. That was related to total votes and
| representatives in congress. If anything, Shay's
| Rebellion was the real reason. The majority (farmers)
| voted with their guns to steal from the minority
| (bankers).
|
| Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat
| for supper. Several Federalist papers are dedicated
| exclusively to this idea and the problems of previous
| democracies. Defending minorities (specifically religious
| minorities) was the primary reason for going with a
| Constitutional Republic instead.
|
| The Senate was a similar concession that smaller or less
| populous states deserved equal voice to larger states.
| I'd note that if slavery were the reason for the
| formation, then the Senate would have been a _bad_ idea
| as it stripped power away from the Southern states (as
| that article points out, Virginia alone had more than 10%
| of the total House votes).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'd note that if slavery were the reason for the
| formation, then the Senate would have been a bad idea as
| it stripped power away from the Southern states (as that
| article points out, Virginia alone had more than 10% of
| the total House votes).
|
| Its true that with the apportionment of House votes in
| the Constitution, the Senate (by comparison) had weaker
| representation of the South (30.8% in the Senate, 35.4%
| in the House), but, as with terms explicitly protecting
| slavery, the concern wasn't for the immediate effect, but
| as insurance against trends that were already apparent
| with the expected internal and external expansion of the
| US and its political development.
|
| With the first Congress seated after the apportionment
| due to the 1790 Census (which included Kentucky, admitted
| in 1792), the Senate already was slightly more favorable
| to the South than the House (the South had 38.4% of the
| Senate and 37.1% of the House). With the Congress seated
| after the 1800 apportionment, the South had 46.1% of the
| Senate, and 39.0% of the House.
|
| The idea that the Senate would have been a "bad idea" in
| terms of political power in the South assumes that no one
| at the time of the Constitution had even considered the
| possibility of thinking a few years down the road.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Which demographic shifts specifically?
| mech422 wrote:
| I can't reply directly to hijile below, so I'll leave
| this here:
|
| >>Democrats seem to assume that those 75M people will
| suddenly change their beliefs
|
| as long as 78M people continue to hold their beliefs, I
| really don't think the democrats care. A minority vote is
| a minority vote - whether its 4.9 percent or 49 percent.
| Personally, I think the dems will work more towards
| eliminating the EC and gerrymandering thats gone against
| them.
|
| edit: change second '4.9' to '49'. I really need more
| coffee..
| hajile wrote:
| In this election, Trump received more votes than any
| other sitting president in history. He lost and now the
| Democrats seem to assume that those 75M people will
| suddenly change their beliefs because 78M people hold
| different beliefs. Moreover, it seems that people voted
| _against_ Trump more than _for_ Biden because they
| thought Trump was rude and distasteful.
|
| They fail to recall that this was actually a political
| route for Democrats. Democrats lost seats in the House
| when they were expected to gain. They eked out parity in
| the Senate that probably disappears in 2 years. More
| importantly, they lost almost all state government races.
|
| Remember, Trump's biggest policy positions (bring our
| troops home, bring our jobs back, hard on china, the
| wall, etc) were all Democrat positions a mere 5-7 years
| ago. Now that the Republicans have taken over those more
| centrist ideas, they have gained a huge number of
| supporters.
|
| The Democrats are fractured between centrists and
| progressives. That fracture is _much_ worse than the
| Republicans because it is ideological while the
| Republican fracture is a cult of personality.
|
| Trump will fade. Another person will replace him. They
| will have all of his populism and charm (yes, he's a
| natural entertainer). They won't have his rude
| abrasiveness. He'll then have the majority needed to
| censor the other side now that the Republicans have
| decided they agree with the progressives on that point.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I agree. As someone pretty far on the left I was shook by
| the banning of Donald Trump, and this trend of censorship
| makes me really, really, really scared.
|
| If you're anything but a very centrist Democrat, this
| should scare the crap out of you.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The actual Left has been a target of private censorship
| and public suppression even when the Right got a free
| pass for so long that, as someone on the Left, I'm not at
| all scared that some private censorship is happening to
| violent extremists on the Right (mildly surprised, but
| not scared.)
|
| Though "you should be scared because what has been
| happening to the Left longer, and much more severely,
| than to the Right might happen to you" is a pretty common
| propaganda theme directed at the Left by the Right
| recently.
|
| Unlike the Right, which has had an existence of extreme
| privilege where even the KKK got a pass on government
| scrutiny because it was valued loyal organization around
| the same time that the second big round of government
| institutionalized anti-Communist hysteria, the Left has
| been built around organizations to route around
| establishment suppression for over a century.
|
| And most people to the left of center-right neoliberal
| Democrats are quite aware of that.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| While this is true, on the internet at least I haven't
| seen leftists sites like revleft or crimethinc get denied
| access to hosters, yet.
|
| But yes, you're right that the left is the source of
| private censorship for a long time, which is why lemmy is
| developped by a lot of leftists, for example. If they're
| ready to ban a right wing president though, I can imagine
| how severe the crackdown on the left would be.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Honestly, if leftists start calling for violent
| Revolution because they lose an election, I'm not going
| to be too upset if they get deplatformed too. Perhaps I'm
| just too comfortable with my life, but I suspect most
| other people would agree.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Leftists spaces online got censored because they said
| things as benign as "killing slave owners is morally
| justifiable when necessary", so I think they still have a
| point.
| conception wrote:
| This can only be true if Republican efforts at voter
| suppression continue to be successful while also states
| don't choose to forgo the electoral college. Republicans
| only win because of a tremendously successful campaign to
| not let people vote. They are very much a minority party by
| any measure except outsized influence.
|
| They have fewer voters.
|
| Fewer people identify with them.
|
| Fewer people support their policies.
|
| If Democrats can continue to get voters out, like in GA,
| they will lose seats.
| [deleted]
| indigochill wrote:
| There's an interesting problem here, though, which is why
| the US federal government is structured as it is: there
| are fewer people in, say, Utah than in California. And
| generally people in California may have different
| interests than those in Utah. But as citizens of the US,
| Utah(ians?) deserve representation at the national level,
| which they just wouldn't have in a first-past-the-post
| popular vote. A direct popular vote would always give the
| advantage to candidates who represent coastal and urban
| interests because that's where people are overwhelmingly
| concentrated, and this would leave rural voters
| disenfranchised.
|
| It might be interesting to re-evaluate whether
| representation by geography still makes sense. I'm more
| partial to the parliamentary approach, where parties get
| representation proportional to votes cast for them, so
| this way there could be a "rural interests party" which
| rural voters could vote for and receive representation
| proportional to their population. This might also do an
| end-run around the mind-bogglingly corrupt practice of
| gerrymandering?
| hguant wrote:
| The question of what to call citizens of Utah is a long
| and thorny one; currently the US Government Printing
| Office uses "Utahn." [0]
|
| Apparently this was a big 'issue' in the 80's, when the
| US government usage was "Utahan" or "Utahian," while the
| local usage was "Utahn." Webster's currently lists
| "Utahan" as the correct usage, as far as I can tell
| (their website is trash - searching for "Utahan" and
| "Utahn" just redirects to the "Utah" entry.
|
| [0] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-
| STYLEMANUAL-2016/pdf...
| Reedx wrote:
| If a sitting President can be deplatformed from the
| Internet, then wouldn't a Presidential Candidate be? Would
| said candidate be able to run a successful campaign without
| it?
| webXL wrote:
| > someone eloquent, competent, and thoroughly able to
| move effectively in the political sphere
|
| How will they be able to deplatform that? Are you
| endorsing deplatforming anyone to the right of Joe Biden?
| Reedx wrote:
| No, just extrapolating from here. It could be used
| against the next Bernie too. Any populist candidate,
| whether from the left or right.
| [deleted]
| joshuahaglund wrote:
| If they incite violence yeah. Is that confusing?
| Reedx wrote:
| Check back when Bernie (or the next Bernie, if he doesn't
| run again) is deplatformed, and we'll see who was
| confused.
|
| Just remember back to how the media and establishment
| pulled together to stop Bernie during the primaries.
| Think they won't use this new tool the next time they're
| in danger of losing power to an outsider?
| joshuahaglund wrote:
| If "the next Bernie" promotes violence then he's not the
| next Bernie and I won't support him and I don't
| understand what's so hard to understand about that.
|
| Y'all think "it's both sides" but, in America, this call
| to violence (straight up armed insurrection) is unique in
| right wing politics. And if it showed up in the Left I
| wouldn't tolerate it.
|
| Show me someone on the right who was deplatformed who
| didn't preach hate.
| hctaw wrote:
| Please stop with the false equivalencies.
|
| Donald Trump directed a mob to storm the Capitol while
| they were certifying election results, the ensuing riot
| led to at least five deaths.
|
| He is being deplatformed because of the impending threat
| of violence he presents. This isn't a hypothetical
| situation - he held a rally, incited a riot, and people
| died.
| Reedx wrote:
| Not saying it is or will be the same. It isn't and won't
| be.
|
| We're talking about a TOOL. You don't have to use a tool
| the same way every time.
| bebopcowboy wrote:
| He won't. They'll just censor him
| btown wrote:
| > censoring of content
|
| The supreme irony of this is that Aaron's role as a co-founder
| has long been censored from Reddit's founders page [0], despite
| agreements to the contrary [1].
|
| More generally, Aaron had strong views on censorship [2]:
|
| > I think all censorship should be deplored. My position is
| that bits are not a bug - that we should create communications
| technologies that allow people to send whatever they like to
| each other. And when people put their thumbs on the scale and
| try to say what can and can't be sent, we should fight back -
| both politically through protest and technologically through
| software like Tor...
|
| > How is compromising [by a technology company on censorship]
| supposed to bring greater freedom in the long run? That's like
| saying "I'm going to beat you up now so that you don't have to
| be hit as much in the long run." The right answer is to stop
| beating people up.
|
| But I do think that physical violence resulting in part from
| the _amplification_ of voices by algorithm would have been hard
| to foresee. I too would be curious if his thinking would have
| evolved. Sadly, we 'll never know.
|
| [0] https://reclaimthenet.org/aaron-swartz-reddit-founder/
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_co...
|
| [2] http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-05-07-n78.html
| pdevr wrote:
| From the second link:
|
| PG's opinion: "Aaron's not wrong to call himself one of the
| founders. The company behind Reddit was a merger of two
| startups, one that made Reddit and one that made Infogami,
| and in that situation the founders of both startups are
| considered founders of the combined company."
| kypro wrote:
| > But I do think that physical violence resulting in part
| from the amplification of voices by algorithm would have been
| hard to foresee. I too would be curious if his thinking would
| have evolved. Sadly, we'll never know.
|
| Something that always seems to be accepted without question
| in these conversations is that censoring violent language
| will reduce violent behaviour.
|
| Are we sure this is the case? For example, if you believed
| the election was stolen and all the platforms which would
| allow you discuss this civilly have banned you and those who
| think like you - what do you do?
|
| Sometimes I wonder if restricting peoples ability to express
| themselves freely (and also talking about them like they are
| scum for holding certain view points) might actually motative
| some number of people to make their voices heard through acts
| of violence.
|
| I also dislike how I've been pushed on to what I'd consider
| extremist platforms in recent months because a few people I
| follow have been banned from platforms like Twitter and
| YouTube. I think I'm strong minded enough to resist the
| constant bombardment of anti-semitic and racist content I am
| now exposed to, but I suspect some people are likely to be
| radicalised by this.
|
| ----
|
| To your point though, I often wonder how Aaron would have
| felt about the internet today. I've seen many people's
| opinions on free speech change over the years (including my
| own). Tech platforms when they were the underdogs were
| overwhelming in favour of free speech - I know early on
| Reddit and Twitter explicitely expressed their support of
| freespeech. But in recent years they have become far more
| powerful and it would seem their opinion on what they will
| allow us to say has now changed. Ironically they've moved so
| far on this that if Twitter, Facebook or YouTube were started
| today they would probably be shut down because of how much
| extremist content they platform - I remember there was a time
| when Reddit was full of child porn and even allowed a
| subreddit dedicated to it to operate.
|
| I guess we'll never know how Aaron would have felt about all
| of this, but I know if there was anyone would could have
| proposed a workable solution it would have been him. It's a
| great shame he's no longer around to contribute to the future
| of the internet in the same way he did the internet of the
| past.
| joshuahaglund wrote:
| It is not obvious that having someone publicly call for
| trial by combat at the capitol increases the probability of
| that happening, compared to no public proclamation? But
| what you're saying is that removing said content is going
| to somehow increase the violent behavior? By what means?
| Because you followed someone into to a cesspool? Then you
| were already drinking diluted pollution.
|
| People do not get banned simply for being a member of a
| political party, people get banned for spreading hate and
| inciting violence. Maybe you should reconsider who you
| follow if the people you follow wallow in hate and bigotry?
|
| Why doesn't the party of individual responsibility doesn't
| seem to understand you can just stop following the hate?
| Seek out and follow reasonable voices. But I'm afraid the
| whole appeal is more emotional resonance more than reason.
|
| Tolerating hateful violent rhetoric will not de radicalize
| anyone.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Now I'm curious about who you follow that were banned from
| Twitter and YouTube.
|
| I don't know if any research has been done on this, but it
| wouldn't surprise me to find that a normalization effect
| happens so that more exposure to certain modes of discourse
| change how you think about them. Our minds are not under
| our conscious control, even if we would prefer that they
| are.
|
| I suspect that our president's mode of discourse has
| dramatically shifted what is seen as acceptable in a lot of
| people, for instance.
| rhaksw wrote:
| Part of the current dilemma is people think only _other_ people
| 's comments are removed [1]. The more people who discover how
| it works, the less people can take advantage of those who
| don't.
|
| [1] https://www.reveddit.com
| trhway wrote:
| today people celebrate Aaron, at least when it comes to lip
| service. Back then though that "holier than thou" comment was at
| the top of HN response to Aaron asking for help
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529609
|
| The HN as well as wider community's change toward Aaron was noted
| by others as well: https://techcrunch.com/2013/01/14/aaron-
| swartz-asking-for-he...
| stevev wrote:
| A person with so much to live for and so much to accomplish; I
| don't believe he took his own life.
| reddotX wrote:
| feels like yesterday! :'(
| throwawaygulf wrote:
| "Thanks Obama!"
|
| This was unfortunately one of the many casualties in the war the
| Obama DoJ raged on the country. It's unconscionable.
| stuckindider wrote:
| Whether it is by drone strike your using you to make an
| example, the nobel peace prize winner will murder you somehow.
| immigrantsheep wrote:
| I think about him from time to time and it still makes me
| incredibly sad.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Aaron could have accomplished so much more had he not succumbed
| to depression. His voice would be most welcome now as tech has
| entered a bitter political conflict. To anyone suffering from
| depression at this time: You are needed. Your voice is needed.
| Aaron's end was a net negative, too early and robbed all of us of
| a brilliant and brave young soul. Improve on Aaron's
| accomplishments by following his lead but persisting through
| tough times.
| superkuh wrote:
| >succumbed to depression
|
| Well, yeah, but he had perfectly valid external reasons to be
| extremely stressed and sad. He succumbed to the FBI ruining his
| life because they're mostly corrupt authoritarian assholes with
| their own agenda that has nothing to do with "justice" or even
| what the "wronged" in this case wanted.
| depneed wrote:
| > Your voice is needed.
|
| I see that "anyone" to you is "any leftist". The internet has
| sent a very clear and unmistakable signal this past week that
| the voices of anyone else are _not_ welcome.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Driving someone to suicide because they acted against entrenched
| copyright interests was one of the most DoJ moments ever.
| cies wrote:
| Hence I reflect on this as murder by the state.
|
| It happened before (like Gary Webb), and sadly I'm afraid it
| will happen again. They (govt) seems more interested in big
| corp's needs than people's needs. This democracy-thing is a big
| lie, a facade.
|
| RIP Aaron.
| tylersmith wrote:
| > This democracy-thing is a big lie
|
| Do you think a majority of the US opposes copyright and would
| not want the State to enforce it? I'm in that group, but it
| seems to me the overwhelming majority of people here support
| copyright laws and prosecutions.
| SirSourdough wrote:
| It seems like a default to the status quo for most, and in
| a broad sense I think aligns with people's notions that
| they should be compensated for their work. I don't think
| that the majority position on the issue is particularly
| informed and perhaps if it were things would change.
| cies wrote:
| Enforcing it and bringing someone to suicide is miles
| apart.
|
| But on topic: copyright that works for decades has been
| lobbied into existence, it's not something average people
| "want". So, no, I dont think most Americans want to pay for
| several decades of copyright enforcement. Same for software
| patents, or extended-length patents in general. Something
| like 10 years is more than enough "head start". Yay for a
| rich commons!!
| krspykrm wrote:
| The overwhelming majority don't have any epistemic basis
| for what they believe and are just saying what they think
| is socially-acceptable to say.
| kortilla wrote:
| Sounds like democracy probably isn't a good choice then.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Sadly, the type of people who rise to the top of
| corporations and democratic governments are the same who
| rise to the top of autocratic governments. At least, in a
| democracy, it seems like they're under _some_ existential
| threat (as slim as that may be). In better democracies,
| the threat is less slim. And I think things are getting
| and will get better.
| cies wrote:
| Cannot have a solid democracy without heavily educating.
| It's has be said before, and I will say it again.
| Examples: Scandinavian countries, Germany.
| totalZero wrote:
| Gary Webb's suicide involved two shots to the head -- quite a
| feat. I find it difficult to believe that he killed himself.
|
| Personally, I also find it difficult to believe that Aaron
| Swartz killed himself.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| He was offered a 6 month sentence in a low security prison.
| He could have served that sentence before the trial was even
| set to begin and resumed his life as programmer and activist.
| He was not murdered, he suffered from severe mentally
| illness.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Well, if they knew so much else about him, maybe they
| should have been aware of his illness and appropriately (ie
| Justly) addressed the situation rather than making an
| example of him.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| So your argument is that depressed people should be able
| to avoid trial altogether? He wasn't even in custody when
| he took his own life.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| no, just that policing needs to be made a good deal less
| scary. Also, at least as I understand it peripherally, it
| can be sufficiently punitive just to lay chargers and
| force the other person to prove their innocence. This
| includes lost time from legitimate activities
| (school/work), lost wealth (lawyers, opportunity cost),
| and the emotional trauma of fighting a near unlimited
| resource state versus your own very limited resources to
| prove they're the ones who are acting unjustly.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > maybe they should have been aware of his illness and
| appropriately (ie Justly) addressed the situation rather
| than making an example of him.
|
| While I don't think Aaron Swartz should've been
| prosecuted (or at least not charged with everything they
| did), this statement in general is not the job of the
| prosecutors. If it were, then many charges would have to
| be dropped/reduced in the case of people with mental
| illness (where it's not considered part of the defense
| proper) or other medically compromised individuals.
| That's kind of an absurd position to take. If X suffers
| from clinical depression, but has committed (or is
| accused of committing) some serious crime, should the
| charges be reduced or the sentence reduced based on these
| circumstances? Or should they be charged and considered
| the same as anyone else would be for the same crimes?
|
| This reeks of the same kind of abuse of prosecution as
| the affluenza case.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| your aside about "defense proper" is kind of the point,
| but extended to another branch of the justice system (ie
| policing) . I think we've seen a similar sentiment in
| 2020 over how many people are unhappy about how the
| police are going about their jobs.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| That aside, in particular, was meant in the sense of: The
| mental illness can be seen as causal or mitigating. Like,
| a person suffering from a schizophrenic break could
| reasonably use that as a defense (not to avoid all
| treatment/punishment, but as a mitigating factor or to
| have the consequences moved from prison time to a medical
| facility) for a crime committed during that break (a
| sincere belief that they're in danger or that someone was
| the devil leading them to commit an assault or worse).
| Depression _could_ similarly be used in a defense like
| that as depression (in severe cases) can similarly cause
| breaks with reality or reduced capacity for self-control.
|
| But _having_ severe depression or _being_ schizophrenic,
| on its own, is not a good justification for changing
| /reducing charges and consequences (sadly, consequences
| in the US are _punishments_ as there 's little focus on
| rehabilitation). If anything, it could reasonably affect
| the sentencing to account for the riskier consequences of
| placing a person with that mental condition into a medium
| or high security prison or general population, but not
| the selection of charges by the prosecutor.
| Jugurtha wrote:
| > _He was not murdered, he suffered from severe mentally
| illness._
|
| Maybe having one of the most powerful governments use its
| might to crush someone and make an example does that to
| people?
|
| Normal people are scared of a manager, a college professor,
| or making a presentation; imagine how they'd feel if the
| _U.S Government_ was on their case _specifically_.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| He was not going to get crushed by the government, he was
| going to serve a 6 month sentence in a low security
| facility. This is the sort of sentence one might receive
| for stealing a car. Are those individuals "crushed" by
| the government?
| Jugurtha wrote:
| My point is that the situation would put anyone's
| resilience to the test.
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| > He was offered a 6 month sentence in a low security
| prison. He could have served that sentence
|
| Prison rape is part of the sentence, in that godforsaken
| country.
|
| This is how aspies fare in the US prison system:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_DeFriest
| Chris2048 wrote:
| It's easy to play down stuff like this without considering
| the later consequences of having a record..
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Aaron already suffered from severe mental illness - law
| enforcement did not drive him to suicide. Prosecutors offered
| him a plea deal if he took a six month sentence in a low
| security facility, which he turned down before killing himself.
| 99.9% of people his age would not end up dead by their own
| hands in that situation.
| zionic wrote:
| What evidence is there the plea deal was offered? Sounds like
| PR by the state.
| Merman_Mike wrote:
| > During plea talks held in the months before his death,
| federal prosecutors told Aaron Swartz and his attorney that
| the computer prodigy must spend six months behind bars and
| plead guilty to 13 federal crimes in order to resolve the
| criminal case short of a trial.
|
| > Swartz's lead defense attorney, Elliot Peters, said today
| that both he and Swartz rejected the plea deal offered by
| the office of US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, and instead were
| pushing for a trial where federal prosecutors would have
| been forced to publicly justify their pursuit of Swartz.
|
| First result on Google.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| You don't have to ask me, the information can be found on
| google within seconds.
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| You're offering the information, the least you could do
| is provide your source.
| spijdar wrote:
| I actually feel some sympathy for both positions here.
|
| On the one hand, it's such a "no brainer" to take such a
| light sentence for what is legally such a "serious crime".
|
| On the other hand, though, it feels ridiculous that Aaron
| would have been put in jail at all for what he did. I think
| it's fair to say he wasn't in a good place, but it's maybe a
| little tone deaf to say the grief of the trial and
| prosecution had no role in his suicide.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Of course it had a role in his suicide, but no person who
| was not already very mentally ill would have ended their
| life in that situation. The narrative that prosecutors
| wanted to effectively ruin his life for his criminal
| offenses is just wrong.
| SirSourdough wrote:
| They were threatening him with 50 years in jail and a
| million in fines or accepting an immoral (to him, and as
| a more broadly held belief of many) punishment with no
| opportunity to defend himself and the prospect of a
| lifelong record of serious crimes.
|
| How is that not an effort to ruin someone's life?
| breck wrote:
| Plenty of great people like Mandela spent a long time in
| jail for unjust reasons, and continued their protest from
| there. I think aaronsw could have done the same except he
| had bad luck and wasn't in a strong place at a critical
| time. I don't hold the prosecutors responsible for
| Aaron's suicide any more than I hold myself responsible
| for not publicly doing more to help him. From my
| conversations and dealings with aaron, I believe he was
| willing to die for his ideas, which were correct and true
| and just. I hope to god someday we can build the world he
| envisioned where everyone, regardless of wealth or
| location or creed, has access to the world's best
| knowledge and information.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| I don't think Aaron's criminal record would have impacted
| his life much at all. If anything it would have burnished
| his credentials and credibility as an activist.
| ska wrote:
| > On the one hand, it's such a "no brainer" to take such a
| light sentence for what is legally such a "serious crime".
|
| This here is really the insidious nature of what the plea
| bargain system has evolved into.
| maccard wrote:
| From wikipedia:
|
| > On September 12, 2012, federal prosecutors filed a
| superseding indictment adding nine more felony counts, which
| increased Swartz's maximum criminal exposure to 50 years of
| imprisonment and $1 million in fines. During plea
| negotiations with Swartz's attorneys, the prosecutors offered
| to recommend a sentence of six months in a low-security
| prison, if Swartz would plead guilty to 13 federal crimes.
| Swartz and his lead attorney rejected that deal, opting
| instead for a trial in which prosecutors would have been
| forced to justify their pursuit of Swartz
|
| Let's be clear, this isn't "here's a slap on the wrist and
| we'll let it slide", this is "we're throwing the book at you
| on trumped up charges", and require him to plead guilty to 9
| felonies to avoid a potential 50 year sentence.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_
| v._...
| apple_innocent wrote:
| For an interesting comparison, consider the first person to
| be charged under CFAA. He's a co-founder and partner at YC.
| Both defendants were the children of parents who were
| involved with early UNIX, one at Bell Labs and NSA, and the
| other as founder of the Mark Williams Company. One kid got
| probation, community service and a fine. The other was not
| so fortunate. If we compare the actual damages caused by
| each, the result seems to violate any notion of
| proportionality.
| [deleted]
| tzs wrote:
| When you see a DoJ press release talking about someone
| potentially facing a very long sentence, they don't mean
| that the particular person being indicted is facing such a
| sentence.
|
| They mean that if you take the maximum possible sentence
| that _someone_ could get for each individual charge, and
| then added up all those individual maximums, you get their
| press release figure.
|
| There are two big problems with that.
|
| 1. Various federal crimes are grouped for sentencing.
| Roughly, if one single act could be charged with N
| different crimes, and you are convicted for all N the
| sentence is not sum of the sentences for each, it is max of
| the sentences for each. An indictment, say, of 5 charges
| each with a 20 year max but that all fall in the same group
| would be listed as 100 years in the press release, but
| would really only be 20.
|
| I find it appalling that the DoJ does not take into account
| grouping when writing press releases. Unlike point #2
| below, grouping doesn't have much of a subjective component
| that won't be resolved until trial. DoJ has everything
| needed when they write the press release to figure out what
| charges group.
|
| 2. The maximum listed for each charge is what someone who
| committed the worst imaginable instance of that crime could
| get. Someone who had all the various factors that can
| affect sentence length go against them.
|
| Unless you are doing your crime for a lot of money, as part
| of something like a drug cartel or the mob, people got
| physical hurt or there was a good chance they could have,
| you caused huge economic loses, and you have a serious
| prior criminal record, you ain't getting anywhere near the
| max.
|
| First time offender, not for monetary gain, no one
| physically hurt, not doing it as part of some larger
| criminal enterprise? Somewhere near the low end, with a
| decent chance of just a few years parole instead of jail
| time.
|
| Here are some articles. The first covers federal sentencing
| in general. The second two cover it in the context of the
| Swartz case and also look at each charge.
|
| https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-
| sentenc...
|
| http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/
|
| http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-
| agains...
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > When you see a DoJ press release talking about someone
| potentially facing a very long sentence, they don't mean
| that the particular person being indicted is facing such
| a sentence.
|
| Short ver: DoJ: either make our prosecutorial life easy
| or we're going to harm you way beyond what is ethical.
|
| Long ver: DoJ: You did A. Lobbyists have composed and
| purchased laws against A. Those lobbyists are pressuring
| their legislators to have us deploy high-profile Gov
| revenge on their behalf.
|
| We want to charge you with B and have you accept that w/o
| resistance. To that end we are charging you with
| B,C,D,E,J,K,L,Q,R,S,T,V,Y and some Dr. Seuss letters we
| came across.
| _jal wrote:
| 99.9% of people were not him.
|
| > law enforcement did not drive him to suicide
|
| People can keep repeating this, and it will still be false.
| LEO and Prosecutor action was the proximate cause of his
| actions.
|
| You can make moral arguments that, say, the prosecutor was
| Just Doing His Job, and I may even agree with you. But you
| and everyone else are simply wrong about cause and effect,
| and attempting to blur that tells me more about your priors
| and biases than anything about the situation.
| kortilla wrote:
| If you go down the path of blaming external factors for
| suicides it's going to get messy pretty fast. How many
| suicides were because of Eminem songs? How many suicides
| were because of the lack of suicide nets on the Golden Gate
| Bridge? How many suicides are because of a break up?
|
| Whose fault was Epstein's suicide?
|
| Robin William's?
|
| R. Budd Dwyer?
| _jal wrote:
| I'll just quote myself,
|
| > attempting to blur that tells me more about your priors
| and biases than anything about the situation
|
| And right on cue, here comes someone who would rather
| talk about Eminem and Epstein to blur the situation than
| talk about the actual situation.
| Shared404 wrote:
| > Whose fault was Epstein's suicide?
|
| You all know what I'm going to say here.
|
| As for the rest, it's a fine line. There are obviously
| individual variances in how much it would take to push
| someone over the edge, I can certainly see how nine
| felonies would be enough in the case of Aaron's example.
| manfredo wrote:
| A substantial number of people commit suicide following
| loss of one's job. Would you feel it's fair to say that
| their bosses drove them to suicide?
|
| I'd say no. Most of such cases, like Swartz, had existing
| mental conditions that are primarily responsible for their
| decision to commit suicide. Loss of a job may have been the
| event that ultimately prompted the act, but the driving
| factors were mental conditions. Saying that these people
| were driven to suicide conflates these cases with like this
| where someone is actively driving someone else to suicide:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Conrad_Roy
| _jal wrote:
| People are obsessed with blame. Get over it. This isn't
| about blame or guilt. It is about cause and effect.
|
| I think it is "fair" to describe action B as following
| from action A, when there is good reason to consider them
| related.
|
| If you revise your observations of reality based on what
| you fear might happen later, you're not observing
| reality.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Aaron's story is good example of why blaming the suicide of
| someone with severe depression on whatever proximate cause
| triggered the act is the wrong way to understand why
| someone takes their own life. Many suicides are prompted by
| trivial or very temporary situations that are not at fault.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Many suicides are prompted by trivial or very temporary
| situations that are not at fault.
|
| I am part of a support group that is dominated by people
| who've attempted suicide.
|
| The words trivial and temporary don't describe any part
| of their journey.
|
| What is common, is how these people were harmed by the
| self-interested and misguided actions of others.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| That presumed that the whole trial wasn't the cause of
| the mental issues. I'm sure that facing an immoral DOJ
| out for blood caused him a lot of stress and depression
| (or triggered any latent issues).
| FDSGSG wrote:
| It's rather well documented that Aaron had been thinking
| about suicide long before getting mixed up with the DOJ
| http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/341150
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| It's not clear how that addresses DoJ's highly unethical
| choice to stack 52 years of federal prison time.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Did you actually read that link? He wrote the alleged
| "suicide note" in a moment where he was suffering from
| extreme physical pain as that was his way of expressing
| it to give himself some mental release. On top of all of
| that he was dealing with getting fired which itself can
| be a mindfuck.
|
| To me the proximate cause 100% was the legal case against
| him - it inflamed any underlying issues and they just
| kept pressing. I could be wrong of course but I don't
| think anyone will ever truly know what was happening in
| his head.
| FDSGSG wrote:
| Actually he was offered even less, 4 months.
|
| http://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-
| aa...
|
| >The alternative sentence to consider is what Swartz would
| have received if he had agreed to plead guilty. According to
| Swartz's lawyers, the prosecutors in the case offered two
| different pleas. First, they would agree to a sentence of
| four months if Swartz agreed to plead guilty to the felonies.
| And second, they could agree to a deal in which Swartz agreed
| to plead guilty, the government would argue for a 6 month
| sentence, and Swartz could argue for a lesser sentence
| (presumably including probation). In all likelihood, the
| judge would have then sentenced Swartz to 4 months under the
| 1st plea and whatever the judge thought appropriate, up to 6
| months, under the second plea.
| jeltz wrote:
| Which makes it even worse. A 4 month plea deal on a 50 year
| maximum sentence is clear evidence of that something is vet
| wrong.
|
| It either means the deal or the max sentence is wrong.
| ryanlol wrote:
| You're not wrong, but "50 year maximum sentence" is off
| by at least an order of magnitude.
| rwmurrayVT wrote:
| The judge is not bound by a plea agreement in federal
| court.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The whole concept of plea deals is insane (but then again, so
| is the concept of "justice" in the US) and it's sad to see it
| being defended here.
|
| Sidestepping the issue of the severity of his crime, the
| concept of "plead guilty to X and waive your rights to a fair
| trial" or go to a trial which is made unfair by trumped up
| charges (thus increasing the corresponding sentence by orders
| of magnitude) almost as revenge for exercising your right to
| a trial doesn't sound like justice to me. Either someone is
| guilty and the state can prove it (and is willing to expend
| resources to do so) or he isn't - nobody should be forced to
| make such a choice.
| FDSGSG wrote:
| Nobody is defending plea deals here. Aaron was offered an
| excellent deal, regardless of how indefensible plea deals
| might be in general.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Aaron was forced into a case where his options are 1)
| take the deal, waive your right to a trial and serve a
| certain sentence, or 2) exercise your right to a trial
| and in revenge get a much heavier sentence (some people
| here mention a max of 30 years - even rapists and
| murderers can get less than that) since the commonplace
| nature of plea deals over time devalues the "true"
| sentences as written in the law because nobody serves
| them.
|
| Frankly I don't think this situation delivers justice to
| neither the victim nor the defendant. If we assume the
| defendant is guilty, why should he be allowed to get off
| with a sentence that's 29 years lower than what it should
| be? If we assume that the defendant is not guilty, is it
| fair to force him to pick between a fair trial and
| potential 30 years of prison or 6 months without trial,
| given that even someone that's not guilty would most
| likely take the deal and this perverts the course of
| justice by essentially jailing people based on mere
| allegations without a trial?
| jeltz wrote:
| No, he was offered a bad deal. Copyright violations very
| rarely result in prison for first time offenders. He also
| did a mild case of hacking which together might have
| resulted in a short sentence. But if he had gone to court
| I doubt he would have got more than 4-6 months, which is
| the same thing as the plea deal.
| manfredo wrote:
| Swartz wasn't torrenting pirated movies. He was
| essentially trying to mirror JSTOR. He was
| programmatically downloading massive numbers of articles,
| and using mac address spoofing to avoid triggering rate
| limiting. He also authored a manifesto explicitly
| declaring his intent to knowingly break the law: https://
| archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj...
|
| Copyright violations rarely result in prison sentences,
| but copyright violators are rarely seeking to violate
| copyright on the same scale and with the same outspoken
| ideological justification as Swartz.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > copyright violators are rarely seeking to violate
| copyright on the same scale and with the same outspoken
| ideological justification as Swartz
|
| I disagree. I'd say that Swartz's actions to try and make
| research freely available online (especially when said
| research is often funded by taxpayers and _not_ by the
| copyright holders of the resulting paper) is more noble
| than for example pirates who publish entertainment
| material such as movies, music, etc.
| xwdv wrote:
| If he had taken the deal and not killed himself he would
| be alive now and a free man 8 years later. Instead he is
| dead forever. I think the deal was not that bad by
| comparison.
| 131012 wrote:
| It depends on how you value freedom.
| amyjess wrote:
| It wasn't because of a copyright violation. It was
| because after he was booted off MIT's network for
| violating their TOS, he went out of his way to find
| another way to get back on their network by unauthorized
| means and resume the same activity he got kicked off for.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| In response to the question "What is the ethical
| justification for 52 years of stacked federal charges?",
| is this your final answer?
| ska wrote:
| > Aaron was offered an excellent deal,
|
| That's a pretty extraordinary claim, as he had competent
| legal counsel (I think?) and they rejected it.
| caminante wrote:
| I appreciate your perspective.
|
| This is a memorial thread with a bias to grieving and
| celebrating Aaron. By making your points, others appear to
| assume you're criticizing him for taking his life (which is
| not your intent or how I perceive your stance).
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Many people use Aaron's death as a political cudgel by
| essentially lying about the events leading to his suicide
| in order to paint him has a martyr who was murdered by
| cruel and vengeful prosecutors. He was in fact a severely
| mentally ill individual who's death should be remembered as
| a tragedy resulting from severe depression, not politically
| motivated homicide.
| ancharm wrote:
| He was an important mind in our community. RIP.
| deenadayalan wrote:
| He didn't suicided. He was murdered by the overzealous prosecutor
| with her own personal agenda.
|
| RIP Aaron. You will be missed forever and it is a loss for
| humanity.
| dilap wrote:
| Among all the many other things he did, he had a fantastic
| analysis of the end of Infinite Jest:
|
| http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend
|
| Such a sad loss.
| [deleted]
| davidjnelson wrote:
| Really sad. Rest In Peace Aaron.
| [deleted]
| jason_slack wrote:
| Aaron's writing were often thought provoking for me. I often feel
| I should do more advocacy for the most important causes in this
| world.
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