[HN Gopher] The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)
___________________________________________________________________
The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013)
Author : dananjaya86
Score : 101 points
Date : 2021-12-30 14:31 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| If someone said it was, would you avoid reading it? If I can
| guess, maybe your hero worship (I presume) of this guy is
| making you unobjective.
|
| Now when I say "hero worship", it sounds like I'm saying he's
| the opposite of a hero, to be honest I just know the name and
| the case, I haven't dug deep into it to make my own judgement,
| but I've seen a lot of comments championing him as a hero, and
| to me it seems their view of him clouds their judgement.
| dpark wrote:
| Why do you jump to "hero worship" from someone asking if it's
| a "hit piece"?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| dpark wrote:
| Why are you engaging in the comments for an article about
| Aaron Swartz then?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Just trying to help provide some perspective, but you're
| right I usually steer clear.
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| It's not, really.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Then the headline is misleading. Doubly bad for pay articles
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| "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 mental health.
| borski wrote:
| I'm not diagnosing, obviously, but a lot of this, including the
| phobia of fruit and non-white and yellow vegetables seems... on
| the spectrum, at the very least. I wonder if Aaron had
| undiagnosed autism of some sort.
| jedberg wrote:
| He was a super taster. When he stayed with me he insisted on
| the plainest of food and told me it's because he's a super
| taster. Although thinking back now, maybe that was just an
| excuse to cover for something else.
| caslon wrote:
| _To be honest, I've always had a problematic relationship
| with food. I always liked plain things -- the year before
| college I lived mostly off of eating plain, microwaved
| bagels. At oriental restaurants I would always just order
| steamed white rice. Wes Felter, noting I would apparently
| only eat white food joked, referencing a Science Fiction
| novel, that I would eat light bulbs, but "only the white
| ones". This reached its extremes at a World Wide Web
| conference where all the food was white, even the plate it
| was on. Tim Berners-Lee later pulled my mother aside to
| share his concerns about this diet._
|
| _Finally, one day at an oriental restaurant by Stanford
| (years before I went to school there), we had the typical
| discussion except this time Cory Doctorow spoke up: 'are
| you sure you're not a supertaster?' he asked. I had heard
| the They Might Be Giants song but never considered the
| possibility. I thought about it as the conversation
| continued and it seemed to make sense to me. [At this point
| I imagine a crane shot lifting up and up over the
| conversation at the restaurant. Fade to:] I did some
| research on the Internet and did the test (which formally
| consists of putting blue food coloring on your tongue,
| taking a piece of paper with a three-hole punch, placing it
| over the tongue and counting the number of taste buds in
| it) and indeed, I am a supertaster. This hasn't eliminated
| the discussions about my eating habits, but it does shift
| the blame._
|
| http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/eatandcode
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| So what? Why do you need to conform to a socially constructed
| persona?
| simplestats wrote:
| well if you're just an everyday introvert, then you need some
| promting, or else to summon the courage on your own to
| overcome your aversion to social situations. (digression, but
| the internet is a big help for this nowadays. you can watch
| youtube videos that walks you through how to ride the bus or
| whatever, for people too scared of embarrassing themslves to
| try).
|
| On the other hand if you have a social anxiety you probably
| need some kind of stronger help to be able to function.
|
| Either way the alternative of avoiding much of the world and
| relying on oehters to get by probably isn't preferable.
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| 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.
| nzmsv wrote:
| And it sounds like he was perfectly aware of this. This feeling
| of being "not really a man" can be overwhelming, and I feel
| like this is an incredibly toxic thing perpetuated by our
| culture.
|
| It's possible to spend an entire lifetime trying to prove the
| opposite of this statement to the world, and most importantly
| oneself, and fail at this impossible task. But the saddest part
| is that because the majority of people think in these "man/boy"
| terms it's easy to start thinking that all people do.
|
| The next step is to consider oneself hopelessly broken and
| unworthy of affection, and dismiss any real friendship as a
| pity party. And yet: there was an outpouring of love and
| sadness following aaronsw's suicide. So perhaps living up to
| the stereotype of manliness is not the most important thing in
| the world.
| [deleted]
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| > So perhaps living up to the stereotype of manliness is not
| the most important thing in the world.
|
| I think some things are being conflated here. There is the
| stereotype of manliness, conforming to which requires you to
| do or have interest in stereotypically manly things (sports,
| cars, home improvement, working outside, being tough, being
| reticent to show emotion). But there's also failure to
| conform to _adult_ ness -- being able to call a cab, order
| food, pay bills, manage finances, maintain steady employment.
|
| It sounds that Swartz, though not stereotypically manly, was
| also not stereotypically adult. The former's not a problem --
| I'm not manly either, I say as I cuddle my pet rabbit -- but
| failure to be an adult can cause issues (at least for those
| without such indulgent friends and family as Swartz had).
| nzmsv wrote:
| True. This one hit close to home for me personally, but I
| can say with confidence that therapy can make things a lot
| better.
|
| There's a tendency to either coddle a person with these
| issues, or try to get them to change through tough love.
| The reality is that neither of these things is helpful -
| what is really needed is a good therapist.
|
| P.S.: In case someone is reading this and nodding along:
| you have likely spent years on the roller coaster of trying
| to prove yourself through pathological self-sufficiency
| interleaved with breakdowns and "failure to adult". It's OK
| to seek help. Even pro athletes use coaches and personal
| trainers if they are stuck in a rut. This is no different.
| Oh, and you are far from alone in this.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| in time he may have gained to wisdom to be free.
|
| there was still so much more he could have done.
|
| i never met him but he seemed like a gentle soul that poked the
| wrong bear.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > The irrationalities of power fascinated him, but he found the
| irrationalities of activism exasperating. Most activists, in his
| experience, would launch big campaigns about big issues and do
| things that they guessed would be beneficial, like running
| television ads or sending out direct mail, but they never did the
| work to figure out whether what they were doing was actually
| changing policy.
|
| This is the frustrating thing about any activism: it moves
| slowly. For someone who cannot finish projects, or needs
| immediate feedback, it appears to be constant failure. However,
| activist movements are less like drag racers (the cars ;) and
| more like xenon ion thrusters that NASA tested a few years back:
| they spew out tiny ions that individually barely move the
| satellite, but slowly, over time, the sheer number of the small
| exhalations translate to colossal speeds. The activists seem to
| be mired in failure, but they are slowly moving the needle.
|
| I wonder if as he got older he would have learned discipline to
| stick with longer-lead feedback loops. Or maybe not, perhaps his
| brain wasn't wired that way.
| santoshalper wrote:
| Or maybe he was right and most activism is emotionally driven
| rather than rational or data driven, and is ultimately
| ineffective.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| What has been your experience working with activists in
| NGOs/nonprofits? I've worked with several over the past few
| decades and emotions certainly are part of it, but trying to
| change a government doesn't happen overnight. For example,
| when Working with HIFIVE (Haiti Integrated Financing for
| Value Chains and Enterprises) I found that having government
| support was much more effective: things happened on a
| schedule, same when I worked with Habitat for Humanity.
| However, when I worked with a local homeless shelter in my
| city, they were struggling due both outreach and a logistics
| system that was sadly inefficient b/c none of them had
| experience with this: the heart was there but not the
| experience.
|
| I'd be eager to hear what you ran into while working in a
| nonprofit that turned you off due to being "too emotionally
| driven." Please share!
| stathibus wrote:
| Swartz was a rare breed of what I think of as real activism.
| Self-proclaimed activists these days have no skin in the game
| and don't go further than signal boosting. To really make a
| difference you have to get burned; most people don't have the
| guts.
| [deleted]
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| When I read this, I think of one of my fav poems by Philip
| Larkin, This Be The Verse. It begins like.. 'they fuck you up,
| your mum and dad'... except it's not mum and dad anymore but the
| entire 'village' that is raising you.
| rcoveson wrote:
| Alexandra Elbakyan is still alive and well, and Sci-Hub is going
| strong. Swartz' prosecution and persecution were totally
| pointless. Copyright is unenforceable.
| jancsika wrote:
| tiahura wrote:
| Persecution? He broke the law and was likely to get a slap on
| the wrist.
| senko wrote:
| > 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-...
| tptacek wrote:
| 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 abusing a login you were given
| legally to snoop on your coworkers performance evaluations
| to coordinating a multinational multi-billion-dollar heist
| by penetrating financial services firms.
|
| What actually happens in sentencing is that you look up the
| relevant sentencing guidelines in the (public, easily
| downloaded) federal sentencing guidelines. The guidelines
| are broken up by groups of statutes. They establish offense
| levels, from 1 (jaywalking) to 43 (mass murder). You take
| the offense level and look it up on a chart against your
| offender history (Swartz had no criminal history) and get a
| sentencing range.
|
| Each guideline starts with a (usually low) base offense
| level, and then a series of clauses that adjust that level
| upwards or downwards based on the conduct charged. For
| CFAA, modifiers include stuff like using sophisticated
| means to evade detection, or making a bunch of money, or
| putting critical systems in danger.
|
| The actual sentencing is a phase of the trial, occurring
| after conviction. The court has the probation office write
| a PSR, which is a confidential memo suggesting a sentence
| based on the guidelines. The prosecution argues for upwards
| departures for the PSR; the defense does the opposite; the
| judge ultimately decides.
|
| Crucially: the sentencing guidelines generally don't work
| by multiplying the number of counts against the suggested
| offense level. Rather: like charges group, and you're
| generally sentenced based on the highest offense level of
| the group.
|
| We don't really have to guess about what Swartz faced. We
| don't just have this New Yorker article to go on; Swartz's
| own attorney discussed the likely sentencing ranges. This
| article suggests that prosecutors were looking for 6 months
| on a guilty plea (they seemed hell-bent on coming up with
| some custodial sentence for Swartz; there seems to be
| something to the idea that they had a grudge against
| Swartz). More importantly, though, we have some of their
| rationale for the supposed 80 month sentence they said
| they'd seek if Swartz went to trial: they intended to argue
| that Swartz incurred 2 million dollars worth of losses.
| That's a self-evidently stupid argument, because there's no
| plausible way Swartz could have recouped even $1 from his
| offense, let alone $2,000,000. The documents he hoped to
| release had virtually no commercial value. Any damage (ie:
| worker hours burned cleaning up for what he did) he caused
| was incidental, and likely well below six figures. But the
| guideline offense level modifier implies the opposite of
| this fact pattern.
|
| Swartz's attorney believed it was likely that had Swartz
| gone to trial and lost on all counts, his ultimate sentence
| would still could have come in below the level at which the
| guidelines recommend straight probation; that is: he
| believed Swartz could have gone to trial, lost, and still
| did better than the plea deal offered by the prosecutors.
|
| It's not really the fault of anyone on HN that these lurid
| potential sentences get tossed around in discussions,
| because federal prosecutors issue press releases that
| discuss the maximum possible sentence in those terms. The
| media abets that dishonesty by repeating the claim, or by
| doing insufficient homework and using the same math.
|
| You should be irritated when you read written sources that
| talk about naive maximum sentences this way.
|
| At any rate: there is no chance Swartz was unaware of any
| of this. Not just because he had an excellent attorney who
| no doubt explained all of this stuff very early on in the
| process, but because Swartz was exactly the kind of nerd
| who would have had the federal sentencing guidelines
| bookmarked somewhere in his browser.
| tiahura wrote:
| Thank you 10,000x over. The reporting about this aspect
| really couldn't have been any worse and drove too many
| equally misinformed opinion pieces.
|
| And agree completely with your assessment of prosecutors
| and press releases - I told my US Attorney that I only
| wanted to see him on TV after a conviction. Alas, I hate
| defending prosecutors, but it seems completely unfair to
| blame her for his death.
|
| As you suggest, my guess was that the sentence was
| largely going to be driven by the damages. My
| understanding is that the "victims" had been sufficiently
| browbeat into being reluctant witnesses and as you
| suggest, it would have just been cleanup costs.
| tptacek wrote:
| This, to be fair, is the biggest problem with the CFAA.
| It's sort of an inchoate statute (you generally use
| computers as a means to conduct other offenses --- in
| fact, some of the reason we have a CFAA in the first
| place is that legislators felt that there weren't
| statutes that addressed computer crimes that didn't have
| immediate financial benefits, which themselves could be
| charged as fraud). The major sentencing knob CFAA comes
| with is 2B1.1(b), which is a table of offense level by
| dollar loss incurred.
|
| There are crimes where I think 2B1.1(b) probably makes
| sense (like, if you're literally stealing, or
| deliberately incurring monetary damage --- remember, your
| intent in committing a crime is extremely important,
| despite a common message board belief that it is somehow
| unknowable and a non-factor in legal decisions). But in a
| lot of cases, it's literally just the induction variable
| in a loop, and it makes no sense to boost an offense by
| 10 levels because you wrote "2000" in your for-loop
| instead of "20".
|
| It's 2B1.1(b) that takes you from offense level 8 (0-6
| months, probation eligible) to level 24 (5 years) based
| on 2 million dollar of incurred loss.
|
| Again, though: the 2 million dollar figure is highly
| implausible. Prosecutors could have argued for it (they
| can argue anything they want), but it's hard to see them
| getting it for a non-remunerative crime that involved
| publishing academic journal articles.
|
| Swartz's attorney was probably a bit rosey-eyed here,
| though: figure any charged computer offense probably
| incurs losses at least in the mid-5 figures (almost
| mechanically, because real companies have insurance
| obligations to conduct external forensic investigations
| when incidents like this happen), and you get to a year
| and change sentence pretty easily.
| chaosharmonic wrote:
| > Again, though: the 2 million dollar figure is highly
| implausible. Prosecutors could have argued for it (they
| can argue anything they want), but it's hard to see them
| getting it for a non-remunerative crime that involved
| publishing academic journal articles.
|
| Actually this ran in parallel with the tail end of the
| Jammie Thomas-Rasset lawsuit, in which the various damage
| figures thrown around for sharing two albums' worth of
| stale, degraded-quality top-40 songs _did_ include one in
| the seven-figure range.
| tptacek wrote:
| The story of the Thomas-Rasset suit --- a civil suit, not
| a 2B1.1(b) criminal sentence argument --- is basically
| about how those 7 figure sums don't hold up in actual
| court. And that suit was about material with clear
| commercial value, not 1942 editions of botany journals. I
| think this example supports my point, rather than
| challenging it.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > What actually happens in sentencing is that you look up
| the relevant sentencing guidelines in the (public, easily
| downloaded) federal sentencing guidelines
|
| Well, it is called 'guidelines' and your post uses words
| like 'suggesting'. So if relevant people went crazy and
| just decide to ignore these guidelines and choose, say,
| 20 years, would such decision be legal?
| tptacek wrote:
| It would be unprecedented and appealable, but mostly it
| just wouldn't happen. Judges aren't required to adhere to
| the guidelines (anymore), but they overwhelmingly do ---
| presumably, not least because the primary input to the
| sentencing process is a PSR that is derived directly from
| the guidelines.
|
| Note here that to reach 20 years, you have to do more
| than disagree with the guideline offense levels; you have
| to somehow disagree with the grouping rules. 20 years
| wasn't on the table to begin with (again: the prosecutors
| threatened a much lower sentence), but it couldn't
| seriously have been put on the table either.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| 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.
| tptacek wrote:
| 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.
| andi999 wrote:
| So what actual number are we talking here? 20 years? 5
| years? Or more like 6 month?
| jcranmer wrote:
| > the supposed 80 month sentence they said they'd seek if
| Swartz went to trial
|
| So 61/2 years at most, quoting tptacek's comment.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's in the article here. Also, in the comment I just
| wrote.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Whether it's 50, 20, or 6, the real number is beside the
| point. Potential "years" of prison will scare the crap
| out almost anybody, and our government ALWAYS uses this
| tactic to coerce people into whatever outcome looks good
| for their careers.
| tptacek wrote:
| I think we can leave this at "I disagree that there's no
| meaningful distinction between a threat of single-digit
| years and double-digit years sentence".
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| There's a pretty good Popehat article on federal
| sentencing guidelines from back before Ken White
| discovered twitter and mostly stopped writing interesting
| articles about law stuff.
|
| https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-
| sentenc...
| ModernMech wrote:
| 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 of
| consciousness of guilt from the perpetrator. It's a slam
| dunk at trial so why should it get to that point? It's a
| waste of everyone's time and money. That's why the plea
| deal was so generous compared to the downside of taking it
| to court. You _want_ to entice them to take a slap on the
| wrist plea deal so everyone can avoid the cost of
| forestalling the eventuality of the jury's verdict.
|
| It's true that prosecutors can be overzealous in their
| prosecutions, but 6 months does not sound like the
| disproportionate punishment many make it out to be.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| > 6 months does not sound like the disproportionate
| punishment many make it out to be
|
| From the article, it seems that he was concerned about
| how being a convicted felon would hurt his career
| prospects. It would reduce his likelihood of being able
| to save the world. Not that he _would_ have, anyway, but
| I think that 's part of the thought process.
|
| Speaking for me personally, six months in federal prison
| would feel like an almost life-ending scenario. I'd lose
| my job (obviously) and would have trouble finding another
| in the field for which I'm educated and trained. My
| fiancee would not have sufficient income to pay our
| mortgage so we'd lose our house, and I'm not sure what
| we'd be able to do for the many pets we love dearly. My
| situation's much different from Swartz's but I can
| empathize that a six month sentence could have such
| dramatic consequences that it wouldn't feel like a slap
| on the wrist.
| MereInterest wrote:
| 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 evidence that Bob robbed a bank. Alice is
| legally allowed to reveal that evidence to the police,
| but is under no obligation to do so outside of a
| subpoena. However, even though both choices are legally
| permissible, Alice is not allowed to make her choice be
| conditional on receiving payments from Bob, as that would
| cross the line into blackmail.
|
| Plea bargains are a form of extortion, and should not be
| part of the legal system.
| gruez wrote:
| >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.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > 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.
| theonemind wrote:
| > If the perpetrator is willing to plead guilty, there is
| no need for a trial.
|
| I don't really think courts should take guilty pleas. I
| believe in some times/places in the middle ages, courts
| would not take guilty pleas in case the prisoner had
| gotten coerced into pleading. Sometimes, we have people
| with mental illness or other issues that will plead
| guilty to crimes they didn't commit.
|
| Along the same lines of "reasonable doubt" in the US
| generally being enough to escape criminal conviction, I
| think we should err on the side of safety and perhaps
| even inefficiency in (not) letting the state exercise its
| monopoly power of force, coercion, and imprisonment
| against anyone for any reason, ever.
| ModernMech wrote:
| While you make very valid points about plea deals in
| general, I don't think they apply in this specific case.
| Swartz was very rich, and well represented. He also
| actually did the thing in question, and demonstrated
| consciousness of guilt.
|
| It's okay for guilty people to be offered plea deals.
| It's actually probably in their best interest sometimes.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > He also actually did the thing in question, and
| demonstrated consciousness of guilt.
|
| He did a thing, that doesn't mean that thing qualified as
| a felony, or even a crime. It certainly did not merit 50
| years in prison.
|
| > It's okay for guilty people to be offered plea deals.
| It's actually probably in their best interest sometimes.
|
| It is simply not OK to threaten people with penalties
| that are well more than an order of magnitude higher than
| the plea deal.
|
| This isn't the kind of plea deal that furthers justice by
| obtaining a cooperative witness in a more serious case.
| This sort of plea deal is offered to advance the
| Prosecutor's career.
|
| > Swartz was very rich, and well represented.
|
| As the article explains, Swartz was out of money, well
| into debt, and faced with begging people for money to
| continue fighting the case.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I get the sense that you are channeling a general
| distrust of the system into this specific case. I will
| say I'm in agreement with your points in a general sense.
|
| But as far as this case goes, I'm not sure. The alleged
| crime is a very technical one. The facts are all recorded
| and they paint a clear picture. The only question is how
| they apply to the law and whether or not they raise to
| the level of a crime.
|
| That's the job of a jury. They will receive a document
| with a list of charges, and the prosecution will lay out
| a very clear roadmap as to how each element of their case
| maps to the elements of the relevant statutes being
| charged.
|
| Since this is a very technical crime, most of the
| evidence would be document-based and very convincing to a
| jury. It's hard to create reasonable doubt in such
| document-heavy cases. So the only question will be how
| many charges can the prosecutor make the facts fit.
| That's where these "50 years" claims come in, by stacking
| charge after charge in serial.
|
| But importantly, neither the prosecutor nor the jury
| decide the sentence. That's the job of the judge under
| the sentencing guidelines. This is what makes those "50
| years" claim of the prosecutor bogus, and what any well-
| represented individual should understand.
|
| I think Swartz _did_ understand that because he opted to
| go to trial.
|
| I get that people want there to be a clear moral story
| here. One perspective is that Swartz was a child prodigy,
| a beloved activist, someone who challenged the system,
| and then succumbed to pressure when it bore down on him
| with the full weight of the federal government.
|
| But it's not as clean as that. On the other hand he was a
| well connected, high net worth individual who repeatedly
| flaunted the system, and thought he would never face
| consequences. In my opinion, that's the profile of
| someone ripe for heavy handed prosecution.
|
| I am sympathetic to both perspectives.
| simplestats wrote:
| What about giving a more lenient sentence if the person
| is remorseful and admits what they did was wrong? Because
| that's effectively the same thing as a plea deal. Even
| innocent people would still sometimes admit guilt and
| apologize, destroying their chances of winning at trial
| either way, to get a shorter sentence.
| MereInterest wrote:
| 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.
| mcguire wrote:
| Note also that 6 months was the prosecutor's _first
| offer._
| skinnymuch wrote:
| The statement is made by the prosecutor though. They
| could be saying the truth. It is a very biased person's
| word to go off though.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _The prosecutor, Stephen Heymann, told Swartz's lawyer,
| Elliot Peters, that if Swartz pleaded guilty to all
| counts he would spend six months in jail; if he lost at
| trial, it would be much worse._ "
|
| The prosecutor made the offer of a 6-month plea deal to
| Swartz's lawyer. Who presumably discussed it with Swartz,
| who seems to have decided not to accept it. Possibly, if
| you accept the analysis above, on the advice of his
| lawyer.
| ModernMech wrote:
| What statement? You mean they could have been lying about
| the plea deal?
| skinnymuch wrote:
| If I recall the prosecutor's future political ambitions
| got derailed because of this. That makes it even more
| likely to not believe anything they are saying without
| more to go on.
|
| So yes. Not just the plea deal and not just this case. In
| any situation, if the only evidence of something is the
| word of the state prosecutor, that only means so much.
| andreilys wrote:
| There was also the fact that he would be branded a felon,
| which as the article mentioned would have prevented him
| from working in the White House or other institutions
| from where he could continue his work
| cowbellemoo wrote:
| > 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 guards and other
| incarcerated people. These are inhumane conditions to
| subject anyone to, mass murderer and copyright-infringer
| alike.
| rcoveson wrote:
| 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.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > 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.
| andreilys wrote:
| _Enforcement of laws is important._
|
| Agreed, unfortunately it seems that we selectively
| enforce laws based on political pressure. Look at the
| numerous high profile cases targeting white collar
| criminals, for example with Purdue and the Sackler
| family.
|
| They got away with zero jail time and a slap on the wrist
| (financially), all because they were able to hire the
| right political actors who could influence the outcome of
| legal procedures.
|
| I'm sure if Swartz was similarly connected (for example a
| family who was a Senator), this whole thing would have
| gone away quietly.
|
| Alas, the laws that apply to the commoners do not apply
| to the elite.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > Look at the numerous high profile cases targeting white
| collar criminals, for example with Purdue and the Sackler
| family.
|
| Don't give up hope yet!
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-
| news/202...
|
| > I'm sure if Swartz was similarly connected (for example
| a family who was a Senator), this whole thing would have
| gone away quietly.
|
| I think Swartz made himself an easy political target
| without realizing it. From his perspective, he was just a
| guy in a room trying to "save the world."
|
| From the outside a different picture can be painted. He
| positioned himself as an activist, and amassed a great
| deal of resources and even an active following. He was
| well connected in that he was on a first name basis with
| billionaires, and probably even had the personal numbers
| of a few in his phone.
|
| So I think all this made Swartz a target without him
| really intending to be one. Or at least he didn't think
| that in the process of "saving the world", that the world
| would fight back. That seems to be one of the central
| points of TFA at least.
| tiahura wrote:
| There's a big difference between a maximum security
| prison and a minimum security camp. We probably share
| many opinions about the former, non-violent penny ante
| white boy offenders go to the latter.
|
| "Bob's Story: "I was in the minimum security camp at
| Fairton for about nine months. It wasn't nearly as bad as
| I expected prison to be. The place was clean, the food
| wasn't bad, and I didn't feel any tension between the
| guys. If I wanted to avoid someone, I could stay to
| myself. "There were fewer than 100 guys serving sentences
| in the federal prison camp and I didn't feel much in the
| way of harassment from anyone, staff or inmates. With the
| help of an orderly, I coordinated a prison job for myself
| in the library. It was just a small room with lots of
| books and I passed my days catching up on reading. I
| hadn't read at all since I was in college because work
| kept me too busy. During the time I was at the camp I
| read about 30 great books and I lost 25 pounds. I'm back
| down to the same weight I was when I was in school and I
| feel better than ever. My wife loves the new look. She
| says the prison sentence probably gave me an extra ten
| years to live."
|
| https://www.whitecollaradvice.com/whats-it-like-in-the-
| priso...
|
| Remember, maximum security is expensive.
| shkkmo wrote:
| 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.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Says who? He didn't get to have a trial to determine this
| because the prosecutor backed him into a corner with threats
| of excessive punishment.
| tiahura wrote:
| Says the judge when you admit to what you did and plead.
| He's the same one that gave Lori Laughlin and Mossimo 6
| months in minimum security "camp" and not the bazillion
| years the prosecutor originally threatened.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Are you talking about the famous wealthy upper class and
| status people with your example?
|
| Not sure if you genuinely believe justice is blind.
| Something that has never been true.
| tiahura wrote:
| Blind to what? He was guilty.
|
| White boys don't do hard time for hiding in the closet to
| copy the library's computer.
|
| The judge appears to be a conservative old navy man. I
| haven't dealt with him, but I think I've been in front of
| the type. Trial would go something like this: On the
| morning of day 3, so before the second day of testimony,
| the judge calls the attorneys into chambers and lays into
| them, sometimes loud enough for half the courthouse to
| hear, for wasting everyone's time on such a stupid case,
| and that the prosecutor better have really good evidence
| of hard damages otherwise he's going to be pissed. And
| then you go out, talk to your clients, and settle.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Blind to what? You just stated "white boys". So you agree
| justice isn't blind. Then bringing up a rich, famous,
| American icon celebrity and how they were handled does
| not make sense.
|
| Edit: as sibling post says. The rest of the comment is
| equivalent to fan fiction.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| > the judge calls the attorneys into chambers and lays
| into them, sometimes loud enough for half the courthouse
| to hear, for wasting everyone's time on such a stupid
| case,
|
| You're basically writing fan fiction here. There's no
| evidence this would have been the case, and frankly I
| rather doubt it. There's nothing to suggest the judge
| would have reacted this way, nor that Swartz should have
| _anticipated_ that he would.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| I wasn't sure how to respond to the last paragraph. You
| worded it correctly
| luckylion wrote:
| > Are you talking about the famous wealthy upper class
| and status people with your example?
|
| As opposed to a wealthy, well-connected Harvard research
| fellow and entrepreneur who stems from an upper class
| family?
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Yes. Unless this family is absurdly rich like hundreds of
| millions. If that's true I am wrong. Otherwise, the
| wealthier American icon is still different enough where a
| [direct] comparison does not work.
| indymike wrote:
| > Says the judge when you admit to what you did and
| plead. He's the same one that gave Lori Laughlin and
| Mossimo 6 months in minimum security "camp" and not the
| bazillion years the prosecutor originally threatened.
|
| The prosecutor was trying to railroad Aaron for political
| gain and used every shenanigan in his bag of tricks to
| leverage Aaron into confessing -er- agreeing to a plea
| bargain. It was wrong, and very much revisionist to say
| otherwise.
| indymike wrote:
| > He broke the law and was likely to get a slap on the wrist.
|
| Sometimes, the law is unjust and it is greater injustice to
| administer any punishment at all.
| ppod wrote:
| Some of his writing in this reminds me a lot of David Foster
| Wallace (who is mentioned), in particular the way he is deeply
| concerned with seeming humble but feeling egotistical: self-
| consciously projecting humility but being aware of the humility
| as a kind of affectation in a recursive and tortuous cycle of
| self-awareness.
| borski wrote:
| I relate to this so much. The very odd "aggrandizing" that is
| so often necessary for starting and running a company, coupled
| with my massive impostor syndrome that is just never going to
| go away at this point, is a very very hard cognitive dissonance
| to manage. I've done it, and will do it again, but it makes me
| squirm on the inside.
| HumanReadable wrote:
| Do you have any advice or wise words on how you manage this?
|
| I find myself in a leadership position, but I feel immensely
| uncomfortable when directing others. In my head there's
| always a nagging voice that replies 'who are you to tell us
| what to do?'
| peakaboo wrote:
| Good leaders don't "tell people what to do" exactly. It's
| more of a "this is something we as a group must focus on
| because of reason x".
|
| I'm a new leader of sorts myself and all I do is looking at
| a Roadmap to see what is important, figure out what my team
| needs to do and ask people which parts they would like to
| work on (although some people are better suited for certain
| tasks, and that's your job to know that by knowing your
| team).
|
| I don't put myself on any kind of high horse. I'm still
| hands on myself too, doing work just like everyone else.
|
| If your ego starts to tell you that you are somehow better
| than any people, you will not be a good leader.
| mr90210 wrote:
| Prior to reading your comment, I had not been aware of such
| feeling.
|
| I aspire to be in a leadership position in the future.
| However, right now let me tell you why and how I would like
| to be led or directed by somebody:
|
| - You give me space to voice my opinions as if I am a
| specialist in the subject; - You give me space to make
| mistake and learn from them; - You are willing to admit
| that you don't know a certain topic; - You carry about your
| own self-development; - You are willing to support me on
| areas where I lack knowledge or experience without judging;
| - You often show that you care about the people in the
| team, and whether we are doing what matters; - You deal
| with me as the adult that I am, and you are open to have
| difficult conversations with empathy about topics such as:
| under-performance, misfit, interpersonal conflicts, or even
| about letting me go (firing);
|
| "who are you to tell us what to do"
|
| Well, you are the human capable of trusting each member of
| your team of doing the best they can, and capable of
| sitting with them when things are not working.
| justinpowers wrote:
| Seems to me the best leader might be someone who forever
| feels uncomfortable and uses that positively (eg asking for
| advice, promoting/delegating to betters, expressing
| gratitude, admitting mistakes, giving due credit) rather
| than negatively. A leader without discomfort suggests an
| unchecked ego...a recipe for eventual disaster no matter
| how long the good times (if any) may last.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| 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 certainly the most
| plausible, and I'd kill to know what DFW would have thought of
| it.
|
| [1] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend
| Mikhail_K wrote:
| > Refreshingly well-researched and honest piece from the New
| Yorker.
|
| My impression is quite the opposite. This piece by Larissa
| MacFarquhart was a contemptible whitewash of government
| bullies. "New Yorker" is squarely in the corner of intelligence
| agencies and law enforcement and against the people, and not
| just in this particular case.
| mattzito wrote:
| I'm curious how it's a whitewash of government bullies when
| that's not the point of the article? It's pretty clear at the
| start that it's about how his friends and family perceived
| him, and his backstory - I was aware of the overall
| narrative, but found it extremely interesting to hear stories
| of his challenges with interacting with the world.
|
| In general, I respect and appreciate content that takes
| someone who has been lionized (especially posthumously) and
| humanizes them. People are complicated, the narrative is
| rarely as simple as it's distilled down for public
| consumption.
|
| As far as the "squarely in the corner of intelligence agences
| and law enforcement" - that wasn't my impression, and while I
| did not spend hours researching, I went through the "police"
| tag on the new yorker website, and in the last year, 10 out
| of 21 articles were overtly critical of police, and only ~2
| could be considered positive towards police. The remainder
| were either neutral, nuanced, or orthogonal (e.g. photo
| essays about a woman who was embedded with the police for
| several years). Do you have evidence to back up your
| assertion?
| boppo1 wrote:
| Aww New Yorker is one of the few outlets I still like. Do you
| have examples?
| daniel-thompson wrote:
| Wow, this is excellent. It's been a while since I read IJ but I
| apparently missed a _bunch_ of the plot, judging by this
| writeup.
| pklausler wrote:
| 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.)
| brainzap wrote:
| I was reading through Aarons blog this week, like his writing
| style. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/semmelweis
| tiahura wrote:
| The anecdote about the pariahing of the doctor advocating
| chlorinated lime would be a clever retort from a qook to a lib
| about ivermectin.
| andreilys wrote:
| I would love to understand some of the rationale behind MIT not
| reversing it's stance. Is there any public/anon writing from
| someone inside MIT at the time?
|
| Was there some pressure being employed by scientific publishers
| to make an example out of Swartz?
|
| It just seems so strange, but then again as we've seen
| institutions can be easily hijacked and corrupted when populated
| with the wrong actors.
| schoen wrote:
| MIT commissioned an entire report about its role
|
| https://swartz-report.mit.edu/
|
| -- maybe that includes some of what you're looking for.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| > 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 it was not O.K. for one
| person to just go and break a law he felt was unjust.
|
| Or, possibly, Hacker News doesn't represent hacker culture, but
| finance-adjacent right-wing techbro culture, which knows
| perfectly well which side of the copyright issue its bread is
| buttered on.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| >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.
| anonporridge wrote:
| VC funded and controlled "hackers".
| zamadatix wrote:
| The articles take is the on point one IMO. The quotes are about
| the action being wrong not the law being right, as were the
| vast majority of the other negative comments in the post. The
| post can be found here for reference
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484 of particular note
| is the number of hackers that feel the action was noble but
| still wrong (even if being over prosecuted).
| pm90 wrote:
| > Or, possibly, Hacker News doesn't represent hacker culture,
| but finance-adjacent right-wing techbro culture, which knows
| perfectly well which side of the copyright issue its bread is
| buttered on.
|
| Spot on. I like HN for certain topics, but it's by no means
| representative of the Hacker culture. Even the name seems like
| duplicitous marketing at best.
|
| As an example, the topic of immigration will bring out the
| nastiest takes and opinions (and straight up racism).
| stathibus wrote:
| A long time ago now, the word "hacker" was captured by
| regular programmers screwing around who wanted to sound cool.
| I doubt anyone is confused about which definition HN is
| concerned with.
| fsckboy wrote:
| are you saying HN is NOT populated by regular programmers
| screwing around who want to sound cool?
| ciphol wrote:
| Why assume that "hacker culture", whatever exactly that is,
| is immune to racism?
| pm90 wrote:
| Maybe it isn't. My understanding of Hacker ethos has been
| that of a curiosity driven by truth seeking of any system
| (not just technological). Racism seems like lazy
| conventional thinking, so it seems prima facie to be
| incoherent with that culture.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| From the Hacker Manifesto:
|
| "We exist without skin color, without nationality, without
| religious bias... and you call us criminals."
|
| "My crime is that of judging people by what they say and
| think, not what they look like."
|
| I wouldn't argue that "hacker culture" is necessarily a
| monoculture or immune to racism, but I feel that this
| disembodied ethic is core to the origins of the culture.
| tonguez wrote:
| Actually the opposite is true here; if you talk about certain
| data which is considered "bad", like crime statistics, your
| post will be shadowbanned because it's considered wrongthink
| (or as you might put it, "straight up racism"), just like
| Twitter.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| > if you talk about certain data which is considered "bad",
| like crime statistics, your post will be shadowbanned
|
| Utter nonsense. Seriously. This is pure claptrap. I've seen
| so many instances where posters here have brought up "crime
| statistics" in the context of race or claimed that left-
| leaning cities are unlivable crime-ridden hellholes, and
| none where such posts were "shadowbanned".
| rfrey wrote:
| I challenge you to show me a case where mere presentation
| of statistics led to a ban, shadow or otherwise.
|
| More likely the "raising of a statistic" was accompanied by
| a first-order explanation of the number that, besides being
| trite and lazy, was also "blatantly racist". But it wasn't
| the statistic that did the job.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "As an example, the topic of immigration will bring out the
| nastiest takes and opinions (and straight up racism)."
|
| Well, I would argue, that hackers can also be nasty racists.
|
| I mean sure, by my definition the hacker spirit is open
| minded by definition. But people with a open mind, are also
| open for some very weird to disgusting ideas.
| pm90 wrote:
| Interesting, is the point here that hackers are susceptible
| to any idea that's not mainstream?
|
| However racism doesn't fit that category does it? Racism is
| a mainstream idea and not a novel one.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| Depends on where you live. It's not mainstream in the big
| tech cities. It's not mainstream on the American
| internet. "Racism" is also arguably not mainstream in
| most American cities, though there are plenty of
| accusations that certain areas are still indirectly or
| implicitly racist because it's a very subjective term.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Open minded to anything.
|
| And then use critical analysis to hack the concept apart
| and see, if it is solid or not.
|
| I for example, see the common racism concept as not solid
| for lots of reasons. But I am open to listen to arguments
| from the other side in general.
|
| (but not here and now)
| sxcurry wrote:
| The article might have been organized by Carmen Ortiz at the time
| - she was planning to run for Governor on the back of this case.
| polynomial wrote:
| This is the first time I have heard that and my jaw is on the
| floor.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| I have trouble even seeing the implied mechanism of how this
| article would have any impact on an election. And after reading
| the article, I wouldn't even be able to guess if people
| consider it slanted for or against Swartz. To me it reads of an
| exceptionally well-researched text showing that Swartz was a
| human being with all the complexity that comes with having a
| soul. And that a completely ridiculous prosecution was a
| necessary, but probably not sufficient, condition for his
| suicide.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This article carefully avoids any analysis of the reasons why MIT
| chose to persecute Aaron Swartz. Here's a quick take on the
| actual situation, off the top of my head:
|
| "The Darker Side of MIT and the Academic Publishing Industry"
|
| While the Internet has been hailed from its inception as a tool
| that would open up access to information for the whole world, the
| reality has not matched that expectation. Much of the most
| important and useful information generated by scientists,
| engineers, historians and others remains hidden behind paywalls
| and is not accessible to the vast majority of people, regardless
| of whether they have access to the Internet or not.
|
| The reason is that academic research - the vast majority of it
| financed heavily by federal science agencies, i.e. the taxpayer -
| remains under the control of a small group of academic publishing
| houses, who earn exorbitant fees for licensing access to
| universities and other institutions. For example, if you want to
| manufacturer an antibiotic, you'd want access to the complete
| research record - the initial discovery of the antibiotic, the
| detailed production technology (found perhaps in the methods
| sections of papers published in the 1970s and 1980s, say), more
| modern biotech methods of production of said antibiotic (papers
| from the 1990s and 2000s), etc.
|
| Given the obvious benefit to all (except the parasites collecting
| the fees) of providing that information to anyone with Internet
| access, it's at first glance hard to understand why MIT - one of
| America's leading federally-financed research institues - chose
| to persecute Aaron Swartz for downloading the jstor archive,
| instead of merely warning him not to do it again. Clearly the MIT
| administration wanted to make an example of Swartz - the question
| is, why?
|
| The most rational explanation involves the corporatization of
| academic research in the USA in general, which began in the 1980s
| with passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, which allowed universities to
| exclusively license inventions created with taxpayer dollars to
| private entities, rather than the prior situation, in which
| anyone could obtain such a license. This 'public-private'
| partnership situation has corrupted American academics, placing
| the profitability of research well ahead of the accuracy and
| reliability of research.
|
| As part of this sea change in American academia, the control of
| information has become more important than the prior academic
| norm, which was the open sharing of information (widely
| understood to increase the pace of scientific discovery). Now,
| many corporations have simply outsourced their R&D divisions to
| the murky public-private academic sector, utilizing financing
| provided by NIH or other federal agencies, while retaining
| control of the results of academic research (*and paying off the
| cooperating professors and administators by buying the academic
| start-up operations and giving them stocks in their larger
| corporations). This can be seen today in the highly profitable
| COVID vaccine and treatment business, in which initial academic
| research (such mRNA technology) was co-opted by the private
| sector under said exclusive licensing agreements (and note how
| open-sourcing the patents globally is continually blocked by
| pharma sector lobbying efforts).
|
| Hence, MIT - an institution which, along with the University of
| California, spearheaded the transition to corporate-controlled
| academic research, wanted to make an example of Aaron Swartz to
| warn other researchers that if they tried to open-source
| information - thereby harming corporate profit opportunities -
| that they would be severely punished.
|
| Well, at least there's scibhub, although their coverage is still
| spotty.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Hasn't it always been corporate interests in academia? Stanford
| was a joke when it was founded, MIT was being petitioned into
| becoming a tech school. Patrons of sciences have always been
| funded by private interests, there isn't any corruption.
|
| > This 'public-private' partnership situation has corrupted
| American academics, placing the profitability of research well
| ahead of the accuracy and reliability of research.
|
| Private profitability research is no different. I don't
| understand what you mean by losing accuracy, for some research
| corporate hardware or copyrighted work is required or the best
| choice.
|
| I thought they gave the ability for other pharma to make the
| mRNA drugs that require incredible investment, to make it seem
| open.
|
| Most of the information we mentioned is out there now. But it's
| much more fun watching tiktoks and liking posts.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| As I noted, it's really Bayh-Dole exclusive licensing that's
| the problem. Make all exclusively licensed federally financed
| patents held by academic institutions available to anyone who
| wants to utilize them via a no-fee license, that's the fix.
|
| Prior to that, if academics wanted to get involved in
| industry and make some money thereby, the route to take was
| called consulting, which seems fine with me, as long as
| conflicts of interest are stated honestly.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I'm reading the law and I don't see that issue. All the
| issues are from the requirements of the FDA, making it
| patent free solves nothing, unless you're talking about
| another industry, the cases are all from healthcare patents
| from the wiki. This isn't new or something unusual, most of
| the issues are in healthcare and the requirements to
| produce them are not going to be fixed by removing patents.
|
| Academic papers do submit sponsorships and conflicts of
| interest, and there's also the case of academia wanting
| cutting edge equipment from private companies and doing
| deals with them. This is much more honest than the smoking
| research, the federal government has an interest in
| maintaining patent law, it has no incentive to give free
| access to no fee licensing. There's lots of laws with
| access to healthcare information, which requires industry
| knowledge where the information is freely given to
| corporations to do research on, which would not be allowed
| federally. The researchers are not usually working because
| they're interested in making their research public
| information, and while post grads are funded by government,
| they are free to develop royalty free information, they
| choose not to and the government wants to partially fund
| corporations. I don't see the problem, people want to make
| money and they want to do cutting edge research.
|
| I see academia and research papers as advertising rather
| than a patent minefield. There are plenty of people who
| want to work for the common good, but the government wants
| to fund private entities to produce products, government
| contracts is what the US does instead of its own
| production.
|
| I see computer science papers with non of these issues
| under the current law.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > MIT was being petitioned into becoming a tech school
|
| MIT was called Boston Tech when it was founded in 1861 to
| bring to life William Barton Rogers's vision for a "new
| polytechnic institute"
| pdonis wrote:
| _> it 's at first glance hard to understand why MIT - one of
| America's leading federally-financed research institues - chose
| to persecute Aaron Swartz for downloading the jstor archive_
|
| It didn't. Read the Abelson report (which has been discussed ad
| nauseam in past HN threads). MIT did not want Swartz
| prosecuted, and told the prosecutor that. The prosecutor chose
| to go after Swartz anyway. MIT's error was that they didn't
| push back harder on the prosecutor (for example, by making a
| clearer public statement along the lines of the one JSTOR made,
| that since the stolen data was returned, no further action was
| necessary or desired).
|
| _> Clearly the MIT administration wanted to make an example of
| Swartz_
|
| No, it didn't. It just made an error of judgment (described
| above). It had nothing against Swartz and was not trying to
| make an example of him. The Federal prosecutor was the one
| trying to do that.
| nzmsv wrote:
| And if you look at that particular prosecutor's record, there
| is a clear pattern of "overkill".
| prirun wrote:
| If you ever see this phrase: 'public-private' partnership, you
| can be assured that the losses/costs will be public while the
| gains/profit will be private.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| public-private partnership is one of the pillars of
| neoliberal win-win politics. At least this is how it's being
| sold. However, it's one of the biggest clues that regardless
| of who you vote for in America (left or right), the
| shareholders will always be taken care of..
| cryptica wrote:
| It's sad how the system punishes smart altruists. If you're
| smart, you'd better be evil or the system will destroy you.
| xibalba wrote:
| I don't agree that "the system" punished a smart altruist.
|
| As this article makes clear, Swartz did something he knew to be
| illegal. This was not his first brush with mass copyright
| violation. He was then prosecuted for his crimes. IMO, the
| charges were vastly disproportionate, but you expose yourself
| to prosecutorial overreach when you (knowingly) commit crimes.
|
| This appears to have been a trend with Swartz. He seems to have
| had something of a God complex. And thus, for him, the ends
| justified the means, because he was _right_ and they were
| _wrong_.
|
| He does not even appear to have been especially ethical or
| rational. For example, Reddit sells to Conde Nast. A condition
| of the sale was that he would work out of Conde Nast's SF
| offices. He took the money, but then rejected the terms post
| hoc and disappeared. When he was tracked down and it was clear
| that he'd simply flown the coup, he was justifiably fired. All
| of which he, and his enablers, viewed as a great injustice!
| They don't seem to entertain giving back the money though...
|
| He was a human, with all the attendant frailties and
| blindspots. He was not murdered. He was a person who struggled
| with mental illness, like so many of us. He committed suicide.
|
| His suicide is tragic. He was clearly a bright and dynamic
| person. But he also seems to have been pretty misguided, and
| his darker tendencies appear to have been rationalized,
| justified, and enabled by his family. That to me, is the
| greater tragedy. It didn't have to be like this.
| exreddit wrote:
| cryptica wrote:
| I think it's a big deal that the charges were
| disproportionate in this case. Maybe what he did was illegal
| on paper, but it was not unethical.
|
| Disturbingly, there seems to be increasingly many things in
| our modern society which are ethical yet illegal. You'd think
| that in those cases, authorities should be more lenient; that
| they would have a sense of what is right and wrong from the
| perspective of the average citizen. The fact that they seem
| to be particularly more aggressive in those cases is what I
| find disturbing and why I'm saying that altruism is being
| punished.
|
| In many countries, the concept of right and wrong is
| increasingly being decided from the perspective of a tiny
| minority. We appear to be reverting to a society of lords and
| serfs. The government's moral compass is increasingly based
| on the elites' perspective.
| xibalba wrote:
| I don't agree that what he did was ethical. For me, and I
| think many people, it is clear that what he lied and stole.
| The works that he stole fall under clearly defined and well
| established copyright laws and which have licenses to which
| Swartz would have had to agree. He knew all of this and
| stole them anyway. He knew exactly what he was doing. This
| is why he hid his laptop and concealed his face when
| retrieving that laptop.
|
| In terms of how this IP is copyrighted and distributed,
| that should be corrected at the funding level. The U.S.
| government (and other funding sources) should forbid
| publication and distribution via publications that do not
| make the information freely available for any science which
| they fund. _But_... we live in society of laws. You don 't
| get to just decide which you like and thus will follow.
|
| > right and wrong is increasingly being decided from the
| perspective of a tiny minority
|
| I'm not sure I agree with you. I suspect your point might
| be motivated by a worldview (i.e. an ideology), as a
| opposed to be borne by evidence.
|
| But I could definitely be wrong. To that end, point me to a
| law that is 1) written from the perspective of a tiny
| minority of elites and 2) forbids something that most
| people would consider ethical. By this I mean, not your
| outsider opinion on the law, but rather, real evidence that
| it is written to serve the elites and that the forbidden
| activities are considered perfectly ethical by the majority
| of people.
| yesenadam wrote:
| > we live in society of laws. You don't get to just
| decide which you like and thus will follow.
|
| Tell that to Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Thoreau, and the many
| benefactors of mankind who have seen a law was wrong, and
| refused to obey it. And all those that admire their
| courage and efforts.
| simplestats wrote:
| The _legal system_ destroys people. It 's what they do. The
| noticeable difference here is how much other people care and
| how much the person had to lose. How well would you bounce back
| from a felony conviction and jail time? There was some random
| teenaged idiot where I grew up that did some stupid miscief to
| the wrong category of property, and ended up committing suicide
| too.
| drzaiusapelord wrote:
| This is such an insightful observation. I think to the critical
| thinker its clear capitalism doesn't allow dissent past a
| certain point. Sure, you can be an altruist in small way that
| don't threaten the status quo like giving to charity or
| volunteering, but when you go against the under-pinnings of our
| system, namely intellectual property laws, then you're going to
| be defeated. We also saw this with Lawrence Lessig who is now
| an entirely unknown person but before was a Kardashian-level
| celeb on the internet due to his criticisms of copyright and
| patents.
|
| So there's no place for a smart and motivated altruist in
| capitalism, because capitalism's oppression is what this person
| will fight and capitalism is usually the better fighter.
|
| Smart altruists do become evil to be successful because of
| this, think of how many left-leaning idealistic early silicon
| valley types and their ethos was entirely shed to become,
| functionally, the same as any MBA or Chicago school economist
| and now, not capitalism's critic, but its driver and the
| wielder of the hammer that crushes people like Swartz or
| Lessig. Let's remember Steve Jobs, who is beloved and seen
| bizarrely as a "hippie" threatened Blackberry with his
| questionable patent portfolio over email because of "poaching."
| Poaching in this context being people leave jobs for better
| ones, but Steve felt a feudal-like ownership of his workers and
| used the corrupt mechanisms of capitalism to control them and
| suppress wages.
|
| I'm sure there are other examples, but 'hippie turned ruthless
| capitalist' is pretty much the story of the boomer generation,
| who quickly figured out that they can get defeated by the
| system on some level, or they themselves become the oppressors.
| They chose to become the oppressors. The same is true of
| millennial idealism when its thrown out the window when you
| have an IPO looming, Facebook being the most obvious millennial
| led company that is about as evil as you can be for a webpage
| and app.
|
| The problem with right-leaning entrepreneurship spaces like HN
| is that there's no class consciousness and no real capitalism
| critiques. So Swatz was killed by the "government" not the
| capitalism that government serves. Or like this article says he
| was a depressed immature weirdo, so this was unavoidable.
| Neither of that is true. He became a valid threat to capitalism
| and the hammer fell on him. If not via this prosecutor (who
| enforces laws written by the oligarchy) then by something else
| (see Jobs using civil suits as a defacto government himself).
| He could have been sued for damages for all the PDFs he
| "stole," for example, if the wealthy couldn't wield the DOJ to
| their liking.
|
| I can't think of any high profile idealists, IP critics, or
| capitalist critics in online spaces today. The system took down
| Lessig, Swatz, Doctorow, etc pretty easily. Swatz, of course is
| dead, but the others are now marginalized characters no one
| cares about and copyright and patent reform an entirely dead
| political horse. Instead the pendulum has shifted to an
| outright worship of billionaires, to the point of putting one
| in the presidency and filling the cabinet with them, on top of
| questionable Elon and Bezos worship, which seemingly gets
| stronger by the day.
|
| No one seems to talk about this, but the late 90s and early
| 2000's financial and IP idealism was entirely crushed by the
| system. Today's smart altruists saw this and I imagine they are
| going to pick the Steve Jobs path, not the Swartz path going
| forward. They don't want to get destroyed either.
|
| Source: someone who is older and witnessed all this in real
| time and is heartbroken over how everything turned out
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Where did you get that idea from the article?
|
| Altruism isn't a fantasy like Robin Hood, there's a way to do
| it correctly; it's why Aaron was interested in policy. Dumb
| altruists are in a worst position, and giving out free
| information from the internet doesn't affect libgen. Aaron was
| a dumb altruist in the way he didn't just listen about how to
| download JSTOR articles.
| gowld wrote:
| The article appears to be a rambling list of eulogies and
| tidbits.
|
| What's the alleged "darker side" that isn't just being (in part)
| a regular person?
| xibalba wrote:
| It may be in response to the general beatification and
| mythologizing of Swartz after his suicide.
| coretx wrote:
| paywalled.
| password4321 wrote:
| ? not for me, but here you go: https://archive.is/tnHWq
| joshthecynic wrote:
| loeg wrote:
| (2013)
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| 62f26d4 wrote:
| Everything ever written about Aaron and everything Aaron ever
| wrote are part of one continuous humming noise that no one can
| hear. The difficulties Aaron lived need to be judged or diagnosed
| or both. There is neither redemption nor responsibility, but
| guilt and symptoms of a larger social or spiritual sickness.
|
| I've spent a large portion of my life blaming everyone including
| Aaron for everything and looking for heroes who would be able to
| make good on any of what seemed reasonable in his promises. In
| considering the worth of all these hours of reflections, I can't
| say I have changed my opinions but I have changed.
|
| What has been written about Aaron's life and accomplishments, let
| it suffice. The meta text is all now. Not "who was he?", but
| "what do we think of him?". This is what he wanted, and possibly
| because it concerns him, he was basically wrong, and this
| conversation is mostly unhelpful. I propose to ask "what do we
| think of what we think of him?".
|
| Those who could never see the value in information and knowledge
| have their knives out for a largely harmless and innocent man,
| while those who think hacking JSTOR would have unleashed a new
| age of enlightenment have yet to become cynical and stupid. His
| friends and family have largely avoided these debates and tried
| to elevate his achievements and explain his incongruities with
| compassion and grace, without taking sides, either out of fear of
| further government overreach or out of a sense that no one can
| speak to Aaron's entire belief set, and whether it was or would
| have been coherent and effective.
|
| As much as he held strong opinions on the subjects, he was trying
| to open a conversation about data, privacy, freedom of
| information etc., and he encountered a lot of people who realized
| that that conversation has extremely negative implications for
| data-driven business models, whether those were content
| publication models or user data ad-tech models. The corporate-
| academe was never willing to discuss any of it openly or honestly
| and was never going to leap to his defense as he might have
| thought at the time, as a socially-underdeveloped young man.
|
| He probably got it too late that corporate academics are not
| conservative so much as cowardly, not so much concerned as
| paranoid, not unaware but purposefully ignorant. And he certainly
| understood, too late, that the government is these things to an
| entirely incomprehensible degree. Whatever the personal
| motivations or ideologies of whichever prosecutor threw the book
| at Aaron, "the government" wanted him punished.
|
| Ultimately information is the scariest possible thing for any
| government, and Aaron had spent too much of his life knocking on
| the doors of the most closed-rank, insular and self-protecting
| people on earth, demanding a better public understanding of and
| regulation of data. He did this at a time when NSA et al. were
| harvesting unprecedented volumes of personal data and while
| trillions of private-side investment dollars were being spent on
| doing the same with no accountability.
|
| The hero-thief debate, and the autist-scumbag debate are for kids
| and morons like the New Yorker. Viz the fact he struggled
| socially---and to such an extent!--- is a "dark-side", warping
| his personality traits, his social and personal disorders, and
| his policy recommendations into a nice big meaningless pile.
|
| As another commenter here noted, like anyone with a soul he was a
| complex person.
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