8 ms·

I just watched "The Internets Own Boy" again last night. It amazes me what our justice system can do to people and not be held responsible. Had I done the same

I just watched "The Internets Own Boy" again last night. It amazes me what our justice system can do to people and not be held responsible. Had I done the same thing to Aaron, I'd have been given lethal injection by now.

escherize 11y ago
You don't become a ruler to be subject to the rules.
- jason_slack 11y ago
  If I had known growing up that the country I lived in was like this, I'd of not cared about it so much. I used to stand when the national anthem would come on and deeply be thankful for what I had.
  - david927 11y ago
    First, Aaron was as much our country as the people who persecuted him. He cared about it; you should too. You can react two ways: 1) impotent anger or 2) stand up and continue his fight. Which will it be? Find friends and others and we can all pitch in to create a method of distributing knowledge in a way that can't be controlled. The internet makes it possible, the only thing missing is the will and the effort. Anyone can contact me: my email's in my profile.
    - jason_slack 11y ago
      I'm not angry. But I am disappointed to the point I think we need serious reform. This means a call to action. This is what Aaron did.
      - wolfgke 11y ago
        > I'm not angry. But I am disappointed to the point I think we need serious reform. This means a call to action. Aaron can't do this an anymore since he was driven into suicide by the criminal prosecution of his country, he can't do it anymore. So: Don't call for action - act instead!
        rubberstamp 11y ago
        I remember reading on arstechnica about Aaron. US justice system has so much inconsistencies. Punishment for copyright cases being harsher than the ones for Actual crimes being one of them. Lets not forget that he is being called criminal because he broke a law, a silly thing signed into law probably because someone lobbyed so hard for it. He is no actual criminal. He didn't feel the articles he downloaded from servers should be kept private. At least the research papers funded with public money should be public property. But so much pressure was put on him that he took his own life. If justice system was fair, he could've faced it. But currently the system is broken. He knew that and felt hopeless. Pushing for things like banning him from all things electronic, and thus internet, is not the right way to serve justice. What reforms have taken place since then?
        cglace 11y ago
        > He is no actual criminal. He didn't feel the articles he downloaded from servers should be kept private. That is a horrible argument. should I just be able to take your tv because I think it shouldn't be locked up in your house? I'm not saying I agree with the papers being locked up. Not believing in a law does not make you innocent. Many people think they don't have to pay their taxes and they all go to jail.
        rubberstamp 11y ago
        if my tv was bought with public money, yes
        briandear 11y ago
        So I can go into a welfare recipient's house and take the food out of their house? Can I go into a military post and take some rifles? Such a ridiculous logic.
        rubberstamp 11y ago
        I realize the ridiculousness of comment I made, but I wasn't originally talking about tv. Aaron has made possible free access to many documents that were being charged for access, but they are actually documents that should be in public domain. JSTOR is journal store which contains journals published by researchers all over the world. JSTOR access is licensed. There is no open access and the access fees are not cheap for something that is digitalized. Does JSTOR compensate the original article publisher? Aaron Swartz was only trying to make this archive public. He could've used an alternative way to achieve that goal. But does he actually deserve 30 to 50 years in prison and a million in fine for what he did? I wouldn't have had a problem with it if those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis were given an appropriate punishment, say 500 years in jail time and fined at least a few billions.
    - cinquemb 11y ago
      I think projects like sci-hub are definitely a step in that direction, and the more projects that leverage the legal arbitrage and technical capabilities that exist today the better. I'd be interested in trying to help someone who lives outside of the US figure out how to come up with something similar but for all the data that is trapped behind the facebooks and the like. I did something like this before, but I got hit with a C&D, but the technical capabilities are still available to leverage to weaken facebooks hold on personality information if one can side step the jurisdiction of such legal tools.
      - mirimir 11y ago
        Sci-Hub is gone.
        ryanlol 11y ago
        I used it a couple of hours ago, sci-hub.io
        mirimir 11y ago
        Cool! I didn't realize that they had come back after their com domain was taken. See https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-and-libgen-resurface-after-being-shut-down-151121/ https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-and-libgen-resurface-after-...
    - gnaritas 11y ago
      > You can react two ways: 1) impotent anger or 2) stand up and continue his fight. Which will it be? False dichotomy and manipulative, there's many ways to react outside of those narrow choices.
mahranch 11y ago
> It amazes me what our justice system can do to people and not be held responsible. Just to play devil's advocate here (and I understand this goes against prevailing opinion), but he did break the law. That much isn't in dispute, they had a video of him entering the MIT network closet. And he didn't commit misdemeanors, he committed a half dozen felonies (actually more, but the prosecution dropped a few of them). The prosecution was offering a meager 6 months in a low-security prison (for multiple felonies, that's peanuts) for his crimes but he rejected the offer (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Arrest_and_prosecution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Arrest_and_prosec...). I understand what he was fighting for and agree with him and his ideology. I support Open Access, but let's not kid ourselves or delude ourselves - he wasn't innocent. He did commit crimes. I don't think this is the justice's systems fault. They were going to go extremely light on him but it was he who chose to fight.
- wolfgke 11y ago
  > Just to play devil's advocate here (and I understand this goes against prevailing opinion), but he did break the law. Aaron himself said "There is no justice in following unjust laws." > https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj... I even go further and say that you can't be good and lawful at the same time - at least not in any currently existing system of laws.
  - an_account 11y ago
    Is the right course of action to break "unjust" laws, or to just fight to change them? This is an opinion, but I argue that every person has a different definition of what is "just", and if everyone followed their definition of "just", than our legal system would break down. Society functions on a set of laws, but those laws can change for the better.
    - wolfgke 11y ago
      I mean "good" in the sense of the values that you honor - and here indeed you can't be good and lawful at the same time (except "being lawful" is your exact definition of good). I personally believe that the way to go is to turn ethics from a humanity into an empirical science, so that any "false" (in a sense that future people will have to define formally) can indeed be falsified. This would at least solve many problems. But at the moment this all is rather science-fiction, since we don't even understand how our brains works (which such theories will probably have to incorporate as special case).

escherize 11y ago

You don't become a ruler to be subject to the rules.

jason_slack 11y ago
If I had known growing up that the country I lived in was like this, I'd of not cared about it so much. I used to stand when the national anthem would come on and deeply be thankful for what I had.
- david927 11y ago
  First, Aaron was as much our country as the people who persecuted him. He cared about it; you should too. You can react two ways: 1) impotent anger or 2) stand up and continue his fight. Which will it be? Find friends and others and we can all pitch in to create a method of distributing knowledge in a way that can't be controlled. The internet makes it possible, the only thing missing is the will and the effort. Anyone can contact me: my email's in my profile.
  - jason_slack 11y ago
    I'm not angry. But I am disappointed to the point I think we need serious reform. This means a call to action. This is what Aaron did.
    - wolfgke 11y ago
      > I'm not angry. But I am disappointed to the point I think we need serious reform. This means a call to action. Aaron can't do this an anymore since he was driven into suicide by the criminal prosecution of his country, he can't do it anymore. So: Don't call for action - act instead!
      - rubberstamp 11y ago
        I remember reading on arstechnica about Aaron. US justice system has so much inconsistencies. Punishment for copyright cases being harsher than the ones for Actual crimes being one of them. Lets not forget that he is being called criminal because he broke a law, a silly thing signed into law probably because someone lobbyed so hard for it. He is no actual criminal. He didn't feel the articles he downloaded from servers should be kept private. At least the research papers funded with public money should be public property. But so much pressure was put on him that he took his own life. If justice system was fair, he could've faced it. But currently the system is broken. He knew that and felt hopeless. Pushing for things like banning him from all things electronic, and thus internet, is not the right way to serve justice. What reforms have taken place since then?
        cglace 11y ago
        > He is no actual criminal. He didn't feel the articles he downloaded from servers should be kept private. That is a horrible argument. should I just be able to take your tv because I think it shouldn't be locked up in your house? I'm not saying I agree with the papers being locked up. Not believing in a law does not make you innocent. Many people think they don't have to pay their taxes and they all go to jail.
        rubberstamp 11y ago
        if my tv was bought with public money, yes
        briandear 11y ago
        So I can go into a welfare recipient's house and take the food out of their house? Can I go into a military post and take some rifles? Such a ridiculous logic.
        rubberstamp 11y ago
        I realize the ridiculousness of comment I made, but I wasn't originally talking about tv. Aaron has made possible free access to many documents that were being charged for access, but they are actually documents that should be in public domain. JSTOR is journal store which contains journals published by researchers all over the world. JSTOR access is licensed. There is no open access and the access fees are not cheap for something that is digitalized. Does JSTOR compensate the original article publisher? Aaron Swartz was only trying to make this archive public. He could've used an alternative way to achieve that goal. But does he actually deserve 30 to 50 years in prison and a million in fine for what he did? I wouldn't have had a problem with it if those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis were given an appropriate punishment, say 500 years in jail time and fined at least a few billions.
  - cinquemb 11y ago
    I think projects like sci-hub are definitely a step in that direction, and the more projects that leverage the legal arbitrage and technical capabilities that exist today the better. I'd be interested in trying to help someone who lives outside of the US figure out how to come up with something similar but for all the data that is trapped behind the facebooks and the like. I did something like this before, but I got hit with a C&D, but the technical capabilities are still available to leverage to weaken facebooks hold on personality information if one can side step the jurisdiction of such legal tools.
    - mirimir 11y ago
      Sci-Hub is gone.
      - ryanlol 11y ago
        I used it a couple of hours ago, sci-hub.io
        mirimir 11y ago
        Cool! I didn't realize that they had come back after their com domain was taken. See https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-and-libgen-resurface-after-being-shut-down-151121/ https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-and-libgen-resurface-after-...
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    > You can react two ways: 1) impotent anger or 2) stand up and continue his fight. Which will it be? False dichotomy and manipulative, there's many ways to react outside of those narrow choices.

mahranch 11y ago

> It amazes me what our justice system can do to people and not be held responsible. Just to play devil's advocate here (and I understand this goes against prevailing opinion), but he did break the law. That much isn't in dispute, they had a video of him entering the MIT network closet. And he didn't commit misdemeanors, he committed a half dozen felonies (actually more, but the prosecution dropped a few of them). The prosecution was offering a meager 6 months in a low-security prison (for multiple felonies, that's peanuts) for his crimes but he rejected the offer (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Arrest_and_prosecution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Arrest_and_prosec...). I understand what he was fighting for and agree with him and his ideology. I support Open Access, but let's not kid ourselves or delude ourselves - he wasn't innocent. He did commit crimes. I don't think this is the justice's systems fault. They were going to go extremely light on him but it was he who chose to fight.

wolfgke 11y ago
> Just to play devil's advocate here (and I understand this goes against prevailing opinion), but he did break the law. Aaron himself said "There is no justice in following unjust laws." > https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj... I even go further and say that you can't be good and lawful at the same time - at least not in any currently existing system of laws.
- an_account 11y ago
  Is the right course of action to break "unjust" laws, or to just fight to change them? This is an opinion, but I argue that every person has a different definition of what is "just", and if everyone followed their definition of "just", than our legal system would break down. Society functions on a set of laws, but those laws can change for the better.
  - wolfgke 11y ago
    I mean "good" in the sense of the values that you honor - and here indeed you can't be good and lawful at the same time (except "being lawful" is your exact definition of good). I personally believe that the way to go is to turn ethics from a humanity into an empirical science, so that any "false" (in a sense that future people will have to define formally) can indeed be falsified. This would at least solve many problems. But at the moment this all is rather science-fiction, since we don't even understand how our brains works (which such theories will probably have to incorporate as special case).