8 ms·

It's not just MIT. The prosecutors are really the ones to blame.

RKearney 8y ago
And let’s not forget he killed himself before any kind of sentence was given. For all we know he could have been found innocent. And he physically broke into an IDF at MIT to do this.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  > And let’s not forget he killed himself before any kind of sentence was given. For all we know he could have been found innocent. He was hounded to death by a prosecutor. The fact that the prosecutor lied to him is hardly a defense.
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    It's shocking how many people on HN seem to assume that Swartz was an idiot. He had good legal representation and it couldn't have been as easy to mislead him as people here keep suggesting.
    - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
      So, what, he killed himself to cynically manipulate public opinion?
      - ryanlol 8y ago
        I simply don't find it very realistic that he killed himself over the possibility of spending 6 months in prison.
        PhasmaFelis 8y ago
        He was threatened with prison and then he killed himself. I doubt it was the only factor, but you'll need some sort of compelling evidence to argue that it wasn't the main factor.
        ryanlol 8y ago
        I find the fact that we're talking about 4 or 0-6 months to be very compelling evidence. What sort of a person kills themselves over 4 months in prison?
        PhasmaFelis 8y ago
        For starters, your numbers are wrong. At one point he was charged with 13 felonies potentially totaling more than 50 years of prison time. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-government-ups-felony-count-jstoraaron-swartz-case-four-to-thirteen.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-go... And you keep saying he couldn't have hanged himself over these charges. Given that he was threatened with prison time, and shortly after hanged himself, what's your counter-theory? He was murdered by the CIA? He was totally fine with the changes, but he just got real sad all of a sudden? There is no reasonable circumstance where this wasn't the major factor in his suicide.
        ryanlol 8y ago
        My numbers aren’t wrong. They’re the plea deals he was offered. Two deals, 4 months in prison or 6 months and opportunity to argue for a lower sentence in front of the judge. You’re the one giving incorrect numbers, he couldn’t possibly have been sentenced to 50 years. According to his attorneys, the prosecutors believed that the most they could achieve at trial would have been 7 years. A very different number from 50 years. I suggest you look into the case a little before making statements like this. Techdirt may not be the best source either.
        PhasmaFelis 8y ago
        He'd already rejected the plea bargain. He was going to stand trial at that point. > According to his attorneys, the prosecutors believed that the most they could achieve at trial would have been 7 years. A very different number from 50 years. And a lot more than 6 months. You still haven't answered my question. If he didn't kill himself because he feared prison, then what happened?
- stochastic_monk 8y ago
  I'm not sure I understand. It reads like you're blaming a suicide victim for dying before he received a verdict instead of the people who put him in that position, but I'd rather not assume your intention.
  - Kylekramer 8y ago
    Blaming suicides on people other than the suicidal person is something I also rather not assume people would intend.
- nkrisc 8y ago
  > And he physically broke into an IDF at MIT to do this. Worse has been done for pranks with little to no consequence.
  - RKearney 8y ago
    Somehow the "well Jimmy did it too and he didn't get in trouble!" defense isn't a strong one.
    - gknoy 8y ago
      In the case of _pranks at MIT_, which has a rich history of outrageous pranks, I'd hoped it would have affected their reaction to it, much as one would hope that students wouldn't get arrested for breaking an entering if they did it to assemble a Volkswagen in someone's office.
      - FireBeyond 8y ago
        Crucial to note is that Aaron _wasn't_ an MIT student. Most of those "pranks" were students. Aaron was trespassing, though MIT decided they did not want him to be prosecuted.
    - nkrisc 8y ago
      Not a defense for his actions, but meant as a way to illustrate how disproportionate the response was for what he actually did. I'm working off memory here, so maybe I'm wrong, but from what he was really be pursued for should have been a civil matter at worst.
- awaywopassd 8y ago
  Horrible position to take. He was bullied and bullies deserve to be punished. Recent suicide of 9 year old because bullying had sparked debate in our office. And most agreed her bullies and parents of bullies should be charged criminally.
danharaj 8y ago
Prosecutors gonna prosecute. A university should protect its members. Not anymore though. Universities are part of the behemoth now.
- FireBeyond 8y ago
  Aaron wasn't a student at MIT.
  - danharaj 8y ago
    > Elliot Peters, Swartz's attorney, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the case "was horribly overblown" because JSTOR itself believed that Swartz had "the right" to download from the site. Swartz was not formally affiliated with MIT, but was a fellow at nearby Harvard University. MIT maintains an open campus and open computer network, Peters said. He said that made Swartz's accessing the network legal. I should have used more accurate language. I think my intended statement is clear now.
MaupitiBlue 8y ago
Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
- trumped 8y ago
  right... a major problem is that we have a lot crazy and stupid laws ... copyright being pretty high up there.
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/ http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartz... > In short, Aaron Swartz was not the super hacker breathlessly described in the Government’s indictment and forensic reports, and his actions did not pose a real danger to JSTOR, MIT or the public. He was an intelligent young man who found a loophole that would allow him to download a lot of documents quickly. This loophole was created intentionally by MIT and JSTOR, and was codified contractually in the piles of paperwork turned over during discovery. > If I had taken the stand as planned and had been asked by the prosecutor whether Aaron’s actions were “wrong”, I would probably have replied that what Aaron did would better be described as “inconsiderate”. In the same way it is inconsiderate to write a check at the supermarket while a dozen people queue up behind you or to check out every book at the library needed for a History 101 paper. It is inconsiderate to download lots of files on shared wifi or to spider Wikipedia too quickly, but none of these actions should lead to a young person being hounded for years and haunted by the possibility of a 35 year sentence.
  - lucozade 8y ago
    But that's a load of nonsense and I don't think it diminishes Aaron's memory to say so. He wilfully, deliberately and with substantial premeditation broke the law. Having pretty much stated publicly he was going to and been caught and let off for a similar crime previously. He was bang to rights guilty. However, he was then persecuted mercilessly and threatened with a sentence way out of proportion to the crime. He was hounded to his death for political brownie points and that's unforgivable. But to suggest he was just a naughty schoolboy is inaccurate and unhelpful.
blitmap 8y ago
I absolutely blame the prosecutors, but I'd want to include the university in this. Aaron's motives (from my outside perspective) were to make information freely available. It's frustrating that the university is happy to partner with organizations that restrict research papers like this. It's not in the spirit of scholarly work, in my opinion.. I don't know what the university could have done different.
jjtheblunt 8y ago
Why does no one have the perspective that Aaron knew he was literally stealing, according to the law, and that subverting the law, even if non ideal, was HIS choice, and therefore the overly dramatic legal threats were invited by HIS actions. It's his fault, and he didn't own up to it, even though he meant well.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > literally stealing, according to the law This is a contested and unsettled legal question. It is not an established fact that what Aaron did would constitute stealing, due to the nuances of this particular situation. > and that subverting the law, even if non ideal, was HIS choice, and therefore the overly dramatic legal threats were invited by HIS actions Even if you ignore the fact that MIT has a long, established student culture of civil disobedience and circumventing the law, the level of prosecution was completely disproportionate to what he actually did.
  - throwaway2048 8y ago
    Copyright infringement is unquestionably not theft, this is 100% settled law, it is not ambiguous.
    - jjtheblunt 8y ago
      Can you cite a source for that assertion? I can't find one.
      - cr0sh 8y ago
        I don't know a source for the assertion, but I find it interesting and disturbing where things in general seem to be headed. The legal concept of "theft": https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2119 https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2119 "the generic term for all crimes in which a person intentionally and fraudulently takes personal property of another without permission or consent and with the intent to convert it to the taker's use (including potential sale)..." (see the link above for more) So what does it mean to "take"?: https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2088 https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2088 "to gain or obtain possession, including the receipt of a legacy from an estate, getting title to real property or stealing an object." ...and "possession"?: https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1555 https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1555 "1) any article, object, asset or property which one owns, occupies, holds or has under control. 2) the act of owning, occupying, holding or having under control an article, object, asset or property." (again - more is available at the link) Ok - so data can't be occupied, so we can drop that. Holding something implies that something is now in someone's hands and not in another's; data doesn't really work that way either. So - can you "own" or "control" data? I'm not going further down this rabbit hole, but it seems to me that we have carved out this special exemption for data - or more generally IP - that isn't applied to physical objects. Which is to say that if you make a copy of data that isn't "your's" (whatever that means in a legal sense), that you have now, in some manner, committed theft. You have somehow stolen something from someone else - even though they still have theirs! Imagine a physical item, and imagine you had a way to copy it. Maybe a wood table, and you are an expert woodworker. You see it, you take some measurements first, plus some photos, maybe a 3D scan? Or you used photogrammetry from the pictures to gain the 3D data. Whatever. Then you go home and make the copy in your workshop. You make an "exact" copy of that table, and the owner (the guy who originally made it - maybe he was selling it, too) learns about it. Have you just stolen from him? Have you committed theft? In the real world, if you tried to bring such charges, you might be laughed out of court (unless he had a patent on it, and you were trying to sell that copy - because patent law allows one to make such copies in order to make improvements, but those copies can't be sold or manufactured in quantity). But when it comes to data - all of a sudden, it's different. With data, the deprivation (even if you are just keeping it for yourself, with no intention of passing it on to someone else!) is considered to be "a loss of sales revenue". So why not in that case of that table? Or any other potentially manufactured artifact? The "slippery slope" argument might be the idea that in the future, that yes, if you happen to make an exact copy of a manufactured article (whether manufactured as a singular item or by the millions, whether done by hand or by machines), and regardless of whether you intend to sell it or keep it for your own use - that if caught, you will be deemed as having committed theft; as having stolen something. I mean - why not? That's what we do with data, so why not physical items? The next step is, of course, to just define stealing or theft as being the deprivation of sales revenue...but that would be crazy, right? As crazy as thinking that one could define stealing and theft as being something you do where you don't deprive the original owner of anything...?

And let’s not forget he killed himself before any kind of sentence was given. For all we know he could have been found innocent. And he physically broke into an IDF at MIT to do this.

PhasmaFelis 8y ago
> And let’s not forget he killed himself before any kind of sentence was given. For all we know he could have been found innocent. He was hounded to death by a prosecutor. The fact that the prosecutor lied to him is hardly a defense.
- ryanlol 8y ago
  It's shocking how many people on HN seem to assume that Swartz was an idiot. He had good legal representation and it couldn't have been as easy to mislead him as people here keep suggesting.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    So, what, he killed himself to cynically manipulate public opinion?
    - ryanlol 8y ago
      I simply don't find it very realistic that he killed himself over the possibility of spending 6 months in prison.
      - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
        He was threatened with prison and then he killed himself. I doubt it was the only factor, but you'll need some sort of compelling evidence to argue that it wasn't the main factor.
        ryanlol 8y ago
        I find the fact that we're talking about 4 or 0-6 months to be very compelling evidence. What sort of a person kills themselves over 4 months in prison?
        PhasmaFelis 8y ago
        For starters, your numbers are wrong. At one point he was charged with 13 felonies potentially totaling more than 50 years of prison time. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-government-ups-felony-count-jstoraaron-swartz-case-four-to-thirteen.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-go... And you keep saying he couldn't have hanged himself over these charges. Given that he was threatened with prison time, and shortly after hanged himself, what's your counter-theory? He was murdered by the CIA? He was totally fine with the changes, but he just got real sad all of a sudden? There is no reasonable circumstance where this wasn't the major factor in his suicide.
        ryanlol 8y ago
        My numbers aren’t wrong. They’re the plea deals he was offered. Two deals, 4 months in prison or 6 months and opportunity to argue for a lower sentence in front of the judge. You’re the one giving incorrect numbers, he couldn’t possibly have been sentenced to 50 years. According to his attorneys, the prosecutors believed that the most they could achieve at trial would have been 7 years. A very different number from 50 years. I suggest you look into the case a little before making statements like this. Techdirt may not be the best source either.
        PhasmaFelis 8y ago
        He'd already rejected the plea bargain. He was going to stand trial at that point. > According to his attorneys, the prosecutors believed that the most they could achieve at trial would have been 7 years. A very different number from 50 years. And a lot more than 6 months. You still haven't answered my question. If he didn't kill himself because he feared prison, then what happened?
stochastic_monk 8y ago
I'm not sure I understand. It reads like you're blaming a suicide victim for dying before he received a verdict instead of the people who put him in that position, but I'd rather not assume your intention.
- Kylekramer 8y ago
  Blaming suicides on people other than the suicidal person is something I also rather not assume people would intend.
nkrisc 8y ago
> And he physically broke into an IDF at MIT to do this. Worse has been done for pranks with little to no consequence.
- RKearney 8y ago
  Somehow the "well Jimmy did it too and he didn't get in trouble!" defense isn't a strong one.
  - gknoy 8y ago
    In the case of _pranks at MIT_, which has a rich history of outrageous pranks, I'd hoped it would have affected their reaction to it, much as one would hope that students wouldn't get arrested for breaking an entering if they did it to assemble a Volkswagen in someone's office.
    - FireBeyond 8y ago
      Crucial to note is that Aaron _wasn't_ an MIT student. Most of those "pranks" were students. Aaron was trespassing, though MIT decided they did not want him to be prosecuted.
  - nkrisc 8y ago
    Not a defense for his actions, but meant as a way to illustrate how disproportionate the response was for what he actually did. I'm working off memory here, so maybe I'm wrong, but from what he was really be pursued for should have been a civil matter at worst.
awaywopassd 8y ago
Horrible position to take. He was bullied and bullies deserve to be punished. Recent suicide of 9 year old because bullying had sparked debate in our office. And most agreed her bullies and parents of bullies should be charged criminally.

danharaj 8y ago

Prosecutors gonna prosecute. A university should protect its members. Not anymore though. Universities are part of the behemoth now.

FireBeyond 8y ago
Aaron wasn't a student at MIT.
- danharaj 8y ago
  > Elliot Peters, Swartz's attorney, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the case "was horribly overblown" because JSTOR itself believed that Swartz had "the right" to download from the site. Swartz was not formally affiliated with MIT, but was a fellow at nearby Harvard University. MIT maintains an open campus and open computer network, Peters said. He said that made Swartz's accessing the network legal. I should have used more accurate language. I think my intended statement is clear now.

MaupitiBlue 8y ago

Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

trumped 8y ago
right... a major problem is that we have a lot crazy and stupid laws ... copyright being pretty high up there.
PavlovsCat 8y ago
http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/ http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartz... > In short, Aaron Swartz was not the super hacker breathlessly described in the Government’s indictment and forensic reports, and his actions did not pose a real danger to JSTOR, MIT or the public. He was an intelligent young man who found a loophole that would allow him to download a lot of documents quickly. This loophole was created intentionally by MIT and JSTOR, and was codified contractually in the piles of paperwork turned over during discovery. > If I had taken the stand as planned and had been asked by the prosecutor whether Aaron’s actions were “wrong”, I would probably have replied that what Aaron did would better be described as “inconsiderate”. In the same way it is inconsiderate to write a check at the supermarket while a dozen people queue up behind you or to check out every book at the library needed for a History 101 paper. It is inconsiderate to download lots of files on shared wifi or to spider Wikipedia too quickly, but none of these actions should lead to a young person being hounded for years and haunted by the possibility of a 35 year sentence.
- lucozade 8y ago
  But that's a load of nonsense and I don't think it diminishes Aaron's memory to say so. He wilfully, deliberately and with substantial premeditation broke the law. Having pretty much stated publicly he was going to and been caught and let off for a similar crime previously. He was bang to rights guilty. However, he was then persecuted mercilessly and threatened with a sentence way out of proportion to the crime. He was hounded to his death for political brownie points and that's unforgivable. But to suggest he was just a naughty schoolboy is inaccurate and unhelpful.

blitmap 8y ago

I absolutely blame the prosecutors, but I'd want to include the university in this. Aaron's motives (from my outside perspective) were to make information freely available. It's frustrating that the university is happy to partner with organizations that restrict research papers like this. It's not in the spirit of scholarly work, in my opinion.. I don't know what the university could have done different.

jjtheblunt 8y ago

Why does no one have the perspective that Aaron knew he was literally stealing, according to the law, and that subverting the law, even if non ideal, was HIS choice, and therefore the overly dramatic legal threats were invited by HIS actions. It's his fault, and he didn't own up to it, even though he meant well.

chimeracoder 8y ago
> literally stealing, according to the law This is a contested and unsettled legal question. It is not an established fact that what Aaron did would constitute stealing, due to the nuances of this particular situation. > and that subverting the law, even if non ideal, was HIS choice, and therefore the overly dramatic legal threats were invited by HIS actions Even if you ignore the fact that MIT has a long, established student culture of civil disobedience and circumventing the law, the level of prosecution was completely disproportionate to what he actually did.
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  Copyright infringement is unquestionably not theft, this is 100% settled law, it is not ambiguous.
  - jjtheblunt 8y ago
    Can you cite a source for that assertion? I can't find one.
    - cr0sh 8y ago
      I don't know a source for the assertion, but I find it interesting and disturbing where things in general seem to be headed. The legal concept of "theft": https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2119 https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2119 "the generic term for all crimes in which a person intentionally and fraudulently takes personal property of another without permission or consent and with the intent to convert it to the taker's use (including potential sale)..." (see the link above for more) So what does it mean to "take"?: https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2088 https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2088 "to gain or obtain possession, including the receipt of a legacy from an estate, getting title to real property or stealing an object." ...and "possession"?: https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1555 https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1555 "1) any article, object, asset or property which one owns, occupies, holds or has under control. 2) the act of owning, occupying, holding or having under control an article, object, asset or property." (again - more is available at the link) Ok - so data can't be occupied, so we can drop that. Holding something implies that something is now in someone's hands and not in another's; data doesn't really work that way either. So - can you "own" or "control" data? I'm not going further down this rabbit hole, but it seems to me that we have carved out this special exemption for data - or more generally IP - that isn't applied to physical objects. Which is to say that if you make a copy of data that isn't "your's" (whatever that means in a legal sense), that you have now, in some manner, committed theft. You have somehow stolen something from someone else - even though they still have theirs! Imagine a physical item, and imagine you had a way to copy it. Maybe a wood table, and you are an expert woodworker. You see it, you take some measurements first, plus some photos, maybe a 3D scan? Or you used photogrammetry from the pictures to gain the 3D data. Whatever. Then you go home and make the copy in your workshop. You make an "exact" copy of that table, and the owner (the guy who originally made it - maybe he was selling it, too) learns about it. Have you just stolen from him? Have you committed theft? In the real world, if you tried to bring such charges, you might be laughed out of court (unless he had a patent on it, and you were trying to sell that copy - because patent law allows one to make such copies in order to make improvements, but those copies can't be sold or manufactured in quantity). But when it comes to data - all of a sudden, it's different. With data, the deprivation (even if you are just keeping it for yourself, with no intention of passing it on to someone else!) is considered to be "a loss of sales revenue". So why not in that case of that table? Or any other potentially manufactured artifact? The "slippery slope" argument might be the idea that in the future, that yes, if you happen to make an exact copy of a manufactured article (whether manufactured as a singular item or by the millions, whether done by hand or by machines), and regardless of whether you intend to sell it or keep it for your own use - that if caught, you will be deemed as having committed theft; as having stolen something. I mean - why not? That's what we do with data, so why not physical items? The next step is, of course, to just define stealing or theft as being the deprivation of sales revenue...but that would be crazy, right? As crazy as thinking that one could define stealing and theft as being something you do where you don't deprive the original owner of anything...?