5 ms·

I don't totally understand why there's so much hate on MIT for this, so consider this more of an inquiry rather than an outright defense of what happened and le

by nawwal 6y ago

I don't totally understand why there's so much hate on MIT for this, so consider this more of an inquiry rather than an outright defense of what happened and let me know if I'm missing something critical: Based on what I know, Aaron Swartz - someone with no affiliation to MIT - abused MIT's open campus/network policies and tried to download all of JSTOR by hiding a laptop in a closet. At best, this is at least something sketchy to do by someone with no connection to the university. MIT discovered this, turned the matters over to the police, Swartz got caught, and the (overzealous) prosecutors took it from there. MIT did not "make it [its] life's work to go after [Swartz]". You can certainly criticize it for not trying to help him, especially given MIT's hacker-friendly culture and the fact that his actions did not hurt anyone, but I think it's unfair to have expected MIT to make a stand against the prosecutor/criminal justice system and predicted Swartz's suicide, after he rejected the 6 month minimum-security prison deal and decided to go to trial instead. I'm all for open access, but Swartz's methods were at least a bit questionable and he should have expected some repercussions should he get caught (I'm sure he did, hence the hiding of the laptop). And in the end, blaming MIT for being neutral in a politically-charged case and for Swartz's death seems unfair, it is an academic and research institution after all, not a public defender.

woofie11 6y ago
A few corrections: 1) Saying Aaron had no affiliation to MIT does not reflect the reality of the situation. MIT, at the time, had an open door policy. There were a lot of people who hung out at MIT -- accepted, participating, contributing members of the MIT community (often actively participating in running MIT classes or doing MIT research), who just happened to not be in a formal role (student, faculty, etc.). MIT has clamped down on that since, but it's a lot of what made MIT awesome in its heyday. The reason the MIT community was so offended by the MIT administration is because it was an attack by the administration on a member of the community. 2) Saying MIT took a neutral role is also false. JSTOR took a neutral role. MIT actively pressed charges. 3) As unreasonable as Swartz' actions seem in 2020 mainstream culture, they were not out-of-line with MIT culture of the time. People were encouraged to actively pushed boundaries, and property was a bit more communal. As an undergrad, I might go into a lab I had no affiliation with, and use equipment to build something. I wouldn't do that if it was indicated that wasn't okay, but for the most part, there was an expectation that if the Institute had a classroom no one was using, you could use it to run a community activity. If there was a lab with equipment you needed, unless there was a sign posted to the contrary, then you should just made sure you left it better than when you found it (and if it was something like a bandsaw, had the safety training you needed). I was trained on equipment in a several labs I had no formal affiliation with, and regularly used them for personal projects. This was 100% okay and everyone knew about this. 4) I don't have any reason to believe Swartz hid a laptop in a closet. He left a laptop in a closet. There were some things he did -- like spoofing IPs -- which were less transparent. But there were plenty of times I'd left equipment connected to random places on the MIT network for long-running network operations, never nefariously. It's an unlocked closet with an ethernet drop. No one in the community would think twice about using it for e.g. a large download overnight. A lot of these things would not be done in 2020 MIT. Not a million years. The administration's handling of Swartz was part of this culture change, and a lot of MIT's soul died in the process. It has had a continuing chilling effect on the culture of the MIT community. What's really evil is that the MIT administration continues to uses Swartz as an example to intimidate community members into compliance with what it wants them to toe the line.
- peterwwillis 6y ago
  > an attack by the administration on a member of the community Prosecuting someone for breaking into your network and using it for illegal activities is attacking them? > What's really evil is Every time I see someone use the word evil in a debate, I just ignore everything else they say, because there's no rationalizing with emotions. "Evilness" is subjective, which is why we have laws. I tend to stick to the laws and not demonize people for doing things that were according to it, since if it were truly evil the people would at least demand the law be changed. If we all really cared enough about open access journals, there would be a world-wide boycott of science education until a national law was passed blocking all public funding to anything but open access. But that's not going to happen, and we all know why: it's not evil enough for us to drop everything and use collective action, but we still want to pose it as evil because we're really angry, and we're really angry because we don't know enough about how it all works to find a better solution.
  - woofie11 6y ago
    > Prosecuting someone for breaking into your network and using it for illegal activities is attacking them? It depends on where you draw the boundaries between "yours" and "ours." My family can walk into my closet. A stranger can't. From the perspective of most of the MIT community, Aaron didn't break into the MIT network. He had both legal and moral access to use it, and he did that like many other community members. People plug things into MIT network jacks all the time. I did that too. I never hid that I did that, and no one thought I was breaking, stealing, or doing anything else wrong. I saw others do likewise. It's how the place worked at the time. He did bypass protections on JSTOR's systems. If someone had grounds to press charges, it was JSTOR, not MIT. > Every time I see someone use the word evil in a debate, I just ignore everything else they say, because there's no rationalizing with emotions. "Evilness" is subjective, which is why we have laws. I tend to stick to the laws and not demonize people for doing things that were according to it, since if it were truly evil the people would at least demand the law be changed. That's a very culturally narrow point of view. It places you as being mostly likely of either of Western European descent or Japanese, but there are a few more cultures which define morality in terms of following the law. I think this is the point at which you check out from the conversation -- most monocultural people get very uncomfortable with foreign things, but: That worldview completely breaks down when Hitler makes it a crime to kill Jews, you have BLM protests in the US, or democracy protests in Honk Kong. It breaks down in more subtle ways across the board. And yes, people did push for change. Aaron's Law was almost passed, but ultimately, it was blocked by Oracle. Oracle is a pretty evil corporation too, although for the most part, it does a good job following the laws. That's your queue to check out, I guess. But the point is that the laws are at least as subjective and arbitrary as people's cultural biases about what constitutes good and bad. If you want more rational opinions of good versus evil, you can start with utilitarianism and other philosophies of morality.

by nawwal 6y ago

woofie11 6y ago

A few corrections: 1) Saying Aaron had no affiliation to MIT does not reflect the reality of the situation. MIT, at the time, had an open door policy. There were a lot of people who hung out at MIT -- accepted, participating, contributing members of the MIT community (often actively participating in running MIT classes or doing MIT research), who just happened to not be in a formal role (student, faculty, etc.). MIT has clamped down on that since, but it's a lot of what made MIT awesome in its heyday. The reason the MIT community was so offended by the MIT administration is because it was an attack by the administration on a member of the community. 2) Saying MIT took a neutral role is also false. JSTOR took a neutral role. MIT actively pressed charges. 3) As unreasonable as Swartz' actions seem in 2020 mainstream culture, they were not out-of-line with MIT culture of the time. People were encouraged to actively pushed boundaries, and property was a bit more communal. As an undergrad, I might go into a lab I had no affiliation with, and use equipment to build something. I wouldn't do that if it was indicated that wasn't okay, but for the most part, there was an expectation that if the Institute had a classroom no one was using, you could use it to run a community activity. If there was a lab with equipment you needed, unless there was a sign posted to the contrary, then you should just made sure you left it better than when you found it (and if it was something like a bandsaw, had the safety training you needed). I was trained on equipment in a several labs I had no formal affiliation with, and regularly used them for personal projects. This was 100% okay and everyone knew about this. 4) I don't have any reason to believe Swartz hid a laptop in a closet. He left a laptop in a closet. There were some things he did -- like spoofing IPs -- which were less transparent. But there were plenty of times I'd left equipment connected to random places on the MIT network for long-running network operations, never nefariously. It's an unlocked closet with an ethernet drop. No one in the community would think twice about using it for e.g. a large download overnight. A lot of these things would not be done in 2020 MIT. Not a million years. The administration's handling of Swartz was part of this culture change, and a lot of MIT's soul died in the process. It has had a continuing chilling effect on the culture of the MIT community. What's really evil is that the MIT administration continues to uses Swartz as an example to intimidate community members into compliance with what it wants them to toe the line.

peterwwillis 6y ago
> an attack by the administration on a member of the community Prosecuting someone for breaking into your network and using it for illegal activities is attacking them? > What's really evil is Every time I see someone use the word evil in a debate, I just ignore everything else they say, because there's no rationalizing with emotions. "Evilness" is subjective, which is why we have laws. I tend to stick to the laws and not demonize people for doing things that were according to it, since if it were truly evil the people would at least demand the law be changed. If we all really cared enough about open access journals, there would be a world-wide boycott of science education until a national law was passed blocking all public funding to anything but open access. But that's not going to happen, and we all know why: it's not evil enough for us to drop everything and use collective action, but we still want to pose it as evil because we're really angry, and we're really angry because we don't know enough about how it all works to find a better solution.
- woofie11 6y ago
  > Prosecuting someone for breaking into your network and using it for illegal activities is attacking them? It depends on where you draw the boundaries between "yours" and "ours." My family can walk into my closet. A stranger can't. From the perspective of most of the MIT community, Aaron didn't break into the MIT network. He had both legal and moral access to use it, and he did that like many other community members. People plug things into MIT network jacks all the time. I did that too. I never hid that I did that, and no one thought I was breaking, stealing, or doing anything else wrong. I saw others do likewise. It's how the place worked at the time. He did bypass protections on JSTOR's systems. If someone had grounds to press charges, it was JSTOR, not MIT. > Every time I see someone use the word evil in a debate, I just ignore everything else they say, because there's no rationalizing with emotions. "Evilness" is subjective, which is why we have laws. I tend to stick to the laws and not demonize people for doing things that were according to it, since if it were truly evil the people would at least demand the law be changed. That's a very culturally narrow point of view. It places you as being mostly likely of either of Western European descent or Japanese, but there are a few more cultures which define morality in terms of following the law. I think this is the point at which you check out from the conversation -- most monocultural people get very uncomfortable with foreign things, but: That worldview completely breaks down when Hitler makes it a crime to kill Jews, you have BLM protests in the US, or democracy protests in Honk Kong. It breaks down in more subtle ways across the board. And yes, people did push for change. Aaron's Law was almost passed, but ultimately, it was blocked by Oracle. Oracle is a pretty evil corporation too, although for the most part, it does a good job following the laws. That's your queue to check out, I guess. But the point is that the laws are at least as subjective and arbitrary as people's cultural biases about what constitutes good and bad. If you want more rational opinions of good versus evil, you can start with utilitarianism and other philosophies of morality.