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I've never understood the obsession with Aaron Swartz. He clearly violated the IP of many hundreds of people (could be thousands) by releasing content he didn'

I've never understood the obsession with Aaron Swartz. He clearly violated the IP of many hundreds of people (could be thousands) by releasing content he didn't own. He also trespassed on university property to do it. From the stories I heard, he was a complete asshole to people that didn't agree with him and was even fired from Reddit at one point. This is authoritarian behavior: I'm going to do what I want regardless of the law and what you believe because it's what I want. I have found that many of the hackers from the 90s and early 2000s that I read about in 2600 were like this. They masqueraded as freedom fighters, but in reality were just authoritarians without power. When their side is in power, they have no problem trampling on the freedoms and rights of the people they dislike. It kind of makes sense to me as an adult. Hackers are authoritarians without power. You don't do what they want, so they are going to destroy your website/livelihood/life. Petty kings without a kingdom. This morphed into the cancel culture we see today and groups like Antifa. His suicide was tragic, but we don't need more people with this attitude running a lemonade stand, let alone a tech company or anything important.

raincole 3y ago
> It kind of makes sense to me as an adult. Hackers are authoritarians without power. You don't do what they want, so they are going to destroy your website/livelihood/life. Petty kings without a kingdom. This morphed into the cancel culture we see today and groups like Antifa. Yeah of course hackers from 90s and cancel culture people on Twitter are the same kind of people. LMAO.
sillysaurusx 3y ago
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Aaron was the furthest thing from an authoritarian. Just because freedom fighters break the law does not equate them to authoritarians, and the rest of this is similarly mistaken. That you have no compassion for someone who committed suicide due to copying bits shows a lack of humanity that I hope no one emulates.
prepend 3y ago
> He clearly violated the IP of many hundreds of people Or one journal. Authors didn’t get copyrights as the journal kept them. This was the point though is that the copyright there was/is immoral and that the papers should be freely available. And of course he didn’t trespass as he was a guest of a student. And I think the argument is that he didn’t even violate the journal’s copyright as the journal allowed download from the university network.

raincole 3y ago

> It kind of makes sense to me as an adult. Hackers are authoritarians without power. You don't do what they want, so they are going to destroy your website/livelihood/life. Petty kings without a kingdom. This morphed into the cancel culture we see today and groups like Antifa. Yeah of course hackers from 90s and cancel culture people on Twitter are the same kind of people. LMAO.

sillysaurusx 3y ago

You have no idea what you’re talking about. Aaron was the furthest thing from an authoritarian. Just because freedom fighters break the law does not equate them to authoritarians, and the rest of this is similarly mistaken. That you have no compassion for someone who committed suicide due to copying bits shows a lack of humanity that I hope no one emulates.

prepend 3y ago

> He clearly violated the IP of many hundreds of people Or one journal. Authors didn’t get copyrights as the journal kept them. This was the point though is that the copyright there was/is immoral and that the papers should be freely available. And of course he didn’t trespass as he was a guest of a student. And I think the argument is that he didn’t even violate the journal’s copyright as the journal allowed download from the university network.