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> Who cares at this point Anyone who has a shred of integrity. I'm not a fan of overreaching copyright laws, but they've been strictly enforced for years now.

> Who cares at this point Anyone who has a shred of integrity. I'm not a fan of overreaching copyright laws, but they've been strictly enforced for years now. Decades, even. They've ruined many lives, like how they killed Aaron Swartz. But now, suddenly, violating copyright is totally okay and carries no consequences whatsoever because the billionaires decided that's how they can get richer now? If you want to even try to pretend you don't live in a plutocracy and that the rule of law matters at all these developments should concern you.

shadowgovt 1y ago
Aaron Swartz died of suicide, not copyright. His death was a tragedy but it wasn't done to him.
- marcus_holmes 1y ago
  There's an English phrase "hounded to death", meaning that someone was pursued and hassled until they died. It doesn't specify the cause of death, but I think the assumption would be suicide, since you can't actually die of fatigue. I think that's what was done to Aaron Swartz.
  - shadowgovt 1y ago
    Many people have dealt with the law, with copyright infringement, even with gross amounts of it, and had the book thrown at them, and survived the experience. Swartz was ill. It is a tragedy he did not survive the experience, and indeed, trial is very stressful. But he was no more hounded than any defendant who comes under federal scrutiny and has to defend themselves in a court of law via the trial system. Kevin Mitnick spent a year in prison (first incarceration) and survived it. Swartz was offered six months and committed suicide. I don't know how much we should change of the system to protect the Aaron Swartzs of the world; that's the mother of all Chesterton's Fences.
    - shiroiuma 1y ago
      Maybe someone should throw you in prison for a year on some BS made-up charges to see how well you survive it. We can use it as a data point for your argument.
    - marcus_holmes 1y ago
      Many people get (for example) pneumonia and recover. Some people get pneumonia and die. The people who died of pneumonia died because of pneumonia. The fact that other people survived it doesn't mean that they didn't die of it. Saying that we should not work on cures for pneumonia because it's a Chesterton Fence is obviously, blatantly, illogical. Saying that we should change the system so that government officials working for moneyed interests can't hound someone to death is similarly illogical.
      - shadowgovt 1y ago
        Pneumonia doesn't have any societal benefit. The process by which we decide if the law was broken and punishment necessary has obvious benefit. If you mean we should seek a cure for dangerous suicidal depression, I agree. But you surely are not suggesting that, for example, has Swartz been accused of embezzlement that the state drop out finish the charges purely because he's a suicide risk; how would that be just to the people who were stolen from? And it's a point of semantics, but no; we generally don't say people who died by suicide died by the things going on in their life when they ended it. Everybody has stressors. The suicidal also have mental illness. Mr. Swartz had self-documented his past suicidal ideation.
        marcus_holmes 1y ago
        We evolved with pneumonia for some reason. It could easily be a Chesterton Fence. We don't treat this as one because we don't want people to die of it. I agree that a system of laws has benefit to society. However the system we've worked out for making such laws is clearly being warped and twisted to serve one small section of society at the expense of everyone else. A clear case being the comment that started this conversation - Swartz was hounded to death for doing the exact same thing that AI companies are doing and they're facing zero punishment. AI executives are not being dragged from their offices by burly policemen and thrown into cells, yet they have done the exact same thing that Swartz did to merit that behaviour. It's not unreasonable to question the societal benefit of this system. And we totally should say that people died of depression, or financial stress, or legal persecution, or whatever. Most people have suicidal ideation at some point in their lives, that's not unusual. Being hassled to the point where you go through with it is definitely violence. Classing this as "mental illness" and therefore a personality defect is a form of victim blaming.
- snickerdoodle12 1y ago
  Crimes generally don't kill the criminal. It's the reaction by authorities that kills (perceived) criminals.
  - shadowgovt 1y ago
    This is true. In general, the harm done by crime is directed outwards from the perpetrator, not inwards to the perpetrator. In fact, the behaviors that only cause self-harm that we criminalize are relatively few.
    - snickerdoodle12 1y ago
      So however you want to twist it, he was killed by the government.
      - shadowgovt 1y ago
        Sorry, I don't see how you arrive there from the fact-pattern. He wasn't a criminal because he never had a trial. He killed himself before he even had a hearing on whether the prosecution's evidence was admissible, much less his opportunity to either prove his innocence or argue the acts he undertook shouldn't by rights be a crime at all. What should the government (executive or judicial) have done differently to balance the needs of the accused vs. the needs of the enforcement and adjudication of the law here?
        snickerdoodle12 1y ago
        The government killed him by threatening insane punishment for something that is practically harmless, and relevant to the original point, is done without a second thought now by the bigcorps to feed their AIs
        shadowgovt 1y ago
        Prosecutors do that all the time. Basically nobody dies of it. I'd humbly propose there were unfortunate mitigating circumstances in Mr Swartz's situation that made it unusual. When a person with AIDS dies, did the AIDS kill them or the pneumonia a regular body would have fought off? When a person with deep mental illness commits suicide, did the circumstances of their life kill them or did they succumb to a deep mental illness? Perhaps we could craft a way to hold people with mental health issue to the same standards we are all held to while simultaneously being more sensitive to their needs. But in general, his story is an unfortunate tragedy of a sick person who took their own life under a stress that doesn't kill most other people, and we adjust the way we prosecute crime at our own peril. It is, as I said elsewhere, the mother of all Chesterton's Fences. Which is not to say it cannot or should not be improved! Only that it be done with great care. And to be completely clear: Swartz ripped content via back-dooring a secured network physically, in a closet, and (it is alleged) planned to dump that content in public. We'll never really know since he (or his illness) denied himself his day in court, and that's a tragedy; he may have successfully defended himself, or could have been a living example of persevering anyway like Mitnick instead of a martyr. Companies using their authorized accounts to scrape Google are likely at most guilty of a TOS violation and Google may choose to cut their accounts, but it's very hard to make a case that the Google API saying, over and over again, "Yes you may view that video" constitutes either unauthorized access or exceeding the bounds of access under 9-48.000. It's hard to comment on whether Swartz violated the CFAA. Since he wasn't tried, we'll never really know. He exited life before justice could happen one way or the other.
mouse_ 1y ago
> If you want to even try to pretend you don't live in a plutocracy and that the rule of law matters at all Can't even pretend anymore, this season jumped the shark
jagged-chisel 1y ago
> … like how they killed Aaron Swartz. I can’t imagine why you’d let the FBI off the hook

shadowgovt 1y ago

Aaron Swartz died of suicide, not copyright. His death was a tragedy but it wasn't done to him.

marcus_holmes 1y ago
There's an English phrase "hounded to death", meaning that someone was pursued and hassled until they died. It doesn't specify the cause of death, but I think the assumption would be suicide, since you can't actually die of fatigue. I think that's what was done to Aaron Swartz.
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  Many people have dealt with the law, with copyright infringement, even with gross amounts of it, and had the book thrown at them, and survived the experience. Swartz was ill. It is a tragedy he did not survive the experience, and indeed, trial is very stressful. But he was no more hounded than any defendant who comes under federal scrutiny and has to defend themselves in a court of law via the trial system. Kevin Mitnick spent a year in prison (first incarceration) and survived it. Swartz was offered six months and committed suicide. I don't know how much we should change of the system to protect the Aaron Swartzs of the world; that's the mother of all Chesterton's Fences.
  - shiroiuma 1y ago
    Maybe someone should throw you in prison for a year on some BS made-up charges to see how well you survive it. We can use it as a data point for your argument.
  - marcus_holmes 1y ago
    Many people get (for example) pneumonia and recover. Some people get pneumonia and die. The people who died of pneumonia died because of pneumonia. The fact that other people survived it doesn't mean that they didn't die of it. Saying that we should not work on cures for pneumonia because it's a Chesterton Fence is obviously, blatantly, illogical. Saying that we should change the system so that government officials working for moneyed interests can't hound someone to death is similarly illogical.
    - shadowgovt 1y ago
      Pneumonia doesn't have any societal benefit. The process by which we decide if the law was broken and punishment necessary has obvious benefit. If you mean we should seek a cure for dangerous suicidal depression, I agree. But you surely are not suggesting that, for example, has Swartz been accused of embezzlement that the state drop out finish the charges purely because he's a suicide risk; how would that be just to the people who were stolen from? And it's a point of semantics, but no; we generally don't say people who died by suicide died by the things going on in their life when they ended it. Everybody has stressors. The suicidal also have mental illness. Mr. Swartz had self-documented his past suicidal ideation.
      - marcus_holmes 1y ago
        We evolved with pneumonia for some reason. It could easily be a Chesterton Fence. We don't treat this as one because we don't want people to die of it. I agree that a system of laws has benefit to society. However the system we've worked out for making such laws is clearly being warped and twisted to serve one small section of society at the expense of everyone else. A clear case being the comment that started this conversation - Swartz was hounded to death for doing the exact same thing that AI companies are doing and they're facing zero punishment. AI executives are not being dragged from their offices by burly policemen and thrown into cells, yet they have done the exact same thing that Swartz did to merit that behaviour. It's not unreasonable to question the societal benefit of this system. And we totally should say that people died of depression, or financial stress, or legal persecution, or whatever. Most people have suicidal ideation at some point in their lives, that's not unusual. Being hassled to the point where you go through with it is definitely violence. Classing this as "mental illness" and therefore a personality defect is a form of victim blaming.
snickerdoodle12 1y ago
Crimes generally don't kill the criminal. It's the reaction by authorities that kills (perceived) criminals.
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  This is true. In general, the harm done by crime is directed outwards from the perpetrator, not inwards to the perpetrator. In fact, the behaviors that only cause self-harm that we criminalize are relatively few.
  - snickerdoodle12 1y ago
    So however you want to twist it, he was killed by the government.
    - shadowgovt 1y ago
      Sorry, I don't see how you arrive there from the fact-pattern. He wasn't a criminal because he never had a trial. He killed himself before he even had a hearing on whether the prosecution's evidence was admissible, much less his opportunity to either prove his innocence or argue the acts he undertook shouldn't by rights be a crime at all. What should the government (executive or judicial) have done differently to balance the needs of the accused vs. the needs of the enforcement and adjudication of the law here?
      - snickerdoodle12 1y ago
        The government killed him by threatening insane punishment for something that is practically harmless, and relevant to the original point, is done without a second thought now by the bigcorps to feed their AIs
        shadowgovt 1y ago
        Prosecutors do that all the time. Basically nobody dies of it. I'd humbly propose there were unfortunate mitigating circumstances in Mr Swartz's situation that made it unusual. When a person with AIDS dies, did the AIDS kill them or the pneumonia a regular body would have fought off? When a person with deep mental illness commits suicide, did the circumstances of their life kill them or did they succumb to a deep mental illness? Perhaps we could craft a way to hold people with mental health issue to the same standards we are all held to while simultaneously being more sensitive to their needs. But in general, his story is an unfortunate tragedy of a sick person who took their own life under a stress that doesn't kill most other people, and we adjust the way we prosecute crime at our own peril. It is, as I said elsewhere, the mother of all Chesterton's Fences. Which is not to say it cannot or should not be improved! Only that it be done with great care. And to be completely clear: Swartz ripped content via back-dooring a secured network physically, in a closet, and (it is alleged) planned to dump that content in public. We'll never really know since he (or his illness) denied himself his day in court, and that's a tragedy; he may have successfully defended himself, or could have been a living example of persevering anyway like Mitnick instead of a martyr. Companies using their authorized accounts to scrape Google are likely at most guilty of a TOS violation and Google may choose to cut their accounts, but it's very hard to make a case that the Google API saying, over and over again, "Yes you may view that video" constitutes either unauthorized access or exceeding the bounds of access under 9-48.000. It's hard to comment on whether Swartz violated the CFAA. Since he wasn't tried, we'll never really know. He exited life before justice could happen one way or the other.

mouse_ 1y ago

> If you want to even try to pretend you don't live in a plutocracy and that the rule of law matters at all Can't even pretend anymore, this season jumped the shark

jagged-chisel 1y ago

> … like how they killed Aaron Swartz. I can’t imagine why you’d let the FBI off the hook