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Aaron Swartz Legal Defense Fund
- markbao 14y agoIs it just me, or does that payment box look kind of dodgy? I think there's a reason that so many people use PayPal and services like it—people trust a familiar face. But this one doesn't really have any padlocks or any details like address or zip code or anything, and just looks out of character for a checkout page. As a person that knows about Aaron, I know it can be trusted, but it might not be the same for others. Just a reaction that the folks supporting Aaron might want to be aware of.
- mrkmcknz 14y agoI get what you're saying. One company who got around this hurdle was App.net(piggybacking on the Stripe/Visa/Mastercard brand). I'm assuming this is another implementation of Stripe.
- oneplusone 14y agoIt is the official Stripe payment tag. https://stripe.com/docs/payment_tag https://stripe.com/docs/payment_tag
- protomyth 14y agoIt would be really nice if there was somewhere on that payment tag to click to verify it at stripe.com.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 14y agoIs Aaron incarcerated?
- sciurus 14y agoI don't believe so; the "free" in the URL seems a bit cheeky. The trial is scheduled for February 4, 2013.
- thejerz 14y agoWhat are we defending Aaron Swartz against? (Sorry for being a boob)
- sciurus 14y agohttp://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/21/aaron-swartz-indicted-hacking-charges http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/21/aaron-swart...
- gnu8 14y agoI'm not willing to donate. Aaron's goal may have been noble, but his actions are indefensible.
- mibbitier 14y agoI agree. He was extremely foolish and arrogant at best. I don't think this belongs on HN. Also didn't he make a ton of money selling Reddit?! :/
- TheCowboy 14y agoCould either one of you please explain how "his actions were indefensible" or how "he was extremely foolish and arrogant at beast"? Appreciated.
- mibbitier 14y agoCome on. If you download millions of files that obviously aren't supposed to be downloaded en masse, and then release them publicly, you're going to get in trouble. Common sense. He knew what he was doing, and hew knew what he was doing was wrong. Doesn't seem terribly smart to make enemies high up.
- pmjordan 14y agoMy understanding is that the civil/copyright matter has been settled, and he's now still facing criminal prosecution for (mis)using MIT's network infrastructure. So it's not actually the downloading itself he's in trouble for at the moment I think, just how he did it. That is, unless there's been some new development, of course.
- tptacek 14y agoHe's facing criminal prosecution for abusing JSTOR and MIT's computers. More of the charges go to JSTOR systems than to MIT systems. This is right in the indictment, which is linked from the last 'aaronsw post on HN.
- citricsquid 14y agoThey really should include some sort of background or link on this page. For anyone else that has little idea who he is or why he needs money: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#JSTOR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#JSTOR More complete background: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/reddit-founder-arrested-for-excessive-jstor-downloads/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/reddit-founder-ar...
- bcl 14y agoIf you want people to donate to your cause you need to do a couple things: 1. Include some background on why I should care. 2. Provide some level of assurance that this page is actually linked to the issue at hand and isn't just a phishing scheme.
- _delirium 14y ago#2 seems reasonably certain, since aaronsw.com has been Aaron Swartz's domain for a while now. As for background: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4528083 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4528083
- hollerith 14y agoI can attest that aaronsw.com has been under the control of the Aaron Swartz for years and years. (I know because I just grepped my bookmarks file.)
- edw519 14y agoNow let me see if I got this right: 1. Brilliant programmer gets chance of a lifetime. 2. Turns that into lots of money early in life. 3. Decides to change the world in his own way. 4. Consciously & purposefully breaks the law. 5. Has a webpage to get others to pay his legal bills. I've never met Aaron but I've always enjoyed his writing and looked forward to meeting him one day. But there is something seriously wrong about this. Aaron should man up, take responsibility for his actions, and pay his own bills. And if this is his idea of changing the world, perhaps he should reconsider his choices and find a better way of paying it forward to other brilliant programmers who never got the breaks he did.
- st3fan 14y agoMaybe he can't. Maybe he is broke already. Maybe his fortune from previous enterprised wasn't that much. Who knows .. there must be a good reason. I'll support him.
- oinksoft 14y agoDidn't he write a blog post about having "fuck you money" a few years ago? I can't find it now.
- tptacek 14y agoYou may have him confused with Eric Raymond.
- oinksoft 14y agoI must be crazy then. I would've sworn that aaronsw wrote a blog post where he talked about having "fuck you money", depression, and other things like that.
- drusenko 14y agohere's one: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/theaftermath http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/theaftermath i remember another one too, something about depression and it didn't matter who paid for dinner anymore, but i can't find that one.
- brackishlake 14y agoI broke the law. Please pay my bills. No thanks.
- mikeklaas 14y agoWhat? No kickstarter?
- lhnz 14y agoWhy are they prosecuting a man for publicly making available beneficial scientific knowledge that the public have effectively paid for? Is personal gain of a few companies really more important than education, and should it really be enshrined in law?
- adrianwaj 14y agoHe would've got more donations had he put the papers he downloaded online sooner, rather than get busted with 4 million. A journalleaks site would be much more useful than wikileaks.
- nostromo 14y agoI wish someone would make a KickStarter for legal stuff. I've seen enough of these that it could be a real business. (Ex: help pay for a defense against some government intrusion, or RIAA overreaching, or to bring a case to challenge an unconstitutional statute, or to overturn a dumb pantent, or whatever). It could even evolve into a platform for the political moneybomb we've seen before. (A bounty for the first person to introduce some bill, for example: patent reform.)
- sillysaurus 14y agoActually, a Kickstarter for legal defense is a good idea.
- shill 14y agoIt is a good idea. Unfortunately, the Obama administration is STILL fighting for indefinite detention powers[1] even after Judge Forrest's NDAA ruling[2]. The owner and users of a legal defense kickstarter could be at risk of indefinite imprisonment without trial if a cause was somehow linked to 'terrorism'. 1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/14/ndaa-case-indefinite-dentention_n_1885204.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/14/ndaa-case-indefinit... 2. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h_ZWg1DMubxpzgZlf58WFOZN415A?docId=560c3298937e445ca6cb325e18c3ab8b http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h_ZWg1DMub...
- tptacek 14y agoYou have to be pretty dumb to believe that the owners and users of a legal defense Kickstarter could face indefinite detention. The myriad of utterly retarded message board arguments you could hide behind to make this claim are so obviously numerous and complicated that I'm not touching this thread with a ten foot pole. Just chiming in to say, "no".
- kunle 14y agoPretty sure crowdtilt (www.crowdtilt.com) allows you to do this already. (Full disclosure - I'm friends with the founders)
- 5xz41s0P8T5N 14y agoYou forgot to accept Bitcoin.
- kylebrown 14y agoThe guy that uploaded the JSTOR papers last year after Swartz was indicted, Greg Maxwell, accepted bitcoin donations. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110721/11122615195/aaron-swartz-indictment-leading-people-to-upload-jstor-research-to-file-sharing-sites.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110721/11122615195/aaron-...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- david_shaw 14y agoI don't necessarily disagree with the motives behind Aaron's actions, but if you're going to break the law in what may be perceived as "civil disobedience," you need to be willing to "do the time," too.[1] I'm neither encouraging nor discouraging people from donating, but I do think that it's a little off-putting that Aaron's taking what could have been a selfless, martyrdom-filled act of civil disobedience and then changing it into "silly mistake," from which he's asking for help recovering. [1]: 'Doing the time' as a turn of speech. I doubt Aaron would get actual jail time for this. Then again, I am not a lawyer.
- shmulkey18 14y agoThis was not civil disobedience, which involves publicly breaking a law in order to demonstrate that it is unjust. Swartz, lacking the courage of his convictions, tried to commit a crime in secret. Now he wants us to help him pay the piper! Despicable.
- ohreilly 14y agoWhen you impact JSTOR and the entire MIT network the way he did, it's hardly "in secret". Something like a stream of one million continuous JSTOR downloads 24/7, significantly impacting the entire MIT network, is going to go unnoticed? His JSTOR use was heavy enough to draw an IP ban. Yet he continued. I fail to believe he was really trying to hide - he knew his actions would be noticed. Network admins would see what was going on. And even in the wiring closet, putting a bike helmet over his face? That's not exactly covert. JSTOR would know something was up - the IP ban was probably automatic but still I would guess the folks administering their servers would have noticed a huge spike in activity from MIT. MIT would know something was up. Their network admins are not asleep at the wheel. Seems to me, it was no secret what he was doing. He did not try very hard to conceal it. (Or maybe you think he was supposed to hold a press conference or at least call the TV news first?) With the way he went about this, it's no wonder he got caught. Moreover, he already knew he had an FBI file from the PACER incident. So it's not like he couldn't imagine the FBI getting involved. Then again, I could be wrong. Maybe he really is that stupid.
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- adastra 14y agoIf people want to help Aaron, I'd recommend a political strategy as well as a legal one. I'm not a lawyer and certainly no expert on this case, but my sense is that there is something political going on or one of the prosecutors sees this as a big career boost. For someone without a criminal background like Aaron it would seem very much out of the norm to continue escalating the charges as they've done, rather than move toward a plea bargain. These prosecutors work for the Obama Administration, and ultimately the President. The President has certainly courted the tech/internet vote, and I think some internet activism in this case is worth a shot. But it would need to be done basically right now (i.e. before the election). Are the prosecutors going to drop the charges? No. But some political pressure could improve whatever the terms of a plea deal are. Disclosure: Aaron and I briefly worked at the same non-profit organization many years ago. But we were essentially in different departments, so while we met once or twice I wouldn't say I know him personally.
- tptacek 14y agoGood plan. Because surely a Republican-controlled DoJ would be much more lenient about the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act.
- adastra 14y agoI can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not. My underlying assumption is that Obama is more than likely going to win re-election. FiveThirtyEight has him at 75% likelihood to win, and intrade bettors have him at 66%. But even if he wins, he'll have much less reason to pay attention to the views of the reddit demographic after the election than he will before. So Aaron's supporters should start working this right away. Same goes with Congress by the way, if a member of Congress could be enlisted to help (what's the Congressional districts for Aaron's hometown and current residence?)
- tptacek 14y agoEven in Nate Silver's analysis, Obama is at his apex coming out of the convention. There are 6 weeks to go, the election turns on 3-4 states, and Romney has tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to spend. But the Internet told you that Obama's going to win, so as far as you're concerned, the election is over, and it's time to start playing games with it to make stupid points.
- jhrobert 14y agoThey could not get Assange, hence...
- godisdad 14y agoSee also http://thecostofknowledge.com/ http://thecostofknowledge.com/ I feel the state of academic publishing is essentially, a hustle. People being divorsed from community feedback and their own rights as authors is farcical.
- additive 14y agoFrom the indictment: JSTOR is a not-for-profit (=no tax liability?). JSTOR charges universities annual subscription fees as high as $50,000. Are we told anywhere what JSTOR's actual costs are for scanning documents and serving PDF's? Yes. Someone provided a link to details of JSTOR's budget in the other Swartz thread. Very interesting. They appear to be some very well paid "librarians" (archivists). And lo and behold, they are trying to figure out how to make Google bucks. Seed the Google index with links to JSTOR articles that sit behind a paywall, then charge $10 or more for a la carte access. (Can you feel the desperation?) Sounds great, they can piggyback on Google, maybe run some SEO, do some behavioural tracking and all that. But there's just one problem: this is library material. Library as in the kind that is funded by grants, taxes, tuition or endowments. Non-commercial. And even more, does Google Scholar show ads? Do they charge anyone for access? I'd put my money on projects like archive.org or publicresource.org, who charge nothing, before I'd bet on these guys. Sadly, this criminal case may really be all for nothing. Because businesses like JSTOR will likely fail, not because of kids like Swartz, but because they simply are not as smart about technology as the folks who run sites like archive and publicresource.
- leed25d 14y agoI think that he's an arrogant little bastard and a few years in the slammer is just what he needs to teach him about the consequences of hubris.