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The part that still bothers me so much about the US vs Swartz case is that JSTOR didn't pursue civil litigation against Aaron. It was the US government that pur

The part that still bothers me so much about the US vs Swartz case is that JSTOR didn't pursue civil litigation against Aaron. It was the US government that pursued him. There was little for the government to lose in the case. In a case vs Meta, at the scale it has reached, it could have wide ranging economic implications limiting the investment in AI, which the US is absolutely not willing to pursue at this point in time (or possibly ever). Basically, being a rich public company provides legal advantages when the US government has similar goals. The whole thing is incredibly sad and exposes the hypocrisy of the US court system and government as a whole. RIP Aaron.

jampekka 1mo ago
JSTOR dropped civil litigation only after getting about $25k in the settlement from him.
PearlRiver 1mo ago
Is that not how it always goes? Robbing a bank got you in jail a lot longer than assaulting a woman.
bigfatkitten 1mo ago
And even then, it wasn’t really about justice but more for the prosecutor, Carmen Ortiz’s career advancement. The case ultimately did not help her in her run for governor of MA.
- DoctorOetker 1mo ago
  the blood of a prodigy as status symbol make-up
- IncreasePosts 1mo ago
  How does prosecuting someone who downloaded articles in a broom closet help her career advancement?
  - bitwize 1mo ago
    Easy notch on her belt.
    - IncreasePosts 1mo ago
      Aarons lawyers expected an acquittal which is why he rejected the plea deal of 6 months
  - lukan 1mo ago
    I suppose in pleasing the right people with money and power.
  - john_strinlai 1mo ago
    prosecutors with higher conviction rates are typically viewed more favorably than prosecutors with lower conviction rates.
    - IncreasePosts 1mo ago
      She could have just never even brought the prosecution in the first place.
      - john_strinlai 1mo ago
        im not saying she did the right thing, im just answering the question of "how does prosecuting someone help her career advancement".
        IncreasePosts 1mo ago
        The point is the prosecution's case was ultra weak. He rejected a 6 month plea deal because they were confident they would win in court. That's not the kind of case you bring to get ahead in your career
  - cucumber3732842 1mo ago
    "look at me, I'm serving the interests of the incumbent education and medical industries by prosecuting the shit out of someone who dared give them the bird, now donate to my campaign".
arionhardison 1mo ago
Maybe the real issue is selective outrage about legal injustice. I totally agree that this was wrong and he should not have been prosecuted but a large part of the effort that dealt this injustice to him was facilitated by the fact that the vast majority of people willfully turn a blind eye when the same thing or worse happens to people are not of their ilk. If we were to finally stand up and say that justice for all means justice for ALL; we might be able to prevent the next Aaron Swartz. Edit: As someone that has done both state and fed time, the thing that makes me the saddest here is that the charges would have been drastically reduced if not dismissed and his appeals would have had a high probability of success. They use this "scare tatic" so much and I understand why it works; the possibility of facing those years is terrifying. I don't mean that in any demeaning manner, 25/26 and never having done time I cannot imagine how terrified he must have been. Edit: I would also like to bring attention to the fact that M. Zuckerberg aggressively pursues these types of cases against people for doing far less than he has done.
- spwa4 1mo ago
  It absolutely is. Youth services is one such thing that people just refuse to get upset about. Not when they attack kids for flimsy reasons. And, conversely, people also utterly refuse to react when kids eventually figure out that their way out is to attack people, other kids, social workers and anyone else in institutions, which is one factor that makes youth services facilities such horrible places to be.
- ignoramous 1mo ago
  > large part of the effort that dealt this injustice to him was facilitated by the fact that the vast majority of people willfully turn a blind eye when the same thing or worse happens to people are not of their ilk Reminds me of Marx's 1870 letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt: Every industrial & commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps ... The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life ... regards himself as a member of the ruling nation & consequently becomes a tool of the English [ruling class] against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination [over his own self]. He cherishes religious, social, & national prejudices against the Irish worker ... The Irishman ... sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland. This antagonism is artificially kept alive & intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. ... The antagonism between Englishmen & Irishmen ... enables the governments of [the US & England], whenever they think fit, to break the edge off the social conflict by their mutual bullying, and, in case of need, by war between the two countries. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_...
inquirerGeneral 1mo ago
I feel like you just made the opposite case you actually made
andy_ppp 1mo ago
Yes, you know why - it had nothing to do with copyright infringement - he was going to win the fight to get money out of politics.
stackedinserter 1mo ago
It was Carmen Ortiz, not abstract "US Government".
stackghost 1mo ago
>Basically, being a rich public company provides legal advantages when the US government has similar goals. This has always been the case. It's why lots of us who came up in the 80s and 90s embraced the "fuck corporations" and "information wants to be free" zeitgeist of the times. It's also why the corporate bootlicking on this site is so grating at times. IDK, maybe I'm the only one but it seems like the veneer has worn off and over the last couple years I've realized HN is "special", not because of the reasons its proponents will recite but because it's where you come to post about the interesting technical challenges you solved while designing a system that goes down to the corner store and buys Hitler a pack of his favorite smokes and everyone laps that up.
noncoml 1mo ago
I think the root problem is Corporations being Legal Persons. An alternative would be the CEO to be the “legal person” of each Corp. and be the one against all legal actions should be targeted. In that case it would Zack himself the one facing any legal action. A Corp’s actions result to the death of a person. CEO should be trialed as if they were the one driving the car.
- calvinmorrison 1mo ago
  The issue is limited liability. I don't think companies should shield stockholder, shareholders, or owners from any liability
  - tpmoney 1mo ago
    While this sounds good in theory, I suspect the actual result would be much worse for justice in most cases. With the corporation acting as its own legal entity, if you are wronged, you sue and obtain justice from the corporation. If instead you needed to sue each and every shareholder to obtain their share of the liabilities, you'd likely spend many more years in court as each individual owner argues why they aren't personally liable for the given act because they didn't have knowledge, or control over the specific chain of events that caused you harm, and the courts have to sort out each individual case.
    - necovek 1mo ago
      I think you missed the point: you can still take damages from the corporation, but if corporation cannot provide them (bankrupcy), owners are held liable for them instead. This is how non-LLC companies are treated. The instrument of Limited Liability exists to encourage business formation and risk taking for small businesses to kick off. The way large corporations and rich individuals would structure their projects into a number of corporation-owned LLCs is an obvious gap being addressed in law systems throughout the world.
      - cpburns2009 1mo ago
devnonymous 1mo ago
Who was it ? The ^US government^ .. or for that matter, any government or corporation doesn't pursue litigation. It is humans who make this decision (at least for now ...). Who in the government bureaucracy made the decision and followed through? It's sad that we've become accustomed to accept governments/corporations as entities by themselves when they clearly aren't.
throwaway563262 1mo ago
[flagged]
RachelF 1mo ago
Remember it was MIT that dobbed him in. MIT then helped the criminal prosecution even after JSTOR settled with him. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/mit-aarons-swartz-case-not-neutral-not-leading-not-standing-technologists https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/mit-aarons-swartz-case...
- FireBeyond 1mo ago
  I mean he was arrested initially not for the material downloaded but the fact that he, not an MIT student, was found hiding in a facilities closet with his laptop hooked into the network. I get that MIT's police were meant to join him in a chorus of "Information wants to be free", but let's not act like it's unreasonable to want someone arrested or prosecuted who was not authorized to be in an equipment closet with their computer wired into a switch.
- jacquesm 1mo ago
  And whitewashed their own involvement. https://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pdf https://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.p...
DivingForGold 1mo ago
In many cases it's "all about the money" (and the lawyers). Take the case of Billionaire hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors who was famously pursued by federal prosecutors as their ultimate "white whale" in a massive insider trading probe. Though his firm pleaded guilty and paid a record $1.8 billion fine, Cohen himself was never criminally charged or convicted. Yet two lower underlings were convicted and served time (the 2 fall guys). An "Army of lawyers", no less than 6 top lawyers appeared in the courtroom that day representing Cohen (he did not appear), as a "shot across the bow" message to the US Government that Cohen was prepared to spend a vast sum of his wealth to defend himself and make it a huge undertaking for the government if they wished to proceed. Lawyers present for Cohen: Peter Nussbaum: SAC Capital's General Counsel, who entered the plea. Theodore "Ted" Wells Jr.: Renowned partner from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Martin Klotz: Partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Cohen's personal attorney. Michael Schachter, Daniel Kramer, and Michael Gertzman: Senior litigation partners assisting the defense. Because the defense consisted of prominent partners from multiple top-tier firms simultaneously, analysts famously calculated that the collective group was costing SAC Capital roughly $10,000 an hour (mere pocket change for a successful hedge fund guy).
- drivebyhooting 1mo ago
  That’s infuriating.
  - arionhardison 1mo ago
    Yes, it's also solvable; the crux of the issue is that these people have made it problematic to even discuss any solutions that do not serve their personal, financial and nationalist interest. All and any fact should be up for discussion. For example, the black community; my community has a serious problem with violence that has caused increased police presence as it spilled out and impacted other communities. We can discuss the why but the fact exist and its up for discussion. All discussion of the conditions which allow situations like this to occur are shut down and labeled an ism, ist etc...
    - 1mo ago
Varelion 1mo ago
Luigi Mangione
frogperson 1mo ago
the government is made up of the people. the people are mostly greedy because our culture worships wealth. broken people, broken culture, broken government.
singingfish 1mo ago
Meta's bots are spectatularly awful, and if your organisation needs to use facebook advertising, they're also unblockable. There are ways around it that doesn't exactly block them but does clearly communicate they should GTFO, but it just shows you what an awful company Meta is.
talon8635 1mo ago
I believe JSTOR did, and then backed off after public outcry. JSTOR is not an admirable operation, for this and many other reasons.
orochimaaru 1mo ago
He was done in by a career prosecutor who just wanted to use him as a stepping stone in their path. They had little or no humanity.
teekert 1mo ago
This is the (John Perkin's coined term) "Corporatocracy" at work. If you want to know how and why it is like this, read Perkin's books (atm I'm reading "The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"). It's why Meta will not get sued but Aaron was, and it is why ships are now lining up in front of the Panama canal paying as much as 400k for a crossing with little of that wealth making it to the people of Panama.
MrSkelter 1mo ago
This is an argument against capitalism. Under capitalism money and power are inextricably linked. Your influence in a democracy is tied directly to your access to capital. This is why expensive elections are are desire of those funding Super-pacs. The more elections cost, the fewer people decide them. Aaron didn’t matter because he was poor. Had he been named Musk, or Zuckerberg, he would suffer the consequences they do when they break the law which is zero. This is how capitalism is supposed to work and does. You can’t have capitalism is being rich doesn’t confer privilege in every area including the legal system. It’s why American oligarch can safely “ask forgiveness not permission”. The risk to them personally is nil.
jsbisviewtiful 1mo ago
> The whole thing is incredibly sad and exposes the hypocrisy of the US court system and government as a whole. It does, but it's not like that's new information to minority communities.

jampekka 1mo ago

JSTOR dropped civil litigation only after getting about $25k in the settlement from him.

PearlRiver 1mo ago

Is that not how it always goes? Robbing a bank got you in jail a lot longer than assaulting a woman.

bigfatkitten 1mo ago

And even then, it wasn’t really about justice but more for the prosecutor, Carmen Ortiz’s career advancement. The case ultimately did not help her in her run for governor of MA.

DoctorOetker 1mo ago
the blood of a prodigy as status symbol make-up
IncreasePosts 1mo ago
How does prosecuting someone who downloaded articles in a broom closet help her career advancement?
- bitwize 1mo ago
  Easy notch on her belt.
  - IncreasePosts 1mo ago
    Aarons lawyers expected an acquittal which is why he rejected the plea deal of 6 months
- lukan 1mo ago
  I suppose in pleasing the right people with money and power.
- john_strinlai 1mo ago
  prosecutors with higher conviction rates are typically viewed more favorably than prosecutors with lower conviction rates.
  - IncreasePosts 1mo ago
    She could have just never even brought the prosecution in the first place.
    - john_strinlai 1mo ago
      im not saying she did the right thing, im just answering the question of "how does prosecuting someone help her career advancement".
      - IncreasePosts 1mo ago
        The point is the prosecution's case was ultra weak. He rejected a 6 month plea deal because they were confident they would win in court. That's not the kind of case you bring to get ahead in your career
- cucumber3732842 1mo ago
  "look at me, I'm serving the interests of the incumbent education and medical industries by prosecuting the shit out of someone who dared give them the bird, now donate to my campaign".

arionhardison 1mo ago

Maybe the real issue is selective outrage about legal injustice. I totally agree that this was wrong and he should not have been prosecuted but a large part of the effort that dealt this injustice to him was facilitated by the fact that the vast majority of people willfully turn a blind eye when the same thing or worse happens to people are not of their ilk. If we were to finally stand up and say that justice for all means justice for ALL; we might be able to prevent the next Aaron Swartz. Edit: As someone that has done both state and fed time, the thing that makes me the saddest here is that the charges would have been drastically reduced if not dismissed and his appeals would have had a high probability of success. They use this "scare tatic" so much and I understand why it works; the possibility of facing those years is terrifying. I don't mean that in any demeaning manner, 25/26 and never having done time I cannot imagine how terrified he must have been. Edit: I would also like to bring attention to the fact that M. Zuckerberg aggressively pursues these types of cases against people for doing far less than he has done.

spwa4 1mo ago
It absolutely is. Youth services is one such thing that people just refuse to get upset about. Not when they attack kids for flimsy reasons. And, conversely, people also utterly refuse to react when kids eventually figure out that their way out is to attack people, other kids, social workers and anyone else in institutions, which is one factor that makes youth services facilities such horrible places to be.
ignoramous 1mo ago
> large part of the effort that dealt this injustice to him was facilitated by the fact that the vast majority of people willfully turn a blind eye when the same thing or worse happens to people are not of their ilk Reminds me of Marx's 1870 letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt: Every industrial & commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps ... The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life ... regards himself as a member of the ruling nation & consequently becomes a tool of the English [ruling class] against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination [over his own self]. He cherishes religious, social, & national prejudices against the Irish worker ... The Irishman ... sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland. This antagonism is artificially kept alive & intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. ... The antagonism between Englishmen & Irishmen ... enables the governments of [the US & England], whenever they think fit, to break the edge off the social conflict by their mutual bullying, and, in case of need, by war between the two countries. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_...

inquirerGeneral 1mo ago

I feel like you just made the opposite case you actually made

andy_ppp 1mo ago

Yes, you know why - it had nothing to do with copyright infringement - he was going to win the fight to get money out of politics.

stackedinserter 1mo ago

It was Carmen Ortiz, not abstract "US Government".

stackghost 1mo ago

>Basically, being a rich public company provides legal advantages when the US government has similar goals. This has always been the case. It's why lots of us who came up in the 80s and 90s embraced the "fuck corporations" and "information wants to be free" zeitgeist of the times. It's also why the corporate bootlicking on this site is so grating at times. IDK, maybe I'm the only one but it seems like the veneer has worn off and over the last couple years I've realized HN is "special", not because of the reasons its proponents will recite but because it's where you come to post about the interesting technical challenges you solved while designing a system that goes down to the corner store and buys Hitler a pack of his favorite smokes and everyone laps that up.

noncoml 1mo ago

I think the root problem is Corporations being Legal Persons. An alternative would be the CEO to be the “legal person” of each Corp. and be the one against all legal actions should be targeted. In that case it would Zack himself the one facing any legal action. A Corp’s actions result to the death of a person. CEO should be trialed as if they were the one driving the car.

calvinmorrison 1mo ago
The issue is limited liability. I don't think companies should shield stockholder, shareholders, or owners from any liability
- tpmoney 1mo ago
  While this sounds good in theory, I suspect the actual result would be much worse for justice in most cases. With the corporation acting as its own legal entity, if you are wronged, you sue and obtain justice from the corporation. If instead you needed to sue each and every shareholder to obtain their share of the liabilities, you'd likely spend many more years in court as each individual owner argues why they aren't personally liable for the given act because they didn't have knowledge, or control over the specific chain of events that caused you harm, and the courts have to sort out each individual case.
  - necovek 1mo ago
    I think you missed the point: you can still take damages from the corporation, but if corporation cannot provide them (bankrupcy), owners are held liable for them instead. This is how non-LLC companies are treated. The instrument of Limited Liability exists to encourage business formation and risk taking for small businesses to kick off. The way large corporations and rich individuals would structure their projects into a number of corporation-owned LLCs is an obvious gap being addressed in law systems throughout the world.
    - cpburns2009 1mo ago

devnonymous 1mo ago

Who was it ? The ^US government^ .. or for that matter, any government or corporation doesn't pursue litigation. It is humans who make this decision (at least for now ...). Who in the government bureaucracy made the decision and followed through? It's sad that we've become accustomed to accept governments/corporations as entities by themselves when they clearly aren't.

throwaway563262 1mo ago

[flagged]

RachelF 1mo ago

Remember it was MIT that dobbed him in. MIT then helped the criminal prosecution even after JSTOR settled with him. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/mit-aarons-swartz-case-not-neutral-not-leading-not-standing-technologists https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/mit-aarons-swartz-case...

FireBeyond 1mo ago
I mean he was arrested initially not for the material downloaded but the fact that he, not an MIT student, was found hiding in a facilities closet with his laptop hooked into the network. I get that MIT's police were meant to join him in a chorus of "Information wants to be free", but let's not act like it's unreasonable to want someone arrested or prosecuted who was not authorized to be in an equipment closet with their computer wired into a switch.
jacquesm 1mo ago
And whitewashed their own involvement. https://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pdf https://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.p...

DivingForGold 1mo ago

In many cases it's "all about the money" (and the lawyers). Take the case of Billionaire hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors who was famously pursued by federal prosecutors as their ultimate "white whale" in a massive insider trading probe. Though his firm pleaded guilty and paid a record $1.8 billion fine, Cohen himself was never criminally charged or convicted. Yet two lower underlings were convicted and served time (the 2 fall guys). An "Army of lawyers", no less than 6 top lawyers appeared in the courtroom that day representing Cohen (he did not appear), as a "shot across the bow" message to the US Government that Cohen was prepared to spend a vast sum of his wealth to defend himself and make it a huge undertaking for the government if they wished to proceed. Lawyers present for Cohen: Peter Nussbaum: SAC Capital's General Counsel, who entered the plea. Theodore "Ted" Wells Jr.: Renowned partner from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Martin Klotz: Partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Cohen's personal attorney. Michael Schachter, Daniel Kramer, and Michael Gertzman: Senior litigation partners assisting the defense. Because the defense consisted of prominent partners from multiple top-tier firms simultaneously, analysts famously calculated that the collective group was costing SAC Capital roughly $10,000 an hour (mere pocket change for a successful hedge fund guy).

drivebyhooting 1mo ago
That’s infuriating.
- arionhardison 1mo ago
  Yes, it's also solvable; the crux of the issue is that these people have made it problematic to even discuss any solutions that do not serve their personal, financial and nationalist interest. All and any fact should be up for discussion. For example, the black community; my community has a serious problem with violence that has caused increased police presence as it spilled out and impacted other communities. We can discuss the why but the fact exist and its up for discussion. All discussion of the conditions which allow situations like this to occur are shut down and labeled an ism, ist etc...
  - 1mo ago

Varelion 1mo ago

Luigi Mangione

frogperson 1mo ago

the government is made up of the people. the people are mostly greedy because our culture worships wealth. broken people, broken culture, broken government.

singingfish 1mo ago

Meta's bots are spectatularly awful, and if your organisation needs to use facebook advertising, they're also unblockable. There are ways around it that doesn't exactly block them but does clearly communicate they should GTFO, but it just shows you what an awful company Meta is.

talon8635 1mo ago

I believe JSTOR did, and then backed off after public outcry. JSTOR is not an admirable operation, for this and many other reasons.

orochimaaru 1mo ago

He was done in by a career prosecutor who just wanted to use him as a stepping stone in their path. They had little or no humanity.

teekert 1mo ago

This is the (John Perkin's coined term) "Corporatocracy" at work. If you want to know how and why it is like this, read Perkin's books (atm I'm reading "The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"). It's why Meta will not get sued but Aaron was, and it is why ships are now lining up in front of the Panama canal paying as much as 400k for a crossing with little of that wealth making it to the people of Panama.

MrSkelter 1mo ago

This is an argument against capitalism. Under capitalism money and power are inextricably linked. Your influence in a democracy is tied directly to your access to capital. This is why expensive elections are are desire of those funding Super-pacs. The more elections cost, the fewer people decide them. Aaron didn’t matter because he was poor. Had he been named Musk, or Zuckerberg, he would suffer the consequences they do when they break the law which is zero. This is how capitalism is supposed to work and does. You can’t have capitalism is being rich doesn’t confer privilege in every area including the legal system. It’s why American oligarch can safely “ask forgiveness not permission”. The risk to them personally is nil.

jsbisviewtiful 1mo ago

> The whole thing is incredibly sad and exposes the hypocrisy of the US court system and government as a whole. It does, but it's not like that's new information to minority communities.