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Aaron Swartz was facing up to 35 years for wire fraud and hacking for swiping some JSTOR documents, and the DOJ has done nothing against the AI companies and th

Aaron Swartz was facing up to 35 years for wire fraud and hacking for swiping some JSTOR documents, and the DOJ has done nothing against the AI companies and their IP violating antics.

gruez 18d ago
>and the DOJ has done nothing against the AI companies and their IP violating antics. For good reason. Courts have so far ruled AI training is fair use, and it doesn't look likely to be overturned by the supreme court. Theres also the matter of some labs pirating books to get training data, which is illegal (they lost in civil court), but it's unclear whether that can be criminally prosecuted.
- adastra22 18d ago
  Hacking other companies is illegal as far as I understand.
  - gruez 18d ago
    1. OP specifically mentioned "IP violating antics", not hacking 2. All the hacking legislation (and criminal law in general) require proving intent, which so far as we can tell didn't exist in those cases. At best you can try some "reckless" or "negligent" angle, but that would a novel legal argument and would be risky to prosecute
    - someothherguyy 18d ago
      > All the hacking legislation (and criminal law in general) require proving intent No, they don't, see laws that make negligent behavior illegal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
    - crote 18d ago
      But officer, I didn't mean for my autonomous bank vault busting robot to autonomously bust any bank vaults!
      - ben_w 18d ago
        More like: Your Honour, it is indeed correct that during testing of our new missile to see if it could correctly function in the military role of seeking out and then breaking through a blast door, the targeting system locked onto the nearby bank vault. We only found out where this particular missile went after the bank contacted us for help in investigating who might have been responsible for the new hole where their door used to be, and if any of our other equipment might help stop such weapons in the future. We did not expect the test missile to be so effective. We have contacted independent researchers to help us investigate what went wrong here. We also agree that we made a lot of mistakes, and that we should have had better tests in place even at the time. However, we also assert that even if we had had all of those tests in place, the specific actions taken by our "autonomously seek-and-destroy-blast-door" munition would likely have circumvented all the things we could have, and should have, already had in place.
- crote 18d ago
  Okay, and? If anything, the Swartz case was even more direct fair use. There's very little to use JSTOR for which isn't some form of teaching, scholarship, or research! Clearly the fact that the end-use is (possibly) fair use isn't the only thing that matters.
  - gruez 18d ago
    >There's very little to use JSTOR for which isn't some form of teaching, scholarship, or research! He wasn't prosecuted for copyright infringement though. >... was prosecuted for multiple violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz
- c2h5oh 18d ago
  Courts have also ruled that sharing in P2P network is enough to get hit with 150k in statutory damages per shared work. AI companies did quite a bit of uploading while e.g. getting Anna's archive over BitTorrent.
  - eastbound 18d ago
    It's transformative. Not aimed at exact reproduction, so not in the scope of copyright law.
    - lobf 18d ago
      I think you misread. There is nothing transformative about bittorrent automatically sharing parts of a file you're downloading with your peers.
    - tareqak 18d ago
      They participated in uploading the files as part of the downloading the torrent from other peers. Their use of the BitTorrent protocol to acquire these files would not have been transformative.
      - DANmode 18d ago
        > They participated in uploading the files as part of the downloading the torrent from other peers. Did they? Are you sure?
        lukan 18d ago
        No, only in some instances maybe, they were mostly leechers.
        DANmode 18d ago
        Thank you https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/meta-defends-using-pirated-material-claims-its-legal-if-you-dont-seed-content https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
- Madmallard 18d ago
  It wouldn't be ruled fair use in a sane society without bribery and lobbying with competent technologically savvy law interpreters.
- whizzter 18d ago
  The supreme irony that they're now trying to peg distillation as illegal.
  - ASalazarMX 18d ago
    It makes sense when you think AI is seen by the government as a strategic asset. They'll want it to progress unhampered, but also don't want other nations/actors to catch up.
- happymellon 18d ago
  > For good reason A reason. Not the same as a good reason. The fact that you even point out that they committed illegal acts that would normally get prosecuted, and yet didn't, shows that IP enforcement is very loose depending on who did it.
  - gruez 18d ago
    >they committed illegal acts that would normally get prosecuted I specifically differentiated civil law from criminal law in my original comment, and said it's unclear whether their acts were criminal.
tptacek 18d ago
It's not at all relevant to this thread, but no he wasn't. At their worst, prosecutors were threatening to push for 7 years; the guideline sentence for Swartz's offense, were he to take it to trial and lose, would likely have been under the level allowing for straight probation (go to a sentencing calculator and plug the values in); writing after his death, his own lawyer stated that had he gone to trial and lost he was unlikely to face a custodial sentence at all. We get this "35 year" number from adding up all the counts he faced, taking their maximum sentence. That's just not how sentencing works. Like charges group, and you're sentenced according to the most severe charge. People cite these numbers in part because DOJ posts them in their press releases. DOJ is in these instances lying. When we amplify those lies, we're doing their work for them.
- tzs 18d ago
  This is 100% correct. Here are some useful links. This is an explanation of just how they got those ridiculous numbers like 35 years [1]. There is also often confusion of what he did and what hewas charged with. Here's a two part series going over that [2][3]. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130211030902/https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130211030902/https://www.popeh... [2] https://volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ https://volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ [3] https://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aaron-swartz-part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/ https://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-a...
- watwut 18d ago
  > People cite these numbers in part because DOJ posts them in their press releases. DOJ is in these instances lying. When we amplify those lies, we're doing their work for them. If DOJ said to him or to the public potential punishment is 35 years, then yes it is fair to say he was facing that. They cant have it both ways - claim that 35 years is possible outcome to pressure the person and then turn around and be like "nah, that is exaggerated such huge penalties are not a thing". Seriously, it is 35 years when it suits DOJ and institutions. And it turns into "likely just straight probation" when ... suits DOJ and big companies.
dearing 18d ago
Michel Foucault enters the chat.
- eadler 18d ago
  I've read a fair amount of Foucault and while I could guess, what specifically were you thinking of?
  - dearing 18d ago
    Aaron sees safety in sharing, interests see threats in the shared, governence see threats in the sharing.
ronnier 18d ago
So you are for shutting down xcancel?
snickerbockers 18d ago
Because that's not what IP law is for. IP law was always corporate rent-seeking. None of those arguments about fairly compensating people for their creations or preserving the profit motive were ever being made in good faith. The point was always to force you to pay for something that would be free under natural laws. And I do mean you specifically, because the act of copying information freely was always going to be preserved for them.
- camgunz 18d ago
  Swartz was charged under the CFAA, like most hacking cases, and it clearly applies to the Anthropic and OpenAI cases.
- close04 18d ago
  It's not the IP law alone that's the problem, it's the way the legislative and justice systems work. There will always be a law and an interpretation that favor people who can afford to buy them at the cost of those who can't.
charcircuit 18d ago
Aaron Swartz was not charged for violating IP either.
sorokod 18d ago
The obligatory: “The rain falls upon the just And also on the unjust fellas But mostly it falls upon the just Cause the unjust have the just’s umbrellas.”
narrator 18d ago
Meanwhile, in China they got the best video models cause they don't care much about IP. The irony that China, by being a threat, is preventing the west from lurching toward totalitarian is really interesting.

Aaron Swartz was facing up to 35 years for wire fraud and hacking for swiping some JSTOR documents, and the DOJ has done nothing against the AI companies and their IP violating antics.

gruez 18d ago

>and the DOJ has done nothing against the AI companies and their IP violating antics. For good reason. Courts have so far ruled AI training is fair use, and it doesn't look likely to be overturned by the supreme court. Theres also the matter of some labs pirating books to get training data, which is illegal (they lost in civil court), but it's unclear whether that can be criminally prosecuted.

adastra22 18d ago
Hacking other companies is illegal as far as I understand.
- gruez 18d ago
  1. OP specifically mentioned "IP violating antics", not hacking 2. All the hacking legislation (and criminal law in general) require proving intent, which so far as we can tell didn't exist in those cases. At best you can try some "reckless" or "negligent" angle, but that would a novel legal argument and would be risky to prosecute
  - someothherguyy 18d ago
    > All the hacking legislation (and criminal law in general) require proving intent No, they don't, see laws that make negligent behavior illegal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
  - crote 18d ago
    But officer, I didn't mean for my autonomous bank vault busting robot to autonomously bust any bank vaults!
    - ben_w 18d ago
      More like: Your Honour, it is indeed correct that during testing of our new missile to see if it could correctly function in the military role of seeking out and then breaking through a blast door, the targeting system locked onto the nearby bank vault. We only found out where this particular missile went after the bank contacted us for help in investigating who might have been responsible for the new hole where their door used to be, and if any of our other equipment might help stop such weapons in the future. We did not expect the test missile to be so effective. We have contacted independent researchers to help us investigate what went wrong here. We also agree that we made a lot of mistakes, and that we should have had better tests in place even at the time. However, we also assert that even if we had had all of those tests in place, the specific actions taken by our "autonomously seek-and-destroy-blast-door" munition would likely have circumvented all the things we could have, and should have, already had in place.
crote 18d ago
Okay, and? If anything, the Swartz case was even more direct fair use. There's very little to use JSTOR for which isn't some form of teaching, scholarship, or research! Clearly the fact that the end-use is (possibly) fair use isn't the only thing that matters.
- gruez 18d ago
  >There's very little to use JSTOR for which isn't some form of teaching, scholarship, or research! He wasn't prosecuted for copyright infringement though. >... was prosecuted for multiple violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz
c2h5oh 18d ago
Courts have also ruled that sharing in P2P network is enough to get hit with 150k in statutory damages per shared work. AI companies did quite a bit of uploading while e.g. getting Anna's archive over BitTorrent.
- eastbound 18d ago
  It's transformative. Not aimed at exact reproduction, so not in the scope of copyright law.
  - lobf 18d ago
    I think you misread. There is nothing transformative about bittorrent automatically sharing parts of a file you're downloading with your peers.
  - tareqak 18d ago
    They participated in uploading the files as part of the downloading the torrent from other peers. Their use of the BitTorrent protocol to acquire these files would not have been transformative.
    - DANmode 18d ago
      > They participated in uploading the files as part of the downloading the torrent from other peers. Did they? Are you sure?
      - lukan 18d ago
        No, only in some instances maybe, they were mostly leechers.
        DANmode 18d ago
        Thank you https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/meta-defends-using-pirated-material-claims-its-legal-if-you-dont-seed-content https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
Madmallard 18d ago
It wouldn't be ruled fair use in a sane society without bribery and lobbying with competent technologically savvy law interpreters.
whizzter 18d ago
The supreme irony that they're now trying to peg distillation as illegal.
- ASalazarMX 18d ago
  It makes sense when you think AI is seen by the government as a strategic asset. They'll want it to progress unhampered, but also don't want other nations/actors to catch up.
happymellon 18d ago
> For good reason A reason. Not the same as a good reason. The fact that you even point out that they committed illegal acts that would normally get prosecuted, and yet didn't, shows that IP enforcement is very loose depending on who did it.
- gruez 18d ago
  >they committed illegal acts that would normally get prosecuted I specifically differentiated civil law from criminal law in my original comment, and said it's unclear whether their acts were criminal.

tptacek 18d ago

It's not at all relevant to this thread, but no he wasn't. At their worst, prosecutors were threatening to push for 7 years; the guideline sentence for Swartz's offense, were he to take it to trial and lose, would likely have been under the level allowing for straight probation (go to a sentencing calculator and plug the values in); writing after his death, his own lawyer stated that had he gone to trial and lost he was unlikely to face a custodial sentence at all. We get this "35 year" number from adding up all the counts he faced, taking their maximum sentence. That's just not how sentencing works. Like charges group, and you're sentenced according to the most severe charge. People cite these numbers in part because DOJ posts them in their press releases. DOJ is in these instances lying. When we amplify those lies, we're doing their work for them.

tzs 18d ago
This is 100% correct. Here are some useful links. This is an explanation of just how they got those ridiculous numbers like 35 years [1]. There is also often confusion of what he did and what hewas charged with. Here's a two part series going over that [2][3]. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130211030902/https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130211030902/https://www.popeh... [2] https://volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ https://volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ [3] https://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aaron-swartz-part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/ https://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-a...
watwut 18d ago
> People cite these numbers in part because DOJ posts them in their press releases. DOJ is in these instances lying. When we amplify those lies, we're doing their work for them. If DOJ said to him or to the public potential punishment is 35 years, then yes it is fair to say he was facing that. They cant have it both ways - claim that 35 years is possible outcome to pressure the person and then turn around and be like "nah, that is exaggerated such huge penalties are not a thing". Seriously, it is 35 years when it suits DOJ and institutions. And it turns into "likely just straight probation" when ... suits DOJ and big companies.

dearing 18d ago

Michel Foucault enters the chat.

eadler 18d ago
I've read a fair amount of Foucault and while I could guess, what specifically were you thinking of?
- dearing 18d ago
  Aaron sees safety in sharing, interests see threats in the shared, governence see threats in the sharing.

ronnier 18d ago

So you are for shutting down xcancel?

snickerbockers 18d ago

Because that's not what IP law is for. IP law was always corporate rent-seeking. None of those arguments about fairly compensating people for their creations or preserving the profit motive were ever being made in good faith. The point was always to force you to pay for something that would be free under natural laws. And I do mean you specifically, because the act of copying information freely was always going to be preserved for them.

camgunz 18d ago
Swartz was charged under the CFAA, like most hacking cases, and it clearly applies to the Anthropic and OpenAI cases.
close04 18d ago
It's not the IP law alone that's the problem, it's the way the legislative and justice systems work. There will always be a law and an interpretation that favor people who can afford to buy them at the cost of those who can't.

charcircuit 18d ago

Aaron Swartz was not charged for violating IP either.

sorokod 18d ago

The obligatory: “The rain falls upon the just And also on the unjust fellas But mostly it falls upon the just Cause the unjust have the just’s umbrellas.”

narrator 18d ago

Meanwhile, in China they got the best video models cause they don't care much about IP. The irony that China, by being a threat, is preventing the west from lurching toward totalitarian is really interesting.