5 ms·

Think about Aaron Swartz, and now realize the balls and execution it took for Larry and Sergey to do Google Books. They got big enough that Google's "only" risk

by temphn 14y ago

Think about Aaron Swartz, and now realize the balls and execution it took for Larry and Sergey to do Google Books. They got big enough that Google's "only" risk was a civil lawsuit. Had they been smaller, they would have been risking some ambitious federal prosecutor charging Google with wire fraud. Indeed, it's kind of lucky that someone like Ortiz wasn't around to throw the book at Alta Vista and early search engines for scraping sites too aggressively or without permission (before robots.txt became mainstream as a distributed solution without as much need for a centralized regulator). As it was, DOJ did get involved in the Google Books case, pushing for a harsher civil settlement against Google: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10357097-265.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10357097-265.html

OGinparadise 14y ago
"Think about Aaron Swartz, and now realize the balls and execution it took for Larry and Sergey to do Google Books." This thread is about Aaron. But please do not tie the two cases together; at best Google (making $10 Billion a year in profit) scanned the books so they could wrap their content with ads. At worst.... Why didn't Google open source the scans if they wanted to "spread knowledge"?
- Karunamon 14y ago
  His point still rings true - even if Aaron was in it for the free exchange of information and Google was in it for the ad revenue, it's a foregone fact in the USA that the justice you receive is proportional to nothing but your cash reserves.
  - OGinparadise 14y ago
    His other point is true but the facts are different. If Aaron had gone to the library, scanned 10 books and posted them online it would be different. Maybe a DCMA or a lawsuit. Aaron was accused of breaking into MIT and a few other things. It's just a bad comparison on all levels IMO. But yeah, having billions at your disposal and a great reputation can do wonders. The Feds cannot outspend you and they it's very hard to vilify you
    - pygy_ 14y ago
      > Aaron was accused of breaking into MIT ... Spurrious accusation, all doors were open. Did you read this article? http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/ http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartz...
      - Karunamon 14y ago
        >Spurrious accusation, all doors were open. The crime of breaking and entering doesn't require you to defeat physical security.. even pushing open a closed (yet unlocked) door is enough. I agree that the accusation is utter crap, but that's the law.
- temphn 14y ago
  Because they were already being sued by the authors of the books and couldn't push it any further? Google Books offers many out-of-print books and is very much in the spirit of what Aaron was doing.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
dchichkov 14y ago
I don't mind at all ambitious, overzealous and over-exuberant prosecutors. That is all right. Even great. But people do suffer when government officials are trying to protect their own carriers and acting out of egoism; or ignorance. And it is really sad that such officials often go unpunished. Like a case here for example: http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2013/130110secret-no-fly-zone.html?WT.mc_id=130111epilot&WT.mc_sect=gan http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2013/130110secret-no-f... They've put this 70 year old pilot: http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2013/130110secret-zone-640.jpg http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2013/130110secret-zone... in jail, without any violations on the part of the pilot or any ill intents. And what was the result of the hearing? > "his case went before the judge. When his attorney returned and said the case would be dismissed if he agreed not to take any legal action against Darlington County law enforcement, he said, he reluctantly agreed" Great. Just great.
- smegel 14y ago
  To some extent I agree. Justice should not be a result of prosecutors pulling punches, but of a justice system that allows for a robust defence to succeed consistently over a harsh prosecution. The problem with letting prosecutors not prosecute to the full extent of the law on their own judgement allows for selective favouritism, like white college kids getting off with a warning where a black street kid gets serious time. Relying on prosecutors to be lenient or "do the right thing" places the defence in the wrong hands - a court that allows a strong defence to succeed over or moderate a prosecution should be at the heart of the justice system.
- noonespecial 14y ago
  The real WTF is that local law enforcement thought that they might have the right to shoot down the glider. The guys that give you tickets for speeding shooting their guns in the air over a nuclear power plant? What could go wrong with that?
  - philh 14y ago
    > What could go wrong with that? If something can go wrong when people with handguns shoot near a nuclear power plant, then something has already gone horribly wrong.
jamesaguilar 14y ago
I don't find the two analogous. Aaron would not have been charged with wire fraud if he had asked JSTOR, even if the original content owners tried to sue him. However, he did not secure any kind of consent and it becomes a different situation. Not saying what I think happened was right but I don't think it is the same.
- temphn 14y ago
  Well, the whole point of the Google Books lawsuit is that they didn't ask first: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyright/article/54247-publishers-settle-google-books-lawsuit.html http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyrigh... The Association of American Publishers and Google’s agreement last week to settle the publishers’ long-running litigation over Google’s library scanning program put an end to the lengthy and expensive suit, but without resolving any of the underlying copyright and fair use issues. The main component of the deal: copyright owners with books scanned by Google under its library program can choose to “opt out” of the program and have their books removed. Of course, that settlement condition is something Google has offered copyright owners with books in the program all along. In other words, Google scanned and posted to the web first, and authors could opt-out if they so chose. So they didn't get consent first. Their rationale was good - there was no machine readable contact information and many of the authors were dead or had moved - but in this respect the situations are reasonably analogous. Had Aaron scraped say 10-100k rather than 4M articles and done some innovative NLP/data mining on the text (like Google N-grams), then showed that to JSTOR, despite the lack of up-front consent he might well have been able to get more or convince them to open up, especially if this 10-100k experiment showed monetization potential and could allow JSTOR to move to an open access model. Sadly, we'll never know.
  - jamesaguilar 14y ago
    They asked the libraries. The analogy would be complete if Google had gone into the libraries uninvited and started scanning.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago

by temphn 14y ago

OGinparadise 14y ago

"Think about Aaron Swartz, and now realize the balls and execution it took for Larry and Sergey to do Google Books." This thread is about Aaron. But please do not tie the two cases together; at best Google (making $10 Billion a year in profit) scanned the books so they could wrap their content with ads. At worst.... Why didn't Google open source the scans if they wanted to "spread knowledge"?

Karunamon 14y ago
His point still rings true - even if Aaron was in it for the free exchange of information and Google was in it for the ad revenue, it's a foregone fact in the USA that the justice you receive is proportional to nothing but your cash reserves.
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  His other point is true but the facts are different. If Aaron had gone to the library, scanned 10 books and posted them online it would be different. Maybe a DCMA or a lawsuit. Aaron was accused of breaking into MIT and a few other things. It's just a bad comparison on all levels IMO. But yeah, having billions at your disposal and a great reputation can do wonders. The Feds cannot outspend you and they it's very hard to vilify you
  - pygy_ 14y ago
    > Aaron was accused of breaking into MIT ... Spurrious accusation, all doors were open. Did you read this article? http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/ http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartz...
    - Karunamon 14y ago
      >Spurrious accusation, all doors were open. The crime of breaking and entering doesn't require you to defeat physical security.. even pushing open a closed (yet unlocked) door is enough. I agree that the accusation is utter crap, but that's the law.
temphn 14y ago
Because they were already being sued by the authors of the books and couldn't push it any further? Google Books offers many out-of-print books and is very much in the spirit of what Aaron was doing.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

dchichkov 14y ago

I don't mind at all ambitious, overzealous and over-exuberant prosecutors. That is all right. Even great. But people do suffer when government officials are trying to protect their own carriers and acting out of egoism; or ignorance. And it is really sad that such officials often go unpunished. Like a case here for example: http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2013/130110secret-no-fly-zone.html?WT.mc_id=130111epilot&WT.mc_sect=gan http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2013/130110secret-no-f... They've put this 70 year old pilot: http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2013/130110secret-zone-640.jpg http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2013/130110secret-zone... in jail, without any violations on the part of the pilot or any ill intents. And what was the result of the hearing? > "his case went before the judge. When his attorney returned and said the case would be dismissed if he agreed not to take any legal action against Darlington County law enforcement, he said, he reluctantly agreed" Great. Just great.

smegel 14y ago
To some extent I agree. Justice should not be a result of prosecutors pulling punches, but of a justice system that allows for a robust defence to succeed consistently over a harsh prosecution. The problem with letting prosecutors not prosecute to the full extent of the law on their own judgement allows for selective favouritism, like white college kids getting off with a warning where a black street kid gets serious time. Relying on prosecutors to be lenient or "do the right thing" places the defence in the wrong hands - a court that allows a strong defence to succeed over or moderate a prosecution should be at the heart of the justice system.
noonespecial 14y ago
The real WTF is that local law enforcement thought that they might have the right to shoot down the glider. The guys that give you tickets for speeding shooting their guns in the air over a nuclear power plant? What could go wrong with that?
- philh 14y ago
  > What could go wrong with that? If something can go wrong when people with handguns shoot near a nuclear power plant, then something has already gone horribly wrong.

jamesaguilar 14y ago

I don't find the two analogous. Aaron would not have been charged with wire fraud if he had asked JSTOR, even if the original content owners tried to sue him. However, he did not secure any kind of consent and it becomes a different situation. Not saying what I think happened was right but I don't think it is the same.

temphn 14y ago
Well, the whole point of the Google Books lawsuit is that they didn't ask first: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyright/article/54247-publishers-settle-google-books-lawsuit.html http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyrigh... The Association of American Publishers and Google’s agreement last week to settle the publishers’ long-running litigation over Google’s library scanning program put an end to the lengthy and expensive suit, but without resolving any of the underlying copyright and fair use issues. The main component of the deal: copyright owners with books scanned by Google under its library program can choose to “opt out” of the program and have their books removed. Of course, that settlement condition is something Google has offered copyright owners with books in the program all along. In other words, Google scanned and posted to the web first, and authors could opt-out if they so chose. So they didn't get consent first. Their rationale was good - there was no machine readable contact information and many of the authors were dead or had moved - but in this respect the situations are reasonably analogous. Had Aaron scraped say 10-100k rather than 4M articles and done some innovative NLP/data mining on the text (like Google N-grams), then showed that to JSTOR, despite the lack of up-front consent he might well have been able to get more or convince them to open up, especially if this 10-100k experiment showed monetization potential and could allow JSTOR to move to an open access model. Sadly, we'll never know.
- jamesaguilar 14y ago
  They asked the libraries. The analogy would be complete if Google had gone into the libraries uninvited and started scanning.
InclinedPlane 14y ago