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As I'd mentioned on an earlier submission about W3C's site being inaccessible: A cool thing about Aaron's activism was that it involved building things, circum

by gojomo 14y ago

As I'd mentioned on an earlier submission about W3C's site being inaccessible: A cool thing about Aaron's activism was that it involved building things, circumventing censorship, and spreading information, rather than sabotage and denial-of-service.

BrokenPipe 14y ago
True but Aaron's activism resulted in him being bullied until he took his own life. It's a difficult topic. If you assume that ddos from a collective is similar to blocking a road by a collective during a strike or manifestation then I must say that some people won't be able to get to work that day and in general nobody would get hurt. This sort of pacific interruption raises awareness, which by itself is very important for a functioning democracy.
- gee_totes 14y ago
  But why protest student blogs and class websites? Why not target the prosecutor's office? Blockading a key port that is shipping war supplies or preforming a DDOS attack against government websites can be legitimate form of protest, but those actions are very hard to plan and pull off. This attack (if it is an attack) just seems like someone is going after the low-hanging fruit of MIT's network.
  - analog 14y ago
    This is a common argument against activism and it's a classic logical fallacy. You're doing X, but Y would be more effective, therefore X is pointless. In reality what happens is that someone does X and someone else does Y, and it's not uncommon for the same group to do both. Fwiw, I don't have any view on whether this attack (if it is one) is justified. I haven't read enough on what MIT have/haven't done so I can't comment.
    - vor_ 14y ago
      The post you're replying to doesn't say anything about being pointless, but besides that, surely it's not a logical fallacy to point out that one action is more effective than another.
      - BrokenPipe 14y ago
        meh, he didn't say pointless but seems like he meant it by saying " low hanging fruit"
    - snowwrestler 14y ago
      The converse fallacy would be that "anything X that is easy for me to do is therefore an effective form of activism."
  - BrokenPipe 14y ago
    Perhaps easier targets. Perhaps because the people behind the ddos want actual students and teachers of the MIT to revolt against those that decided to continue the case against Aaron. Who said nobody is attacking the persecutor's office and why is it either and not both ?
- vor_ 14y ago
  This "pacific interruption", as you delicately describe it, hurts innocent teachers and students who had nothing to do with the alleged bullying of Swartz, who was already suicidal prior to his prosecution. Regardless of what one may think of computer laws, there is no proven link between his suicide and the criminal charges he faced, and any claims to the contrary have so far been entirely speculative and coming from people who never met the guy--one can't help but wonder if they had even heard of him before last week. In addition, many of Swartz's accomplishments have been exaggerated specifically to fuel a frenzied mob. E.g., "co-creator of Reddit" which contradicts the public statements of other Reddit founders, and "creator of RSS" when he was one member of a group that took over Netscape's technology. Of course, my saying this will be used as a reason to attack me for discounting contributions that he actually made, which isn't the case. I am simply pointing out that the knee-jerk righteous indignation and mad desire to blame is getting out of hand. It's becoming an angry mob, directing its violence at convenient targets to feed a primal hunger for revenge.
  - BrokenPipe 14y ago
    He was depressed, and because of the case he was considered by his lawyer at suicide risk but I'm not aware of any reported attempt of suicide by Aaron. Again, if some people can't go to work because of a strike, even if it seemingly hurting teachers, student or general population it is in fact benefiting them and the right price for democracy. Democracy can only be with awareness and without it is just a different kind of manipulated monarchy. And the rest of your 'additions' seems very ugly. He was part of a joint-venture or similar between companies where they all called each other cofunder, not co creator. And check at what age he did work on RSS, if that's not an accomplishment I don't know what is. Not an angry mob, nobody is being physically hurt, just slightly interrupted from what they were doing just as it happens when there's a strike or a big manifestation.
  - analog 14y ago
    "no proven link between his suicide and the criminal charges he faced, and any claims to the contrary have so far been entirely speculative and coming from people who never met the guy" Please stop spreading lies and disinformation. 'killed by the government,' father tells mourners [1] 'depressed about his case/upcoming trial, but we had no idea what he was going through was this painful.' from his mother [2] [1] http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-aaron-swartz-funeral-eulogy-father-20130115,0,648108.story http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-aaron-... [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5047398 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5047398
- sigzero 14y ago
  "True but Aaron's activism resulted in him being bullied until he took his own life." You state that like it is the only reason he did it. It contributed, yes, but it wasn't the sole cause.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
wavesounds 14y ago
Its not black and white. Sure Aaron built things but he also threatened to destroy JSTOR's business model. Likewise a DDoS may seem destructive but if it causes MIT to have better Ethics and Leadership as a result then its well worth the discomfort. If theres a bug in your system you sometimes have to replace some lines of code to make it better, this isn't destruction its just change.
- geofft 14y ago
  But it won't. I certainly hope MIT makes serious changes in its leadership and ethics (if it turns out, after all, that MIT was in some way responsible -- that's still very unclear), but that's not because anyone's DDoSing MIT, it's because I can see the story. If there's a bug in your system, fix the bug. Don't delete a file in another directory and call it change.
  - btilly 14y ago
    if it turns out, after all, that MIT was in some way responsible -- that's still very unclear In the Boston Globe, Aaron's lawyer says that a suggested plea deal with probation and no actual jail sentence was rejected by MIT, and that played a part in the prosecutor pushing for harsher judgement. If there is any truth in that, then there is evidence that MIT did indeed play enough of a role to have some of the responsibility here. We won't have a full picture of what their role might have been until Abelson's report comes out. Which likely will take a good deal of time.
    - FireBeyond 14y ago
      So MIT should have had reasonable cause to believe that there was a risk of suicide should they decide to prosecute a case? And that makes them responsible? Is that a road we want to go down?
      - btilly 14y ago
        You seem to be reading something into what I said that I did not say. It is my belief that MIT as an institution should have a policy on the appropriate severity of response to actions such as Aaron's. They need to for the simple reason that they have made a conscious decision to choose to make themselves a natural lightning rod for this type of incident. Therefore they help set the bar for what an appropriate reaction should be. My further belief is that if this policy is set in accord with the bulk of opinion of MIT students and alums, then we'd have had a different result in this case. This does not mean that they should be held to be at legal fault for the suicide. However if you have even a passing familiarity with root cause analysis you'll know the value of habitually fixing systemic issues you identify which are several layers removed from the ultimate failure. I am cautiously optimistic that Abelson's report will address this issue.
redthrowaway 14y ago
DDoSes are far, far easier to carry out. The low barrier to entry means that far more people can engage in that kind of "activism" than would be able even to write the python script Aaron used to download the JSTOR articles.
rhizome 14y ago
Yeah, well, people who aren't Aaron are kind of mad at MIT right now. That said, MIT has some smart people, surely they can put their noggins together to figure out a way to stem the attack. Maybe once and for all, and for the good of the internet, they can contribute this tool for unilaterally turning off DDOSes to the public.
- smosher 14y ago
  Distributed denial of service attacks are very difficult to deal with (I have dealt with—read: suffered through—several each year for the past ten years on and off.) Often there is little to nothing you can do within your network to improve the situation. It's an issue of raw volume, once the attacker(s) exceed your capacity you're saturated and dead in the water. At this point, the techniques that will help must be applied at a point where the pipe has greater capacity than the attack, and depend on the exact nature of the attack and so vary in effectiveness. That isn't to say the situation couldn't be improved, but I think widespread infrastructural changes would be needed and isn't the kind of thing MIT folks could just work out and apply to their current situation.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    I know the mechanics of DDOS. I was around when some of the first distributed attacks were being directed at best.com (et al: http://www.pentics.net/ http://www.pentics.net/), my ISP at the time. I was using understatement to mock both MIT's reputation for innovation and intelligence and their role in the events that appear to have spurred the attack, so maybe they could put their vaunted brainpower to work solving that problem instead of killing downloaders, so to speak.
    - smosher 14y ago
      Oh sorry. The way you spoke of MIT was probably meant to be the tell but I hope you don't blame me for missing it. (I do know some disturbingly brilliant people from MIT... I also have had occasion to meet some people who are disturbingly not brilliant, but no worries, they had ample levels of the Dunning-Kruger effect to make up for it.)
WalterSear 14y ago
And look how well that worked out.

by gojomo 14y ago

BrokenPipe 14y ago

True but Aaron's activism resulted in him being bullied until he took his own life. It's a difficult topic. If you assume that ddos from a collective is similar to blocking a road by a collective during a strike or manifestation then I must say that some people won't be able to get to work that day and in general nobody would get hurt. This sort of pacific interruption raises awareness, which by itself is very important for a functioning democracy.

gee_totes 14y ago
But why protest student blogs and class websites? Why not target the prosecutor's office? Blockading a key port that is shipping war supplies or preforming a DDOS attack against government websites can be legitimate form of protest, but those actions are very hard to plan and pull off. This attack (if it is an attack) just seems like someone is going after the low-hanging fruit of MIT's network.
- analog 14y ago
  This is a common argument against activism and it's a classic logical fallacy. You're doing X, but Y would be more effective, therefore X is pointless. In reality what happens is that someone does X and someone else does Y, and it's not uncommon for the same group to do both. Fwiw, I don't have any view on whether this attack (if it is one) is justified. I haven't read enough on what MIT have/haven't done so I can't comment.
  - vor_ 14y ago
    The post you're replying to doesn't say anything about being pointless, but besides that, surely it's not a logical fallacy to point out that one action is more effective than another.
    - BrokenPipe 14y ago
      meh, he didn't say pointless but seems like he meant it by saying " low hanging fruit"
  - snowwrestler 14y ago
    The converse fallacy would be that "anything X that is easy for me to do is therefore an effective form of activism."
- BrokenPipe 14y ago
  Perhaps easier targets. Perhaps because the people behind the ddos want actual students and teachers of the MIT to revolt against those that decided to continue the case against Aaron. Who said nobody is attacking the persecutor's office and why is it either and not both ?
vor_ 14y ago
This "pacific interruption", as you delicately describe it, hurts innocent teachers and students who had nothing to do with the alleged bullying of Swartz, who was already suicidal prior to his prosecution. Regardless of what one may think of computer laws, there is no proven link between his suicide and the criminal charges he faced, and any claims to the contrary have so far been entirely speculative and coming from people who never met the guy--one can't help but wonder if they had even heard of him before last week. In addition, many of Swartz's accomplishments have been exaggerated specifically to fuel a frenzied mob. E.g., "co-creator of Reddit" which contradicts the public statements of other Reddit founders, and "creator of RSS" when he was one member of a group that took over Netscape's technology. Of course, my saying this will be used as a reason to attack me for discounting contributions that he actually made, which isn't the case. I am simply pointing out that the knee-jerk righteous indignation and mad desire to blame is getting out of hand. It's becoming an angry mob, directing its violence at convenient targets to feed a primal hunger for revenge.
- BrokenPipe 14y ago
  He was depressed, and because of the case he was considered by his lawyer at suicide risk but I'm not aware of any reported attempt of suicide by Aaron. Again, if some people can't go to work because of a strike, even if it seemingly hurting teachers, student or general population it is in fact benefiting them and the right price for democracy. Democracy can only be with awareness and without it is just a different kind of manipulated monarchy. And the rest of your 'additions' seems very ugly. He was part of a joint-venture or similar between companies where they all called each other cofunder, not co creator. And check at what age he did work on RSS, if that's not an accomplishment I don't know what is. Not an angry mob, nobody is being physically hurt, just slightly interrupted from what they were doing just as it happens when there's a strike or a big manifestation.
- analog 14y ago
  "no proven link between his suicide and the criminal charges he faced, and any claims to the contrary have so far been entirely speculative and coming from people who never met the guy" Please stop spreading lies and disinformation. 'killed by the government,' father tells mourners [1] 'depressed about his case/upcoming trial, but we had no idea what he was going through was this painful.' from his mother [2] [1] http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-aaron-swartz-funeral-eulogy-father-20130115,0,648108.story http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-aaron-... [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5047398 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5047398
sigzero 14y ago
"True but Aaron's activism resulted in him being bullied until he took his own life." You state that like it is the only reason he did it. It contributed, yes, but it wasn't the sole cause.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

wavesounds 14y ago

Its not black and white. Sure Aaron built things but he also threatened to destroy JSTOR's business model. Likewise a DDoS may seem destructive but if it causes MIT to have better Ethics and Leadership as a result then its well worth the discomfort. If theres a bug in your system you sometimes have to replace some lines of code to make it better, this isn't destruction its just change.

geofft 14y ago
But it won't. I certainly hope MIT makes serious changes in its leadership and ethics (if it turns out, after all, that MIT was in some way responsible -- that's still very unclear), but that's not because anyone's DDoSing MIT, it's because I can see the story. If there's a bug in your system, fix the bug. Don't delete a file in another directory and call it change.
- btilly 14y ago
  if it turns out, after all, that MIT was in some way responsible -- that's still very unclear In the Boston Globe, Aaron's lawyer says that a suggested plea deal with probation and no actual jail sentence was rejected by MIT, and that played a part in the prosecutor pushing for harsher judgement. If there is any truth in that, then there is evidence that MIT did indeed play enough of a role to have some of the responsibility here. We won't have a full picture of what their role might have been until Abelson's report comes out. Which likely will take a good deal of time.
  - FireBeyond 14y ago
    So MIT should have had reasonable cause to believe that there was a risk of suicide should they decide to prosecute a case? And that makes them responsible? Is that a road we want to go down?
    - btilly 14y ago
      You seem to be reading something into what I said that I did not say. It is my belief that MIT as an institution should have a policy on the appropriate severity of response to actions such as Aaron's. They need to for the simple reason that they have made a conscious decision to choose to make themselves a natural lightning rod for this type of incident. Therefore they help set the bar for what an appropriate reaction should be. My further belief is that if this policy is set in accord with the bulk of opinion of MIT students and alums, then we'd have had a different result in this case. This does not mean that they should be held to be at legal fault for the suicide. However if you have even a passing familiarity with root cause analysis you'll know the value of habitually fixing systemic issues you identify which are several layers removed from the ultimate failure. I am cautiously optimistic that Abelson's report will address this issue.

redthrowaway 14y ago

DDoSes are far, far easier to carry out. The low barrier to entry means that far more people can engage in that kind of "activism" than would be able even to write the python script Aaron used to download the JSTOR articles.

rhizome 14y ago

Yeah, well, people who aren't Aaron are kind of mad at MIT right now. That said, MIT has some smart people, surely they can put their noggins together to figure out a way to stem the attack. Maybe once and for all, and for the good of the internet, they can contribute this tool for unilaterally turning off DDOSes to the public.

smosher 14y ago
Distributed denial of service attacks are very difficult to deal with (I have dealt with—read: suffered through—several each year for the past ten years on and off.) Often there is little to nothing you can do within your network to improve the situation. It's an issue of raw volume, once the attacker(s) exceed your capacity you're saturated and dead in the water. At this point, the techniques that will help must be applied at a point where the pipe has greater capacity than the attack, and depend on the exact nature of the attack and so vary in effectiveness. That isn't to say the situation couldn't be improved, but I think widespread infrastructural changes would be needed and isn't the kind of thing MIT folks could just work out and apply to their current situation.
- rhizome 14y ago
  I know the mechanics of DDOS. I was around when some of the first distributed attacks were being directed at best.com (et al: http://www.pentics.net/ http://www.pentics.net/), my ISP at the time. I was using understatement to mock both MIT's reputation for innovation and intelligence and their role in the events that appear to have spurred the attack, so maybe they could put their vaunted brainpower to work solving that problem instead of killing downloaders, so to speak.
  - smosher 14y ago
    Oh sorry. The way you spoke of MIT was probably meant to be the tell but I hope you don't blame me for missing it. (I do know some disturbingly brilliant people from MIT... I also have had occasion to meet some people who are disturbingly not brilliant, but no worries, they had ample levels of the Dunning-Kruger effect to make up for it.)

WalterSear 14y ago

And look how well that worked out.