4 ms·

Hm... "It is clear Swartz did something wrong and should have been punished" "He didn’t access something he wasn’t supposed to" "Swartz did not destroy or da

Hm... "It is clear Swartz did something wrong and should have been punished" "He didn’t access something he wasn’t supposed to" "Swartz did not destroy or damage data or infrastructure" See, maybe I am just confused about the meanings of words here, but if Aaron did not access anything he was not supposed to access and did not destroy or damage anything, what exactly is it that he did wrong? Who gets to define the upper bound on how many articles a person is supposed to access, or what counts as an "appropriate" or "acceptable" method of utilizing a JSTOR subscription? Aaron was the victim here; his suicide was shocking and brought that fact to our attention, but if he were alive today he would still be the victim. I called this a senseless prosecution when I learned about it months before his death. Aaron did nothing wrong, and he deserved no punishment.

rayiner 14y ago
> See, maybe I am just confused about the meanings of words here, but if Aaron did not access anything he was not supposed to access and did not destroy or damage anything, what exactly is it that he did wrong? Continuing to access MIT's network after MIT tried to get him to stop. > Who gets to define the upper bound on how many articles a person is supposed to access, or what counts as an "appropriate" or "acceptable" method of utilizing a JSTOR subscription? Something called behaving like a reasonable person. The scope of a license is implied by the nature of the license. If JSTOR gives you permission to access journal articles for academic purposes, it's outside the scope of the permission to download them wholesale with intent to distribute them. Nobody needs it spelled out to them that this is the case--it's obvious from the nature of the transaction. Disclaimer: I'm not justifying the prosecutor's actions. But it's possible to support what Aaron did and think the prosecutor overreached without degrading the argument to a hyper-technical and willfully blind defense of how he didn't actually do anything wrong.
- youngerdryas 14y ago
  I think you are being a little obtuse or don't know the case. Aaron was protesting the fact that publicly funded research papers were behind an administrative paywall even though they are ostensibly free.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Actions that are arguably justified in the specific case can still be wrong in the general case. In general, it's wrong to keep using a network after the administrator tries to get you to stop. It's wrong to download millions of documents for distribution when the scope of your access implied accessing a limited number for research. Activists break the law and they get punished for it. That's part and parcel of civil disobedience. The injustice here is not that Aaron was facing punishment--it's the magnitude of the punishment he was facing.
    - youngerdryas 14y ago
      I am arguing that he was behaving like a reasonable person because he was protesting an injustice. You may disagree but I think you are wrong.
      - rayiner 14y ago
        "Reasonable" is in reference to ordinary people. Was he behaving how an ordinary person would? No. He was an activist. Activists are almost by definition unreasonable.
        mpyne 14y ago
        "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man" - George Bernard Shaw
        youngerdryas 14y ago
        Well there are a lot of unreasonable men, but most aren't as reasonable as Aaron.
- betterunix 14y ago
  "Continuing to access MIT's network after MIT tried to get him to stop." I am not really seeing the moral argument there. MIT's network is designed to be open; a ban on a MAC address is, on such a network, little more than a polite request to not continue your access. Being rude by ignoring polite requests is not morally wrong. As for the law, all I can say is that there are an awful lot of criminals in this world if accessing a network that tries to block your computer is a crime. If the law criminalizes a common behavior, then the law itself is what is wrong. "behaving like a reasonable person" How conservative of you. I hear there are some lovely caves that people used to live in, until some unreasonable person had a "better" idea (I wonder if you would have made an argument for punishing him -- after all, not living in caves might disrupt the social order). "If I let you come apple picking in my orchard, you can't bring in a fruit truck and some day laborers and strip the trees bare." You are comparing apples to universal Turing machines. Your comparison is actually that bad -- you might as well be talking about the superbowl than Aaron Swartz. Aaron did not strip anyone or anything. He prevented nobody else from using JSTOR, nor did he stop anyone from reading the articles he downloaded, nor from using the network, nor from using the closet where he hid his laptop. He caused no measurable damage to anyone or anyone's property at any point in the JSTOR incident. "If JSTOR gives you permission to access journal articles for academic purposes..." ...then I should be free to use those articles for any purpose, because JSTOR has no claim to them or to the knowledge they contain. What gives JSTOR the moral right to tell anyone what they are allowed to do with the articles JSTOR provides to them? Sure, we have this thing called copyright that emerged from British attempts to censor books in the age of printing presses (I wonder if the Chinese firewall will lead to the creation of a similar law), but copyrights are in no way related to modern senses of morality or justice -- copyrights are just a way for the government to promote a particular class of business, and that is all they have ever been about in the United States. "Right" and "wrong" are no more relevant to copyright than they are to parking in a loading zone. "nobody needs it spelled out to them that this is the case." That is because prior to the attack on Aaron Swartz, nobody thought that automatically downloading scientific articles on a university network would ever warrant the attention of federal prosecutors. Now we know: don't you dare download articles using any software other than your web browser, and don't you dare do so if you ever suggested that those articles should be shared freely on the Internet, or else you'll face a long and expensive prosecution by the US government.
ScottBurson 14y ago
He was technically guilty of trespassing. (I know, the closet he was using was also reportedly in use by a homeless person, and MIT apparently looked the other way.) He did intend to distribute the articles, even if he didn't actually do so. I'm actually unsure what I think about this; some say "no harm, no foul", but others point out that we don't normally let people off the hook for crimes they were in the middle of committing just because they were prevented from completing them. Personally, I think that Swartz did not properly consider that even though the articles he intended to distribute were in the public domain, the scans of those articles he was downloading belonged to JSTOR. He also did not consider the impact of his actions on other JSTOR users at MIT. I don't think he should have served any jail time, but I do think a small slap on the wrist -- a small fine and some community service -- would have been in order. Felony charges, on the other hand, were way, way, way out of proportion.

rayiner 14y ago

> See, maybe I am just confused about the meanings of words here, but if Aaron did not access anything he was not supposed to access and did not destroy or damage anything, what exactly is it that he did wrong? Continuing to access MIT's network after MIT tried to get him to stop. > Who gets to define the upper bound on how many articles a person is supposed to access, or what counts as an "appropriate" or "acceptable" method of utilizing a JSTOR subscription? Something called behaving like a reasonable person. The scope of a license is implied by the nature of the license. If JSTOR gives you permission to access journal articles for academic purposes, it's outside the scope of the permission to download them wholesale with intent to distribute them. Nobody needs it spelled out to them that this is the case--it's obvious from the nature of the transaction. Disclaimer: I'm not justifying the prosecutor's actions. But it's possible to support what Aaron did and think the prosecutor overreached without degrading the argument to a hyper-technical and willfully blind defense of how he didn't actually do anything wrong.

youngerdryas 14y ago
I think you are being a little obtuse or don't know the case. Aaron was protesting the fact that publicly funded research papers were behind an administrative paywall even though they are ostensibly free.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Actions that are arguably justified in the specific case can still be wrong in the general case. In general, it's wrong to keep using a network after the administrator tries to get you to stop. It's wrong to download millions of documents for distribution when the scope of your access implied accessing a limited number for research. Activists break the law and they get punished for it. That's part and parcel of civil disobedience. The injustice here is not that Aaron was facing punishment--it's the magnitude of the punishment he was facing.
  - youngerdryas 14y ago
    I am arguing that he was behaving like a reasonable person because he was protesting an injustice. You may disagree but I think you are wrong.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      "Reasonable" is in reference to ordinary people. Was he behaving how an ordinary person would? No. He was an activist. Activists are almost by definition unreasonable.
      - mpyne 14y ago
        "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man" - George Bernard Shaw
        youngerdryas 14y ago
        Well there are a lot of unreasonable men, but most aren't as reasonable as Aaron.
betterunix 14y ago
"Continuing to access MIT's network after MIT tried to get him to stop." I am not really seeing the moral argument there. MIT's network is designed to be open; a ban on a MAC address is, on such a network, little more than a polite request to not continue your access. Being rude by ignoring polite requests is not morally wrong. As for the law, all I can say is that there are an awful lot of criminals in this world if accessing a network that tries to block your computer is a crime. If the law criminalizes a common behavior, then the law itself is what is wrong. "behaving like a reasonable person" How conservative of you. I hear there are some lovely caves that people used to live in, until some unreasonable person had a "better" idea (I wonder if you would have made an argument for punishing him -- after all, not living in caves might disrupt the social order). "If I let you come apple picking in my orchard, you can't bring in a fruit truck and some day laborers and strip the trees bare." You are comparing apples to universal Turing machines. Your comparison is actually that bad -- you might as well be talking about the superbowl than Aaron Swartz. Aaron did not strip anyone or anything. He prevented nobody else from using JSTOR, nor did he stop anyone from reading the articles he downloaded, nor from using the network, nor from using the closet where he hid his laptop. He caused no measurable damage to anyone or anyone's property at any point in the JSTOR incident. "If JSTOR gives you permission to access journal articles for academic purposes..." ...then I should be free to use those articles for any purpose, because JSTOR has no claim to them or to the knowledge they contain. What gives JSTOR the moral right to tell anyone what they are allowed to do with the articles JSTOR provides to them? Sure, we have this thing called copyright that emerged from British attempts to censor books in the age of printing presses (I wonder if the Chinese firewall will lead to the creation of a similar law), but copyrights are in no way related to modern senses of morality or justice -- copyrights are just a way for the government to promote a particular class of business, and that is all they have ever been about in the United States. "Right" and "wrong" are no more relevant to copyright than they are to parking in a loading zone. "nobody needs it spelled out to them that this is the case." That is because prior to the attack on Aaron Swartz, nobody thought that automatically downloading scientific articles on a university network would ever warrant the attention of federal prosecutors. Now we know: don't you dare download articles using any software other than your web browser, and don't you dare do so if you ever suggested that those articles should be shared freely on the Internet, or else you'll face a long and expensive prosecution by the US government.

ScottBurson 14y ago

He was technically guilty of trespassing. (I know, the closet he was using was also reportedly in use by a homeless person, and MIT apparently looked the other way.) He did intend to distribute the articles, even if he didn't actually do so. I'm actually unsure what I think about this; some say "no harm, no foul", but others point out that we don't normally let people off the hook for crimes they were in the middle of committing just because they were prevented from completing them. Personally, I think that Swartz did not properly consider that even though the articles he intended to distribute were in the public domain, the scans of those articles he was downloading belonged to JSTOR. He also did not consider the impact of his actions on other JSTOR users at MIT. I don't think he should have served any jail time, but I do think a small slap on the wrist -- a small fine and some community service -- would have been in order. Felony charges, on the other hand, were way, way, way out of proportion.