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This article makes little sense to me. Really, civil rights activists shouldn't have fought going to jail over having sat at the front of the bus? Letting the g

This article makes little sense to me. Really, civil rights activists shouldn't have fought going to jail over having sat at the front of the bus? Letting the government run them over was the right thing to do? No, the answer is to fight in any venue you can, and the court is a perfectly reasonable one to do it in; that's a major way that laws and their interpretations get changed. In fact, an activist defending herself in court is exactly how buses eventually got desegregated.[1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browder_v._Gayle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browder_v._Gayle Questions of strategy aside, Byrne is a little too quick to buy the government's story that a crime was actually committed, and much too loose with the words "theft" and "hacking", and of course the stuff about "our security" is nonsense. Swartz could not, should not have expected to go to jail for what he did. That the civil rights protesters expected and received jail time for straightforward violations of law may make them more powerful heros in Byrne's eyes, and that's fair enough (leaving the importance of their respective causes aside -- I'm not the one making this comparison). No one is claiming Swartz is today's Rosa Parks. But it doesn't make Swartz's actions less just and his persecution less unjust.

peejaybee 14y ago
Damn right. I've always rejected the notion that civil disobedience precludes defending yourself in court, especially when the authorities come at you with felony charges. It's a little too convenient for the authorities, in my opinion.
unreal37 14y ago
No I think his point was that Swartz was trying to "get away with it" in his actions during the MIT incident (hiding his face from the cameras, etc), and wasn't prepared to be caught. Clearly, he wasn't willing to plead guilty or do any jail time. In most of the other examples (Pentagon Papers, Bus desegregation), the people were prepared to be caught and wanted to highlight the immorality of the law. They weren't sneaking onto the bus.
- popee 14y ago
  Get away with what? Isn't MIT network open and isn't JSTOR allowing everyone from that network to download articles? I'm really not informed about this, so please inform me. On the other side it looks like witch hunt from the start.
  - unreal37 14y ago
    So I'm paraphrasing David Byrne's argument here. But when Rosa Parks sat down on the bus that day, she was sitting in the black section. When the white section filled up, she was asked to move back some more and she refused. The police were called. They came and arrested her. She understood during this whole time that she would face prosecution and punishment, but she was doing what she believed was right. She fought the punishment in a very public way, and she became a symbol of the overall struggle through that. Mr Swartz on the other hand was trying to be anonymous about his actions while he was doing them. Even though he was affiliated with Harvard and Harvard had access to JSTOR, but traveled to MIT specifically to use their network for this. He started taking the documents by WiFi, and when that was blocked, he found a closet in the basement to plug his laptop and external hard drive into. His program was designed to download the document slowly, to avoid being so obvious to be caught. He snuck in and out of MIT each day to swap hard drives, sometimes hiding his face from cameras. Much of what he did during this time was trying to avoid being caught. When caught, he gave back the data immediately and agreed never to release it. He was quiet about his legal struggle over the 2 years, not really pounding the drum to try to get attention to the injustice. Didn't blog about the case specifics, didn't do media interviews. Apparently he was trying to keep quiet about it not to upset the prosecutor. He was trying to convince prosecutors to drop the case entirely. It's a subtle point perhaps, but Byrne is saying Swartz was not prepared for the consequences of his actions whereas other people fighting injustice usually are. After his arrest, he was not fighting publicly to rally support for what he did, but rather just trying everything he could to avoid prosecution. I wonder if Swartz would have said he regretted the whole JSTOR incident before he died. Certainly Rosa Parks would not have regretted refusing to move seats, even if she landed in jail from it.
    - 14y ago

peejaybee 14y ago

Damn right. I've always rejected the notion that civil disobedience precludes defending yourself in court, especially when the authorities come at you with felony charges. It's a little too convenient for the authorities, in my opinion.

unreal37 14y ago

No I think his point was that Swartz was trying to "get away with it" in his actions during the MIT incident (hiding his face from the cameras, etc), and wasn't prepared to be caught. Clearly, he wasn't willing to plead guilty or do any jail time. In most of the other examples (Pentagon Papers, Bus desegregation), the people were prepared to be caught and wanted to highlight the immorality of the law. They weren't sneaking onto the bus.

popee 14y ago
Get away with what? Isn't MIT network open and isn't JSTOR allowing everyone from that network to download articles? I'm really not informed about this, so please inform me. On the other side it looks like witch hunt from the start.
- unreal37 14y ago
  So I'm paraphrasing David Byrne's argument here. But when Rosa Parks sat down on the bus that day, she was sitting in the black section. When the white section filled up, she was asked to move back some more and she refused. The police were called. They came and arrested her. She understood during this whole time that she would face prosecution and punishment, but she was doing what she believed was right. She fought the punishment in a very public way, and she became a symbol of the overall struggle through that. Mr Swartz on the other hand was trying to be anonymous about his actions while he was doing them. Even though he was affiliated with Harvard and Harvard had access to JSTOR, but traveled to MIT specifically to use their network for this. He started taking the documents by WiFi, and when that was blocked, he found a closet in the basement to plug his laptop and external hard drive into. His program was designed to download the document slowly, to avoid being so obvious to be caught. He snuck in and out of MIT each day to swap hard drives, sometimes hiding his face from cameras. Much of what he did during this time was trying to avoid being caught. When caught, he gave back the data immediately and agreed never to release it. He was quiet about his legal struggle over the 2 years, not really pounding the drum to try to get attention to the injustice. Didn't blog about the case specifics, didn't do media interviews. Apparently he was trying to keep quiet about it not to upset the prosecutor. He was trying to convince prosecutors to drop the case entirely. It's a subtle point perhaps, but Byrne is saying Swartz was not prepared for the consequences of his actions whereas other people fighting injustice usually are. After his arrest, he was not fighting publicly to rally support for what he did, but rather just trying everything he could to avoid prosecution. I wonder if Swartz would have said he regretted the whole JSTOR incident before he died. Certainly Rosa Parks would not have regretted refusing to move seats, even if she landed in jail from it.
  - 14y ago