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Rather, he gained access to a network closet and hid his identity as he attached his laptop to a switch. He then proceeded to violate some TOS that everyone agr

by nsfmc 14y ago

Rather, he gained access to a network closet and hid his identity as he attached his laptop to a switch. He then proceeded to violate some TOS that everyone agrees nobody cares about. So let's say somebody steps into your office, opens your network closet and leaves a laptop there overnight. You don't know who it is and you see it sucking down some data from some service you incidentally pay for. Can you honestly tell me that when you discover the laptop doesn't belong to anybody in your office, you'll just step out the closet and let it continue doing it's thing while you wait for the owner to return? It's clear nobody cares about JSTOR, what Byrne is bringing up vis-a-vis historical precedents of civil disobedience and closes with is that when you find the laptop, your real worry isn't about JSTOR's feelings, it's the subterfuge. Why it's 'complicated' and 'sloppy' is because you now have to divorce your feelings about your network's violation from your ambivalence to casual TOS violation, which is hard.

mattvanhorn 14y ago
If the closet was off-limits, then the charge should have been a simple trespassing, given that doing the same thing from a publicly accessible ethernet socket would have been completely legal. He was only using the closet, because MIT was trying to singlehandedly change the terms of access to to the database to prevent the hoovering up of the info. It's like getting arrested at a lunch buffet for eating too fast, or too much.
- nsfmc 14y ago
  my point being that 'simple trespassing' + tos violation is a muddy issue whereas simply violating a tos is an easy-to-parse flavor of civil disobedience. more to the point, it's like getting arrested by a usda strike force at a buffet for eating in the kitchen after being told by the manager to that you're moving through the line too quickly. I agree that this is a disproportionate punishment, but... why are you in the kitchen again? I would prefer that we only argue about TOS violations and the ethics of open-access journals, but instead we have to preface everything with "but look, he was only criminally trespassing because MIT changed their network access policy for community members" and that caveat by its very nature weakens the discourse around open-access journals, silly terms of service and so on. You're right that the behavior on some level is 'technically correct' but it doesn't change Byrne's point that civil disobedience is most effective when the execution (and 'crime' committed) is unambiguous and focused.

by nsfmc 14y ago

mattvanhorn 14y ago

If the closet was off-limits, then the charge should have been a simple trespassing, given that doing the same thing from a publicly accessible ethernet socket would have been completely legal. He was only using the closet, because MIT was trying to singlehandedly change the terms of access to to the database to prevent the hoovering up of the info. It's like getting arrested at a lunch buffet for eating too fast, or too much.

nsfmc 14y ago
my point being that 'simple trespassing' + tos violation is a muddy issue whereas simply violating a tos is an easy-to-parse flavor of civil disobedience. more to the point, it's like getting arrested by a usda strike force at a buffet for eating in the kitchen after being told by the manager to that you're moving through the line too quickly. I agree that this is a disproportionate punishment, but... why are you in the kitchen again? I would prefer that we only argue about TOS violations and the ethics of open-access journals, but instead we have to preface everything with "but look, he was only criminally trespassing because MIT changed their network access policy for community members" and that caveat by its very nature weakens the discourse around open-access journals, silly terms of service and so on. You're right that the behavior on some level is 'technically correct' but it doesn't change Byrne's point that civil disobedience is most effective when the execution (and 'crime' committed) is unambiguous and focused.