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The four lamest excuses in MIT’s report on Aaron Swartz
- dmix 13y agoMIT dropped the ball here but the prosecutor sounds absolutely evil by comparison and seems to have heavily influenced MIT's position of neutrality.
- chaostheory 13y agoIt doesn't sound like MIT was really neutral. http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/01/15/humanity-deficit/bj8oThPDwzgxBSHQt3tyKI/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/01/15/humanity-deficit... "Marty Weinberg, who took the case over from Good, said he nearly negotiated a plea bargain in which Swartz would not serve any time. He said JSTOR signed off on it, but MIT would not. 'There were subsets of the MIT community who were profoundly in support of Aaron,' Weinberg said. That support did not override institutional interests."
- uhno 13y agoNot signing off on the plea bargain is precisely the definition of remaining neutral: not influencing the proceedings.
- chaostheory 13y agoFirst you shouldn't have to hide under a new throw away account. Second, since MIT initiated the proceedings I wouldn't call that neutral either.
- mayanksinghal 13y agoGiven the level of adjectives and expletives that I have seen being used for anyone who has made even the slightest of remarks that don't aligned perfectly with the popular stand here, I can understand uhno's stance of saying stuff from a new account. And yes, it doesn't seem that MIT was neutral on this case. But I guess dropping the case wouldn't have been a neutral stance either.
- chaostheory 13y agoI think you're confusing HN with reddit. While the comment quality may have gone down a bit from the influx of new users, most people on HN still tend to be courteous. Out of all the comments in multiple stories, I've only seen about 5 bad words give or take which is pretty good considering that a lot of people are probably furious.
- mpyne 13y agoYes, I think the conversation is definitely tamer than the last time we were discussing aaronsw or MIT. Of course I can be brave and eat downvotes when necessary without a throwaway as I never get to meet, or work with, anyone here IRL who might punch me in the face. But I have to say that even my non-conforming comments are usually left alone by downvoters, as long as I take pains to explain my disagreement.
- larrys 13y ago"First you shouldn't have to hide under a new throw away account." But you don't know who "you" is so how can you judge that they don't want to hide under a throwaway account? What if "you" is <person who HN fawns over> or <CEO of HN's latest darling> or <someone nearing the karma point where you get to downvote> or <someone who's feelings are more easily bruised> (Karmaphiliac?) Would be a nice feature to be able to post a comment which isn't linked to your handle w/o doing a throwaway. Said feature only available above a certain karma level of course. Add: Or <someone who doesn't want to upset an important co-worker, boss or partner/spouse that reads HN who views things differently>
- chaostheory 13y agoGoing off-subject, I feel that one of the main reasons that HN is really civil compared to other social sites is that not many long standing HN users use throw-aways. If using throw-aways becomes more common, I feel that the comment quality will continue suffer even more, so I'm inclined to call it out when I see it.
- pdonis 13y agosince MIT initiated the proceedings I wouldn't call that neutral either. MIT initiated a process to find out who the laptop they found belonged to. MIT did not initiate any legal proceedings, and did not tell anyone that they were in favor of doing so.
- chaostheory 13y agoCombined with Jstor's actions, MIT could have stopped this circus at anytime. They didn't.
- pdonis 13y agoMIT could have stopped this circus at anytime. The report gives plenty of evidence that doesn't support that contention. It looks to me like the prosecution didn't care what MIT or JSTOR thought.
- chaostheory 13y agoYes but it would probably weaken the prosecution's case at the very least.
- pdonis 13y agoit would probably weaken the prosecution's case at the very least I can see one thing that would have weakened the prosecution's case: if MIT had been able to say definitely that Swartz's access to the MIT network was authorized. However, I'm not sure MIT could have said that definitely.
- sillysaurus 13y agoPutting him behind bars for downloading bits is ludicrous, and history will look back on us as living in some sort of dark ages. Just had to get that out of my system.
- v1tyaz 13y ago>Putting him behind bars for downloading bits is ludicrous Unless it's your data that's being downloaded unlawfully, right?
- sillysaurus 13y agoEven then. In fact, especially then. I wouldn't be able to stomach taking away even one month of someone's life for words that I wrote. I'm writing a book. I plan on putting it on piratebay myself. I'll have an option for people to pay me if they so choose.
- grauniad 13y agoWait until you're perhaps older, with children to feed, bills to pay. maybe employees or shareholders that need to see a return.
- chaostheory 13y agoWell in this case, it's publicly funded research data. US citizens should have easy access to this data since we already paid for it. So yes. It is our data. "JSTOR told the Chronicle that each and every year, they turn away 150 million attempts to gain access to articles."
- v1tyaz 13y agoThen tell your government to either provide it to the public themselves, or pay someone else to provide it to the public. Either way, funding one half of something and then demanding the rest is ridiculous.
- 13y ago
- mitmatt 13y agoFrom http://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pdf http://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pd..., Appendix 14, Question 35: > 35. What influence, if any, did MIT exercise or could it have exercised in the plea negotiations? Did MIT really scuttle a plea bargain with no prison time? > Answer: MIT played no role in any plea negotiations related to the Aaron Swartz case. For a description of these negotiations, please see the Report, section II.B.2 The federal prosecution. For a description of MIT’s position regarding the government’s prosecution, please see Part III MIT’s Response to the Prosecution. It is unclear whether MIT could have exercised influence on the plea bargain. Please see in particular section III.A.2 MIT is informed about the prosecution; and section III.C.3 MIT’s outside counsel speaks with the lead prosecutor. What would it mean for MIT to "sign off" on a plea bargain? The prosecutor alone was pressing criminal charges; MIT was not pressing any civil charges and it was not involved in the proceedings.
- chaostheory 13y agoI really don't know since MIT has objected to FOIA requests in Aaron's case. A lot of details are missing. Personally I trust Aaron's lawyers more than MIT's administration.
- mitmatt 13y agoIf by "objected to FOIA requests" you mean "filed a motion, just like JSTOR, proposing the ability review and suggest redactions to the requested documents over a window of five days for the explicit purpose of ensuring the privacy and safety of its employees, especially in light of the threatening communications it has received". MIT never proposed preventing the documents from being released. http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N29/swartz/MIT-motion.pdf http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N29/swartz/MIT-motion.pdf http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N29/swartz.html http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N29/swartz.html But based on your comments in the other threads, I'm not sure you're interested in the actual facts...
- chaostheory 13y ago> MIT never proposed preventing the documents from being released. I'm not sure you're interested in the actual facts Ok they blocked and prevented FOIA access to documents until Aug 23. What I posted wasn't inaccurate. If what I posted before weren't facts, maybe you should dispute them instead just making one generalized statement. I've been wrong before, and I don't mind being proven wrong.
- latj 13y agoThe report seems to be saying "MIT didnt interfere", "MIT didnt get involved", "MIT didnt do anything wrong". Who is this MIT? Why dont we just talk about human beings and address them by the names they are known by.
- pdonis 13y ago"MIT didnt do anything wrong". The report doesn't really say that. It says MIT did nothing illegal and acted prudently, but it doesn't say that MIT couldn't have done better. Item 4 in the introduction (p. 14) specifically says MIT could have done better. Why dont we just talk about human beings and address them by the names they are known by. The report explains why: to protect the privacy of the people involved. It's up to MIT to take whatever action might be warranted involving those people; the public doesn't need to know their names. (The report also points out that the names of key people at MIT who were involved are already matters of public record since they appear in court documents; but that there is no reason to further erode those people's privacy.)
- zck 13y agoThis article really needs more evidence supporting its views. Just restating the claims of the report isn't enough. For example, the third claim is that MIT claims no one cared until aaronsw's suicide. Citing protests by students, open letters by faculty, or articles by alumni would sufficiently refute the report, which is DH5^1. As it stands, this article is just contradicting, which is DH3, and much less convincing. [1]http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
- aidenn0 13y agoI don't think they are even doing a DH3; they aren't claiming that MIT is lying. I think it is rather: "Here are excuses offered up by MIT for its behavior, even assuming they are true, it's lame"
- darkarmani 13y agoThat would be true if we were all uneducated about the issue, but that fact nearly everyone can agree that those claims are ridiculous means adding piles of proof would only bloat the article. For example, what would you have them refute of this statement? "Prosecutors said that Swartz bringing MIT personnel into hearings and trials was like re-victimizing a rape survivor."
- Qantourisc 13y agoMoral of the story DO NOT SUE YOUR STUDENTS. For crying out lout TALK with them first. The other lesson is we can all trust the USA to not kill a person (indirectly and unwillingly but still dead non the less) when people commit minor crimes, and don't even cause significant financial losses.