5 ms·

What about Aaron Swartz? He essentially did the same exact thing to the computers at MIT and he is somehow a freedom fighter when someone doing the same thing

What about Aaron Swartz? He essentially did the same exact thing to the computers at MIT and he is somehow a freedom fighter when someone doing the same thing to the osvdb website is considered "unethical". This is straight from the open security foundation website: "We believe that security information and services should be easily accessible for all who have the need for such information and services"

codezero 12y ago
While your sentiment is reasonable, I think the main difference here is that McAfee and others mentioned host their own private vuln databases and do not share them with anyone, so they were scraping to increase their own private resources for commercial use. Aaron was scraping private resources to share publicly.
- jamra 12y ago
  More than that, he was scraping private resources that were freely populated. He was not robbing content creators of their money. He was circumventing a paywall to what should be free data.
  - web007 12y ago
    Is OSVDB any different? "Open Source" Vulnerability Database implies openness. The maintainers are trying to implement a paywall. I feel bad for OSVDB from a sysadmin perspective, but if Aaron's case was so polarizing for essentially the same thing, why isn't everyone jumping on the Hate Train here?
  - npizzolato 12y ago
    That's quite the mental leap. He was circumventing a paywall, but that's not robbing anyone of money because it should have been free in the first place? Well, it wasn't free, even if you think you it should be. Thus the paywall.
    - codezero 12y ago
      To that point, the people who submitted to the journal did so knowing that it costs money to access, it wasn't as if they were tricked into contributing to a private pay-wall journal.
      - Blahah 12y ago
        For most scientists there isn't another system, and certainly when the system was established nobody was envisaging a time when publishers would make hundreds of % markup on every access of a paper. The prices reflect print publishing costs and the historical lack of a cheap distribution system like the internet. Now we have a hangover where people's careers are judged on their ability to publish in high-impact journals, all of which charge several thousand pounds extra to make the paper Open Access. So we're not tricked, but we do it under duress. The system is changing, Aaron helped.
    - jsight 12y ago
      Some of the content on JSTOR was actually public domain content. At the time, JSTOR did not make this publicly available. It is definitely debatable to consider the downloading and distribution of public domain material to be robbery. Since then, JSTOR has released these documents freely themselves[1]. They have also stated that this was their intention all along. [1] http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor%E2%80%93free-access-early-journal-content-and-serving-%E2%80%9Cunaffiliated%E2%80%9D-users http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor%E2%80%93free-access-early-...
pmorici 12y ago
You might argue the difference is that the information that Aaron was after was already paid for with public money. The OSVDB sounds like it is a bunch of people who aren't otherwise paid to maintain this information.
- hueving 12y ago
  >You might argue the difference is that the information that Aaron was after was already paid for with public money. This is naive. Just because research is backed by public money doesn't mean the publications are automatically free to the public. If your argument was valid, you could use it to demand access to the emails of every FBI employee. Just because something is funded by the public doesn't automatically make every component of it open to the public.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_%28United_States%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_%28U... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_in_the_Sunshine_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_in_the_Sunshine_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Act
    - hueving 12y ago
      Have to file a foia request that could take years and be denied isn't exactly open.

codezero 12y ago

While your sentiment is reasonable, I think the main difference here is that McAfee and others mentioned host their own private vuln databases and do not share them with anyone, so they were scraping to increase their own private resources for commercial use. Aaron was scraping private resources to share publicly.

jamra 12y ago
More than that, he was scraping private resources that were freely populated. He was not robbing content creators of their money. He was circumventing a paywall to what should be free data.
- web007 12y ago
  Is OSVDB any different? "Open Source" Vulnerability Database implies openness. The maintainers are trying to implement a paywall. I feel bad for OSVDB from a sysadmin perspective, but if Aaron's case was so polarizing for essentially the same thing, why isn't everyone jumping on the Hate Train here?
- npizzolato 12y ago
  That's quite the mental leap. He was circumventing a paywall, but that's not robbing anyone of money because it should have been free in the first place? Well, it wasn't free, even if you think you it should be. Thus the paywall.
  - codezero 12y ago
    To that point, the people who submitted to the journal did so knowing that it costs money to access, it wasn't as if they were tricked into contributing to a private pay-wall journal.
    - Blahah 12y ago
      For most scientists there isn't another system, and certainly when the system was established nobody was envisaging a time when publishers would make hundreds of % markup on every access of a paper. The prices reflect print publishing costs and the historical lack of a cheap distribution system like the internet. Now we have a hangover where people's careers are judged on their ability to publish in high-impact journals, all of which charge several thousand pounds extra to make the paper Open Access. So we're not tricked, but we do it under duress. The system is changing, Aaron helped.
  - jsight 12y ago
    Some of the content on JSTOR was actually public domain content. At the time, JSTOR did not make this publicly available. It is definitely debatable to consider the downloading and distribution of public domain material to be robbery. Since then, JSTOR has released these documents freely themselves[1]. They have also stated that this was their intention all along. [1] http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor%E2%80%93free-access-early-journal-content-and-serving-%E2%80%9Cunaffiliated%E2%80%9D-users http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor%E2%80%93free-access-early-...

pmorici 12y ago

You might argue the difference is that the information that Aaron was after was already paid for with public money. The OSVDB sounds like it is a bunch of people who aren't otherwise paid to maintain this information.

hueving 12y ago
>You might argue the difference is that the information that Aaron was after was already paid for with public money. This is naive. Just because research is backed by public money doesn't mean the publications are automatically free to the public. If your argument was valid, you could use it to demand access to the emails of every FBI employee. Just because something is funded by the public doesn't automatically make every component of it open to the public.
- wpietri 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_%28United_States%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_%28U... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_in_the_Sunshine_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_in_the_Sunshine_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Act
  - hueving 12y ago
    Have to file a foia request that could take years and be denied isn't exactly open.