9 ms·

The Life And Death Of 'The Internet's Own Boy'

157 points by soasme 12y ago

mathattack 12y ago
I hate to say it, but it's hard to read articles about him any more. I get so pissed off that it becomes counterproductive.
- MBCook 12y ago
  It's nice this exists but I wonder if it's just preaching to the choir. The issues seem abstract and esoteric enough that I doubt the documentary will draw in many people who weren't already vaguely familiar with the subject. It's not something that's going to be easy for people to understand and relate to like Supersize Me. Personally I'm in the same bucket as you. I read plenty about it when it was happening, I'm not sure that anything I'd learn would be worth the time and frustration of re-hearing a story I already know.
  - peterwiese 12y ago
    i thought the same. then i watched it. it's really well-made and you learn much more about aaron than by the media coverage it received way back when. it's on youtube, so you don't even have to pay/torrent/whatever it.
- pixelmonkey 12y ago
  Lawrence Lessig, who is featured in this documentary, recently completed his ambitious $5M fundraising for the MayDay PAC on July 4. When they hit this fundraising goal, he tweeted, "That's it. We did it. For US. For @aaronsw. Tears, and sleep, and endless thanks. #MayDayPAC" (https://twitter.com/lessig/status/485233905545400321 https://twitter.com/lessig/status/485233905545400321). "For @aaronsw." Lessig says in the documentary that it was a conversation with @aaronsw a few years back that convinced him to move on from issues of copyright and into "root issues" in politics, like campaign finance and corruption. MayDay may not succeed, but it has already raised $5M and Lessig has a good track record for achieving change, so one must assume something positive will come out of it. Though I identify with your anger, I think you can channel it positively. As RFK said, "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
  - jacobolus 12y ago
    > Lessig has a good track record for achieving change Examples?
    - jhart3333 12y ago
      Really? You're a seasoned follower of Hacker News and you don't know who Lawrence Lessig is and what he's done?
    - wcarss 12y ago
      One significant work was the founding of the Creative Commons in 2001, whose licenses provide an alternative to traditional "all right reserved" copyright schemes, now applied to hundreds of millions of works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
paulhauggis 12y ago
"It's speculated that what he might have been doing is downloading these articles to analyze them for corporate funding — corruption, essentially — that led to biased results in research, particularly in the area of climate change." This is complete speculation. Why include this in the article other to sway a certain demographic to view you in a favorable light? I know the HN community treats him like some kind if freedom of information hero, but I don't. He illegally copied information that he didn't own..and then cracked when the authorities went after him. He made millions of dollars from Reddit, he should have had plenty of money to take care of any mental health issues he had.
- MBCook 12y ago
  I've got to say I've never seen that theory before, and people seem to be calling it out in the NPR comments as baseless speculation as well. > [H]e should have had plenty of money to take care of any mental health issues he had Sadly mental health doesn't work this way. Many people refuse to admit they may have a problem or to seek treatment for it. Of course we don't know how much of a role his (alleged?) mental health issues played in all of this.
  - droithomme 12y ago
    According to Ars Technica's interview with Swartz asking why he downloaded the JSTOR documents, he referenced his bio in the Demand Progress statement, which notes that "in conjunction with Shireen Barday, he downloaded and analyzed 441,170 law review articles to determine the source of their funding; the results were published in the Stanford Law Review. From 2010-11, he researched these topics as a Fellow at the Harvard Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption." http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/reddit-founder-arrested-for-excessive-jstor-downloads/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/reddit-founder-ar... Here is the result of his research: http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/punitive-damages-remunerated-research-and-legal-profession http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/punitive-dama... It found that there was extensive corruption in law journal publications which were often commissioned for specific upcoming cases. That research work led to his position as Harvard Fellow continuing that specific work of analyzing large journal datasets to find corruption. That is why he downloaded the journals - to continue his research into analyzing large datasets to find connections that indicate corruption. There can be no doubt that many people were unhappy about the corruption in the legal industry which he uncovered using his analysis methods. He was continuing that research on a broader scale, which he plainly indicates in his response to Ars Technica and is substantiated by his biographical, research and publication history. As a Harvard Fellow, and as a MIT visitor, and as the son of a MIT employee visiting, he has the right to access those articles, and MIT paid for that access to JSTOR, which JSTOR had no legitimate right to withhold from a credentialed researcher with valid access. He only had to circumvent anything because JSTOR implemented access countermeasures which were contrary to their access agreement with MIT. His circumvention was only for the purpose of obtaining the access he was legally entitled to, and thus was valid. The arguments that he was planning to redistribute articles are without merit and are nothing more than propaganda spread by the criminals at the Justice Department who targeted him for destruction. He was someone who had already revealed systematic corruption in their legal system and published about their corruption in Stanford Law Journal.
tptacek 12y ago
Two years into his legal battle with federal government, Swartz faced a maximum penalty 35 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines. No, he didn't. You can only arrive at that number by ignoring the way the federal sentencing system works, because it's based on taking the maximum penalty for any count of the offense charged and multiplying it by the total number of every count. In reality, like charges group --- you are typically sentenced based on a single count, usually the most severe of the counts. Prosecutors threatened Swartz not with 35 years but with 7. But 7 years is an equally ludicrous number for the actual offenses charged, which were non-remunerative, non-destructive, and applied to a first-time defendant. Which may be why prosecutors offered Swartz a plea deal with a custodial sentence just several months long. Swartz's own lawyer, writing after Swartz's tragic death, believed that Swartz could have gone to trial, lost and been found guilty, and still not served a custodial sentence. Not implausible for a first-time offender who didn't try to make a cent from his offense. Reporters parrot these numbers because the DOJ supplies them in press releases. DOJ is lying when it makes these outlandish claims, but deception on the part of prosecutors isn't an excuse for reporters not to talk to lawyers before amplifying those lies in the press. As usual, you can count on Popehat --- a blog run by a former federal prosecutor turned civil rights attorney --- for a pretty excellent summary of how the system actually works: http://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ http://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence... (If you're interested, here's the sentencing guidelines for 18 USC 1030: http://books.google.com/books?id=nZu3w1y4fkYC&pg=PA299&lpg=PA299&dq=guideline+2Q2.1&source=bl&ots=VCrUGGT_Dr&sig=xdBB4bzMj2BkS9S8_I5oLgCAgtM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FZ0RUeHPGoLFigKi0YGYAw&sqi=2&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=computer%202b1.1&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=nZu3w1y4fkYC&pg=PA299&lpg=P...)
- droithomme 12y ago
  As you have already seen many times before before, here is the actual statement released by the US Prosecutor's Office. http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.html http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.... > AARON SWARTZ, 24, was charged in an indictment with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. If convicted on these charges, SWARTZ faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million. Key Point: According to the actual documented statement released by the federal prosecutor, a statement which is still available on www.justice.gov, Swartz faced 35 years in prison and a one million dollar fine if convicted. These are well known, easily verifiable, and indisputable facts. When NPR stated that "Swartz faced a maximum penalty 35 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines" they were directly citing actual statements made by the federal prosecutor's office. The federal prosecutor's office stated "SWARTZ faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million." That is what they said. It is not false. It is not an exaggeration. NPR is citing exactly what the prosecutor actually said.
sparkzilla 12y ago
Aaron Swartz Timeline: http://newslines.org/aaron-swartz/ http://newslines.org/aaron-swartz/
epx 12y ago
Swartz, Manning and Snowden: heroes of our time. How many decades until history books mention them?
- hueving 12y ago
  I could perhaps see Snowden recognized, but what did the other two do for society that was so heroic?
  - TheBiv 12y ago
    It's hard to take your comment at face value, but I'll assume you are being genuine. Aaron Swartz gave us granularity to what the term "hacker" should be used for, when it comes to malicious intent. It was likely possible for lawyers to argue that anyone who used a computer to download something could been seen as having malicious intent. However Aaron's case has proven that you have to look at what was being downloaded, how and why before you can paint a broad brush such as malicious intent.
    - exelius 12y ago
      I don't disagree that Swartz was a victim of a ludicrously overzealous justice system, but I wouldn't call him a hero. What he did was illegal and he knew it was illegal when he did it. You can argue that it was a bad law and he was practicing civil disobedience, but I don't think it was that either (a big part of traditional civil disobedience is to draw the process out as long and as loudly as possible, then proudly serve the time.) Maybe it started out as civil disobedience, then depression kicked in and he felt hopeless and took his own life. It's hard to say, and honestly I'm sick of the post-mortem psychoanalysis of a kid who was trying to make sense of his life (as we all were at that age). But either way, Swartz was not a mere victim of circumstance; he made choices that painted a target on his back, malicious intent or no.
  - peterwiese 12y ago
    Well you know, when he was like 12-15 he co-drafted the first rss spec as well as the first spec for the creative commons licences. I don't know what you did at that age, but I mainly played Counter Strike and programmed clan websites...
thinkcomp 12y ago
Anyone who is interested in helping support one of the causes that Aaron was interested in--the opening of public court records to the public--should participate in Operation Asymptote. It requires a U.S. credit or debit card, but costs nothing. http://www.plainsite.org/asymptote/ http://www.plainsite.org/asymptote/ We also need help finishing an IE version of RECAP (http://www.recapthelaw.org http://www.recapthelaw.org, started by Stephen Schultze, profiled in the movie). See: https://github.com/yinglei/recap-ie https://github.com/yinglei/recap-ie Law firms use IE. They download tons of legal documents. If we can get RECAP working on IE, we can make a pretty big dent in PACER.
- thaumaturgy 12y ago
  I think it's fantastic that you've continued the technical approach to one of the problems Aaron wanted to solve. Nice, I'll be joining Operation Asymptote shortly. You're also the only person in this thread so far with a technical comment, so there's that.
wavesum 12y ago
I don't want to come off as a folio hat but what is the actual evidence of the suicide? Has any of this stuff been made public?
- iterationx 12y ago
  The government says suicide and everyone simply believes it. shakes head
  - Tomte 12y ago
    No, the girlfriend and family say it was suicide.
    - wavesum 12y ago
      Which one of the girlfriends? Can you link to an article? Does she mention evidence? Did he leave a message or a note or anything?

157 points by soasme 12y ago

I hate to say it, but it's hard to read articles about him any more. I get so pissed off that it becomes counterproductive.

MBCook 12y ago
It's nice this exists but I wonder if it's just preaching to the choir. The issues seem abstract and esoteric enough that I doubt the documentary will draw in many people who weren't already vaguely familiar with the subject. It's not something that's going to be easy for people to understand and relate to like Supersize Me. Personally I'm in the same bucket as you. I read plenty about it when it was happening, I'm not sure that anything I'd learn would be worth the time and frustration of re-hearing a story I already know.
- peterwiese 12y ago
  i thought the same. then i watched it. it's really well-made and you learn much more about aaron than by the media coverage it received way back when. it's on youtube, so you don't even have to pay/torrent/whatever it.
pixelmonkey 12y ago
Lawrence Lessig, who is featured in this documentary, recently completed his ambitious $5M fundraising for the MayDay PAC on July 4. When they hit this fundraising goal, he tweeted, "That's it. We did it. For US. For @aaronsw. Tears, and sleep, and endless thanks. #MayDayPAC" (https://twitter.com/lessig/status/485233905545400321 https://twitter.com/lessig/status/485233905545400321). "For @aaronsw." Lessig says in the documentary that it was a conversation with @aaronsw a few years back that convinced him to move on from issues of copyright and into "root issues" in politics, like campaign finance and corruption. MayDay may not succeed, but it has already raised $5M and Lessig has a good track record for achieving change, so one must assume something positive will come out of it. Though I identify with your anger, I think you can channel it positively. As RFK said, "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
- jacobolus 12y ago
  > Lessig has a good track record for achieving change Examples?
  - jhart3333 12y ago
    Really? You're a seasoned follower of Hacker News and you don't know who Lawrence Lessig is and what he's done?
  - wcarss 12y ago
    One significant work was the founding of the Creative Commons in 2001, whose licenses provide an alternative to traditional "all right reserved" copyright schemes, now applied to hundreds of millions of works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

paulhauggis 12y ago

"It's speculated that what he might have been doing is downloading these articles to analyze them for corporate funding — corruption, essentially — that led to biased results in research, particularly in the area of climate change." This is complete speculation. Why include this in the article other to sway a certain demographic to view you in a favorable light? I know the HN community treats him like some kind if freedom of information hero, but I don't. He illegally copied information that he didn't own..and then cracked when the authorities went after him. He made millions of dollars from Reddit, he should have had plenty of money to take care of any mental health issues he had.

MBCook 12y ago
I've got to say I've never seen that theory before, and people seem to be calling it out in the NPR comments as baseless speculation as well. > [H]e should have had plenty of money to take care of any mental health issues he had Sadly mental health doesn't work this way. Many people refuse to admit they may have a problem or to seek treatment for it. Of course we don't know how much of a role his (alleged?) mental health issues played in all of this.
- droithomme 12y ago
  According to Ars Technica's interview with Swartz asking why he downloaded the JSTOR documents, he referenced his bio in the Demand Progress statement, which notes that "in conjunction with Shireen Barday, he downloaded and analyzed 441,170 law review articles to determine the source of their funding; the results were published in the Stanford Law Review. From 2010-11, he researched these topics as a Fellow at the Harvard Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption." http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/reddit-founder-arrested-for-excessive-jstor-downloads/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/reddit-founder-ar... Here is the result of his research: http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/punitive-damages-remunerated-research-and-legal-profession http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/punitive-dama... It found that there was extensive corruption in law journal publications which were often commissioned for specific upcoming cases. That research work led to his position as Harvard Fellow continuing that specific work of analyzing large journal datasets to find corruption. That is why he downloaded the journals - to continue his research into analyzing large datasets to find connections that indicate corruption. There can be no doubt that many people were unhappy about the corruption in the legal industry which he uncovered using his analysis methods. He was continuing that research on a broader scale, which he plainly indicates in his response to Ars Technica and is substantiated by his biographical, research and publication history. As a Harvard Fellow, and as a MIT visitor, and as the son of a MIT employee visiting, he has the right to access those articles, and MIT paid for that access to JSTOR, which JSTOR had no legitimate right to withhold from a credentialed researcher with valid access. He only had to circumvent anything because JSTOR implemented access countermeasures which were contrary to their access agreement with MIT. His circumvention was only for the purpose of obtaining the access he was legally entitled to, and thus was valid. The arguments that he was planning to redistribute articles are without merit and are nothing more than propaganda spread by the criminals at the Justice Department who targeted him for destruction. He was someone who had already revealed systematic corruption in their legal system and published about their corruption in Stanford Law Journal.

tptacek 12y ago

Two years into his legal battle with federal government, Swartz faced a maximum penalty 35 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines. No, he didn't. You can only arrive at that number by ignoring the way the federal sentencing system works, because it's based on taking the maximum penalty for any count of the offense charged and multiplying it by the total number of every count. In reality, like charges group --- you are typically sentenced based on a single count, usually the most severe of the counts. Prosecutors threatened Swartz not with 35 years but with 7. But 7 years is an equally ludicrous number for the actual offenses charged, which were non-remunerative, non-destructive, and applied to a first-time defendant. Which may be why prosecutors offered Swartz a plea deal with a custodial sentence just several months long. Swartz's own lawyer, writing after Swartz's tragic death, believed that Swartz could have gone to trial, lost and been found guilty, and still not served a custodial sentence. Not implausible for a first-time offender who didn't try to make a cent from his offense. Reporters parrot these numbers because the DOJ supplies them in press releases. DOJ is lying when it makes these outlandish claims, but deception on the part of prosecutors isn't an excuse for reporters not to talk to lawyers before amplifying those lies in the press. As usual, you can count on Popehat --- a blog run by a former federal prosecutor turned civil rights attorney --- for a pretty excellent summary of how the system actually works: http://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ http://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence... (If you're interested, here's the sentencing guidelines for 18 USC 1030: http://books.google.com/books?id=nZu3w1y4fkYC&pg=PA299&lpg=PA299&dq=guideline+2Q2.1&source=bl&ots=VCrUGGT_Dr&sig=xdBB4bzMj2BkS9S8_I5oLgCAgtM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FZ0RUeHPGoLFigKi0YGYAw&sqi=2&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=computer%202b1.1&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=nZu3w1y4fkYC&pg=PA299&lpg=P...)

droithomme 12y ago
As you have already seen many times before before, here is the actual statement released by the US Prosecutor's Office. http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.html http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.... > AARON SWARTZ, 24, was charged in an indictment with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. If convicted on these charges, SWARTZ faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million. Key Point: According to the actual documented statement released by the federal prosecutor, a statement which is still available on www.justice.gov, Swartz faced 35 years in prison and a one million dollar fine if convicted. These are well known, easily verifiable, and indisputable facts. When NPR stated that "Swartz faced a maximum penalty 35 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines" they were directly citing actual statements made by the federal prosecutor's office. The federal prosecutor's office stated "SWARTZ faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million." That is what they said. It is not false. It is not an exaggeration. NPR is citing exactly what the prosecutor actually said.

sparkzilla 12y ago

Aaron Swartz Timeline: http://newslines.org/aaron-swartz/ http://newslines.org/aaron-swartz/

epx 12y ago

Swartz, Manning and Snowden: heroes of our time. How many decades until history books mention them?

hueving 12y ago
I could perhaps see Snowden recognized, but what did the other two do for society that was so heroic?
- TheBiv 12y ago
  It's hard to take your comment at face value, but I'll assume you are being genuine. Aaron Swartz gave us granularity to what the term "hacker" should be used for, when it comes to malicious intent. It was likely possible for lawyers to argue that anyone who used a computer to download something could been seen as having malicious intent. However Aaron's case has proven that you have to look at what was being downloaded, how and why before you can paint a broad brush such as malicious intent.
  - exelius 12y ago
    I don't disagree that Swartz was a victim of a ludicrously overzealous justice system, but I wouldn't call him a hero. What he did was illegal and he knew it was illegal when he did it. You can argue that it was a bad law and he was practicing civil disobedience, but I don't think it was that either (a big part of traditional civil disobedience is to draw the process out as long and as loudly as possible, then proudly serve the time.) Maybe it started out as civil disobedience, then depression kicked in and he felt hopeless and took his own life. It's hard to say, and honestly I'm sick of the post-mortem psychoanalysis of a kid who was trying to make sense of his life (as we all were at that age). But either way, Swartz was not a mere victim of circumstance; he made choices that painted a target on his back, malicious intent or no.
- peterwiese 12y ago
  Well you know, when he was like 12-15 he co-drafted the first rss spec as well as the first spec for the creative commons licences. I don't know what you did at that age, but I mainly played Counter Strike and programmed clan websites...

thinkcomp 12y ago

Anyone who is interested in helping support one of the causes that Aaron was interested in--the opening of public court records to the public--should participate in Operation Asymptote. It requires a U.S. credit or debit card, but costs nothing. http://www.plainsite.org/asymptote/ http://www.plainsite.org/asymptote/ We also need help finishing an IE version of RECAP (http://www.recapthelaw.org http://www.recapthelaw.org, started by Stephen Schultze, profiled in the movie). See: https://github.com/yinglei/recap-ie https://github.com/yinglei/recap-ie Law firms use IE. They download tons of legal documents. If we can get RECAP working on IE, we can make a pretty big dent in PACER.

thaumaturgy 12y ago
I think it's fantastic that you've continued the technical approach to one of the problems Aaron wanted to solve. Nice, I'll be joining Operation Asymptote shortly. You're also the only person in this thread so far with a technical comment, so there's that.

wavesum 12y ago

I don't want to come off as a folio hat but what is the actual evidence of the suicide? Has any of this stuff been made public?

iterationx 12y ago
The government says suicide and everyone simply believes it. shakes head
- Tomte 12y ago
  No, the girlfriend and family say it was suicide.
  - wavesum 12y ago
    Which one of the girlfriends? Can you link to an article? Does she mention evidence? Did he leave a message or a note or anything?