3 ms·

Swartz was a member of a group that was intentionally pirating and distributing large amounts of copyrighted material to which he did not have permission to do

by rilita 12y ago

Swartz was a member of a group that was intentionally pirating and distributing large amounts of copyrighted material to which he did not have permission to do so. He is also an idiot for killing himself. If he believed what he was doing was right he should have been willing to face the consequences. To me, killing himself is an admission that what he did was wrong and stupid. Should he have been thrown in jail for 7 years? Well; he would have had more years alive after he got out then he does now. Edit: Fuck Swartz. More clear?

sarciszewski 12y ago
> intentionally pirating and distributing large amounts of copyrighted material to which he did not have permission to do so Pirating is bad because it supposedly takes money out of the content producers' pockets (let's ignore the studies that suggest the contrary). The people who produced the content for the journals he "intentionally [pirated]" were not paid for the content they created. They, the content creators, are not hurt by someone pirating their research (most of which was funded by taxpayers). Additionally, society is benefited by more people being exposed to the knowledge of publicly funded scientific research. Legally, you are correct, but outside that microcosm, conflating what Aaron did with piracy misses the point. > He is also an idiot for killing himself Oh just fuck off.
- tzs 12y ago
  He wasn't pirating directly from the journals, though. He was pirating from JSTOR. JSTOR spends a lot of money to legally take journals that are not available online and make them available. They pay for the rights to do this, and then they pay for the costs of digitizing the material. JSTOR are good guys, with the same mission Swartz claimed to have--they were making journals more available and at less cost than they would have been without JSTOR.
  - sarciszewski 12y ago
    > JSTOR are good guys, with the same mission Swartz claimed to have--they were making journals more available and at less cost than they would have been without JSTOR. Most scientific research done in the United States is publicly funded and therefore should be publicly available at no cost to the public. Less cost might sound like a good idea on paper, but no cost is fair. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23canhazpdf&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=%23canhazpdf&src=typd I support what Aaron wanted to do, and hope to dissuade as many people as I can from publishing their research in closed-access journals.
    - tzs 12y ago
      > Most scientific research done in the United States is publicly funded and therefore should be publicly available at no cost to the public. Less cost might sound like a good idea on paper, but no cost is fair It costs JSTOR money to get permission to use the material from the publishers. It costs JSTOR money to digitize print journals. How would you suggest that JSTOR get the money for that? Because of JSTOR, public libraries, community colleges, non-profit research institutions, and many universities outside of the top tier research universities can get organization wide access to large collections of journals for orders of magnitude less than it would cost them without JSTOR, and they can let the general public use their access for free. Individuals can buy JSTOR subscriptions covering thousands of journals for less than it would cost to subscribe to one individual journal directly. Yes, that's not as good as no cost, but it is a tremendous improvement over what the world would be like without JSTOR, and that's a good thing.
      - sarciszewski 12y ago
        > Yes, that's not as good as no cost, but it is a tremendous improvement over what the world would be like without JSTOR, and that's a good thing. I agree, but that's not really my concern. > How would you suggest that JSTOR get the money for that? I don't suggest they get the money for that. I'm more of a "let's topple the giants" sort of guy. JSTOR's survival/profitability is not my concern. The free diffusion of publicly funded research is. And, frankly, I don't care if that makes me a bad person. I feel the same way about the for-profit closed-door academic research publishing model as I do about the fossil fuel industry. :) > It costs JSTOR money to get permission to use the material from the publishers. It costs JSTOR money to digitize print journals. JSTOR can keep doing what they're doing. I have no problem with their existence. I just want to stop people from publishing exclusively in journals that can only be made available to the public for a cost. Then eventually we won't need JSTOR anymore. > Because of JSTOR, public libraries, community colleges, non-profit research institutions, and many universities outside of the top tier research universities can get organization wide access to large collections of journals for orders of magnitude less than it would cost them without JSTOR, and they can let the general public use their access for free. But it's still a cost that can be avoided by scientists boycotting the publications that JSTOR has to spend money to obtain permission from and digitize.

by rilita 12y ago

sarciszewski 12y ago

> intentionally pirating and distributing large amounts of copyrighted material to which he did not have permission to do so Pirating is bad because it supposedly takes money out of the content producers' pockets (let's ignore the studies that suggest the contrary). The people who produced the content for the journals he "intentionally [pirated]" were not paid for the content they created. They, the content creators, are not hurt by someone pirating their research (most of which was funded by taxpayers). Additionally, society is benefited by more people being exposed to the knowledge of publicly funded scientific research. Legally, you are correct, but outside that microcosm, conflating what Aaron did with piracy misses the point. > He is also an idiot for killing himself Oh just fuck off.

tzs 12y ago
He wasn't pirating directly from the journals, though. He was pirating from JSTOR. JSTOR spends a lot of money to legally take journals that are not available online and make them available. They pay for the rights to do this, and then they pay for the costs of digitizing the material. JSTOR are good guys, with the same mission Swartz claimed to have--they were making journals more available and at less cost than they would have been without JSTOR.
- sarciszewski 12y ago
  > JSTOR are good guys, with the same mission Swartz claimed to have--they were making journals more available and at less cost than they would have been without JSTOR. Most scientific research done in the United States is publicly funded and therefore should be publicly available at no cost to the public. Less cost might sound like a good idea on paper, but no cost is fair. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23canhazpdf&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=%23canhazpdf&src=typd I support what Aaron wanted to do, and hope to dissuade as many people as I can from publishing their research in closed-access journals.
  - tzs 12y ago
    > Most scientific research done in the United States is publicly funded and therefore should be publicly available at no cost to the public. Less cost might sound like a good idea on paper, but no cost is fair It costs JSTOR money to get permission to use the material from the publishers. It costs JSTOR money to digitize print journals. How would you suggest that JSTOR get the money for that? Because of JSTOR, public libraries, community colleges, non-profit research institutions, and many universities outside of the top tier research universities can get organization wide access to large collections of journals for orders of magnitude less than it would cost them without JSTOR, and they can let the general public use their access for free. Individuals can buy JSTOR subscriptions covering thousands of journals for less than it would cost to subscribe to one individual journal directly. Yes, that's not as good as no cost, but it is a tremendous improvement over what the world would be like without JSTOR, and that's a good thing.
    - sarciszewski 12y ago
      > Yes, that's not as good as no cost, but it is a tremendous improvement over what the world would be like without JSTOR, and that's a good thing. I agree, but that's not really my concern. > How would you suggest that JSTOR get the money for that? I don't suggest they get the money for that. I'm more of a "let's topple the giants" sort of guy. JSTOR's survival/profitability is not my concern. The free diffusion of publicly funded research is. And, frankly, I don't care if that makes me a bad person. I feel the same way about the for-profit closed-door academic research publishing model as I do about the fossil fuel industry. :) > It costs JSTOR money to get permission to use the material from the publishers. It costs JSTOR money to digitize print journals. JSTOR can keep doing what they're doing. I have no problem with their existence. I just want to stop people from publishing exclusively in journals that can only be made available to the public for a cost. Then eventually we won't need JSTOR anymore. > Because of JSTOR, public libraries, community colleges, non-profit research institutions, and many universities outside of the top tier research universities can get organization wide access to large collections of journals for orders of magnitude less than it would cost them without JSTOR, and they can let the general public use their access for free. But it's still a cost that can be avoided by scientists boycotting the publications that JSTOR has to spend money to obtain permission from and digitize.