RIP Aaron Swartz

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Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
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Never heard of him till now but definitely sounds like he was a great asset to the tech community. Not enough people care about stuff anymore, such as how the government is walking all over us.
 
SKORPI0

SKORPI0

Lifer
Jan 18, 2000
18,492
2,424
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The THIEF WHO STOLE KNOWLEDGE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jstor

On July 19, 2011, federal authorities charged Internet activist Aaron Swartz with several data theft-related crimes, including wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer, all in relation to bulk-downloading academic journal articles from JSTOR.[9][10] According to the indictment against him, Swartz surreptitiously attached a laptop to MIT's computer network, which allowed him to "rapidly download an extraordinary volume of articles from JSTOR".[11] Prosecutors in the case say Swartz acted with the intention of making the papers available on P2P file-sharing sites.[12] Swartz surrendered to authorities, pleaded not guilty to all counts and was released on $100,000 bail. Two days later, on July 21, Greg Maxwell published a torrent file of a 32-GB archive of 18,592 academic papers from JSTOR's Royal Society collection, via The Pirate Bay, in protest against Swartz' prosecution.[13][14] The case was still pending when Swartz reportedly committed suicide in January 2013.
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djnsmith7

Platinum Member
Apr 13, 2004
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Definitely didn't look or sound like someone who was even remotely suicidal or depressed.
 
Number1

Number1

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Feb 24, 2006
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Sad to lose any 26 years old. Mental illness is a terrible thing.

RIP young man.

What's sadder is that his family is blaming the government for his suicide and trying to portray him as a martyr....:rolleyes:
 
lxskllr

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
60,247
10,690
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Number1 said:
What's sadder is that his family is blaming the government for his suicide and trying to portray him as a martyr....:rolleyes:
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Poor misunderstood government. They were only standing up for truth, justice, and the American way. How dare those ingrates besmirch it's impeccable character :^S
 
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unokitty

Diamond Member
Jan 5, 2012
3,346
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halik said:
He's the guy that was ripping off JSTOR db, right?
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Did someone say ripoff? Do you realize that JSTOR is a company that publishes scholarly articles and doesn't pay the authors anything?

What Aaron is charged with is the equivalent to checking out too many library books.

When even JSTOR refused to prosecute Aaron, the Federal Government charged him with criminally violating JSTOR's web site's terms of service.

Aaron was looking at paying his defense lawyers a million dollars.

Interesting isn't it that the news media seems hell bent on broadcasting that Aaron downloaded millions of articles. However, none of these news articles mention that the 'stolen' articles were free to download on the campus where Aaron downloaded them.

Three questions

Is it ethical for JSTOR to sell access to millions of scholarly articles without paying the authors anything?

Why did the Federal Government decide that the electronic equivalent of checking out too many library books was a crime?

The next time you ignore a web site's terms of service are you prepared to be charged with a federal crime?

Uno
 
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Number1

Number1

Diamond Member
Feb 24, 2006
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lxskllr said:
Poor misunderstood government. They were only standing up for truth, justice, and the American way. How dare those ingrates besmirch it's impeccable character :^S
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You're such a fucking idiot. WHat does that have to do with him committing suicide.
 
PottedMeat

PottedMeat

Lifer
Apr 17, 2002
12,363
475
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unokitty said:
Did someone say ripoff? Do you realize that JSTOR is a company that publishes scholarly articles and doesn't pay the authors anything?


Is it ethical for JSTOR to sell access to millions of scholarly articles without paying the authors anything?

Uno
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is this JSTOR's problem? isn't this a problem between the journal publisher and the writer? it seems like all JSTOR does is digitize, store, and distribute articles in agreement with some original publisher.
 
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unokitty

Diamond Member
Jan 5, 2012
3,346
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Number1 said:
What's sadder is that his family is blaming the government for his suicide and trying to portray him as a martyr....:rolleyes:
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The family stated:
"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach,"

Wikileaks, and similar events, have demonstrated the Government's inability to protect its 'secret' documents. The Government demonstrated further inability when its attempt to strike back against Julian Assange proved impotent. The trumped up case against Aaron was just a frustrated Governmental attempt to strike back.

While you have the right to sympathize with the Government's inability and impotence, you don't have a right to spread falsehoods.

Other than Aaron, no one has ever faced federal criminal charges for downloading free documents.

It is clearly within the family's prerogative to question the judgement of the Federal Prosecutor. Checking too many electronic books out of a library is not now, nor has it ever been, a federal crime.

The Feds were clearly going to lose this case. As a message to the rest of us, they just wanted to demonstrate that they could ruin this young mans life and saddle him with a million dollar legal bill.

In his Twitter post, Tim Tim Berners-Lee captured it pretty well
"Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep."

Uno
 
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unokitty

Diamond Member
Jan 5, 2012
3,346
1
0
PottedMeat said:
is this JSTOR's problem? isn't this a problem between the journal publisher and the writer? it seems like all JSTOR does is digitize, store, and distribute articles in agreement with some original publisher.
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Didn't want to hit this with too big of a stick. But I thought that JSTOR had a pretty sweet business model.

That is, take other peoples content, don't pay them, don't get permission from them to charge for access, ignore the fact that much of the content is based on research funded by the government and then charge third parties to access the content.

The numerous articles talking about how Aaron was 'stealing' this content, just triggered my irony gene.

That is, here is JSTOR that is taking content without compensating the authors, being 'stolen' from... Ironic, no?

Legal? Apparently. Ethical? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

One positive for JSTOR, they dropped all legal action against Aaron and requested that the Federal Government drop their charges as well..

Uno
 
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Markbnj

Markbnj

Elite Member <br>Moderator Emeritus
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Sep 16, 2005
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unokitty said:
That is, take other peoples content, don't pay them, don't get permission from them to charge for access, ignore the fact that much of the content is based on research funded by the government and then charge third parties to access the content.
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The guy was obviously very smart, and very troubled. Whatever you think of jstor's model, and I've run into their paywall many times myself, if there is some injustice there I don't think it rises to the level where citizens get to start making their own laws. There is a level of injustice at which that becomes permissible, but having to click around a little longer to find the information you want doesn't make the cut.
 
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unokitty

Diamond Member
Jan 5, 2012
3,346
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Markbnj said:
The guy was obviously very smart, and very troubled. Whatever you think of jstor's model, and I've run into their paywall many times myself, if there is some injustice there I don't think it rises to the level where citizens get to start making their own laws. There is a level of injustice at which that becomes permissible, but having to click around a little longer to find the information you want doesn't make the cut.
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Every article that Aaron downloaded was free to be download by guests on MITs network.

The Federal Government is attempting to say that if you violate a web sites terms of service by writing a script to download those articles, then you can get 30 years.

That's just silly.

Lets look at four points made by Alex Stamos, an expert witnesses in this case.

One
At the time of Aaron&#8217;s actions, the JSTOR website allowed an unlimited number of downloads by anybody on MIT&#8217;s 18.x Class-A network...

Two
Aaron did not &#8220;hack&#8221; the JSTOR website for all reasonable definitions of &#8220;hack&#8221;. Aaron wrote a handful of basic python scripts that first discovered the URLs of journal articles and then used curl to request them.

Three
The government provided no evidence that these downloads caused a negative effect on JSTOR or MIT, except due to silly overreactions such as turning off all of MIT&#8217;s JSTOR access due to downloads from a pretty easily identified user agent.

Four
I cannot speak as to the criminal implications of accessing an unlocked closet on an open campus, one which was also used to store personal effects by a homeless man. I would note that trespassing charges were dropped against Aaron and were not part of the Federal case.

As everyone familiar with the case knows, nothing that Aaron did was even remotely close to being a felony. It is pretty apparent that as Aaron's family has stated: "The US Attorney's office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims."

This former MP has no sympathy for criminals. I also have no sympathy for Federal Prosecutors that act like bullies.

This case never had anything to do with justice. It was always about the Federal Government getting revenge on the portion of the Internet Community that the government perceives as 'hackers' for Wikileaks and similar events.

Uno
 
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Number1

Number1

Diamond Member
Feb 24, 2006
7,881
549
126
unokitty said:
The family stated:
"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach,"

Wikileaks, and similar events, have demonstrated the Government's inability to protect its 'secret' documents. The Government demonstrated further inability when its attempt to strike back against Julian Assange proved impotent. The trumped up case against Aaron was just a frustrated Governmental attempt to strike back.

While you have the right to sympathize with the Government's inability and impotence, you don't have a right to spread falsehoods.

Other than Aaron, no one has ever faced federal criminal charges for downloading free documents.

It is clearly within the family's prerogative to question the judgement of the Federal Prosecutor. Checking too many electronic books out of a library is not now, nor has it ever been, a federal crime.

The Feds were clearly going to lose this case. As a message to the rest of us, they just wanted to demonstrate that they could ruin this young mans life and saddle him with a million dollar legal bill.

In his Twitter post, Tim Tim Berners-Lee captured it pretty well
"Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep."

Uno
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You dodo heads can blame the government all you want but the fact remains, this child of privilege KILLED HIMSELF, not that wise of a move to solve a temporary problem if you ask me. After all the fed was clearly going to "lose" this case according to you.
I can't wait to hear about Julian's suicide.
He must be getting bored in his self imposed jail.
 
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