I'm still disgusted by the behavior of the MIT officials in all of this. Whenever I see or hear 'MIT' the first thing that comes to mind is: "that's the school that was responsible for the death of Aaron".
Beyond that, you seem to be overlooking the fact that it wasn't MIT that was after Aaron, but JSTOR, who constantly pushed MIT to help them locate the hacker who was taking their data from the MIT network. MIT didn't have the option to just handle the matter internally, a third party was involved who was being hacked through the MIT network.
You know what happens when you're a hacktivist; you go to jail. Aaron knew he was guilty, he knew he was breaking the law when he did it, it was willful civil disobedience by his own admission. His suicide was likely the result of his knowing jail was coming even if the prosecutor hadn't been overzealous because he committed a felony and knew it and he couldn't deal with facing the consequences of his actions.
He wanted to change the system, he went about it the wrong way and figured that out too late.
If you're saying that he ought not to been civilly disobedient then that's a different matter but what he did makes him a sort of modern-day hero. That he took his own life makes him a martyr in a weird kind of way. I know that hero and martyr are emotive words but I think I nearly feel that way about all this.
And it's not theft, it's copyright infringement. Repeat after me: you can't steal bits and bytes, only copy them, and copying is infringement, not theft.
I didn't mean "morally" wrong, I mean wrong approach. That's not contradictory at all; civil disobedience is not always the correct way to go about change. Sometimes it is, like when its done en-masse; going it alone, wrong approach.
> And it's not theft
Fine, infringing their data, irrelevant to the conversation; a crime no matter what label you want to apply.
The right approach is to lobby to get the law changed, not break it by yourself and hope you don't get hammered.
For there to be a defensible claim of theft, the property owner must lose their property. Someone experiences something missing.
Infringement exists as a concept and an element of law because it is not theft, specifically.
Perhaps, perhaps not. There's certainly safety in numbers. But this issue is not a huge social issue like, say, nationalist causes or other political issues. This is a kind of geeky issue that only a small fraction of the population gets but that everybody should care about. Also the law-breaking is doing no-one any physical harm. Nobody is going to go hungry because they are deprived of food.
Some argue that mp3 downloads have not affected the music industry's revenues and profits, or at least not by the vast amounts they claim. Similarly I imagine the out of pocket hit to JSTOR to be pretty small, but couple that with the fact that a lot of academic papers were funded by public money then people start seeing things differently. Hence the open-access journal movement and Arxiv and so on. And what about the benefits to society brought about by giving wider access to knowledge? One could start to take a pretty dim view of the ridiculous prices the JSTORs and Elseviers charge.
> it's irrelevant to the conversation.
It's not totally irrelevant. Stealing/theft sounds worse than infringement.
Look, I'm not having a go at you. I just think that Aaron was justified in what he did and I admire him for what he did. There are times for emailing and times for plugging in a network cable, Aaron chose the cable and I don't think that was the wrong approach even though it ended tragically.
> Stealing/theft sounds worse than infringement.
It's not relevant because this conversation isn't about how it sounds, it's about who's to blame for his death. None of which has anything to do with what the particular charges were.
> I just think that Aaron was justified in what he did and I admire him for what he did. There are times for emailing and times for plugging in a network cable, Aaron chose the cable and I don't think that was the wrong approach even though it ended tragically.
And that's your right, personally I admire the principles, but his approach was naive and imho not worth admiration; his suicide tragic and also not worth admiration. It was the wrong approach because a bad outcome for Aaron was predictable from the onset that led to a needless suicide of a very talented individual. You can't flagrantly commit federal crimes and think jail isn't an option, regardless of the merits of those laws.
Never said or implied they were, so what are you responding to?
I imagine that any form of non-violent civil disobedience is fair game. I imagine that collective action is always more troubling for the system because the systemic response is more challenging to orchestrate.
Some things change by themselves. We can see that marijuana is slowly transitioning from being a criminalised substance a decriminalised one. I don't partake myself but society is heading that way, that's plain to see.
Same with civil rights of all kind. Yes, it might take centuries but the arrow of equality is clearly pointing in just one way. But it does take civil disobedience and protest.
In this specific case (academic articles) I personally believe that we ought to cover the cost of storage and distribution and that's it. Because this is not a civil rights issue, more a, I don't know, societal expectation(?), a right to knowledge so that society can be improved quicker rather slower. These rent-seekers are like grit in well oiled machinery gunking up the works. I more or less think the worst form of money-making is rent-seeking.
I don't know, get creative!
Swartz killing himself absolutely does not make him a martyr. Martyr is someone who is killed for their beliefs.
We don't know why Aaron killed himself, but I sure hope that he had a better reason than possibly spending a few months in prison.
When a school sends police after someone for downloading academic files, and yet decides to not send the police after sex offenders (dealing with them internally and not even expelling them), they have pretty screwed up priorities.
He was also caught by the MIT Police which has full state-vested arrest power, so I'm not sure if there's any turning back from the legal system at that point.
Studies of suicide show that during harsh times such as during a crisis or a drought suicides go up. Of course those extra suicides are responsible for their actions but we recognise that external factors _can_ cause some people to go on downward spirals resulting in their deaths.
If the justice system had been more merciful and compassionate Aaron would undoubtedly still be alive. Yes, he was responsible for taking his own life. Yes, the pressure he was put under was indirectly a cause in him taking his own life. The laws are unjust and the penalties are too harsh.
I mean, maybe that's just the way it is; maybe being a student at an elite institution just doesn't come with the level of privilege than I think it comes with; Maybe Stanford would have done the same thing (though my impression is that they would not.) like I said, I'm an outsider here, but the actions of MIT faculty in these two cases have significantly diminished how much I want to become a student there.
People won't think twice about things they don't like unless you make it unavoidable.
Surprisingly, it doesn't stop people who want to work with me. I guess it helps when you can do useful stuff a couple standard deviations away from the vapid/banal bullshit most seem satisfied working on and aggrandizing such efforts :P
Edit: And why people downvoted the GP? Are they passing their judgement on GP's raising the topic with MIT people they interact with. Please note GP is just sharing it, in an after-the-act relevant discussion.