American librarians helped defeat the Nazis | Hacker News Reader

American librarians helped defeat the Nazis

daily.jstor.org

91 pointssamclemens16 comments

I don't understand why mentions of JSTOR's involvement in the massive overcharge of Aaron Swartz that led to his suicide are being removed here (please explain why), and why the matter was ever treated as a (state + federal) criminal matter involving MIT, rather than a private civil matter between Swartz and the alleged rights holders. Here is the NYT's reporting:

Slashdot comment, 1/22/2013: "MIT Warned of a JSTOR Death Sentence Due To Swartz" [0]

citing NYT "How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture" [1].

If JSTOR reputation-washing itself by indirectly claiming a tiny responsibility for the actions of librarians in WWII is on-topic here, half a century before JSTOR existed, then JSTOR's involvement in the Swartz case in 2013 must be.

[0]: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/01/22/0219224/mit-warned-o...

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/technology/how-mit-ensnar...

> why the matter was ever treated as a criminal matter

I'm not any category of credentialed legal expert, and I haven't had the heart to dig into the gory details of this particular disaster, but I'd point at the No Electronic Theft ("NET") Act. This legislation broadened the category of criminal copyright infringement to an almost absurd degree, redefining "commercial advantage" to include the mere expectation of others reciprocating by sharing their own stashes of infringing material.

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

But we're talking about JSTOR's behavior and reputation here, not the legalities, which have been discussed many times (although not tested in courts).

In particular after state and federal prosecutors went berserk and MIT admin didn't push back in the name of these same freedoms that JSTOR is telling us were so beloved and apple-pie back in WWII. It's not like JSTOR publicly said "This federal criminal indictment is massive overreaction; not in our name". It's a matter of record that JSTOR executives were threatening MIT.

Swartz was (criminally) charged with 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(!) [0]. Harsher than many indictments for cases of terrorism or mass murder. For something that may well not even have been a criminal act. By a group of people who may well not even have been the actual rights holders - that claim never saw the inside of a courtroon since the massive overcharge made it unlikely that Swartz would contest; and in fact it caused him to commit suicide.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz#Federa...

I don't disagree with you overall; I was just trying to seek out the point where it jumped the gap between civil and criminal processes. I suppose that the NET Act sticks in my mind because it was probably the first legislation I read that shocked me with how blatant the disconnect was between legal and practical definitions of terms.

Agreed; I want to keep the focus on JSTOR's behavior, not the legislation, but:

(The No Electronic Theft ("NET") Act (1997) was introduced by Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), whose big donors include media rights holders and law firms and their PACs [0]. And that legislation was brought specifically to "remedy" the inability to criminally prosecute non-commercial infringements in the 1994 LaMacchia case [1][2], although that was about a warez bulletin-board of commercial software, not published academic papers. The NET Act amended the definition of "commercial advantage or private financial gain" to include the "receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works" (still not seeing any of that applied to Swartz, but they would have cheerfully bankrupted him fighting it, and destroyed his life if they'd won an adverse ruling).

But now, back to JSTOR's behavior and reputation.

[0]: Bob Goodlatte Representative (R-VA) | Donor Summary https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/bob-goodlatt...

[1]: "United States v. LaMacchia" (1994) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._LaMacchia

[2]: "Before there was Aaron Swartz, there was David LaMacchia" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5143897

Yes, Goodlatte and his donors introduced legislation which was a massive overreaction to the issue it was "remedying". But noone had the deep pockets to fight it.

Oh, and there are some killer ironies in Bob Goodlatte's trajectory (I never thought I'd see a revolving door made out of paper, but now we have):

Goodlatte stepped down from Congress (and House Judiciary Chair) in 2018. In February 2020, he registered as a lobbyist [0] representing (media rights holders and) and the Project for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability, a nonprofit that describes itself on its website as “a nonpartisan group of U.S. citizens who advocate for greater protection of our privacy and civil liberties in government surveillance programs.”(!) In an interview, Goodlatte said he is lobbying Congress and the administration on behalf of the nonprofit on three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act authorizing government surveillance programs set to expire in March 2020. [1]

> Goodlatte invoked surveillance abuse against Martin Luther King Jr. in the context of [alleged surveillance abuses in 2016] [2]

[0]: Lobbying Firm Profile: Goodlatte, Robert https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/firms/summary?c...

[1]: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2020...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Goodlatte#Russia_probe

probably being remove because they're not especially relevant to the OP and going to cause political arguments.

Only an organization with JSTOR's well known moral and ethical history would write a quote like this:

"Librarianship and spy craft are well-suited partners; both revolve around the collection and dissemination of information."

Let's sully the motivation of a simple librarian by turning them into an information collecting panopticon, and fail to mention the disinformation and chaos-generation aspect of the spy.

Fuck JSTOR and fuck their opinion on anything ever again, even if I am open to it and willing to read it, it's garbage even after the ethical hurdle of deciding to open up to another JSTOR experience.

RIP Aaron. I hope that critique was relevant enough to stay on-topic in the thinnest allowed sense.

Kind of insane that the Germans were still allowing papers on rocketry and nuclear physics to be published in journals in 1943.

When the United States stopped all publications related to nuclear developments, that alarmed Georgy Flyorov[0]: He took it as a sign that we were building a bomb. He wrote to Stalin, and that helped start the Soviet Atomic Bomb Project[1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_Flyorov

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_atomic_bomb_project

But can they do it again (now)?

"How American Librarians Helped Defeat the Nazis" as explained by a librarian (and teacher).

good guys won, and the Entire nation helped them succed. So proud of us team.

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