Comment by mitmatt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mitmatt | Hacker News Reader

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From http://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pd..., Appendix 14, Question 35:

> 35. What influence, if any, did MIT exercise or could it have exercised in the plea negotiations? Did MIT really scuttle a plea bargain with no prison time?

> Answer: MIT played no role in any plea negotiations related to the Aaron Swartz case. For a description of these negotiations, please see the Report, section II.B.2 The federal prosecution. For a description of MIT’s position regarding the government’s prosecution, please see Part III MIT’s Response to the Prosecution. It is unclear whether MIT could have exercised influence on the plea bargain. Please see in particular section III.A.2 MIT is informed about the prosecution; and section III.C.3 MIT’s outside counsel speaks with the lead prosecutor.

What would it mean for MIT to "sign off" on a plea bargain? The prosecutor alone was pressing criminal charges; MIT was not pressing any civil charges and it was not involved in the proceedings.

Thanks for stepping up to argue MITs case. I understand you personally hold the view that MIT is not to blame for very much at all.

IANAL... I just notice that other people said that MIT could have put an immediate stop to the proceedings:

"Here are the facts: This report claims that MIT was “neutral” — but MIT’s lawyers gave prosecutors total access to witnesses and evidence, while refusing access to Aaron’s lawyers to the exact same witnesses and evidence. That’s not neutral. The fact is that all MIT had to do was say publicly, “We don’t want this prosecution to go forward” – and Steve Heymann and Carmen Ortiz would have had no case. We have an institution to contrast MIT with – JSTOR, who came out immediately and publicly against the prosecution. Aaron would be alive today if MIT had acted as JSTOR did. MIT had a moral imperative to do so."

(from http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/56881327662/mit-report-is-a-w...)

What have I said that suggests "MIT is not to blame for very much at all"? My comments have dealt with factual issues; I don't see where I advanced any opinions on MIT's deserved level of blame.

The MIT report lays out facts (and not conclusions or judgements) for the express purpose of informing the debate. Many here would probably be interested in its contents if they weren't so busy expressing opinions about it.

It's not clear to me what Ms. Stinebrickner-Kauffman meant by her comment, since prosecution was entirely at the discretion of the DA (as with all criminal charges) and MIT (like JSTOR) had no involvement in the criminal charges. The report explains as much in careful detail and my poor paraphrasing is no substitute.

(Judging by tweet timestamps, Ms. Stinebrickner-Kauffman's statement may have been made about 18 minutes after the release of the report (8:31am @TarenSK vs 8:13am @MIT), so it's possible that the statement was not based on the entirety of the report's content. That is not based on precise knowledge of the report's actual time of release.)

Here is a personal opinion: Hal Abelson, founding director of both the Free Software Foundation (with RMS, GJS, and others) and Creative Commons (with Lawrence Lessig and others) and lead author of the MIT report, produced a thoughtful and thorough document and it should not be ignored.

Your comments seems to be ignoring both the facts and the issues.

> What have I said that suggests "MIT is not to blame for very much at all"? My comments have dealt with factual issues; I don't see where I advanced any opinions on MIT's deserved level of blame.

My comment should have been a question, let me put it explicitly: What is your personal opinion on MIT's deserved level of blame?

OK I have now read the entire report, up to and including the first appendix. My now informed opinion is that with the issue of this, umm, mild report, MIT have missed an opportunity to address the "one issue for reflection" identified in the report itself:

In closing, our review can suggest this lesson: MIT is respected for world-class work in information technology, for promoting open access to online information, and for dealing wisely with the risks of computer abuse. The world looks to MIT to be at the forefront of these areas. Looking back on the Aaron Swartz case, the world didn’t see leadership. As one person involved in the decisions put it: “MIT didn’t do anything wrong; but we didn’t do ourselves proud.”

I really don't know since MIT has objected to FOIA requests in Aaron's case. A lot of details are missing. Personally I trust Aaron's lawyers more than MIT's administration.

If by "objected to FOIA requests" you mean "filed a motion, just like JSTOR, proposing the ability review and suggest redactions to the requested documents over a window of five days for the explicit purpose of ensuring the privacy and safety of its employees, especially in light of the threatening communications it has received". MIT never proposed preventing the documents from being released.

http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N29/swartz/MIT-motion.pdf http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N29/swartz.html

But based on your comments in the other threads, I'm not sure you're interested in the actual facts...

> MIT never proposed preventing the documents from being released. I'm not sure you're interested in the actual facts

Ok they blocked and prevented FOIA access to documents until Aug 23. What I posted wasn't inaccurate. If what I posted before weren't facts, maybe you should dispute them instead just making one generalized statement. I've been wrong before, and I don't mind being proven wrong.

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