Comment by guynamedloren | Hacker News Reader

Comment by guynamedloren | Hacker News Reader

I'm going through the exact same thing. I've been upset since Aaron's suicide and I just cannot figure out why it's affecting me in such a way. I didn't know him, and like the author, I have a difficult time feeling emotions for distant (yet immense) tragedies, including war and natural disasters. But this just fucking hurts.

Maybe it hurts because seemingly reasonable, well educated people are behind this. This wasn't some looney that snapped and walked into a school with guns blazing. The people responsible are representatives (in one way or another) of the United States of America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. Supposedly good people. But they can do this (thanks to the wallets of hard working American people) and will probably get away with it? They have this kind of power? They can ruin a person's life for a victimless crime, even when the alleged 'victim' chooses not to pursue legal action? That's a devastatingly scary thought. And it's not just Carmen Ortiz and Steven Heymann. Our justice system is wrought with corruption, and that's scary, because it's probably the best justice system in the world (or at least touted as such).

because it's probably the best justice system in the world (or at least touted as such).

By whom? The US has more citizens in prison than even China; and that is talking about absolute numbers, not even a percentage. Also, I often read posts by Americans that sarcastically mention justice going to the highest bidder. I never heard it touted as "the best", or even just "acceptably okay", for that matter.

Land of the free. Home of the brave. Supposedly good people.

That was never true, never will be, even though lots of countries and groups think that of themselves. It's like a child whistling in the dark; you don't do that because there is music all around you, but because there isn't. Actually brave and free people would never call each other, and surely not themselves that. Why, they wouldn't even have a word for it, they'd just be it.

> The people responsible are representatives (in one way or another) of the United States of America. Land of the free. Home of the brave.

I don't get this at all... Harvard fellow uses MIT's network surreptitiously to violate the terms of service to download a nonprofit's entire database and then give it away for free, putting them out of business. Gets busted and charged with crimes. Where's the problem here?

Ok the prosecutor may have been overzealous, but we do have an adversarial system and it was Swartz's bad decisions that brought the hammer down. They didn't plant drugs on him. He wasn't doing it to feed his family. Sorry to all the people here that knew him personally, and to whom this is a personal tragedy, but this is not the kind of travesty of justice that you are making it out to be.

35+ years in prison for "checking out too many books at once" is not a travesty?

Not to mention bankrupting himself and his family if he had mounted a legal defense against the charges...

According to the Wall Street Journal[1], the government would probably have asked for 7 years, and a plea bargain offer was made to reduce to 6-8 months in prison. The 35+ years was the potential maximum, would have required conviction on all charges, and ultimately would have required an independent trial judge to "throw the book at him."

[1] http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1000142412788732458150...

And "checking out too many books at once" = allegedly hacking into a third party network to download 4 million articles from 1,000 academic journals without paying the required fees.

7 years, for downloading articles that should probably be in the public domain? Well, that's not prosecutorial overreach at all.

6-8 months is what the prosecutors asked for, remember?

According to Lessig that wasn't even the sticking point for Aaron: Aaron didn't want to plead guilty to a felony, he wanted lesser charges.

Allow me to rephrase that then: 6-8 months, for downloading articles that should probably be in the public domain? Well, that's not prosecutorial overreach at all.

"allegedly hacking into [...] without paying the required fees

"Crime against 'intellectual property', goddammit! Let him rot in prison, I say! That content was paid-for by tax dollars, and nobody lost a dime because he never redistributed it, but so what? It's the principle: if you break property laws, you should always go to prison."

"nobody lost a dime because he never redistributed it"

Because he was caught?

> Harvard fellow uses MIT's network surreptitiously to violate the terms of service to download a nonprofit's entire database and then give it away for free, putting them out of business.

Do you notice the contradiction in 'non profit' and 'putting them out of business'?

Non-profits and being a business are not contradictory. The Associated Press and NPR are both non-profit and have the potential to "go out of business" if people stop supporting them and paying member fees. The best non-profits are run as good businesses...because you need money to pay salaries and keep the lights running.

It is also notable how many non-profits aren't necessarily what people would conventionally think of as charities, despite being given a special tax status, etc.

Problems:

* Why is this a Federal crime at all? Because some computer in another state was involved? If so,then soon all crimes will be federal.

* It appears they used mostly catch-all laws. The vague wording is subject to confirmation bias where almost any action looks like a violation. This is a particular problem with laws related to computer use; but also includes laws like "obstruction of justice" and "lying to a federal agent".

* In order to have a "reasonable" sentence on the table at all, he has to give up his right to a trial.

* As far as I can tell, no damage was actually done to anyone yet.

* Since when is violating a TOS a criminal issue? Did we outsource the writing of laws to company legal teams?

JSTOR's database is scholarly articles going back about 500 years. These papers were written not-for-profit for the public good by academics and then peer reviewed (for free) by other academics. This represents our shared cultural knowledge, it belongs to everyone of us, and should be 100% freely available. And indeed much of it is in the public domain anyway since copyright has lapsed.

Whether the gate-keeper is nonprofit or not isn't really important. In point of fact, the entire system of journals charging fees for access to academic papers is outdated and broken, and is merely a parasitic relic from an age where it cost large sums of money to print and distribute paper-based media. Remember that universities pay a fee to access journals, and sometimes even pay a fee to have their papers published in journals, all the while generating and peer reviewing the content at their own expense.

In other words we can do better. And we should do better. By releasing JSTOR's content publicly Aaron was engaging in activism for the common good. You're welcome to your opinion that he deserved the book throwing at him and a $1M legal bill, but (in my opinion) you should think again.

Would you like the red or the blue pill?

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