I've seen more prevaricating (and sometimes outright lying) this week from the hackers than from the lawyers so I, for one, hope that the lynch mob ceases immediately.
Ever since Aaron killed himself people have been saying the most logically unsound things about this case and others. Such as: he was a hero, he didn't commit any crimes, others who did similar things were not criminals, copyright shouldn't even exist, MIT is evil for not not caring about the breach, calling other cases bogus because the perpetrator was a young programmer, and so on. Many of the people commenting seem so out of touch with reality that it looks like trolling.
It's all the emotions. Makes it hard to write a sound argument.
Please consider the notion of civil protest. After all, this great country started by throwing the English tea overboard. To defend this view I would like to say that:
1. he was not personally profiting from the act
2. he was doing it for the betterment of society
Illegal things are sometimes morally right, and legal things morally wrong. We need to raise above the laws when they don't fit reality any more.
This is the logic that was used to colonize (er, "civilize") the "savages" of Africa and the Pacific.
So no, I refuse to subscribe to the idea that because he felt that it was better for everybody that it was his job to force it on everyone else.
You know what else the American colonists did to the English, right? They tarred and feathered them, burned down their houses, and many other forms of not-quite "civil" protest. And they did this in response to far worse transgressions than "those JSTOR assholes make me go to a public library to read this peer-reviewed literature I wouldn't know what to do with".
When the comparison is made against governments, that is bad, but it is okay to make such comparisons against the people. Sickening.
The cause of this discrepancy is an unhealthy worship of the law and government that many people seem to have acquired.
* "They were pushing for 35/50 years in prison"
* "This is just like using my neighbor's Wifi"
* "They were trumping up charges to make an example of Aaron" (before you downvote, read Kerr's posts).
* "They were aiming for harshest possible sentence"
* There was also the very nice individual who doxxed Ortiz, who I'm sure is a fine representative of all that is right with hacktivism.
And on and on.
And in the meantime there has been very little commentary over the major (not only, but major) cause of this (untreated depression), presumably because that doesn't play into the agenda. Likewise there is little discussion on ways to amend CFAA to make it better-aligned with what we intuitively feel would be appropriate (because in the hacktivist mold the only good change would be to repeal CFAA entirely). Feel free to say I'm seeing it wrong, but I don't think I am.
As for depression, the federal case is the only part that is any of our business, and is the only part (that I know of) that provides some commonality of experience and results, as the feds can come after any of us for whatever three felonies a day they choose to do so. The prosecutors were helped by the PATRIOT act, after all, which covers more of us than Aaron's personal historical details and experiences. Aren't we allowed to talk about whether that's a troublesome umbrella to live under, and how it played out in a specific case?
You can't just say "every case is different" when the techniques can be the same between them. Forest for the trees.
If by "business" we mean keeping our brightest minds around to drive progress on the difficult issues of our times then we absolutely must take a holistic view.
If by "business" we simply mean advancing the goals of hacktivism then a focus on depression would certainly not help, I agree.
Actually it has been discussed. As per his father:
""" Bob Swartz also dismissed the notion that his son had a depressive personality.
"He had never been diagnosed as having depression; he was never on medication for having depression," Swartz said.
Aaron Swartz's mother had been hospitalized in December 2011 after having a bowel obstruction and going into septic shock, Bob Swartz said. She spent several weeks in a coma, four months in intensive care, and two more months in the hospital.
"So the notion, the narrative that people are going to say -- is that he’s somebody who just has depression -- is just wrong. You’d be depressed too if you were under a 13-count federal indictment and you go see your mother, who’s in a coma."
Do people who aren't suffering from depression commit suicide? I'd always thought that (attempted) suicide was like the smoking gun for diagnosing depression?
And either way, Bob Swartz is not exactly a disinterested party here.
I've lost a child to SIDS. I can guarantee you as a fellow parent who has lost a child that being able to point a finger at some person or persons who are responsible feels much better. You lose a child to something like SIDS or depression and you feel helpless, just utterly helpless. What else do you expect him to say, "oh yeah, he seemed real withdrawn last time we talked but I guess I just didn't notice"?
But looking from the outside, are we really supposed to conclude that someone who killed themself based on a 6 month prison sentence had nothing else going on inside? Do other men never have their parents die or become seriously ill?