The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz [video]

WEIS 2014: Experimental Measurement of Attitudes Regarding Cybercrime

http://weis2014.econinfosec.org/papers/GravesAcquistiAnderso...

> "Online activists appear to be treated much more harshly by prosecutors than equivalent street protesters; meanwhile online fraudsters are often treated more leniently than the traditional variety. Over two thousand mTurkers participated in six different between-subjects experiments to assess the seriousness or cybercrimes by type of data (directory vs medical info), scope 10 to 1,000,000 records) motivation (student, activist, profiteer) financial consequences, co-responsibility and whether the victim was a firm, a nonprofit or a government agency. Respondents saw more records as more sensitive than less; profiteers as much worse than students or activists; more expensive cases as more serious; that firms were less liable if servers were patched (but that the data were more sensitive in that case). In summary, participants recommend harsher sentences when cybercrimes involve more or more sensitive data, have costlier consequences, or are motivated by profit. This is much more rational than the reported behaviour of some prosecutors and judges."

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:6b1c1f8476d0604d98e4a9d3d3bbf4cd131e3326&dn=The+Internet%27s+Own+Boy+-+The+Story+of+Aaron+Swartz+%282014%29&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80/announce

The first half of the piece is a bit of a confessional/elegy- personal, poignant, and a bit heartrending, especially for those who knew Aaron. The second half turns decidedly more polemic, but feels all the more important for the HN crowd (or anyone thinking about the future and the society we live in).

Aaron's death was tragic, yes, but it happened within a much (much) larger context of what feels like a waning in social justice and personal freedom around the world.

I've certainly been thinking a lot harder about it in the past year, and I hope others are as well.

He was then mercilessly pursued, pushed to the point of financial ruin, and threatened with several decades of prison - by a prosecutor who seemingly had zero sense of right/wrong, even in the face of the supposed victim (JSTOR) indicating they had no desire to pursue this any further.

It was the sort of activity that when I went to school, would have merited a 3 day suspension, if that.

What you're seeing is the community making him into a martyr.

Martyrdom is a concept that is somewhat foreign or unexpected in American culture. Similar to the delusion that the country is somehow immune to totalitarianism, there exists a common assumption that martyrs, like dictators, only happen "in those other, less free countries".

The very nature of what it means for someone to be a martyr basically guarantees that people will react strongly. This is why they can be a unifying force ("we must ${dangerous_but_important_task} for ${martyr}!"). This is also why the more talented oppressors take steps to prevent martyrs such as having them "disappeared".

I see this situation as similar to the question of what to do with the medical data acquired from the Nazi camps. A good argument can be made for both sides, but in the end we should make use of the resources we have.

So if it takes some "deification" or get the larger community to finally wake up and do something about these prosecutors (and other related people), then I would suggest that any "deification" at least served an important purpose. Given that Swartz spent a lot of time and energy trying to get people to do just that (wake up and actually fight the "big" problems in our society), then... I suspect he would have approved for the same reason.

Everyone thinks they are completely reasonable, but the fact is our brain convinces us we are even when we are not.

Unless you've actually been someone else, how can you know what it is like?

http://legalinformatics.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/operation-a...

http://www.plainsite.org/asymptote/

Another is to write to your representatives in Congress demanding accountability for prosecutors and Stephen Heymann in particular. The web forms actually do get tallied by interns and closely monitored by staffers when there's a spike.

The first thing you need to decide is, do you want to work within the law, and try to change the system from the inside, or do you think the system is so corrupt that it can't be changed from the inside, so the only option is to take it down from the outside? Swartz appears to have believed that the second option was the only option, at least in the case under discussion. Do you agree?

I'd like to believe that we can all be winners.

I think you're underestimating the greed and the ego of the people who currently have "ownership" rights to so much information that was supposedly the property of the public, since we paid for it being produced in the first place. Those people are not going to give up their cash cow willingly, and if they are forced to give it up, they will not feel like they are "winners". If that were going to happen, it would have happened years ago, once it became obvious to anyone with half a brain that the Internet was a viable means of distribution for information that belongs to the public--that, for example, scientific papers belong on arxiv.org, not locked up in some journal that charges exorbitant fees for access.

In other words, when you're up against greed and ego, thinking that "we can all be winners" is a recipe for failure. The people who are keeping this system propped up need to lose. Anything less won't achieve the goal.

Or to put it still another way: the ones making it a zero-sum game are the publishers trying to hang on to their cash cow, not us.

He didn't go to college when he was 14/15, did he?

What is their typical socio-economic status? Is that a factor?

My bet is, you don't know the answer to either of those questions, so the "obviously" in your statement is misplaced.

sounds like that is acceptable to you because there isn't mass suicides you can link to.