
 Aaron Swartz "JSTOR" case indictment revised/expanded - wglb
http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001476.html
======
revelation
Here, the government is pursuing criminal charges for someone who has taken
research papers (funded, by and large, through public research grants) to
presumably make them available to the public.

In doing so, he wronged various publishers, who have not financially supported
any research, who have not financially supported the scientific review of said
research, who have financially gained by (likely) not only charging the
original author for the submission but also the universities which provided
the infrastructure critical to the majority of research.

Spearheading this noble effort to right the wrong and restore law and order is
US attorney Carmen Ortiz, who is cited for the wise words: _"Stealing is
stealing"_.

Lets be reasonable here: a decently sized server farm could probably keep the
entirety of documents hosted on JSTOR in RAM. Today alone, imgur burned
through 50TB of traffic; it delivers a petabyte a week. I'm not going to
believe a sob story about how distributing 100KiB PDFs to someone running
'wget -r' is DoSing their systems.

~~~
calpaterson
> Lets be reasonable here: a decently sized server farm could probably keep
> the entirety of documents hosted on JSTOR in RAM.

One largeish science publisher I worked with had 9-10TB of (pdf) document
data. In addition to that there's a search engine, and image versions (of
everything) to allow for look inside. Then there's dynamically generated HTML
for online view. Electronic publishers do with large amounts of data and it
isn't wholly static content. I don't know much about JSTOR but I think it's
safe to assume that the implementation is non-trivial.

~~~
Zigurd
I believe Swartz's point is that 10TB of data is not something you can build a
self-perpetuating bureaucracy around, anymore, and that this implementation
is, in fact, simple enough that it can be made available and maintained for a
tiny fraction of the cost of JSTOR.

~~~
calpaterson
I'm not really talking about what Swartz's argument is, but you seem to have
missed the point that there's more to being a publisher than holding data.

~~~
sillysaurus
I don't understand your point either. Yes, publishers do more than merely hold
PDF files. Ergo what?

~~~
calpaterson
Ergo keeping all the documents in RAM isn't a technical solution. I think
you've mentally lost track of what I originally said.

------
bstar77
Despite what Aaron's intentions were, he clearly knew he was doing something
illegal. He broke into a building (closet?), setup a computer illegally and
transferred information illegally. In addition to all of that, he tried to
evade security when he knew he had been discovered.

It seems like there were many other (more reasonable) avenues that he could
have taken to accomplish his goal. He's really the only one to blame for
getting himself into this mess. I sincerely hope that he gets the punishment
he deserves which should be a firm slap on the wrist. I'm uncomfortable with
the idea of him getting any jail time, but if it comes to that then he'll have
to deal with those consequences.

~~~
btipling
> I sincerely hope that he gets the punishment he deserves which should be a
> firm slap on the wrist.

A felony, even without any jail time, is an irreversible and life changing
punishment. He will no longer be able to vote or (possibly?) leave the
country, or work at various organizations and corporations that automatically
do not hire felons.

Edit: didn't know that felons could still get passports. They can have trouble
getting visa's for sure though.

~~~
rdtsc
> He will no longer be able to vote or leave the country,

Why leaving the country would be a problem? I haven't heard of that one
before. Say what if wants to fly to Europe for vacation, he can't because he
was convicted of a felony?

~~~
throw_away
this link says that's only in specific cases:
[http://www.travelinsurancereview.net/2010/04/20/internationa...](http://www.travelinsurancereview.net/2010/04/20/international-
laws-can-a-convicted-felon-travel-outside-the-us/)

interestingly, if you have a DUI conviction, you cannot enter Canada.

------
tptacek
The government --- and a grand jury.

    
    
                       A TRUE BILL
    
                       b r e n d a   l    h a n n o n
                       _________________________________
                       Foreperson of the Grand Jury
    
    
        scott l garland             9 - 12 - 12
        _______________             ___________
        Assistand United States Attorney  
    
        DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
        September 12, 2012
        Returned into the District Court by the Grand Jurors and filed.
    

Granted: grand juries rarely refuse to indict. But it's not just the
prosecutors behind this decision.

~~~
abecedarius
This made me wonder how often.
<http://www.freedomlaw.com/archives/oldsite/GRANDJRY.html> says 0.6% in 1984.

~~~
_delirium
Minor correction: 0.4% (the article reports a 99.6% indictment rate).

~~~
abecedarius
Thanks! I wrote that on an iPad at 3am and tried to check if I'd goofed, but
it had no within-page search.

------
danboarder
As Aaron is a founder of <http://demandprogress.org> I am not surprised by
this. Their campaign emails are highly critical of the current political
establishment fighting SOPA, PIPA, NDAA and related issues quite effectively
through social media. This is deliberate over-reaction to petty protest crime.
Like WikiLeaks, I imagine he has developed enemies due to these efforts. This
entire situation reminds me of the treatment of political protest punk band
Pussy Riot in Russia recently.

~~~
billswift
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation
as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases
which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.

\- - Charles Beard

------
plausibledenial
Copied from "Show Dead"

To me the Largest Sadness is that he did not succeed in releasing the corpus
to the public, which I presume was his real goal. Making this information
accessible would be one of the largest contributions an individual could make
to the world, possibly worth the trade of spending the rest of one's life in
prison. The tragedy is doing so without the reward.

The only greater contribution I can immediately come up with that is
definitely accessible to some of the readers of this board would be leaking
the Google Books archive. Depriving the world of life saving knowledge for
purpose of profit is as great a sin as genocide. Sometimes conscience must
trump the law.

Sincerely,

A long time member resorting for the first time to an anonymous account.

------
keithvan
As a result of Swartz's conspiracy to release JSTOR articles to the public, it
led to the company making many articles free for public for viewing. A lot of
good has come about from what Swartz did, even if the morality of his illegal
actions are under dispute. There has been a lot of recent criticism against
academic journals and their publishing companies whose business model is
keeping all science and research behind gated walls and away from the public.
Even if the research was funded with public money!

~~~
jkn
_it led to the company making many articles free for public for viewing_

That is a nice result indeed, do you have a reference?

~~~
_delirium
They've decided to make pre-1923 articles from American journals, and pre-1870
articles elsewhere, available publicly (w/o any subscription or even a free
account needed): <http://about.jstor.org/service/early-journal-content-0>

Their original FAQ on it used to have a question about whether this was
related to the "Swartz situation", where the answer could be paraphrased as
"no but sort of yes", basically that they had been planning it all along but
may have moved up some initiatives in response to the publicity. Doesn't seem
that their current FAQ has that question anymore.

------
nl
_One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying
others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just
and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not
only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has
a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St.
Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."_

Martin Luther King, 16 April 1963, "Letter from Birmingham Jail"[1]

[1]
[http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.h...](http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html)

~~~
Zuider
The Nuremberg laws are a prime example of laws that were so intrinsically
wrong that disobeying them was a moral imperative.

------
andreyf
Could someone who knows about such matters comment on whether this is the
usual consequence for what he did, or if it's likely that he's been given
"preferencial" treatment for his political activism?

~~~
jrockway
I don't think it's for the political activism as much as it's for someone's
friend at JSTOR.

~~~
nathanb
JSTOR have said that once they had a guarantee the articles had been secured--
which I believe means that Aaron claims he no longer has them and has not, and
will not distribute them--they had no more interest in pursuing the case. This
is the feds acting on their own.

~~~
wpietri
JSTOR said that publicly, and they could well have said that privately. But
I'd be interested to know what the various journal companies have said, either
to the prosecutor or to the various politicians they lobby and contribute to.

~~~
nathanb
Yeah, it would definitely be interesting to know that.

But even so, is it really that hard to believe that the feds have their own
agenda and are acting on their own for this one? I realize I have no proof to
back up my assertion that this is all them, but it's not outside the realm of
possibility, that's for sure.

~~~
wpietri
They could have their own agenda, sure. But given how much money there is to
influence American government these days, I think it's also worth asking "who
could benefit financially from this action?"

------
RockyMcNuts
Good men must not obey laws too well - Emerson

(not that I equate JSTOR to slavery)

~~~
chimeracoder
> (not that I equate JSTOR to slavery)

Not to belabor the analogy too much, but in academia at large, there's a
decent argument to be made....

~~~
rabidsnail
No.

Having to pay for access to papers and being forced to pick cotton in the
blinding sun every day of your life under pain of the whip _are not the same
thing_.

~~~
chimeracoder
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that you completely missed the point
of my analogy, which was a reference to the exploitative, all-but-mandatory
unpaid 'research assistant' jobs or 'internships' and the like. We're
fortunate that this is unheard-of in our industry, but in some fields, it's
the norm.

Though I would thank you for deleting the completely out-of-proportion
reference to Hitler that was in your original comment ("Hitler liked cakes,
therefore anyone who likes cakes is a Nazi"). It seems even Hacker News is not
immune to Godwin's law.

------
kanzure
Wow, I didn't know that the government compelled Quinn Norton and Alec Resnick
on this one too. What exactly is aaronsw's defense going to be?

------
andrevoget
It was mentioned in the blog post, but probably not everyone will read it.
There's a legal defense fund for Aaron Swartz: <https://free.aaronsw.com/>

