
Aaron's Army - mikeleeorg
https://public.resource.org/aaron/army/
======
thinkcomp
Carl really is an amazing person.

If you haven't seen it already, please participate in Operation Asymptote, and
tell others to as well:

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

I'd like to have every U.S. Attorney's full case history on PlainSite by March
31, 2013. I paid for Ortiz [1] and Heymann [2]. There are a lot more.

[1]
[http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/attorney.html?id=69049&#...](http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/attorney.html?id=69049&table=attorneycases)

[2]
[http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/attorney.html?id=73864&#...</a><p>Also,
help us with extending RECAP:<p><a href="http://www.plainsite.org/aaronsw/"
rel="nofollow">http://www.plainsite.org/aaronsw/</a>

~~~
slapshot
Is there some level of irony in asking people to take legal risk in order to
upload content to a legal research service you charge money for? [1]

[1] <http://www.plainsite.org/pro/index.html>

~~~
thinkcomp
No, because nothing being uploaded is for sale.

With PlainSite I wanted to see if it was possible to build a business model
around public information that is actually available to the public, unlike the
traditional model that Lexis, West and Bloomberg use. The dockets are all
available for free. The documents are all available for free. Cleaned-up USPTO
data is available for free. What isn't free is analytics on the data of the
kind that generally only lawyers would care about.

Furthermore, the data is being uploaded to the Internet Archive, which
PlainSite then re-downloads. Anyone can use it. If you don't like what I'm
doing with it, you can do something else.

Aaron was an entrepreneur as well as someone who cared deeply about open
access to data. So no, I don't think there's much irony.

~~~
keithpeter
" _Furthermore, the data is being uploaded to the Internet Archive, which
PlainSite then re-downloads. Anyone can use it. If you don't like what I'm
doing with it, you can do something else._ "

Excellent idea (UK resident so the actual information is of no use to me but
the model is good)

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will_brown
In all humility I did not know who Carl Malamud was before reading this post
and the comments, and still I had to look him up. As a former corporate
attorney I used the SEC's EDGAR database regularly never realizing that if it
were not for one persons efforts that system would not exist. But what speaks
to me even more is his current effort with law.gov to bring online all primary
legal materials (including legal codes and case law) for open public access.

It is eye opening to someone whose reality was subscriptions to westlaw and
lexisnexis, that could be in the thousands of dollars, for access to case law,
codes, statutes, rules and regulations (or in other words, public material). I
am going to see if I can find some of his talks on YouTube, but it would be
awesome to be able to interact with someone like this.

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rsingel
For those unfamiliar with Carl Malamud, he's a national treasure cataloging
and open-sourcing the nation's legal codes, government videos, legal filings
and other public documents.

He had Aaron's back many times, including when the FBI was investigating the
Pacer liberation. If you want to support the kind of work that Aaron believed
in, resource.org takes donations in many denominations.

~~~
tptacek
In what way did he have Aaron's back? (I'm asking, not challenging).

~~~
rsingel
Well, in the PACER case, Carl talked to the FBI and offered to take the fall
for Aaron if it came to that. That's even though Aaron used archive.org
servers without Carl knowing what had transpired.

<https://public.resource.org/aaron/pub/msg00707.html>

There were other data issues, including USPS zip code data stuff that Carl
counseled Aaron on how to make public legally. Carl was generous in cautioning
Aaron, ordering gov files for him, digitizing files, getting Aaron server
space, etc.

Carl also wrangled free legal help for Aaron in setting up a non-profit.

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ebcase
I hope they post the video of Carl's memorial speech somewhere online, it was
passionate and inspiring! Text on a webpage conveys his message, but everyone
jumped up applauding when he finished speaking tonight in SF.

------
digitalengineer
A good talk, but I feel it's not smart to use the 'Army' definition,
espacially because you're non-violent. You're definitely not an army, see
Wikipedia: An army (from Latin "arma" “arms, weapons”) in the broadest sense
is the land-based military branch, service branch or armed service of a nation
or state.

The way this 'game' is played it's not even possible to defend yourselves (by
design). And with regards to you're _rights_ , I'm reminded of George Calin:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgj4ARfAqI0> (from 4:23).

~~~
danabramov
Dumbledore's Army comes to my mind.

~~~
Maxious
Also Dad's Army <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Guard_(United_Kingdom)>

~~~
analog
Freedom fighter

~~~
DanBC
_Freedom fighter_ is a synonym for _terrorist_ , so that'd have some
unfortunate effects.

~~~
analog
More of an antonym really but you're right that the meaning of the phrase is a
little confused these days.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipszh14WPFY>

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javajosh
It seems strange to me that Google, Amazon, or any other cloud provider hasn't
partnered with a non-profit organization to secure grants for a modern,
comprehensive public data repository. You might call it something like
"gov.org". One requirement, of course, is to have an open process for
modifying data representation. Crowd-sourced data formats, heh.

(Out of curiosity, why can't we consider the content of .gov websites to
constitute this archive and simply a) petition that all public datasets be
available on a .gov domain (format to be sorted later) and b) that all future
datasets start out life open on .gov.)

~~~
DannyBee
We're trying. It's not as easy as you think. The incentives for government to
care or want to work with you really aren't there.

That said, we've had success in some limited areas. For example, voting
information (which was 7+ figure data for the US) is now online. This was
originally a partnership I helped create with Pew and Google back in 2008 (now
expanded to include MS and others as well, wonderfully):

<https://votinginfoproject.org/about>

After 4+ years, we now have a large number of states voting information online
and free. A large number of people at various states also put their asses on
the line to help make this happen over the years . I wish I could give them
medals. :)

There are other example, like patent data, etc. To be honest, i'd rather us
stay behind the scenes and just have the info released, even if it means
people never know we were involved. It prevents a lot of issues from people
who make large amounts of money off data that should be public and open. Of
course, there are times/cases where it makes sense to use our name and brand
to help, and when necessary, we do that.

We also fund plenty of non-profit orgs, including folks like Carl. But getting
traction is simply not that easy. A lot of government agencies make revenue
from data they publish by selling subscriptions to it or otherwise charging.
They don't want to give it to you if your plan is to open it up, even if you
are willing to pay large sums. I can't often blame them. Congress cares more
about seeing agencies budget neutral than they do about "open data".

There were also mandates that public datasets be cataloged sanely and
released. This led to data.gov. However, because of the way it worked some
agencies had some perverse incentives, like "release the most datasets". This
led to humorous things like every single separate piece of data being
published as its own dataset on data.gov, which had no good search, making
parts of it entirely useless.

Anyway, the short answer is: We're trying. We've been trying.

~~~
javajosh
Good! Thanks for your comment. I thought of an amusing way to think of a
rather unamusing situation, so I figured I'd share it. Maybe you'll laugh, I
hope.

Let's say you have a large extended family and elderly grandparents that have
boxes of family photos. You know that the family would love to flip through
these, and digitizing them and putting them online is beyond your
grandparents' abilities.

So you offer to help them digitize and share the files. On your time and dime.

But your grandparents surprise you by saying "no". The first thing they're
worried about is that, mixed in with those photos, are some risque photos of
grandma when she was younger. She doesn't want those shared. But also - and
this is the part that really drops your jaw - unknown to you for many years
your grandparents have been charging family members a small fee to access the
photographs, and it's quite a little side income for them, especially around
the holidays when they need it most!

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wjs9889
This is a wonderful tribute, I was there just now and felt so inspired.

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SageRaven
From these past couple of weeks, I have picked up on the basics of the PACER
incident. Is the archive out there anywhere to be found? Maybe at Wikileaks or
an onion address?

How about the mass of data Aaron got from JSTOR? Surely someone else must have
a copy for safe keeping.

Seems this particular subset of data deserves to be liberated. Not that the
archives in their entirety do not, but since a subset is already out there,
why hasn't some group released it yet?

As someone who's had to pay PACER fees for their own court concerns, I find
this entire paywall mentality offensive.

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etherealG
please can anyone upload a video stream of this?

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sonergonul
Just wait us Aaron!..

