
The New Aaron Swartz Documentary Looks Powerful. Here's the Trailer - jamesisaac
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/04/29/_the_internet_s_own_boy_about_aaron_swartz_is_a_kickstarter_funded_documentary.html
======
noisy_boy
I hope Carmen Ortiz gets adequate coverage in the movie to expose what she is
and has done. I know its a bigger problem and all that but she shouldn't be
let off the hook that easily. And I don't care if that sounds
vengeful/mean/trolling - he was basically driven to suicide because of her
cornering and bulling him using overzealous prosecutorial overreach.

~~~
afarrell
Id been under the impression that Carmen's actions were par-for-the-course for
prosecutors in the US. Is this not the case?

~~~
noisy_boy
I'm not familiar enough with typical prosecutorial practice in the US legal
system. However, when a prosecutor's overreaching actions in a case, which
clearly was not for a heinous crime, results in the death of a bright young
man who was fighting for freedom of information, I think it warrants that all
parties are put under the spotlight and their actions adequately examined. If
corrective steps are to be taken to avoid such tragedies, people have a right
to know what wrongs were done before they can voice their opinions via their
lawmakers/voting etc.

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nrao123
I backed this movie & I am very excited about this movie! The trailer looks
amazing as well.

Also- I would strongly encourage people to also look at Aaron's writing on
making Wikipedia better (which has profound consequences for the internet)
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia)

====

So did the Gang of 500 actually write Wikipedia? Wales decided to run a simple
study to find out: he counted who made the most edits to the site. “I expected
to find something like an 80-20 rule: 80% of the work being done by 20% of the
users, just because that seems to come up a lot. But it’s actually much, much
tighter than that: it turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by just .7%
of the users … 524 people. … And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400
people, have done 73.4% of all the edits.” The remaining 25% of edits, he
said, were from “people who [are] contributing … a minor change of a fact or a
minor spelling fix … or something like that.”

==== Curious and skeptical, I decided to investigate. ====

I purchased some time on a computer cluster and downloaded a copy of the
Wikipedia archives. I wrote a little program to go through each edit and count
how much of it remained in the latest version.† Instead of counting edits, as
Wales did, I counted the number of letters a user actually contributed to the
present article.

If you just count edits, it appears the biggest contributors to the Alan Alda
article (7 of the top 10) are registered users who (all but 2) have made
thousands of edits to the site. Indeed, #4 has made over 7,000 edits while #7
has over 25,000. In other words, if you use Wales’s methods, you get Wales’s
results: most of the content seems to be written by heavy editors.

But when you count letters, the picture dramatically changes: few of the
contributors (2 out of the top 10) are even registered and most (6 out of the
top 10) have made less than 25 edits to the entire site. In fact, #9 has made
exactly one edit — this one! With the more reasonable metric — indeed, the one
Wales himself said he planned to use in the next revision of his study — the
result completely reverses.

I don’t have the resources to run this calculation across all of Wikipedia
(there are over 60 million edits!), but I ran it on several more randomly-
selected articles and the results were much the same. For example, the largest
portion of the Anaconda article was written by a user who only made 2 edits to
it (and only 100 on the entire site). By contrast, the largest number of edits
were made by a user who appears to have contributed no text to the final
article (the edits were all deleting things and moving things around).

~~~
GuiA
This is really interesting. You should write a blog post and publish the
source.

~~~
watwut
The source is linked int he beginning of his comment:
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia)
. He was quoting it.

------
thinkcomp
I'm one of the film's backers and the operator of a site based on Aaron's
work. We still need your help opening PACER.

[http://www.plainsite.org/asymptote/](http://www.plainsite.org/asymptote/)

[http://www.recapthelaw.org](http://www.recapthelaw.org)

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sparkzilla
I made an Aaron Swartz Timeline some time back: [http://newslines.org/aaron-
swartz/](http://newslines.org/aaron-swartz/)

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oliversong
What happened to Aaron's law? Seems like it's been almost a year with no
progress.

~~~
thinkcomp
Congress happened.

[https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr2454](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr2454)

------
gre
I enjoyed it. Kind of a sad story though. What's with the other reddit guys
refusing to be in it?

~~~
markdown
Probably didn't have enough positive stuff to say about him, so they opted not
to say anything at all.

He lost interest in Reddit at some point and just got really flaky... not
turning up for work and shit like that. Think he was going through depression
at the time and there was a bit of drama around all that.

EDIT: It's a real shame he and Alexis Ohanian didn't get along better... it
seems that thay could have made a great team, with him being the soldier and
Ohanian the diplomat in a fight against govts/corporations (SOPA, TPP, etc)
impinging on our freedoms online.

~~~
twoodfin
This ancient reddit thread covers most of the "drama" from both sides:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cof...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cofounder_aaron_swartz_discusses_how_he/)

~~~
Goopplesoft
Thanks! Any chance you could breif that? I'm curious but lacking time to read
through and make sense it all.

~~~
bobbles
Essentially he wanted to be a cofounder of something.

It was decided that he would 'merge' with reddit, but the reddit guys
described it as him turning up one day and them having to deal with it.

He was flaky and got fired.

Yes theres lots of other details but thats the gist of it

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coherentpony
The video doesn't play for me. Anybody have a youtube link?

~~~
frankydp
Out of curiosity what is the monetary benefit of self hosting streaming video?

~~~
coherentpony
I dunno dude. I can't seem to play anything on slate. ghostery blocks it. So I
disable ghostery and the video element loads. I click play and the video does
not play.

YouTube works fine with ghostery.

I want to watch shit online without people watching me. I don't think that's
unreasonable. Lots of sites try to make it really fucking hard, though.

/end rant

~~~
dredmorbius
If sites embedding video would simply post links to the YouTube content, that
would help markedly.

I had the same problem FWIW: absolutely nothing on Slate's page evidenced that
there _was_ video let alone where it was hosted. Thanks HN for pointing out
the sources.

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jds375
He wrote some really interesting articles too, aside from his activism. For
all of you Dark Knight fans check the most recent one out:
([http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/))

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nvk
Saw it at the Toronto Hot Docs, great movie.

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afatc
Look's promising, can't wait

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xutopia
I wonder if I'll be able to see it legally in my country.

~~~
coherentpony
Legally meaning right-to-stream? Or legally meaning uncensored?

Forgive my ignorance, I do not know which country you are in.

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gkhnarik
I am super excited to learn more about him and the case.

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andyjohnson0
I hit play and got a Google "sponsor message" for funeral cost insurance. Full
marks for sensitivity Google...

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BrandonMarc
Here's my question. I don't know if the documentary follows this vein or
answers it, but I'd like to know. Does Carmen Ortiz (or her bosses) feel
sincere remorse? Or does she feel like she's a victim of who-knows-what?

Like Richard Fernandez [1], I can say the appropriateness of her behavior is
beyond my competence to comment on, but the context of her actions is pretty
interesting.

Carmen was being groomed for a potential run for Governor. Before her witch
hunt blew up in her face, she was getting glowing media exposure [2],
describing her as the protege of high Democratic Party officials, helping
cement her story in the minds of voters.

Sadly, in American politics it's all about the story you can tell. Oh, your
parents were born in Puerto Rico, and you grew up in poor areas of NYC? Well,
dear, with your rags-to-riches story and our headlines, we'll sell plenty of
birdcage liner, we'll sell your story to the masses, and good luck on your
election.

The story is what matters ... and the _story_ of a US Attorney who grew up in
a housing project while Hispanic and female makes a formidable political
opponent. The "narrative" plays such an important part in public life these
days that people can hardly go anywhere without it. From Lance Armstrong to
Manti Te'o everybody seems to need an angle.

It seems to me like Carmen just needed a good scalp to hang on her wall, and
if that meant charging Aaron to the moon and back (hoping for a plea deal to a
tiny fraction of the charges) well you know what they say about eggs and
omelets.

But ... Aaron was a human being. You can only push someone so far, before they
behave in a way you don't expect. And how the mighty Carmen fell [3]:

 _Just days ago, speculation was rampant. Gov. Carmen Ortiz? U.S. Sen. Carmen
Ortiz? Well, that’s all over now. U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz is done.
Finished. Forever linked to bringing the full and frightening weight of the
federal government down upon a 26-year-old computer genius — and a suicide
risk._

So like I said, how does she feel? Another article in the Boston herald [4]
mentioned she was terribly upset at Aaron's death ... but if you read
carefully, the article says she was terribly upset at _being blamed for_
Aaron's death. Now that's something different.

I know where I stand. I suspect for legal reasons the film doesn't even touch
this question, which is maybe even reasonable, I guess ... give her the
benefit of the doubt ... but at the same time it's rather sad, since she
certainly didn't give that to Aaron.

\----------------------------------------

[1] [http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2013/01/17/crime-
story/](http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2013/01/17/crime-story/)

[2] [http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/12/07/patrick-
reported...](http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/12/07/patrick-reportedly-
cites-prosecutor-vying-for-governor/0aEpGj5QqjvJfgSwgFNc7H/story.html)

[3]
[http://bostonherald.com/comments/1062230411](http://bostonherald.com/comments/1062230411)

[4]
[http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/01/...](http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/01/emotional_carmen_ortiz_terribly_upset%E2%80%99_over_swartz_suicide)

[also] [http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2013/01/17/ortiz-is-
done...](http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2013/01/17/ortiz-is-done/)

------
pinaceae
hope the movie is not as one sided as the long version trailer.

aaron knew about the current laws. aaron decided to break the law, absolutely
no grey area there. trespassed, hooked his machine physically up where it did
not belong. aaron tried to be a hero, just like ghandi or mandela. when he
faced similar consequences like those - his weakened state of mind kicked in
and he ended his life.

a little bit like a little kid touching a hot plate and then being surprised
about the massive consequences and overwhelming pain. where were all his
friends and peers during those actions? did nobody notice he was playing with
fire? nobody told him to back off?

~~~
fossuser
Aaron went into a place with public access internet (MIT) and had a python
script download public documents that anyone on MIT's network had access (and
the legal right) to download.

While an argument could be made that JSTOR didn't want people downloading so
many so quickly they could have solved that other ways - nothing here was
breaking the law. It was _technically_ legal.

An argument could be made that Aaron planned to publicly release them to
everyone on the internet for free (I didn't get to meet him personally, but
from what I know about him I think this is likely). That was never part of the
crimes he was charged for and frankly I'm not sure if it was even alleged.
JSTOR understood this, dropped charges and backed out.

He was then charged with 13 felonies:

    
    
      Wire Fraud - 2 counts
      Computer Fraud - 5 counts
      Unlawfully Obtaining Information from a Protected Computer - 5 counts
      Recklessly Damaging a Protected Computer - 1 count
    

Aaron was someone who probably would have been acquitted ($1.5 million dollars
in legal costs later), who's actions weren't illegal that was bullied with
multiple decades in prison and driven to suicide because he was trying to do
the right thing.

When asked about the government's actions in pursuing him, Carmen Ortiz
defended her (and the government's) actions as "appropriate".

Is that Justice?

Copyright law was originally intended as an incentive for people to create, a
deal with the government for a limited time monopoly in order to generate
content for the public's benefit. The original spirit of the law has been lost
- along with our republic. [1]

[1]
[http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_t...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html)

~~~
danielweber
The MIT network isn't "public." They let guests use it with proper
registration. You ignore MIT's repeated attempts to lock him out and his
working around their countermeasures each time, leading to more and more
escalation. If he had just run his scraper exactly once and then stopped the
first time he was kicked off, no one would have cared.

He also wasn't facing "multiple decades in prison." This has been debunked so
many times it's getting exhausting, but once again I'll point out that his
lawyer was not a complete hayseed and understood that, even if Aaron went to
trial and was found guilty on every single count, he would face at most a few
years in jail, and quite possibly no jail time at all.

~~~
fossuser
What is the distinction between public and allows public guest use without
registration? Yes it's MIT's network, but they were basically allowing public
access.

Being pressured with multiple years in prison, 13 felonies and a 7 figure
defense cost is a difficult problem to face. Even if your lawyer tells you 30
years in prison is not going to happen and worst case you'll be in prison for
a year -- Even if he wasn't actually facing it - he was still being pressured
with it (that's essentially the purpose of stringing together multiple charges
for a plea).

~~~
danielweber
It's not "basically allowing public access." MIT was actively and repeatedly
kicking him off their network, and it got to the point where Aaron gave up and
resorted to physically trespassing to regain access.

Facing criminal charges is indeed difficult. You don't need to make up stuff
to make the problem sound worse than it is.

