

Former Reddit Director & Harvard Fellow Charged With Hacking MIT Computer - jerrelp
http://bostinnovation.com/2011/07/19/reddit-cofounder-harvard-fellow-charged-with-hacking-mit-computer/

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trotsky
It seems like he was accessing the MIT network simply to get an MIT IP address
that would authorize him in the JSTOR application. He then was running a
scraper, which was probably just a python script with a bit of metering to
avoid slamming them too hard. Does anyone know if that's correct, that if your
organization has a site license you can access the service without additional
credentials?

If that's all true then the description of the events and charges seem to
reflect quite a polarized view. It's somewhat understandable, though, that
JSTOR would want to "throw the book at him" given his previous public comments
- it seems very likely he intended to distribute the large cache of documents
widely. Whether or not that's ethical, it's clearly not in the firm's best
interests - I doubt a similar situation without any intent to distribute would
be referred to law enforcement at all.

~~~
tedunangst
I'm not specifically familiar with JSTOR or MIT's network, but I am familiar
with other services that allow free access from anyone coming via a school's
network block, and I'm also familiar with networks that will allow guest
access for a short period of time so as to not inconvenience true guests.

Lots of services do this because it's far less hassle than distributing
traditional credentials and typically it's less likely to be abused because
unlike name/password pairs, you can't post an IP address to usenet and have
somebody else use it. The abuser also has to be physically present, which
makes them much easier to find.

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bobfunk
The actual indictment with details of the hack:
[http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pd...](http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pdf)

Also JSTOR's statement: [http://about.jstor.org/news-events/news/jstor-
statement-misu...](http://about.jstor.org/news-events/news/jstor-statement-
misuse-incident-and-criminal-case)

35 years in jail sounds insanely outside all proportions of the damage done by
downloading scholarly articles!

~~~
tluyben2
35 years is crazy; if they wanted could MIT do something about that? I mean;
it seems far more reasonable to give me a fine.

~~~
gregory80
Demand progress makes it sound like MIT asked the gov't not to pursue the
case. But the gov't went forward anyway

<http://demandprogress.org/aaron>

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woodall
This is not the first time he has done something like this if memory serves
me. In late 2008 Mr. Swartz and Carl Malamud went to select libraries, ones
with free PACER access, and proceeded to download ~700 GB of information that
was behind a paywall. After which they made all of it available on Mr.
Malamud's website.

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/case-
against...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/case-against-
pacer.ars)

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thirsteh
He wasn't a co-founder. Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian founded Reddit. They
acquired Aaron's company half a year later.

~~~
kooshball
from pg

> Aaron's not wrong to call himself one of the founders. The company behind
> Reddit was a merger of two startups, one that made Reddit and one that made
> Infogami, and in that situation the founders of both startups are considered
> founders of the combined company.

[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/c1okmc)

~~~
argos
alexis doesn't seem to agree

<https://twitter.com/#!/kn0thing/status/93374221685755904>

one talks about a merger and the other of an acquisition

~~~
redthrowaway
They seem to still be pretty pissed at him.

~~~
encoderer
What's the backstory there?

~~~
redthrowaway
He went to europe while they were in the middle of crunch time, then promptly
took a week of sick time upon his return. They fired him shortly thereafter.
Steve talks about it here:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/d2njs/til_the...](http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/d2njs/til_there_was_a_third_cofounder_of_reddit_who_was/c0x40yz)

In Aaron's words: "Yeah. I was unhappy working in an office and didn’t hide
it. So I’d come in late and set up lots of off-site meetings and stuff. And my
boss wasn’t really thrilled about that. Also, I think he was upset about me
disappearing for so long on vacation. One of the places I went to in Europe
was the Chaos Computer Conference. And while I was there I hung out with my
friend Quinn Norton, who was reporting on the event for Wired. She took my
photo for one of her articles and it was featured on wired.com’s front page.
“Heh,” I joked. “I bet the first time my boss finds out where I am is when he
sees my photo on the front page of his own website.”"

So yeah, he earned his firing and the emnity of his coworkers the old-
fashioned way.

Edit: Also, there's some speculation on the thread I linked to that Aaron was
a cofounder who received a payout in the CN deal. He wrote web.py, sure, but
if he walked away with $1MM+ without showing up to work, that could explain
why they still hate his guts.

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gregory80
A statement from demand progress, which Swartz is the former exec director of:
<http://demandprogress.org/aaron>

~~~
jacoblyles
Does Demand Progress realize how creepy that logo is?

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apu
Main discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2781615>

