
Aaron Swartz died three years ago today - jseliger
http://crookedtimber.org/2016/01/11/aaron-swartz-died-three-years-ago-today/
======
BenoitEssiambre
I wanted an Aaron Swartz t-shirt so I made these graphics:

For dark fabric: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6fL4G1FVF-
AdHhCdVU4UHhCNk0...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6fL4G1FVF-
AdHhCdVU4UHhCNk0/view?usp=sharing)

For lighter fabric: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6fL4G1FVF-
AblFNYlBrWTJmems...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6fL4G1FVF-
AblFNYlBrWTJmems/view?usp=sharing)

Source Inkscape SVG: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6fL4G1FVF-
AbHB3ZW9CZWNDVmc...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6fL4G1FVF-
AbHB3ZW9CZWNDVmc/view?usp=sharing)

Based on a photo by Sage Ross (CC BY-SA)
[http://ragesoss.com/blog/2013/07/12/the-use-aaron-swartz-
pho...](http://ragesoss.com/blog/2013/07/12/the-use-aaron-swartz-photographs/)

I printed one on zazzle.com on a dark t-shirt but it seems I can't share the
design without becoming some kind of t-shirt vendor and take a royalty which I
don't care to do. If you want one, you will have to upload the image yourself.

~~~
flashman
You can upload them to redbubble.com and set your royalty to 0%.

------
xiaoma
He was a pretty argumentative guy, but he was right about so much. He
genuinely put his heart into what he believed in. Without him (and Lessig),
SOPA easily could have gone the other way.

He didn't deserve what the justice system did to him. Let's be honest. Almost
no one does.

Aaron is definitely missed.

~~~
andrepd
>Almost no one does.

That's not even remotely true. Our justice system may be severely fucked in
many ways, but it's not completely nonfunctional. But we hear about the
problems whenever something goes wrong. The other 99.9 percent of the time
when things go smoothly we don't even notice...

~~~
quanticle
There is a huge difference between things going smoothly and things being
_just_. Something like 95% of cases in the US don't even go to trial. They're
ended in a plea bargain, which allows the prosecutor to serve as both judge
and jury. I do not think that is a sign of a healthy justice system, nor a
sign of a justice system that actually pursues _justice_.

~~~
an_account
Alternatively, it is the sign of a very healthy justice system. When cases are
cut and dry there's no reason to go to trial. A basic example: I know I
jaywalked, and I got caught, so I pay the already predetermined fine. Why
wasted tons of resources taking everything to trial and redifing the system
with every case?

~~~
wolfgke
> I know I jaywalked, and I got caught, so I pay the already predetermined
> fine. Why wasted tons of resources taking everything to trial and redifing
> the system with every case?

Why punish jaywalking?

~~~
andrepd
That's beside the point here, really.

~~~
mindslight
It certainly shows the proliferation of ridiculous criminal laws.

How many of these "99.9 percent" of "just" cases are simply just persecuting
someone for an invented victimless "crime"?

If the questionable legality of walking across an empty street doesn't
perfectly illustrate how our minds have been warped by a draconian sense of
"justice", I don't know what could.

~~~
mason240
You stepping in front of my car, going through my windshield, and hurting me,
is not victimless.

~~~
mindslight
This is exactly the type of knee-jerk reaction that perpetuates the status quo
of immoral laws.

In your scenario, there is a civil case for the accident. There can still be a
criminal sanction if a pedestrian fails to avoid vehicles (that are obeying
traffic laws). This does not change my example, which is an empty street.

~~~
mason240
You must also be against drunk driving laws, and just about every law.

Waiting until after dangerous behavior causes damages, injury, or even death
to to happen, then hiring a lawyer to sue to damages is terrible to way to
organize society.

It benefits the privileged on both sides and monetary payouts do not bring
back dead people or cure lingering injures.

------
jason_slack
I just watched "The Internets Own Boy" again last night. It amazes me what our
justice system can do to people and not be held responsible.

Had I done the same thing to Aaron, I'd have been given lethal injection by
now.

~~~
mahranch
> It amazes me what our justice system can do to people and not be held
> responsible.

Just to play devil's advocate here (and I understand this goes against
prevailing opinion), but he _did_ break the law. That much isn't in dispute,
they had a video of him entering the MIT network closet. And he didn't commit
misdemeanors, he committed a half dozen felonies (actually more, but the
prosecution dropped a few of them).

The prosecution was offering a meager 6 months in a low-security prison (for
multiple felonies, that's peanuts) for his crimes but he rejected the offer
(source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Arrest_and_prosec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Arrest_and_prosecution)).

I understand what he was fighting for and agree with him and his ideology. I
support Open Access, but let's not kid ourselves or delude ourselves - he
wasn't innocent. He _did_ commit crimes. I don't think this is the justice's
systems fault. They were going to go extremely light on him but it was _he_
who chose to fight.

~~~
quanticle
>Just to play devil's advocate here (and I understand this goes against
prevailing opinion), but he did break the law.

He absolutely did break the law. I, personally don't dispute that, nor do I
think that that's a controversial fact here. The trouble that I and many other
commenters here have with what happened to Aaron Swartz is the gross
disproportionality of the punishment he was facing. For downloading academic
papers, he was facing a punishment that could have gone to literally millions
of dollars in fines and up to 35 years in prison. That is the sort of
punishment that I would expect for ending a life (i.e. negligent homicide),
not downloading a few thousand academic papers and publishing them on the
Internet.

Should Aaron have gone to jail? Should he have been forced to pay some
restitution? Probably. But I don't think that holding the spectre of millions
of dollars in fines and the rest of his adult life in jail over his head was
the right thing for the prosecutor to do. Its very rare for a crime to break
just one law. Prosecutors almost always have a choice of laws to prosecute
under. In this case, the prosecutor chose the heaviest, most punishing law,
when she could have chosen a lesser charge.

~~~
raldi
_> For downloading academic papers, he was facing [...]_

You left out the part where he snuck into a server closet and tampered with
the network equipment. Among other things, that's burglary.

~~~
ericd
I've heard stories from my days at MIT of people doing much worse things in
server closets. The MIT community's view on these things is _vastly_ different
from the federal government's, and there's a large and shocking disconnect
when those laws are applied to what's normally fairly accepted (if not
explicitly, then implicitly condoned) behavior in the community.

~~~
raldi
This wasn't implicitly or explicitly condoned. MIT had detected what Aaron was
doing, and deployed countermeasures. Aaron defeated those countermeasures; MIT
deployed tougher ones, and Aaron escalated again by breaking into the server
closet and patching his laptop directly into the network switch, knowing it
was the only way to bypass the considerable efforts MIT was making to protect
itself.

This was no, "Oops, I didn't realize you minded!" situation. Aaron was fully
aware that MIT didn't approve of what he was doing, and he didn't care, and
was actively battling to do what he pleased anyway.

~~~
nitrogen
Are you basing this on statements from MIT, from the government, from the
indictment...?

I ask because, though I've never been near MIT, everything I read about it
suggests that every one of these steps is seen as part of the game expected to
be played by a few curious students now and then.

~~~
raldi
Some quotes from the official MIT report: [http://swartz-
report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pd...](http://swartz-
report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pdf)

 _Typically, when an excessive use case is reported that is determined to
originate from within MIT’s network, the Libraries report this to either the
MIT Information Services and Technology (IS &T) network security team or MIT’s
“Stopit” group, which deals with inappropriate behavior that occurs
electronically. The Stopit group’s general response is to send the offender a
warning email message. This is almost always all that is needed to get
people’s attention and have them stop whatever it was they were doing that
caused the problem._

[...]

 _This time, the requests and downloads stimulated a cascade of failures that
brought down multiple JSTOR servers. Half the servers in one data center
failed, and JSTOR engineers feared that the entire service might go down
worldwide._

[...]

 _Also on October 12, the Director of the MIT Libraries reported to MIT’s
Academic Council that a cyber-attack of the JSTOR database had caused a
weekend shutdown of JSTOR to the entire campus._

Now take a look at the "MIT Hacker Ethic", particularly bulletpoint #2:
[http://hacks.mit.edu/misc/ethics.html](http://hacks.mit.edu/misc/ethics.html)

~~~
nitrogen
Nobody was harmed, no property damaged. Sounds like a "hack" to me. Certainly
cheaper than getting a car off of a building.

~~~
foldr
Sure people were harmed. JSTOR going down is a big deal. It's relied on by
academics all over the world.

------
kevinoid
For those interested in commemorating in person, there are events planned in
Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, NYC, and SF
[https://info.thoughtworks.com/celebrate-
aaron-2016](https://info.thoughtworks.com/celebrate-aaron-2016) and Seattle
[https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/celebrate-aaron-
swartz-2016](https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/celebrate-aaron-swartz-2016)

------
manaskarekar
I often remember his essay 'Lean into the pain' :
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dalio](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dalio)

~~~
krat0sprakhar
+1. His series on Raw Nerve is still one of the best things that I've found on
the internet -
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve)

~~~
ameen
While it's a decent read, objectively it means that his way of life failed and
he accepted failure by taking his own life.

P. S. I'm in no means condoning what happened to him, it's a great injustice
but ultimately Aaron didn't persevere as he himself has written.

------
hkmurakami
Seems like an apt time to reupload the markdown dump of his blog that was made
by a HN'er 3 years ago. (we were concerned that his blog would cease to be a
going concern)

[http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=673004338877052...](http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=67300433887705295405)

(not really sure where the best file hosting venue is these days)

~~~
rpgmaker
Someone actually made a perfectly indexed epub back then but I think HN frowns
upon the reformatting of someone's public blog, which I guess is why more
people don't upload an epub of pg's blog.

------
suprgeek
MIT Failed him - spectacularly so. If they had declared that they had no wish
to see him in prison and used their (considerable) influence he would be
alive.

Instead, this political, vindictive creature [http://wgbhnews.org/post/carmen-
ortiz-spotlight-under-fire](http://wgbhnews.org/post/carmen-ortiz-spotlight-
under-fire) and her nasty acolytes in search of a high profile "Scalp" pushed
him over the edge.

A terrible waste and a horrible use (misuse) of prosecutorial discretion.

~~~
ryanlol
>he would be alive.

How do you know?

Aaron had been talking about suicide years before this, maybe we should just
blame reddit?

Edit: Why the downvotes? Fact is that we don't know why Aaron killed himself,
but we do know that he had a prior history of depression and in 2007 posted
what seemed very much like a suicide note.

Frankly, making claims like "If x had (not) done y he'd still be alive" and
presenting them as facts is straight up disgusting.

~~~
pluma
We don't know whether he would still be alive.

We do know he wouldn't have been in the situation in which he ended his life.

Claiming that victims of depression who have killed themselves would have
killed themselves anyway is no less disgusting.

~~~
ryanlol
We really don't know how much of an effect MIT declaring that they don't want
Swartz in prison would've had on his prosecution, speculating on that is
rather pointless anyway since we never got to hear his sentence.

I never made such a claim. I specifically brought up the previous depression
to make clear that we really don't know what was going on his life and what
ended up driving him over the edge.

~~~
Chathamization
MIT could have also simply locked the door to the closet. Or JSTOR could have
simply revoked his account. Instead, the police were sent after him.

~~~
ryanlol
That's pretty much what they did, but Swartz didn't stop before they called
the police.

[http://volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-
charges/](http://volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/) is a good read
btw.

~~~
Chathamization
But they didn't lock the door. Or take the computer that he left there (and it
seems they knew it). They didn't stop guests from having unfettered access to
JSTOR. They decided the best course of action was to send police after Swartz.

~~~
ryanlol
>But they didn't lock the door.

I hope you never forget to lock your doors.

> They didn't stop guests from having unfettered access to JSTOR.

They actively took steps to prevent Swartz from scraping it

>They decided the best course of action was to send police after Swartz.

Yes, for breaking and entering. Fuck MIT.

~~~
Chathamization
> I hope you never forget to lock your doors.

Eh...this wasn't a private residence but a building where the public had free
access. And it's hard to argue that they "forgot to lock" the doors when they
didn't bother locking them even after they realized Swartz was going in there.

> Yes, for breaking and entering. Fuck MIT.

For going in to an unlocked room in a public building.

~~~
ryanlol
>Eh...this wasn't a private residence but a building where the public had free
access. And it's hard to argue that they "forgot to lock" the doors when they
didn't bother locking them even after they realized Swartz was going in there.

At that point they kind of needed to know WHY Swartz was going there.

>For going in to an unlocked room in a public building.

[http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/01/13/article-0-16EA7DFB...](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/01/13/article-0-16EA7DFB000005DC-267_634x558.jpg)

He did feel it necessary to cover his face.

------
mei0Iesh
The response to his death is creepy to me, like "His name is Robert Paulson".
There's so much misinformation, and misuse of his death for ideological and
social purposes unrelated to the actual person. The fact that someone made
something called "Internet's Own Boy" only compounds this. If it were me, I'd
want to come back to life just to tell you all that I'm not your puppet, and
you have no clue why I died; you didn't know me, and I am not "your boy".
Since I couldn't come back to life, I'd hope there'd be people who would speak
against this groupthink on my behalf.

~~~
cooper12
Did you actually watch the documentary? (It's available for free) They talk
with people who were very close with him, including his father, his ex-
girlfriend, and Lawrence Lessig. It also includes excerpted footage of him
speaking at various events. (Not to mention his blog is still present) If
these people (like the author) and excerpts don't actually know Aaron Swartz,
then I don't know who could. (I'm also of the personal opinion that
documentaries are not meant to tell the truth, but rather solidify a living
memory of the person)

One can't deny that Aaron was opposed to institutional corruption (such as his
work with PACER) and wanted to see the freedom of information (see his
"Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto" for a precursor to that). Of course as in
Fight Club, the original intent of a movement or a person's identity can get
twisted and morphed, but it would help if you actually bought up these
inaccuracies. The most insulting thing we could do is forget what Aaron fought
for and let all that he stood for go for nought out of some misguided respect
for his memory.

------
nickbauman
This historical event is what tipped me into the direction of being much, much
more concerned about government overreach and find some sympathy with my
libertarian-leaning friends for the first time. Swartz's story will be part of
_The Fire Next Time_ that James Baldwin wrote about 40 years ago. Swartz is
part of the same story that includes Eric Gardner, Sandra Bland, et al.

~~~
rabidonrails
A Swartz is more closely related to general government overreach like Snowden
or Katherine Mitchell; people who saw a system that needed fixing. Comparing A
Swartz with Gardner is a somewhat unfair comparison for Swartz.

~~~
gertef
Is downloading information less worthy of government regulation then trading
cigarettes?

Is hounding someone through the courts more of an overreach than killing in
the street?

------
coppolaemilio
Every time I remember Aaron's story makes me angry. He is and will be a big
inspiration for me.

~~~
puppetmaster3
Same here.

------
ameen
One of the first movies I watched on Netflix (we just got it) was "The
Internet's own boy".

He was the typical overachiever, successful in almost anything he touched but
finally he decided to hack justice. And broke a bunch of laws and went against
a few institutions. JSTOR wasn't responsible, MIT might've been but he broke
through enough barriers set up by them that Aaron did deserve a slight tap on
his knuckles (the plea deal). And rather than take it he decided to end his
life cause it meant the end of his political career. If he had been so
volatile I wonder how he would've reacted had his earlier efforts elsewhere
had failed.

------
jstoiko
"Sign the Petition for Better Oversight for Federal Attorney Misconduct"

[http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-
boy#takeaction](http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy#takeaction)

~~~
ryanlol
Can you please explain why the Swartz case is a particularly good example of
federal attorney misconduct?

~~~
nitrogen
Type "Aaron Swartz" into the search box at the bottom of any HN page to read
ample arguments on either side of that question.

~~~
ryanlol
I've yet to see any good arguments for why this case stands out, other people
have spent decades in prison due to prosecutorial misconduct.

------
5db8db
He is such a inspiring legend, shining beside Edward and the other fighting
friends, for freedom and a better world. I love Aaron for his spirit and the
mission he lived.

For anyone, who hasn't seen the documentary [1], I can recommend it!

Good to be remembered to some of his goals: „We need to buy secret databases
and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload
them to file sharing networks.“ [2]

[1] [https://freedocumentaries.org/documentary/the-internet-s-
own...](https://freedocumentaries.org/documentary/the-internet-s-own-boy-the-
story-of-aaron-swartz) [2]
[http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamju...](http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt)

~~~
nickpsecurity
I independently came up with the same thing about journals but instinctively
knew better. I looked at the financial reports for a major one to confirm or
reject the instinct. All I can say is "Holy shit. We're not buying that any
time soon."

Thanks for the documentary link, though. I'll check it out.

------
ktamura
I just got this book in the mail that collected aaronsw's writings:
[http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Could-Change-World-
ebook/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Could-Change-World-
ebook/dp/B00VPPYEQK/)

------
sethbannon
I encourage everyone to take time today to reflect on Aaron's legacy, and on
how we can use technology to make the world more just, more open, and more
fair.

------
draaglom
Funny seeing the difference between then and now:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484)

Next time, let's try being this supportive _before_ someone dies as well as
after.

------
SFjulie1
ian murdock died less than 1 month ago too. He was right too.

The news is still confined to the dead dogs section in local news.

I guess that cemeteries are full of important people we all care about,
sometimes much more than the yet to be important that are still alive.

------
dredmorbius
Related: I'd run across an article some time back that discussed _what it was_
that Aaron might have been up to by doing massive data collection of JSTOR
data. Unfortunately I cannot find the article and don't recall just what it
suggested.

The upshot though was that there may have been some quantitative / bulk
analysis that such a corpus would have allowed or enabled, potentially turning
up interesting or unusual elements of large-scale academic research.

Is this ringing bells with anyone?

------
xyzzy4
I think he should've just taken a plea deal and gone to prison for a few
months. It wouldn't have been that bad - maybe he could've taken the time to
write a book.

------
gravypod
Can anyone give a clear and concise summary of what he did to bring on the
wrath of the criminal justice system? Every article I have read jumps back and
fourth through his timeline and inter-splices useless information.

I know it involves breaking into a room, writing a bot to scrape a website,
and MIT. I'm not sure on the details though.

~~~
cooper12
He downloaded a large amount of articles from JSTOR. This involved setting up
a laptop in a storage room in MIT, where he was not a student. MIT had to
investigate it because the laptop was making a large amount of requests to
JSTOR's servers and JSTOR had to block access to MIT. The rest of the story
involves an overzealous federal prosecutor wanting to charge him under the
CFAA to make an example of him because of Aaron's "Guerrilla Open Access
Manifesto". JSTOR also claimed that Aaron cost them an overinflated sum of
damages, but was not interested in prosecution after Aaron agreed to delete
the acquired documents. MIT adopted a policy of neutrality in the matter,
contrary to its spirit of hacking, and did not speak up for Aaron's case. Hope
that helps. If you want a more objective look at the case, see Wikipedia
[0][1] and MIT's Report to the President [2] (which is long, but very
comprehensive).

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#JSTOR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#JSTOR)
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz)
[2]: [http://swartz-report.mit.edu](http://swartz-report.mit.edu)

------
notindexed
The irony of the surveillance video freely available on the web vs the
scientific docs he downloaded.

------
ravin1729
an idealist to the core who has left a mark on world or anyone who got to know
about him directly or indirectly. May be governments and people like us have
failed him. Its like few or majority hold too much of power to make a decision
rather than what is right.

------
devhead
and still PACER is charging for searches. rip swartz

------
SocksCanClose
I wonder what he would say about #jesuismilo.....

------
ratsimihah
RIP Aaron!

------
bitmapbrother
I'm still disgusted by the behavior of the MIT officials in all of this.
Whenever I see or hear 'MIT' the first thing that comes to mind is: "that's
the school that was responsible for the death of Aaron".

~~~
gnaritas
And why would that come to mind when none of it is true? Firstly, Aaron is
responsible for his own death, it was suicide. Secondly, it's the zealous
prosecutor you should be mad at, MIT is not to blame here; Aaron broke many
laws and they were well within their rights to have him arrested. Good
intentions aside, what Aaron did was illegal and he deserved to be arrested
for it; what he didn't deserve was more than probation and a slap on the
wrist.

~~~
dlandis
Well oftentimes colleges can and will exercise discretion when it comes to
having a student arrested and they will perform their own internal inquiry to
determine whether an offense warrants arrest and prosecution. That's just the
way it goes. Colleges should do the right thing for their students and protect
them when appropriate because all kids do stupid things. MIT would have known
pretty well what type of prosecution he would face. Do you think all students
who do something illegal on campus get arrested for it?

~~~
gnaritas
He didn't just do some silly illegal thing; he illegally hacked a network from
a closet he should not have been in and hit it with so much traffic that he
caused legitimate users of the network to suffer loss of access for multiple
days and he did this multiple times after being kicked out. Legitimate users
were harmed, regardless of what what anyone feels, Aaron committed a felony
and was rightfully arrested.

Beyond that, you seem to be overlooking the fact that it wasn't MIT that was
after Aaron, but JSTOR, who constantly pushed MIT to help them locate the
hacker who was taking their data from the MIT network. MIT didn't have the
option to just handle the matter internally, a third party was involved who
was being hacked through the MIT network.

You know what happens when you're a hacktivist; you go to jail. Aaron knew he
was guilty, he knew he was breaking the law when he did it, it was willful
civil disobedience by his own admission. His suicide was likely the result of
his knowing jail was coming even if the prosecutor hadn't been overzealous
because he committed a felony and knew it and he couldn't deal with facing the
consequences of his actions.

He wanted to change the system, he went about it the wrong way and figured
that out too late.

~~~
igravious
You can't say that it was wilful civil disobedience and then say that he went
about it the wrong way, you contradict yourself as that's kind of the
definition of civil disobedience.

If you're saying that he ought not to been civilly disobedient then that's a
different matter but what he did makes him a sort of modern-day hero. That he
took his own life makes him a martyr in a weird kind of way. I know that hero
and martyr are emotive words but I think I nearly feel that way about all
this.

And it's not theft, it's copyright infringement. Repeat after me: you can't
steal bits and bytes, only copy them, and copying is infringement, not theft.

~~~
gnaritas
> You can't say that it was wilful civil disobedience and then say that he
> went about it the wrong way, you contradict yourself as that's kind of the
> definition of civil disobedience.

I didn't mean "morally" wrong, I mean wrong approach. That's not contradictory
at all; civil disobedience is not always the correct way to go about change.
Sometimes it is, like when its done en-masse; going it alone, wrong approach.

> And it's not theft

Fine, infringing their data, irrelevant to the conversation; a crime no matter
what label you want to apply.

The right approach is to lobby to get the law changed, not break it by
yourself and hope you don't get hammered.

~~~
igravious
> Sometimes it is, like when its done en-masse; going it alone, wrong
> approach.

Perhaps, perhaps not. There's certainly safety in numbers. But this issue is
not a huge social issue like, say, nationalist causes or other political
issues. This is a kind of geeky issue that only a small fraction of the
population gets but that everybody should care about. Also the law-breaking is
doing no-one any physical harm. Nobody is going to go hungry because they are
deprived of food.

Some argue that mp3 downloads have not affected the music industry's revenues
and profits, or at least not by the vast amounts they claim. Similarly I
imagine the out of pocket hit to JSTOR to be pretty small, but couple that
with the fact that a lot of academic papers were funded by public money then
people start seeing things differently. Hence the open-access journal movement
and Arxiv and so on. And what about the benefits to society brought about by
giving wider access to knowledge? One could start to take a pretty dim view of
the ridiculous prices the JSTORs and Elseviers charge.

> it's irrelevant to the conversation.

It's not totally irrelevant. Stealing/theft sounds worse than infringement.

Look, I'm not having a go at you. I just think that Aaron was justified in
what he did and I admire him for what he did. There are times for emailing and
times for plugging in a network cable, Aaron chose the cable and I don't think
that was the wrong approach even though it ended tragically.

~~~
gnaritas
Hey, I agree with Aaron's position that the data should be freely accessible,
so no need to sell me on that or the fact it was non-violent, that's not in
contention.

> Stealing/theft sounds worse than infringement.

It's not relevant because this conversation isn't about how it sounds, it's
about who's to blame for his death. None of which has anything to do with what
the particular charges were.

> I just think that Aaron was justified in what he did and I admire him for
> what he did. There are times for emailing and times for plugging in a
> network cable, Aaron chose the cable and I don't think that was the wrong
> approach even though it ended tragically.

And that's your right, personally I admire the principles, but his approach
was naive and imho not worth admiration; his suicide tragic and also not worth
admiration. It was the wrong approach because a bad outcome for Aaron was
predictable from the onset that led to a needless suicide of a very talented
individual. You can't flagrantly commit federal crimes and think jail isn't an
option, regardless of the merits of those laws.

