
The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013) - akashtndn
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/11/requiem-for-a-dream
======
petke
I don't think this obsession with Aaron and his death is any good. It feels
like a morbid soap opera. He is more talked about in death than in life. I
think its better to focus on the living. There is plenty of interesting tech
entrepreneurs and activists out there.

~~~
krapp
I think it's less morbid soap opera and more propagandist soapbox. Aaron
Swartz has been turned into a martyr for a cause. Ian Murdock, as well. We can
expect any technologist suicide to be called a murder at the hands of the
state from now on, and for conversation to be steered towards polemics against
US policy at every conceivable opportunity, when their names are brought up.

I do believe the subjects (copyright law, police brutality, etc.) are worth
discussing, but I also believe the politics around them make it difficult to
discuss them rationally. People tend not to invoke Aaron Swartz to start
conversations, so much as attempt to end them, or polarize them, or steer them
into the same tedious and unproductive circles time and again.

I guess we're lucky there's no way to spin Marvin Minsky's death that way. If
he'd gotten so much as a traffic ticket before the end, people would be
implying his cerebral hemorrhage was caused by police batons.

~~~
Chris2048
two, seemingly valid, examples, and "We can expect any technologist suicide to
be called a murder at the hands of the state from now on". Your'e the one
being hyperbolic.

~~~
krapp
I think it's a correct assertion, although I'm aware of my hyperbolic tone.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
This passage was interesting to me:

“He was freed of all the disciplining experiences of life,” Lawrence Lessig
says. “His parents got him out of school early, which was great because it
allowed him to become somebody who wasn’t the product of puberty in a public
school. But it was bad in the sense that it gave him a confidence about his
own judgment, which is dangerous.”

I hated school and still hate work mostly due to the discipline aspect and the
bureaucracy but I endured it. Before now I thought was bad but perhaps this
discipline does make me stronger to deal with general bullshit that exists in
our world, I deal with it fine for the most part. As a parent now I was
thinking I should allow my son to do whatever he wants to avoid the nonsense I
sometimes had to put up with but now I don't known if that hurts him too, it's
difficult striking that balance.

~~~
akashtndn
I am pretty sure that a lot of people must have took an interest in the
passage. For anyone who has serious issues with the BS that the academic life
has to offer, it offers a rather interesting take on the matter.

------
nostrademons
I'm reminded of this Ribbonfarm essay whenever news about Aaron comes up:

[http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/09/17/how-to-be-a-precious-
sn...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/09/17/how-to-be-a-precious-snowflake/)

I think Aaron Swartz's life & death continues to fascinate us because many of
us see something in him that we wish we could protect in ourselves. He's the
ur-snowflake to all of us clods. It would be _nice_ to live in a world of free
access to information, universal compassion, freedom from power hierarchies,
and everything that he stood for. It's just not very _practical_ , when
content creators need to eat and people have differing desires that are often
at odds and reality needs to choose between multiple competing desires.

~~~
JanneVee
< It would be nice to live in a world of free access to information, universal
compassion, freedom from power hierarchies, and everything that he stood for.
It's just not very practical, when content creators need to eat and people
have differing desires that are often at odds and reality needs to choose
between multiple competing desires.

What? The activism was directed at giving free access to that should be free!
The research that is being hoarded behind paywalls by gatekeepers who didn't
create it and don't pay the ones who created it. The creators of the text are
people paid by us through our taxes and other contributions and then locked
away so only a select few can see it. This knowledge locked away that could
save lives, be new areas of business or just simply improve the human
condition.

And here you are and talking about this like he was trying to distribute
movies for free.

------
sarciszewski
The title needs a (2013), as this was published nearly three years ago. I
didn't realize this until I saw the words "two years ago" in reference to his
arrest.

------
mirimir
> It is clear that he did not anticipate the astonishing severity of the legal
> response [to scraping JSTOR].

This is a key lesson. The transition from protected academic life to "The Real
World" (as we used to style it) can be alarmingly abrupt. It's best to plan
for the worst.

~~~
Joof
We often call things 'The Real World' when we see how harsh and unethical the
current reality often is, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for a more
ideal one.

We have to work within those real rules, but it would be a shame if those
rules define us.

~~~
mirimir
Yes, he deserved slack. MIT dropped the ball, for sure.

However, my point is that it's very dangerous to count on slack. Consider the
theft of that cannon from Fleming House. Sure, it was a prank. And Caltech
didn't press charges. All in good fun. But interstate theft is a federal
crime.

~~~
Joof
The whole thing seems politically motivated from an outside source. Precedents
at MIT effectively encourage this behavior (the law isn't a moral absolute;
you've broken the law at least once; I wouldn't be surprised if I've
unknowingly committed a few felonies). If the expectation was otherwise he
wouldn't have behavied as he did.

His mistake was likely that he had become somebody important; something of a
political figure. That's when people start about caring what you do (by
definition).

Remember that bastard that hiked up the price of life saving drugs who got
slapped with an old felony? Nobody would have bothered to find it if he wasn't
the most hated man in America.

------
kumarski
Didn't know he had ulcerative colitis.

For anyone else suffering, there's been new studies on fodmap free diets which
have been reportedly effective.
[http://bit.ly/fodmapfree](http://bit.ly/fodmapfree)

~~~
junto
I have UC. I'm lucky that I have access to medication that hold it in check.

Thank you for the link. I'd love to get to the point where I no longer need to
take this medication on a daily basis.

~~~
kumarski
I used to take lialda.

I've had it for 12 years. I've spent the last 2 years learning everything I
can about web, building 2 saas ventures, and now trying to attack this
problem:
[http://trials.humandataproject.org](http://trials.humandataproject.org)

I'd love to chat with you and learn more about what you've tried.

Keep in mind Tibetans have a 80% incidence rate of IBD. Feel free to reach out
to me if you think I can be a resource.

------
chris_wot
As much as I love what Aaron Schwartz stood for and did (hell, the more I read
about him the more amazing he seems), he does seem to be a victim of his own
hubris. For example, he concludes it would be easy to take over Australia.
Possibly, but unlikely - given he was almost running a guerilla campaign
against things like SOPA, surely he would see things aren't that easy? Or that
the smaller party often punches above their weight, given he was indeed the
smaller party?

Strangely, none of this detracts from this extraordinary individual. Oh, but I
wish he hadn't committed suicide! It's not like I don't understand it, I am a
person at risk of this myself. I just wish he didn't leave his devastated
loved ones behind like that.

------
libeclipse
For me, all that Aaron Swartz's story is for me, is a reminder if how broken
and corrupted the judicial system is. I couldn't really care less about what
he did when he was alive, just about the horrific things that others did along
the way.

~~~
Esau
Don't act like Swartz was an innocent lamb.

~~~
chris_wot
He's not. You can accept Schwartz broke the law in downloading a bunch of case
law that probably would have cost a maximum of $10,000, if that. You don't
have to forgive Carmen Ortiz or Stephen Heyman for prosecutorial overreach, or
the complete and utter misuse of public resources in prosecuting a crime the
supposed victim, JSTOR, had resolved was no longer an issue.

~~~
oldmanjay
The real problem is accepting that he broke into MIT property and tampered
with their network as if he had some sort of moral high ground that granted
him a right to do so. Private property does not belong to the hacking class
simply because they can get to it, and that aspect of the lionization of Aaron
Swartz is distasteful at best. This was not just "Robin Hood" freeing research
for the poor, it was a man violating the rights of others based on strong
desires. Hardly noble. Hardly heroic. That he couldn't face the consequences
of the actions once he realized that desire did not translate into a right
just cuts down the last tree in that forest, to me. My heroes aren't cowardly.

~~~
chris_wot
Really? I'm curious here, who was injured? Seriously, tell me the exact person
who was harmed by him hooking up his laptop into the MIT network.

~~~
foldr
JSTOR had to shut down temporarily, which hurt everyone who uses it. And MIT
would certainly be harmed if they made it known that anyone who liked was
allowed to break into their property and hook into their network.

~~~
rek0j
"had to shut down" It didn't have to shut down any more than you'd have to
burn your own house down after a burglary.

If somebody broke into my house and was caught I supposed I could overreact
and go into massive debt fortifying it with castle walls, a moat, and
alligators.

But I don't think the legal system should side with parties doing damage to
themselves just because they don't understand computer networks.

~~~
foldr
I don't think it's credible to suggest that JSTOR would have shut down if they
didn't think it was necessary. I dislike this victim-blaming mentality that
some people seem to have in relation to computer-related crimes. JSTOR appear
to have done their best to handle the situation, bearing in mind that they
cannot be seen to condone violations of the licenses which they have
negotiated with publishers.

~~~
chris_wot
Both JSTOR and MIT declined to pursue civil litigation. They clearly didn't
consider themselves to have been materially harmed.

Where did you get the information that the entirety of JSTOR was shut down,
even temporarily?

~~~
foldr
>Both JSTOR and MIT declined to pursue civil litigation. They clearly didn't
consider themselves to have been materially harmed.

The second statement doesn't in any way follow from the first. There are call
kinds of reasons why JSTOR might have decided not to pursue civil litigation.
Swartz quite possibly didn't have enough money to make it worthwhile, and it
would have been bad publicity. On top of that, given that Swartz was already
facing criminal prosecution, there was no need to pursue civil litigation as a
deterrent to others.

>Where did you get the information that the entirety of JSTOR was shut down,
even temporarily?

[http://swartz-report.mit.edu/faq.html](http://swartz-report.mit.edu/faq.html)
("This activity was in violation of MIT's licensing agreement with JSTOR, and
its scale threatened JSTOR's network so profoundly that JSTOR blocked all MIT
access for three days in October 2010.") My original post was open to the
interpretation that JSTOR shut down everywhere for everyone, which is not the
case. But anyway, it's clear that Swartz's activities were significantly
disruptive.

What you seem to be missing is that Swartz's actions were a direct challenge
to JSTOR's entire business model. The only way that JSTOR can make money out
of scanning old journal articles is to charge fees to someone or other for
access to those articles. If the entire JSTOR database becomes freely
available, then this income stream is cut off. It's worth considering what the
effects would have been if Swartz had succeeded in doing what he intended to
do, i.e. release JSTOR's entire database of articles. This wasn't merely a
prank or a protest. It was something that had the potential to destroy JSTOR
entirely. (And JSTOR isn't even evil -- it's a non-profit that does a lot of
great work.)

~~~
chris_wot
You can read JSTOR's statement here:

[http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor-statement-misuse-
incident-...](http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor-statement-misuse-incident-and-
criminal-case)

"The criminal investigation and today’s indictment of Mr. Swartz has been
directed by the United States Attorney’s Office. It was the government’s
decision whether to prosecute, not JSTOR’s. As noted previously, our interest
was in securing the content. Once this was achieved, we had no interest in
this becoming an ongoing legal matter."

They genuinely weren't interested in making him an example.

~~~
foldr
I didn't say that JSTOR was interested in making an example of Swartz. I said
that _if_ they had wanted to make an example of him, that would _still_ not
have given them a reason to pursue civil action, since Swartz was _already_
facing a criminal prosecution that would have acted as a far greater deterrent
than any conceivable civil action. There would simply have been no point in
spending lots of money on a civil suit (money which probably could not be
recovered in full) when the person in question was already facing jail time.

More generally, that fact that JSTOR did not pursue civil action is totally
unsurprising given that Swartz was already facing a criminal prosecution, and
it tells us very little about what JSTOR did or didn't think about what Swartz
did. It's like saying "you must not think that the burglar harmed you by
burgling your house because you're not pursuing civil action against him" \--
in an instance where the burglar was already facing a criminal prosecution.

If JSTOR had believed Swartz's actions not to be harmful, they clearly would
not have blocked JSTOR access from the MIT network. And indeed, Swartz didn't
actually succeed in doing JSTOR much harm _becuase they successfully stopped
him_. What you're effectively saying is that being caught before you've
succeeded in completing a crime ought to count as a good defense. In other
words, if I try to burgle your house and you catch me before I succeed in
making off with your stuff, then you can't complain, because after all, I
didn't actually get hold of any of your stuff!

------
obrero
The US taxpayer and government funds public research, and the results are
given as private profit to publishers. Swartz downloads papers en masse,
something he may have had a murky right to do as an MIT fellow. This results
in MIT, JStor, and the US government persecuting him. The New Yorker and
Larissa Macfarquhar don't look for the darker side of all of this in the
government persecutions and taxpayer money for public research privatized by
corporations, but in Swartz himself. Conde Nast is just another big
corporation (watch the nth generation heir of it in a piece more illuminating
than this one - "Born Rich") coming to the defense of another big corporation
in the slimy way someone like Larissa Macfarquhar specializes in, although its
the New Yorker it's middle-brown, and in a slimy quote subtle unquote way. No
articles on the darker side of other big publisher corporations for sure.

~~~
apsec112
How does the article "come to the defense of another big corporation"? Which
corporation is it coming to the defense of? JSTOR is owned by Ithaka Harbors,
a non-profit organization
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaka_Harbors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaka_Harbors)),
and MIT is a non-profit educational institution. In any case, the article
didn't seem very sympathetic to them.

~~~
krick
I wouldn't word it like that, but I think _obrero_ definitely has a point. I
mean, all this storytelling is pretty disgusting. Enjoy the read, look how
pompous, how grandiloquent this is! Look at all this tragedy! And I mean not
only the writer herself — the quote of the girlfriend, which serves as an
epigraph is already too much.

And it's not just that I'm not a big fan of newyorker's style (even though I'm
not), the whole read is composed in a very specific way. It isn't
biographical, not documentary, it's more of an essay, purpose of which is not
to tell Aaron's story as such, but _the writer 's_ story, with it's own
premise and morale.

So what is this story all about? The suicide. And the whole Aaron's life is
shown as a prelude to it. The suicide is the point, and the whole life is "an
explanation" for it: story, which, we are given to understand, was likely to
end with a suicide sooner or later. As the writer eloquently calls it — "the
darker side".

It's easy to convey that, because it's a social norm to view a suicide as a
tragedy, regardless of circumstances. But let us be cynical just for a minute
and look at what happened: some guy was fighting for his ideals; the party he
was fighting against was something way bigger than him, a mere mortal; he
lost; he died. Suicide never was a big deal, apparently not for Aaron, anyway.
What was a big deal for him: his war for the social justice. And, let's face
it, there're plenty of other guys who end their lives with suicide, newyorker
doesn't write about them. So, as a matter of fact, the suicide isn't a big
deal for a newyorker as well, even though MacFarquhar won't admit it, maybe
even to herself.

Yet it's made to look as if it is precisely what is the big deal and it's
socially acceptable to display it that way. What the story really was about —
the fight, and those on the other side of it — that we won't be thinking of,
we won't discuss it, we won't remember it. Instead, it will be all about "a
darker side" and a tragedy.

Regardless of whether what Aaron did or was doing was right or wrong,
regardless of if he was a hero or just a fool — I think it's a pity. To take
the most insignificant part of the story, and to make it _The Story_ , because
it's so easy to do that.

------
roymathew
why its 2013 on 2015 is needed

------
Aloha
What a tortured soul.

------
known
Victim of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)

