man, JSTOR was literally in the process of making these same documents free for all anyways. And they had already reached an agreement with Aaron over this, yet the fed’s kept pressing. Millions of dollars in fines, DECADES in prison, his life would have been absolutely ruined.
fail
Damn I wish more people on le reddit would follow his lead. I’d upvote that.
They were talking about Swartz on NPR the other day. Fucking sad to see someone that brilliant go, and extra-fucking sad that society exacts such draconian punishment for IP crimes while pieces of human garbage like Paris Hilton could probably commit a homicide and get a slap on the wrist.
I’d wager that most suicides are committed for no discernable reason, though Swartz certainly had one. The suicidal mindset isn’t exactly rational, and it has afflicted people who have taken shits that are worth more than anybody here.
Sit down and shut the fuck up. Grown folks is talking.
How about we make the list of FBI and CIA informants public too.
Life’s not fair.
Life isn’t obligated to be fair. People, however, are.
Information should indeed be free and public, but not all information.
There is a difference between knowledge and information.
This really puts some perspective on how ridiculous the charges really were.
This whole jail system is fucked up.
Perhaps this is your clever way of pointing out that some information should be private. I personally think that privacy of the individual should be protected, but things such as all literature and scientific knowledge should be shared, and that privacy of the corporation and the governments should be transparent to all. that’s because corporations and governments aren’t people. they don’t deserve privacy. that’s kind of radical I know, but its the only real way to keep those in power honest. yes, there are dangers. for example, if we made the science readily available to build a nuclear bomb, well terrorists could use that for evil. however, I’m not a fan of luddite ideologies because progress cannot be stopped. right now iranian nuclear scientists are being assasinated by israel or usa, who knows. its clear that the west doesn’t want iran to have that kind of knowledge. but its morally reprehensible. when the unabomber murdered AI scientists because he wanted to prevent the singularity, that was equally reprehensible and futile. you can’t stop progress. instead of killing scientists, we could be spreading education. hell if every terrorist had the educational background to understand how to make a nuclear weapon, they’d probably become atheists or agnostic. most physicists typically are.
in the past information was withheld by those in power to stay in power. there’s a reason they didn’t want slaves to read. so it is a noble endeavor to make sure no one is denied knowledge. now people in power today invoke national security to justify all sorts of bad acts that go underneath the public radar. laws have been passed that let people get indefinitely detained, and we are to take their word that they know what they are doing. i don’t buy it.
as for bank account #s, they should just redesign systems so that identity theft isn’t so trivially easy. if i knew your birthday, mother’s maiden name, address, and full name i could probably jack all your money. instead of hiding that (which is impossible), the system needs to be overhauled so that knowing that info would not mean you as an individual lose everything. perhaps some biometrics would be a good first step.
I can’t click like enough on that post, Fishjie
which 1 crime would’ve put him away for 30 years? it looks a lot more like people not understanding what concurrent sentences are, i’d be shocked if any of those crimes carried sentences more than 5-10. either way, it seems like this guy fancied himself a crusader or whatever, in which case he should’ve been prepared to get locked up since that’s in the job description.
Is everyone sure that he wasn’t murdered, then the murderers made it look like a suicide?..
Wire fraud and hacking. Those were the crimes that would have put him away for, and I quote here, “dozens of years.” And millions in fines.
Like i said, the US Government has been imposing draconian laws ever since Anonymous and Wikileaks. If you’re a hacker, they just want to punish ANY hacker. Hackers are the new drug dealers. Doesn’t matter if you’re selling dimebags or cooking up meth, they’re gonna send you to prison for a loooooooong time and then put the arrest in the news so it looks like authorities are taking care of bad guys.
oh and for the record, the US District Court has dismissed all charges against him. Those same charges that MIT and JSTOR wanted dropped too.
By your own admission you don’t know much about this issue but go on to give your opinion as if you do.
yeah…i’m calling bullshit. that dude that hacked all of those celebs’ phones was charged with significantly more counts of similar crimes and got 10 years (i think he was facing a combined 104 years). but he’s dead, so we’ll never know. shrug
Our democracy is so sick with corruption right now…
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The prosecutor on the case is linked to another hacker suicide back in 2008.
They don’t go this hard at rapists or murderers. Bullying a defendant? What kind of society do we live in?
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Right in the butt.