Does anyone have any insights into the state of trying to open up publicly funded scientific research?
You did not answer my question. Nor have you provided any evidence that what you claim is true.
And (regardless of truth) what JSTOR decided to ignore as well.
Not what he was charged with.
Doesnât matter if youâre right, he didnât have to prove his innocence here.
This is probably not going to be a popular post.
Aaron Swartz is dead. He also suffered from major depression. If you donât suffer from major depression, I donât think you can even begin to fathom what he must have gone through every day. All shenanigans from the government or MIT aside, I donât think itâs responsible to blame anybody for his death. If you do have the experience of what itâs like to feel that everything is meaningless for months on end, maybe we can begin to talk.
I dispute what this lawyer dude says about what Swartz did. It accurately describes the first instance of basically wget-ing all of JSTORâs archives. It doesnât accurately describe âenteringâ a network closet to continue this after his access had been revoked. Although there was one instance of late night exploring I remember in which a network closet was left unlocked, almost all of them require some form or another of âmagicâ to get into under normal circumstances. Of course this is a misdemeanor at best, and no worse that things that Iâve done in the past.
For all that there exists a section of the MIT community that calls the response of the administration âgutless,â Iâve heard more than a few grumblings from people saying Swartz went too far and deserved to be caught. Itâs worlds away from the response I saw to MIT dropping Star Simpson like an ugly baby, which was of universal condemnation for the administration by both students and faculty. The difference is not because weâre sheeple, but because more than a few of us didnât agree with Aaronâs tactics or of his disregard of the detente that exists between hackers, IS&T, and the campus police.
Iâm wondering why anybodyâs surprised about the US criminal âjusticeâ system. Itâs a meat grinder and sausage maker. Most of the time the body politic is content to avert their eyes. This time itâs someone you liked and it forced you to have a look. Weâre predictably horrified. And people wonder why so many people with petty charges go to jail? Or why people who are innocent sign confessions? The law isnât on your side, and neither are the police or prosecutors. The only thing sitting between you and a jail cell is your money and the constitution, and to paraphrase a long rant, theyâre trying to take those away too.
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Iâm a publishing academic. Authors of papers never get paid for their work. The peer reviewers who quality-check the papers never get paid for their work. The editorial board members who organise the reviews never get paid for their work. The only people who get paid are the publishers. And since authors have to give up their copyright to publish their work, the publishers have absolute control over who can read those papers.
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Seems to me popular opinion was very much against the governmentâs handling of the Branch Davidian (and Ruby Ridge) situations.
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Doesnât sound like popular approval to me. And Iâm not clicking any Stormfront link.
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It was public research by researchers who had already been paid. JSTOR doesnât give them checks, either. Nor did JSTOR give a shit, at the end of the day. It was the prosecutor, taking your point of view, who turned this into a personal crusade to ruin Swartzâs life.
Frankly, Taylor and Francis can lump it.
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