MIT President on Aaron Swartz

While it's painful that this is happening now and not a year ago, I'm heartened that Hal is heading the internal investigation. I can't imagine anyone better.<p>He was a major supporter of Star Simpson when most of the MIT administration hung her out to dry. He has as good a chance as anyone at understanding Aaron's goals in liberating JSTOR's archive: he's a founding director of the FSF, Creative Commons, and Public Knowledge. He led the creation of MIT's OpenCourseWare and the class <i>Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier</i>.<p>He's also just a deeply good guy.<p><pre><code> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Knowledge http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/</code></pre>

I'm impressed with this response. Two quick notes:<p>1) President Reif is brand new in the role -- the majority of events would have happened under Susan Hockfield, the previous president. It makes sense that he would want a report of what happened previously since he wasn't here yet.<p>2) Professor Abelson is a <i>very</i> well respected member of the MIT community, and the fact that he is heading up the investigation leaves me comforted. He's helped me before in the past and is so incredibly smart and kind hearted I can't think of a better guy for the job.

<i>I will not attempt to summarize here the complex events of the past two years. Now is a time for everyone involved to reflect on their actions, and that includes all of us at MIT. I have asked Professor Hal Abelson to lead a thorough analysis of MIT's involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual activity on our network in fall 2010 up to the present. I have asked that this analysis describe the options MIT had and the decisions MIT made, in order to understand and to learn from the actions MIT took. I will share the report with the MIT community when I receive it.</i><p>That was a much more contrite and accountable message than I had expected. When he said "<i>not attempt to summaraize...Now is a time for...</i>" I expected the sentence to end with "<i>now is the time to grieve and celebrate Aaron's life, not cast blame</i>"...<p>Certainly, the same message and promises won't be made by the government handlers.

Aaron Swartz was mentally ill and committed suicide as a direct result of his mental illness. He comtemplated suicide in 2007 long before any of this DOJ stuff happened.<p><a href="http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dying" rel="nofollow">http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dying</a><p>Furthermore the "glorification" of his suicide is doing nothing more but encouraging other suicidal "hackers" to go over the edge so they have their "story" and inconsequential blog posts plastered all of Hacker News. The focus should be on figuring out a way to get mental health services to those who need it most. Not a witch hunt for every person who had something to do with Aaron's prosecution for crimes he knowingly committed.

Note that Hal Abelson, the professor being tasked with investigating, used to run a class called Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier. He's also the coauthor of SICP.

This goes way beyond what I expected MIT would do. I guess MIT is more responsive to public opinion than any prosecutor's office or politician.

Very well written. Reif understands that there is nothing to be gained by outright pointing fingers. He knows that MIT played some part and basically admits it. What he doesn't want to do is go into details until he readily understands what role MIT played.

It’s up on the MIT website too: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/letter-on-death-of-aaron-swartz.html" rel="nofollow">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/letter-on-death-of-aaron-...</a>

Contrast the MIT statement with the distancing of JSTOR: <a href="http://about.jstor.org/statement-swartz" rel="nofollow">http://about.jstor.org/statement-swartz</a><p>They write, "The case is one that we ourselves had regretted being drawn into from the outset..."<p>But in Lawrence Lessig's <a href="http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully" rel="nofollow">http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bull...</a> he writes, "Early on, and to its great credit, JSTOR figured “appropriate” out: They declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its."<p>According to Lessig, JSTOR was hardly "drawn into" their case against Swartz: they withdrew their own legal action against Swartz.

35 years in prison for getting access to articles in a library ? Human race is yet to evolve. <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/farewell-aaron-swartz" rel="nofollow">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/farewell-aaron-swartz</a>

Today, I have this feeling again, the same I had when I heard about Micheal Jackson's death. He too struggled in a way from false accusations caused by reasons we all know. What I did learn today, which I did not knew earlier, was how while living, a man may not achieve something, but in death WHY exactly he would achieve even more. I do not in any way, justify the loss of life here, but instead that after what has already happened, what will we do? His ideas can no longer be ignored by me, us &#38; those who caused this, and they must take a present stance, &#38; retrospect for the good, that, what exactly were the things that went wrong and still are in the wrong, similarly to what Mr. Reif said. I feel, that even though I didn't knew who Aaron Swartz was until yesterday, I will know him for the rest of my life. What I can say today is, that yes, I have heard you, and if I can, I will try to make others hear the same. (Rest in Peace)<p>PS: 26 years, is too short of a life, you deserved much more than this. For the least, I will try on my part, to not let something similar to happen to even a enemy.

The university does, what makes sense for a university to do. They do an analysis, and produce a report.<p>What I hope happens afterward is that MIT take in the report and create meaningful changes. This however is not in the nature of universities and is where the challenge will be if MIT want to learn from this tragedy.

Why pastebin?

What I do not understand, is how a wireless connection to the public MIT network is so different from a wired one.<p>It feels like MIT should change their policy and specifically state, that wired connections to their network are Ok.

What did he mean by "MIT Medical is available to provide expert counseling"?<p>edit : and why is this on pastebin?

All the organizations (MIT, JSTOR, etc.), specifically the people directly involved in bullying Aaron Swartz may have publicly announced their condolences, but to me they all sound like sugar coated empty jars. I can sense that when they all go home they'll be saying "Regardless of what happened, Aaron Swartz will always be remembered as a thief, a radical, and most of all a criminal". I bet those people are feeding large amounts of coal into their legal department to avoid being blamed for Aaron's death.

They pushed Aaron Swartz to suicide because they did not fear what would happen next. They are right. There is nothing to fear. Ultimately, respect will always remain based on the fear for reprisals. Where is the respect?

Well done Aaron Swartz, now rinse and repeat, if necessary. Some deaths provide a lot of information to others. Lets not hang upon death as some sort of bad turn of event &#62;:)

"Whoopsy. Also: throwing Prof. Abelson under the bus."