Aaron Swartz v. United States

This whole thing weirds me out. Here we are on Hacker News, and yet there is a super-large contingent of people going "Well, he DID technically commit a victimless crime...".<p>So yes - he did do something that was against some terms of service. But jail time? For breaking a clickthrough "license" and computer hacking at MIT in the service of public knowledge? This sucks unutterably.<p>MIT: Playful physical hacks okay, but don't try to mass harvest the knowledge of the world or the DOJ will come down on you like a sledgehammer.<p>JSTOR: All the world's knowledge, as long as you don't try to access all of it.<p>DOJ: We'll break you just because we can (or for other reasons that we are not stating).<p>Hacker News: Well, they do have a point - he did access semi-public data in a non-approved way, and he had to plug into the network in a strange way to do it.

I don't understand why people are bringing issues of the availability of scientific journalism into this. I agree that the prices and paywalls involves are ridiculous and a bad idea for a variety of reasons, but that seems orthogonal to the issue here.<p>I don't think anyone is denying that Swartz committed a (possible series of) minor crimes. Claiming that "information should be free" doesn't stop them from being crimes. What's shocking is the response from the government, which appears to be using this incident for its own purposes rather than to preserve the rule of law. No one seems to really be asking <i>why</i> this is happening, and I think that is by far the more interesting question. Is the justice department trying to expand its reach, as the article suggests? Is this a deterrent for future "hackers"? Has one of Swartz's numerous hornet nest-kickings pissed off someone high up, who wants him removed from the playing field?

Empires in decline get progressively more brutal. Sounds like Aaron Swartz became an embarrassment so is being side-tracked from the good work he does.<p>I am not 100% sure of this, but I think this is probably true: similar to the case of Eliot Spitzer who as governor of NY was investigating Wall Street. So, I think that Wall Street had their lackey the US Government (via the FBI) dig up something on Spitzer to bring him down. I believe that this situation is called a plutarchy.

To paraphrase Feynman, this might have some relevance to the situation:<p>"...he also worked with Shireen Barday at Stanford Law School to assess “problems with remunerated research” in law review articles (i.e., articles funded by corporations, sometimes to help them in ongoing legal battles), by downloading and analyzing over 400,000 law review articles to determine the source of their funding. The results were published in the Stanford Law Review."

&#62; ... and Aaron faces a possible fine and up to <i>35</i> years in prison, with trial set for September.<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14270655" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14270655</a><p>&#62; Under Norwegian law, Mr Breivik faces a maximum of <i>21</i> years in jail if convicted...<p>WTF.

shouldn't that be <i>United States v. Aaron Swartz</i> because the US is bringing charges against him? <i>Aaron Swartz v. United States</i> makes it sound like he is suing the government, but there's nothing on that page that says he is.

Why aren't Google and Bing going to prison every time one of their bots crashes some web server?<p>(Perhaps because "systematic downloading" isn't actually a crime?)

So he's suing the United States now, eh? Because usually the first person named is the complainant. Getting the simplest and most basic details wrong like this is a reliable indicator that everything which comes afterwards is going to be similarly ill-founded. This is a prime example of the yawning gulf between blogging and proper journalism.<p>Kindly do not misread that as support for the legal <i>status quo</i>, JSTOR, or anything else.

Regardless of who was hosting them before and how much their hosting costs were that were used to justify the paywall, Google Scholar should be brought in to host them all going forward. They're out in the open, might as well put them to good use.

Well, Mr.Swartz should probably thank Anonymous and Lulsec for provoking the US Government. They're fed up and have determined whoever they get their hands on (minor hacking or not) they're going to drag you into federal court and make an example out of them.<p>This reminds of back in the 90's when there wasn't any laws in place to address hacking. But man, the Feds did not like kids making them look like fools. Once they got the laws of the books, it was open season on hackers.<p>I'm pretty sure the next few years are going to see a major crackdown on hacking again. Just like the recent arrests of supposed Lulsec and Anon members.<p>This guy will be lucky to get out of federal prison in 15 years.

To me this looks like a career move by the prosecutor who wants to get some convicted hackers on his CV, which will look good when it comes to promotion time as these crimes get more and more relevant. The US justice system seems to have degenerated so that prosecutors do anything to get some people convicted, as long as they are a) popular or b) it helps them in some way, regardless of the quality of thee evidence or the merit of prosecution to the general public.

I'm super curious to know if there is someone else out there who believes that there is a connection between Aaron's political activism and his indictment. Not that his political views would represent the major cause of his indictment, but still. Anyway, just ranting...

We must evolve &#38; develop economic &#38; political systems that eliminate the government's authority to railroad a person like this. It's disturbing and a blatant flaw in a free nation.

I'm just curious why someone who did this is still a fellow at a center for <i>ethics</i>. It seems like the whole situation, even if it's been cleared up with MIT and JSTOR, is completely unethical, regardless of the legal case.<p>Is the position tenured?

Nice spin: he's been charged for "excessive downloading".<p>Way to ignore the physical break-in to install a computer directly on a network switch. I, for one, hope that he gets a criminal record at the very least (plea deal). This really puts the crime in a different league.<p>Unless I have my facts wrong, in which I'm willing to be corrected.

Correction: Aaron Swartz v Some Powerful Politicians or People Who Are Afraid Of What Playing With This Data May Reveal.