Aaron Swartz Unlikely To Face Jail Or Conviction... Until Feds Decided To 'Send A Message'
from the prosecutorial-discretion dept
Things just keep looking worse and worse in the Carmen Ortiz/Stephen Heymann vendetta against Aaron Swartz. Now it's come out that state prosecutors, who were originally looking into the case had no interest in pursuing felony charges or prison time... until Carmen Ortiz and her team showed up. Instead, state prosecutors had focused on the initial charges: "breaking and entering in the daytime" which they expected "would be continued without a finding, with Swartz duly admonished and then returned to civil society to continue his pioneering electronic work in a less legally questionable manner." Instead, the report notes:Tragedy intervened when Ortiz’s office took over the case to send “a message.”In case you were wondering what "continued without a finding" means, Harvey Silvergate (author of Three Felonies a Day) explained to Declan McCullagh:
"Continuance without a finding" was the anticipated disposition of the case were the charge to remain in state court, with the Middlesex County District Attorney to prosecute it. Under such a disposition, the charge is held in abeyance ("continued") without any verdict ("without a finding"). The defendant is on probation for a period of a few months up to maybe a couple of years at the most; if the defendant does not get into further legal trouble, the charge is dismissed, and the defendant has no criminal record. This is what the lawyers expected to happen when Swartz was arrested for "trespassing at MIT." But then the feds took over the case, and the rest is tragic history.The report above also notes that Ortiz is in some additional hot water, as another one of her overreach cases, involving an attempt to seize a family-owned motel in Massachusetts by claiming that it was "facilitating drug crimes" has failed miserably, tossed out by the magistrate judge. Not only was it noted that there were only 15 drug-related incidents over a 15 year period (during which 196,000 rooms were rented out), but also, the motel owners worked closely with local police to deal with drug issues and that other local businesses that had drug incidents were not targeted by Ortiz.
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Filed Under: aaron swartz, carmen ortiz, federal prosecutors, lawsuit, state prosecutors
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Milk, milk, milk. When are you going to grow a pair and actually discuss the issues with me? Stop being such a baby.
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Sad little mind you've got there...
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However when it's truthful, sarcasm fails to be recognized as such.
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IMPORTANT
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb
A lthough the petition to fire Ortiz has passed the threshold, the petition to fire Heymann has 14.5k signatures to go. Come on!
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…Charles Carreon?
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out_of_the_blue?
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I think frankly it is highly unlikely Mike wants IP done away with completely. I do... I don't think he does though. But if he does, really, so what?
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So what's the problem? It is past-your-eyes-duh!
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"Funny how" "unable to be criticized himself." - You criticize him on his blog, about not being able to take criticism.
"Funny how" - Funny how, you feel ignored, but come here day after day, year after year.
I dont know what mental deficiency you have that compels you to come here everyday but I am pretty sure they have meds for that now. You probably cant afford them and there will never be a generic due to the mechanisms you defend. I am sure the irony eludes you.
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Did you take a master class in irony or something, because you're really good at it!
If you had a pair you'd publish your nonsense under your real name and occupation just like Mike does. Instead you hide behind anonymity because we all know you'd never have the guts to say it in public. You know your behavior here is incredibly anti-social and you'd be deeply embarrassed (I hope) if your friends and colleagues knew what you wrote. You're in no position to tell anyone to "grow a pair", at least not until you do the same. Why would anyone, let alone Mike, bow to your constant rude demands? You know you'd be ignored, punched in the face or fired if you acted like that in person. So's who's really the baby here?
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Offed himself when he got caught.
A coward in every single sense of the word.
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2. JSTOR isn't a government site.
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Shootin' you straight, little girl, for there ain't no shame."
Lynyrd Skynyrd
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"Stop being such a baby." - Says the whining baby.
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Even if I read it once, I can leave it collapsed going forward to save time.
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Send a message
"I have more power than I can responsibly handle and someone desperately needs to rein me in."
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art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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Re: Send a message
TITS OR GTFO!
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GTFO!
:)
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-------------------------------
The facts are coming to light. Ortiz's attempts at saying nothing to see here is having some well needed light shined on the activities and what was being done. After this revelation her presence in the justice system begins to look more like a public disgrace than someone they can depend on to do the job properly. Obviously ethics is one of the required topics in school she must have skipped.
One would hope she gets to chance to rediscover them while looking at 4 walls for an extended period of time.
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Pranda Ortiz Carreon
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This is what happens when you tell your politicians that you want them to get "tough on crime" instead of the more reasonable "let's all look into how we can lower crime"--you just gave them too much power and you got unexpected and unwanted consequences as a result.
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Very good point. I think this is a symptom of the societal pendulum that swings back and forth in direct proportion to the vocal push. It's beyond challenging to get the pendulum to settle in on the middle ground balancing opposing views.
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http://www1.wne.edu/oit/index.cfm?selection=doc.2843
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.com
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If they used the evidence they gathered from the stings he helped them on, against him, that is going to seriously screw over the police in that area in the future, as no one would be able to trust that helping them wouldn't end up with the 'helpful citizen' in the crosshairs right along with the actual criminals.
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The area around this motel owner is owned by larger corporations that had more drug crimes. Ortiz didn't punish Walmart or target another place with larger crimes.
She went for the little guy to bully. That is her MO. Pile on the criminal charges and get them to summit to civil asset forfeiture then use the money for law enforcement.
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I Wonder which one of them was looking to expand?
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The area around this motel owner is owned by larger corporations that had more drug crimes. Ortiz didn't punish Walmart or target another place with larger crimes.
She went for the little guy to bully. That is her MO. Pile on the criminal charges and get them to summit to civil asset forfeiture then use the money for law enforcement.
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Just like Megaupload!
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Don't hate the player, hate the game... well and her too.
A win is worth x points.
A bigger win is worth more points.
A case that can be showcased to show how much they 'care' about the public is worth way more points.
The bigger and harder you go, the more advancement you get.
The DOJ had to make a rule pointing out hiding evidence from the defense was a bad thing. This is basic to the law, but they needed a special rule telling them to do it... or else. The problem is the or else is toothless, it was a publicity stunt.
People want to think the legal system is fair and balanced, it helps maintain the illusion of Justice.
A fair speedy trial... like Manning is getting.
A fair speedy trial... like MegaUpload got.
A fair speedy trial... like Aaron got.
A fair speedy trial... like Dajaz1 got.
The list goes on and on, they are more about getting headlines than actual justice. They are lying, cheating, and abusing their power to get people to cave regardless if they are actually guilty or dangerous.
Manning - Terrorist sympathizer! or giving us proof of the evil being done in our name that is being covered up.
MegaUpload - Evil pirate conspiracy! or a service the cartels hate and wanted removed at any cost.
Aaron - Super Hacker of Evil! or someone to put a cyberwar feather in her cap so she can advance.
DaJaz1 - Copyright infringer! or people who were given things to share by the same people who called them thieves for doing what was asked.
Wall Street - Not enough proof! or a lawyer afraid of a hard case with pressure from above to do nothing.
We now need to look at every case, every settlement, every conviction and wonder is it actually real. I mean its not like a high profile case was ever botched.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/25/secret-hearings-chandra-levy/1865877/
Secret hearings where we might not know how deep the corruption went?
How many people have the Innocence Project had cleared?
West Memphis Three... but don't sue us for railroading you to jail or the "deal" is off.
People put to death, only to be proven innocent later.
People put to death because the Governor undermined the investigative team looking at problems in the case.
Justice is more about headlines and soundbites rather than truth. When the Justice system is the problem, society is fucked. We need to fix this and keep it from ever being abused like this again. It is time to stop blindly trusting authorities, they have proven themselves to not me worthy of it and we deserve better.
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Prosecutors have been using faulty evidence for speedy convictions for years.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/04/17/150823191/prosecutors-knew-of-forensics-fla ws-for-years-the-post-reports
Now think about it...
You have overzealous prosecutors looking for convictions, with little to no judicial oversight, tons of cash, looking for people to punish, and overlooking corporate crimes.
I can't tell you how much of a disaster this is...
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Re: Don't hate the player, hate the game... well and her too.
Exactly, Ortiz is just looking to climb the political ladder, she doesn't care how much damage she does on her way to the top.
Those who desire power the most, deserve it the least.
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Stupid Americans
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SOPA, human rights, the list of power/corruption/greed/control based problems plaguing most countries around the world is endless.
Of course, I do admit that this country I live in is most often at the top of the list (along with Russia) for imperialistic manipulation of other countries. Yet there are plenty of self-induced cases around the globe.
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This.
The power center is multinational corporations, and various nations (and other groups) are all too often used to express corporate power. Governments can make law, war, and all kinds of other things that are very useful to them.
US power is the most useful, because it is, at the moment, the most effective, but the corruption and control exists wherever there is power to be wielded.
The US is no worse, and no better, than any other nation in this respect. It simply has a larger impact than any other nation, for better and worse.
This is as it has always been for as long as societies have existed. The names change, but the behavior remains the same.
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I think folks take things a little too far in demonizing the entire country while other nations still have open and flagrant discrimination, church and state separation issues continue to linger in Europe, human rights violations proliferate in China, and on and on.
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land of the free home of the brave
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Inevitably, it leads to civil war. Or, in a "lighter, gentler, more peaceful" situation, just a military coup, or lately, the uprising buzz-word is "Arab spring".
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I don't think the prosecutor is "over reacting". I think she knew good and well what really was going on, and was pushing the envelope for political reasons, not out of fear of what Aaron had done might proliferate.
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From there, the wave either continues on until it's a tsunami and unstoppable, or dispersed through opposing pressure.
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The U.S. does its fair share of over reaching, no doubt, but don't think that Europe and others are not playing the same game.
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Made it illegal for private citizens to own gold. Translation? Consolidated power through monetary means. And yes, European powers are complicit in the global manipulation of society through monetary methods. And equally responsible for the financial upheaval as well...
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To my mind, the unique thing Nixon did was in response to European countries simultaneously leaving Bretton Wood, but then still demanding gold for their dollars at a pegged price. That's just silly. International currency exchanges playing games with fixed exchange rates for gold go way back though. The whole thing is nothing but nonsense in my view, so I have little sympathy for those who feel Nixon somehow short changed them.
But you apparently are familiar enough with it all, and I think in general terms we agree anyhow. So you win. LOL!
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I'm sorry, but this part at least is not true. Gold has a value for several reasons that led to its use as money. It is highly valued for its appearance and for the fact that it does not oxidize. It's value as a commodity is high enough that a relatively small amount of it can be used in trade for much bulkier goods, so it is useful as money in that it is relatively easy to transport in relation to its perceived value.
Moving on to the less well documented and more just my opinion and that of many others who have studied the issue, modern paper money's value lies strictly in the government's threat of sanctions if you do not use it in the prescribed manner.
This is an important distinction. If we did not have to pay taxes in money - if we could pay them in kind or through labor for example - the entire dynamic of money being the central focus of the economy would change.
Gold became relatively fake only when fractional reserve lending became commonplace. It is not really, literally, "creating money form nothing," but it operates in a way that is difficult to distinguish and is really just as fraught with problems.
Fractional reserve lending is re-lending the same money over and over again in a sort of chain. It compounds the interest rate basically, so that what appears on its face to be reasonable interest is in fact usurious in every sense of the word. That is to say, it is not just "usury" in the sense that any interest is "usury", it is "usury" in the sense of being abusively high.
At a 10% reserve rate, a 2.5% interest rate becomes an effective 25% interest rate.
Additionally, by relending the money, the chances get higher and higher that someone is not going to be able or willing to meet their obligation. Since there is no literal chain, everyone is equally affected, but it still magnifies the risk to the system as a whole that a substantial portion of money lent out will not find its way back.
Bottom line, you do not appear to me to understand the topic you're discussing, and the proliferation of this continued ignorance in our society repeatedly has put us in danger over the years. I sincerely hope you will re-evaluate the situation.
I may be wrong, obviously. If I am, please feel free to try to set me right. But what you said just seems about a thousand miles off from my present understanding of the topic.
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Using gold as currency due to its value as a commodity is simply using it as a barter good. It was convenient while the amount of gold in circulation had a value equivalent to the goods and services being traded.
Paper money, as title to gold or silver held in a bank vault arose when merchants were dealing with goods whose total value was such too much weight in coinage was involved. Paper was much easier, and safer to carry arou8nd than hundreds of pounds weight of precious metal.
The use of precious metals as money began to fail when the industrial revolution caused increased production of goods. Their was not enough new gold being mined to keep up with the value of goods being produced. Fractional banking was the solution to this problem, as the alternatives were either limit the size of the economy to the amount of gold in circulation, or let the value of gold rise to exorbitant heights, where its only use was as money.
Once the direct link between the amount of gold in circulation, or held in vaults, was partially decoupled from the value of the economy, it was only a matter of time before it was given up as a basis for money in circulation.
A gold standard can only work where the value of gold is the same as the economy, and while keeping the commodity value of gold at a reasonable level so that it can be used in industrial processes and for decorative items. Direct barter is too restrictive for a large economy, because the gold standard was too limiting on economies.
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That may be a little bit strong, but that's the definition of deflation, and it does tend to have a depressive effect on an economy. Good summary of money, the gold standard and why we left it though.
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Ah I see. Well that was pretty coherent for a late night post.
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Direct barter, in and of itself, is not restrictive. What it is is uncentralizable, if I may be allowed to coin a phrase. Direct barter done in a market style would result in a sort of "money" based on credits whose values would be formulated on the comparative value of goods and services, and this is in fact what exists any time some central authority is forbidden from centralizing control over a required medium of exchange.
We are constantly told direct barter is bad, or clunky. The truth is artificially mandated money is what is bad and clunky. It is simplicity itself to have market places with brokers who help people arrange beneficial trades of goods and services for other goods and services, but that sort of decentralization does not serve the ends of those who desire power. People use money because they are threatened with force if they do not.
Money is not power. Power is power. Money is what you get when power wants to control the market place.
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Once you use money, that's no longer direct barter, whether that money is issued by a central authority or not.
We are constantly told direct barter is bad, or clunky. The truth is artificially mandated money is what is bad and clunky.
Direct barter is clunky, inefficient, and not suitable for a lot of types of transactions. What is bad and clunky about centrally controlled money? Are you familiar with the early history of money in the US? Every bank issued its own money, and storekeepers had to have big books telling them how much to discount money from any particular bank. Different books in different stores of course, because the farther you go from your bank, the less your money is worth. Go too far, and it won't be accepted at all. There are very good reasons the US government decided to centralize control of money.
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Sure, independent banks don't work. Banking doesn't work. Free silver failed because even silver turned out to be too easy to dig up. Is the book keeping necessary for an open market really more complex than that needed for a centralized fiat currency system? I would say that the development of supply chain management software speaks volumes about the shortcomings of a system where all you know is how much money you have and how much what you want costs strictly in terms of that artificial commodity. People in the know already seek to find out the relative relationships from the ground up. The rest of us are told not to worry about it when in fact it is precisely what we need to worry about.
I don't see a whole lot of new info coming from this conversation, and I hate to keep bugging you, so I'll drop it. I'll keep poking around. I do thank you for the time you have taken though.
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Localized informal money can work great, but it doesn't really scale well, does it? I like being able to easily buy something from someone across the country or the world and know that the dollar in my wallet is the same as the dollar on the price listing. What do you suggest that provides that? Don't think I'm trying to shout you down or anything, it's just that you seem to really have an idea in mind here, I'm just not clear on what it is.
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I first became aware of this sort of thing reading through Congressional records for the 1893 silver debate where it was pointed out that locally some folks had had success with what they were terming as "clearing houses". Today, a clearing house is mostly concerned with "financial" transactions, but the process could be used for goods and services as well, and apparently was. Instead of having it informal and local, it can be formalized and scaled for local, regional, national, and international trade.
International trade is sort of key. Much of modern inequality stems from the strength of western money in comparison to money in other parts of the world. It is no, in reality, "cheaper" to do things overseas. Rather, due to exchange rates and the fact that western money is the de facto international intermediate trade good, it costs less in Dollars, Euros, Pounds, etc, to do a lot of things overseas.
Point being, banks already just create credits. They might as well be forced to create them in accordance with real transactions and real goods and services, rather than just creating them and assigning them to whoever they suppose is the best risk. In the process of overseeing all these transactions, it will be possible to work out how much things are worth in comparison to other things, and just assign the credits while the clearing takes place behind the scenes.
I imagine before long it would look the same to the casual user as the present system, only it would not leave so much power in the hands of the few folks running the show.
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Direct barter works so long as the goods you have can be directly exchanged for the goods that you want, or the people involved know each other, so one can promis a future delivery of something.
Life become complicates when you have to indulge in multiple trades to convert a high value item to a many different low value items or trade want you have for something that the person who has what you want wants.
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Banks are essentially just another layer of complexity added on top of existing trade exchanges. This stuff people are trying to say is so complicated goes on behind the scenes all the time. Futures trading, options, buyers and sellers for various organizations - they all work this stuff out already, using all sorts of information gathering techniques to try to find the most advantageous trades.
Just get rid of the bank portion of it and have these trades recorded and managed by brokers, with the option of assigning credits. Have the system, obviously, regulated and well watched over.
Instant non-centralized "money".
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Cash, or an electronic equivalent where the information passed is the amount transferred from the payers bank, is highly desirable for privacy reasons. That is the Banl records that you put x amount on your card. The seller record say that it received Y amount from your bank, which is deducted from the balance on your card, without recording which card it came from. The sellers bank aggregates transaction with a given bank, and the banks settle up the difference. Note in this system neither the seller, or the banks can tie any particular transaction to any particular buyer.
Either actual money, or a system like the one outlines is required to maintain personal privacy, especially in the digital age, to avoid governments being able to trace every transaction made by every citizen.
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If you wish to claim that the financial markets are badly broken, and need reform than I would agree with you, but they are different from the banking services needed for day to day market transactions.
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People are constantly reminding us that money is not real.
Good, then bypass it and go straight to the source - relative trade values.
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Most of the damage to economies have been done because of the use of derivatives and other fincial instruments. High speed trading is alo a perversion of the stock market.
The origin of the stock markets was as the means of allowing investors to buy and sell shares in companies. These used to be considered a long term investments.
Derivatives are best described as a form of gambling that multiplies the risk. Where with a stock, you can onl;y lose the money you paid for them, a bad bet with a financial instrument can require a large outlay to fulfil the contract of the instrument.
Note no money was lost from the economy, just transferred to the winners of the gamble, with the public left to rescue the banks.
What I am trying to say, is that money, and deposit and loan banking is a reasonable way of running an economy, so long as no insane risks are taken with loans. Basic stock market transactions are also a useful function, so long as the banks do not get directly involved.
Letting deposit and loan banks get involved in the financial market, and especially in the gambling with derivatives, is a dangerous practice because they are gambling with other people money.
Derivatives are probably a bad idea, because they do not support business activities, but only money making by gambling with money.
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THAT is the issue. Otherwise there would be no need for government bailouts of banks.
The solution being bandied about now is basically to go back to the old "Chicago Plan" where the government controls the money supply directly. This, to me, is little better than the current regime whereby banks control it through a combination of regulatory and market pressures. The bottom line is some oligarchy somewhere is in charge of the money supply, and while this system has a long and glorious tradition, it is mostly a long and glorious tradition of abuses and catastrophes.
That's my take on it.
My suggestion is probably reflective of something far more refined and well developed that someone has proposed before and that has been burried under a blizard of opposing scholarship. So far I haven't found it, but I have certainly found a ton of stuff indicating that we were actually more free and self directed in Medieval times than we are now, for example.
I think banking, Intellectual Property, and Limited Liability work together to effect fascist forms of government that look less centralized than they actually are. The banking part is possibly the trickiest, but I know there is a better way.
I once heard a fairly simplistic solution to base money on something akin to stock market.
And while I was looking for that, found this instead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_credit
So yeah, it's nothing new. It just needs to be expanded and regulated. Note specifically this - "the money supply expands and contracts as needed, without any managing authority"
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The crisis was not caused by lack of money, but rather money being transferred from the majority of people to a few people by the banks gambling.
Mutual_credit, like barter works at a small scale, and over small areas. Scaling it up to enable capital intense industries, and trade over large areas, results in the recreation of modern money.
Avoiding economic disasters requires that the large scale economy is manage properly, and not the small scale economy that the proposed alternatives support. If economies are limited to local areas only, then local areas have to be self sufficient, as the cannot buy in goods from remote areas.
I think you are looking at microeconomics to solve problems that exist in macroeconomics. They have to be linked by a common medium of exchanges, that is some token to represent the value of labour and goods, whether it is called money or mutual credits.
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When banks could no longer unload real estate morgages, the financial system seized up. It seized up because banks are the source of our money. Bank failures mean the money itself is sucked from the system, as money IS one of the things banks can reserve that gives them the authority to create new money.
There is no need for the government to step in and regulate private contracts such as derivatives that you (and many others I have heard) seem so frightened of. If the monetary system itself were not tied to this, then investors, banks, indeed entire municipalities, states, and even nations could go bankrupt without the monetary system itself being hurt. This is what I am addressing.
I am not worrying with microeconomics, nor are the people who are thinking of returning money production and destruction to the government. What I and others are looking at is divorcing money creation and destruction - in effect the money supply itself - from banking.
So thanks, but it would appear you are not understanding the object here. Again, the main benefit I see with a system of LETS organizations is, "the money supply expands and contracts as needed, without any managing authority."
What I am discussing has nothing to do with microeconomic forces.
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Re: land of the free home of the brave
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Your comment about the Android operating system is incoherent.
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In fact, this fool is the person who used to post as Average Joe:
http://www.techdirt.com/user/average_joe
If you dig through his old comments, you'll see that he's a law student who started at some Southern law school around 2009 or so, after earning a degree in mathematics.
Mike and I have been debating him for quite a while. But for whatever reason, he totally lost his shit in 2012, and has been nothing but a whiny crybaby ever since.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120818/01171420087/funniestmost-insightful-comments-week- techdirt.shtml#c1210
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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120818/01171420087/funniestmost-insightful-comments-week- techdirt.shtml#c1210
Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! .... Damn!
With a smack down so finely crafted I almost felt bad for that guy. Almost.
Link saved.
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Does your wife know you're posting naughty things on the Internet again?
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No, he'd just say the post didn't happen.
A year later, he'd be posting "Masnick refuses to state his beliefs about breathing."
Notice he doesn't say what issues he wants to discuss. That's to stop us from copy-pasting Masnick's already shared opinions into the responses. Guy's juts a liar, and a weird one.
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Except, of course, when he stated his opinion:
- http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130121/14473121743/global-hackathons-prepared-to-carry-forward-wo rk-aaron-swartz.shtml#c377
Here's the more important question: What does Mike Masnick's opinion on copyright law, have to do with Aaron Swartz or prosecutorial misconduct?
The answer: None.
Meaning you're trolling the comments to harangue Mike about irrelevant bullshit.
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prosecutors
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The Message Ortiz Sent
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Mergh
I haven't gotten email from Demand Progress lately either.... I subscribe to their site... that is a little unusual.
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I'm not sure why this is relevant.
It sounds like the system was working as intended here; State Prosecutors handle the aspects of the crime which were local in nature, and Federal Prosecutors handle the elements of the crime which were interstate and affect society on a broader level.
Are you intentionally ignoring that this is how the legal system works to press a position which has no merit?
Swartz broke the law and acted on beliefs which are incompatible with out established social contract. Not only did he legally deserve to be punished, but morally he did as well. If restorative or reformative approach would have been more successful, than I can agree jail time should not have been sought. But are you really arguing that he would have changed his mind about whether or not information should be free, or at least restrained from acting on those beliefs in the future? If someone refuses to change their behavior for the future, how can society be asked to accept the threat he poses?
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The law in question was written decades ago to deal with wire fraud and the like, not high speed downloading of already free documents. The use of this law, and especially the extent to which they piled on, is more and more being seen as an abuse Ortiz in fact appears to have a history of abusing her position.
http://bostonherald.com/comments/1062280931?page=8
So yeah, I think you trying to paint Mike as somehow misleading is really more misleading than anything he might be doing.
I did notice him sort of dodge an issue concerning the six month offer from Ortiz a few days back, but the belligerence of the person calling him to the carpet over it made his refusal to come back and acknowledge his mistake more than understandable to me, and he of course has since posted multiple articles that cite the 6 month plea offer, so...
Most the people trying to paint Mike in a bad light here seem to paint themselves into a corner in the effort.
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Re: I'm not sure why this is relevant.
See, that's the thing. This "social contract you refer to, yeah, that's the 20th century contract that modern humans rejected as the 21st century was ushered in on the shoulders of giants like Aaron, Tim Berners Lee, and many others who helped take the interwebs and grow it into the vehicle critical to human evolution that was needed at this exact time in history.
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Re: Re: Re: I'm not sure why this is relevant.
US economic dominance (relevant for appreciating why we habitually prosecute such acts), and really, the continued existence of our entire civilization currently depends on information having value since we have no technological means of overcoming scarcity in the physical world, yet we rely on information which is no longer necessarily scarce as a substantial of our economy.
While I share the ideal of a world where information can eventually be shared, I feel like ideologues like Swartz, and even Masnick, propose their ideas in a vacuum and do not consider what the short to medium term consequences of their actions would be to humanity as a whole. I genuinely do not believe he and others have thought this through— though I am of course open to hearing arguments as to why and how we would maintain a stable society. My guess is they're more interested in achieving a fair society, and ignore that some tradeoffs are often practically necessary for the greatest good.
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I feel that you are the one not considering consequences. The slow breakdown of ideas of intellectual property has actually given industry plenty of time to adapt, but instead they are attempting to legislate their way out of the impending collapse. It is simply too east to make copies of things now. To stop it will require ever increasing violations of personal privacy and human rights. Now is the time to start working on change before things actually do get to a place where precipitous change will cause chaos.
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http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/17bq98/kavinsky_nightcall/c844b0u
"Google and Reddit should be shutdown for this type of flagrant disregard of copyright law. It is clearly unlicensed commercial use of the material to generate a profit; both for YouTube and Reddit, and wrapping the content in their branding rather than transmitting it blindly breaks their DMCA safe harbor protections. I really don't understand why r/Music thinks this type of rent seeking behavior is acceptable. Musicians have a hard enough time making money from their music these days, sharing high quality copies of songs like this, despite the added publicity, only hurts the artists further. It's no help being famous if you can't feed your kids."
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Re: Re: Re: Re: I'm not sure why this is relevant.
1. Most of the articles Swartz downloaded were not copyrighted. They were public domain. JSTOR locks them up and charges for them anyway.
2. If copyright really were a "social contract," then society at large should be able to change it or do away with it. If Congress truly represented the will of the people, they would, since the majority of people now believe that non-commercial infringement is not a social evil. Certainly, most people seem to believe that what Swartz did was not morally wrong; or at least not enough to deserve jail time.
3. There is nothing "objective" about copyright. The fact that the "scarcity" (actually, monopoly - the goal is not scarcity, but wider distribution to the public) is artificial means that it is not objective. It does not exist in nature; copyright laws are not securing any natural right. It is purely a creature of legal statutes, and is exactly as "objective" as the "right" to make a right turn at a red light.
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Society CAN do that. They overwhelmingly choose not to.
the majority of people now believe that non-commercial infringement is not a social evil.
Bullshit. Everyone that pirates knows that it's wrong, but they're selfish and greedy and they simply try to rationalize away their abuse of someone else's rights. Examples of such abound on this site every day.
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You're also joking if you think that most people think that non-commercial, personal downloads warrant penalties up to the tune of $150,000 per download.
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What is this obsession with lionizing someone who didn't really do all that much. And before you ask what I did, that has nothing to do with anything. There are hunderds of thousands who have contributed to the project of the internet, and while Swartz did something, I can't help but view this martyring as self-serving and unjustified. He killed himself for whatever private reasons we cannot speculate to, and it had nothing to do with the US government justly prosecuting him for a criminal action. He did not need to act on his beliefs and infiltrate the JSTOR network after being stopped repeatedly; the consequences of his actions are 100% on him.
Sure, it is a critical vehicle; but until we overcome scarcity in the real world, we cannot ignore or dismantle the idea of intellectual property and artificial scarcity imposed on information.
And I'm really not sure why you so back these ideas anyway. It's not like the Google's of the world are doing anything but extracting surplus value fromt he collective work of humanity. It's not like the internet is really a non-profit research and communication tool as it was originally conceived to be. This 21st century social contract is just a more efficient form of capitalism, where now, you don't even have to pay your data entry slaves because they do it for you, and you have the DMCA protecting you from liability.
You need to think your position through a little more carefully.
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Hilarious of you to characterize people's voluntary contributions to something assumed to be maintained as a communal resource with unpaid data entry. It is precisely this business model that you support that makes it impossible for most people to work strictly on projects in which they can have any lasting stake. Everything of lasting value belongs to the rich. To even get a sliver of that pie requires years of painstaking savings, much of which can be wiped out by bank fiascos such as our recent housing bubble.
I'm not as confident as some of the folks here that lasting positive change is on the way, but characterizing the current business model as anything but a mockery of justice is pretty sloppy thinking in my view.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: I'm not sure why this is relevant.
I don't understand your sentence about what you find hilarious. Clarify? Particular the vague terms "something." I was referring to entities like Facebook and Google which extract surplus value and convert it to capital for the few.
Justice is a lot more complex. Things which appear on the surface to be incredibly unjust, can become just because of other things they make possible. Capitalism is an inherently unjust economic system, yet it led to the development and globalization of the internet, and may lead to all sorts of other benefits to humanity.
Where we would be without the evolution of our current system, which began roughly with the Magna Carta, I don't know, but is the world more just than it was back then? Is the more good? Are we better off? I like to thinks so; hell, we can actually have this conversation and speculate as to what might be possible in the future, as opposed to raiding each others castles.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I'm not sure why this is relevant.
Which is why the SOPA protest was so prevalent in mainstream media.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I'm not sure why this is relevant.
Capitalism is not a definable thing. If what you mean by "Capitalism" is a free market, and people being allowed to trade what they want when they want to, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with it at all. If by "Capitalism" you mean a market controlled by capital, which itself is centrally controlled, what you have is something not so very different from socialism, and indeed most economies in the west these days are "mixed" in whatever sense contrasting capitalism with socialism makes any sense at all. Ultimately most everything you say about economics makes no sense.
Magna Carta is about limiting the power of the privileged, and the history of this earth is really nothing but the back and forth between privilege and common life. I frankly don'y see a whole lot of difference between life today and life 2000 years ago. Our current system is almost indistinguishable from fuedalism. Fiefdoms are not corporations. The larger corporations represent more powerful fiefdoms, smaller ones more akin to knights. There are a handful of professionals that operate like free artisans and merchants and the like, and the vast bulk of people work for wages in a way not at all unlike peons of old. If anything, there seems to be growing evidence peasants in medieval times actually had more self determination, seeing as the gap between the well to do and the poor was narrower. Court rolls document peasants being able to rise and fall economically, live outside of town (and hence outside of their lord's direct monitoring) for a small fee. Travel was far from unheard of.
Technical know how has made the average person's life much better, but the limit on the number of people allowed into such fields makes demigods of those people, which is just one more reason I despise IP laws. A modern Magna Carta would limit the ability of corporations and governments to dictate who can and cannot compete, and under what circumstances. Research would either be a community driven thing, or it would not happen. Doing research to find out how to save a man's life only to then use that knowledge to leverage work out of him is just plain, old fashioned, unadulterated greed, and there's nothing about it to suggest it drives progress.
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What is societies benefit regarding that?
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If you believe he did it for private reasons that nobody knows, then why do you claim to know something isn't a reason he did it? In the same sentence, no less.
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Hey, maybe you should read the tribute that Sir Tim Berners-Lee gave for Aaron Swartz. I think they both qualify as great and humble men, both tremendously valuable.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9800147/Sir-Tim-Berners-Lee-pays-tribute-to- Aaron-Swartz.html
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We all know how dangerous it is to let the general populace see the kind of information the government uses to make policy.
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That is a justification used by all totalitarian institutes to maintain their grip on power. Note that such contracts usually boil down to:-
"we are in power so just do as we say".
It goes along with re-education camps, arbitrary use of the justice system, secret police, and massive surveillance of the population.
If members of a society are not allowed to question that society, then sooner or latter it will explode in violence.
By the way, as far as I can see Aaron Swartz was guilty of a minor abuse of a generous network policy of a university. The FEDS proceeded to magnify normal action to debug a problem into as many acts of felony that the could find the slightest evidence for to try and force a plea bargain. That is a much bigger breach of social contracts, the one where people expect an even handed application of the law.
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Re: I'm not sure why this is relevant.
And being threatened with 35+ years in federal prison is totally commensurate with trespassing.
You throw this out there like it's established fact, when it's just your opinion. You'll need to explain how his beliefs are incompatible.
Nobody on either side of this issue is arguing that.
You see, there's the rub. He posed no threat.
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Funny how whenever something bad happens, We, the People, take the fall for it. Think about that.
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Like the same hysteria that swept the country that every daycare was just a front for Satan worshiping people?
They put a guy in jail and held him, people are still convinced he had to have done it... even after it was proven he hadn't been near the state it took place during the time one of his accusers was coached to remember horrific abuse.
But the headlines for breaking up these satanists were like a drug, bigger and bigger claims that had no real basis in reality. Honestly the children spoke of being taken in tunnels and then put on planes and flown far away, abused, then returned... all in the space of 8 hours. There was no tunnel, but some members of the public are still digging looking for it. The Good Guys(tm) told them this was true, even as the convictions were overturned and the adults who coached the kids faced slaps on the wrist. The Bad Guys(tm) did nothing wrong but run a good day care, but their lived are ruined. The accusation is damaging enough to get them isolated from society, increasing the hype and fanciful claims just was kicking them trying to get a confession so they could record their points on the board.
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It's disheartening to see what people will do, and I am not able to really understand why they do it... It's surreal.
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If you remember who that Governor is I bet you will find out he is a former prosecutor or has ties to the case. The reputation of the prosecutor is more important than Justice, and we need to end that.
They didn't go after Wall Street because the lead lawyer is scared of not winning, they found Aaron and worked the system to score points. The system is broken beyond repair, trying to pretend we live in a country of laws when the rich get a pass and the regular folk are crushed in a system designed to break their will and get them to accept things they shouldn't because its faster and headline making.
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This is the key point that people need to understand. Showing that a prosecutor 'broke the law' or 'pushed too hard' on one case, can result in the thousands of other cases they have tried over the years being questioned and scrutinized for similar issues or instances of abuse.
The powers that be do not want that to happen, the prosecutors are TOO BIG TO FAIL (now where have we heard this before.....) and thus their actions, even when illegal, immoral, unjust, and downright dirty are swept under the rug and brushed over... nothing to see here folks, just move along, after showing me your papers first, you do have your papers, right?
We live with a broken government system and have to try and figure out ways to point out the injustice without becoming targets ourselves, which with the widespread gathering of information (illegally) by our government, this is becoming more and more difficult.
What would Aaron do???
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Comment on Anonymous Actions
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sign petition
Also, I did Aaron's astrology
http://m.youtube.com/index?&desktop_uri=%2F#/watch?v=dtqyjRmfWB0
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What hot water?
What hot water is that? I haven't heard about Ortiz facing any consequences for this at all. Unless you mean angry blog posts, which I wouldn't characterize as being in hot water.
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Send Carmen Ortiz a message
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