Techdirt Reading Club: The Boy Who Could Change The World: The Writings Of Aaron Swartz

from the sad-stories dept

Thu, Jan 7th 2016 12:39pm — Mike Masnick

We're back again with another in our weekly reading list posts of books we think our community will find interesting and thought provoking. Once again, buying the book via the Amazon links in this story also helps support Techdirt.

This week we have a brand new book, but one I'm disappointed needs to be a book. It's the collected writings of Aaron Swartz, called The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz. As I've noted in the past, I knew Aaron as we worked in similar circles and interacted on a bunch of occasions, though I didn't know him well. But, more importantly, I'd actually been following Aaron's writings on his personal blog and elsewhere from a very early age (I particularly remember following his writings about his experience as a freshman at Stanford). As you probably know by now, Aaron committed suicide almost three years ago, while dealing with a ridiculous federal prosecution for downloading too many academic papers from a computer system at MIT, where the license was clear anyone could download as much as they wanted.

While I won't go as far as others in arguing that the prosecution is why he took his own life, I will say that the whole situation -- both the prosecution and the suicide, remain a tragedy. Aaron was so thoughtful and so passionate about so many things important to nearly everyone who reads Techdirt. He wasn't always the easiest person to get along with, but mostly because he held everyone to almost impossibly high standards. And all of that always came through in his writings. I haven't read this particular collection yet, but considering I tended to read basically everything he wrote back when he originally wrote it, chances are I have read much of it already. Still, I've picked up a copy of the book and will reread it in the coming weeks, though I'm afraid of how angry and annoyed and frustrated it will make me, as it reminds me, again, how much we've lost in the fact that Aaron is no longer around to challenge people, to spark ideas and to directly try to move the world forward. He's been greatly missed for the past three years, and will continue to be missed. Hopefully, by reading this book, others will be inspired to carry on his legacy.

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Filed Under: aaron swartz, techdirt reading club

17 Comments

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W, 7 Jan 2016 @ 1:29pm

Reading about what happened to Aaron Swartz is depressing. Perhaps his writings can inspire to action, but his story doubles as a warning about how horrid the state of anti-hacking law and the Department of Justice's interpretation of it is.
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Shmerl, 7 Jan 2016 @ 2:05pm

Is there any way to buy it in another digital store? Preferably one that only sells DRM-free e-books.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Jan 2016 @ 2:09pm

As you probably know by now, Aaron committed suicide almost three years ago, while dealing with a ridiculous federal prosecution for downloading too many academic papers from a computer system at MIT, where the license was clear anyone could download as much as they wanted.

Such a lie, Mike. The license he agreed to when he accessed JSTOR explicitly said that he could not scrape the database. And then they revoked whatever license he may have had by blocking his MAC address and all the other things they did to try and stop him.

Your denial of reality is remarkable, to say the least. Why do you insist on lying about him?
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W, 7 Jan 2016 @ 2:12pm

Re:
You're conflating contract law with anti-hacking law. If anti-hacking law keeps being used to criminalize violations of terms of service if a terms of service involves a computer, it effectively gives private companies free reign to write their own computer laws and use the FBI to enforce them.
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crade (profile), 7 Jan 2016 @ 3:22pm

Re: Re:
Even with contract law, "scraping" means sifting through for specific information, which is not what he was doing. I can't find anywhere that alleges he agreed to any agreements or broke any. I thought he was given a guest account by the university and didn't even have to sign up himself. Link?
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crade (profile), 7 Jan 2016 @ 3:43pm

Re: Re: Re:
Ahh nevermind, found one:
http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/
Looks unlikely he agreed to anything, even so much as passes for agreement to TOS these days.

Obviously he stopped doing what he was doing when they "tried" (ie: did) stop him. Actually, JSTOR weren't even after him, once he returned the articles he downloaded, they were satisfied. Only NO HARMED PARTY (tm) at all was still trying to crucify him.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Jan 2016 @ 4:08pm

Re: Re:
You're conflating contract law with anti-hacking law. If anti-hacking law keeps being used to criminalize violations of terms of service if a terms of service involves a computer, it effectively gives private companies free reign to write their own computer laws and use the FBI to enforce them.

I'm not talking about the hacking charge. I'm talking about Mike's bullshit claim that "the license was clear anyone could download as much as they wanted." This is absolutely false. This has been pointed out to Mike numerous times, yet he keeps making the same claim. Mike is intentionally lying.

From the superseding indictment (page 2):
JSTOR authorizes users to download a limited number of journal articles at a time. Before being given access to JSTOR’s digital archive, each user must agree and acknowledge that they cannot download or export content from JSTOR’s computer servers with automated computer programs such as web roots, spiders, and scrapers.
Source: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/09/swartzsuperseding.pdf

Mike doesn't care about the truth. Never has. Never will.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Jan 2016 @ 4:40pm

Re:
Whined the chicken noise man.
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CK20XX (profile), 7 Jan 2016 @ 4:54pm

Re: Re: Re:
What gets me about these comments is that even if you are right, what's the alternative? Siding with you? You sound like you're stuck in a fantasy drama where you're off to slay some fictitious evil. Who would want you as an ally?

When you label someone as a devil, you force others to play devil's advocate.
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Leigh Beadon (profile), 7 Jan 2016 @ 9:07pm

Re: Re: Re:
That's what the indictment says. Unfortunately, it's not true. The JSTOR terms said (and say to this day) that automatic downloading is only banned if it interferes with the operation of their services:

undertake any activity such as the use of computer programs that automatically download or export Content, commonly known as web robots, spiders, crawlers, wanderers or accelerators that may interfere with, disrupt or otherwise burden the JSTOR server(s) or any third-party server(s) being used or accessed in connection with JSTOR;

Now, it has been argued that Swartz did do just that — but if that's true, it was apparently not a big enough deal for either JSTOR or MIT to have any real beef with him. If there's anything false in the statement that "the license was clear anyone could download as much as they wanted" then it's the word "clear" - perhaps that should be, "strongly suggested with only vague caveats"
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Jan 2016 @ 11:11pm

I would think constant harassment from the government you have been brought up all your life to believe is there to protect you as long as you do nothing wrong would drive anyone to take their life.

How else would you deal with a fascist regime that ignores its own laws just to spite someone it does not like.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2016 @ 5:27am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
That's what the indictment says. Unfortunately, it's not true. The JSTOR terms said (and say to this day) that automatic downloading is only banned if it interferes with the operation of their services:

That is NOT what they said at the time. You're just as bad as Mike. You're making stuff up. You guys are unreal.
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Ninja (profile), 8 Jan 2016 @ 5:29am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
That there are still people who argue otherwise in the face of what happened and the overreach from the authorities is sad and shows how we do have despicable people around the world...
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2016 @ 7:45am

Let's assume there really was a crime here, punishable to its greatest extent. Was it worth trying to throw the book at Aaron just to make an example of him ?

Then again according to US law, even wget is a hacking tool if the stars align correctly.

Please remember that people were handed sentences of up to 5 years of federal "pound-me-in-the-a**" prison for basically executing something like this:

for(i = 0; i < 9999; ++i)
{
syscall("wget", "http://somesite.net/stuff/${i}/index.htm");
}

Something like this should be punished as a public nuisance at best (i.e.:ringing all the doorbells in a neighborhood).
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MarcAnthony (profile), 8 Jan 2016 @ 9:11am

Re:
Then again according to US law, even wget is a hacking tool if the stars align correctly.

You may be correct, but I'm not aware of any official classification of wget as a hacking tool or of there being anything intrinsically illegal—or even detrimental—about it. It's described as a "command-line web browser," and it's the same utility that Mark Zuckerberg used on the road to building his Facebook empire. If a site honors a request for downloads, is that not tacit approval to do so?
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tqk (profile), 8 Jan 2016 @ 4:27pm

Re: Re:
If a site honors a request for downloads, is that not tacit approval to do so?

I've read stories where Big Something pees off Little Guy, whereupon Little Guy exhorts all and sundry to "when you have a moment, click on this page", where "this page" is Big Something's web server. That wins Little Guy an accusation of DDoS attack. He counters with "civil disobedience" and "what, your web server isn't supposed to serve web pages?"

Fold in an asshole prosecutor and "civil disobedience" morphs into decades in prison after millions of dollars in legal fees defending yourself and a pretty much destroyed life, for stating your opinion on something someone else didn't like.

I'd be more inclined to accuse Big Something of not knowing how to run a web server, but I doubt they'd listen to the likes of me.
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That One Guy (profile), 9 Jan 2016 @ 6:52am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
By all means, please feel free to provide evidence that the terms used to be more restrictive.

While you're at it, please feel free to explain why if they were more restrictive, they've since made them less so, after an incident where if anything they would have tightened the rules up even more if what had happened had really been a problem for them.
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