Originally posted by idoru
The simplest answer here is, "The law's the law". I don't necessarily agree with it in this case, but that doesn't change the fact that he was busted for breaking the law and punished (albeit too strongly) for it.
It sounds to me like you are fine with people being punished for something just because it is illegal.
srussell0018
Yeah, the whole "the law is the law" argument is kind of a cop out.
idoru
Perhaps I'm not making myself clear enough, despite having already said it twice now: The punishment that the government wanted him to have was too severe. I agree with you guys, pay attention. Do I think that some/many laws are bull? Absolutely. Do I think that some people suffer too much for breaking certain laws? You bet.
Where I think we're getting lost in translation here is Doombot's "No matter what the law is?" response to my comment about how you should be punished for breaking a law. He made it sound like there are laws that you just shouldn't be punished for making, and perhaps I misunderstood that. Hacking into a system and stealing data is the computer equivalent of breaking and entering and theft. Should he have been punished? Yes. Should he have been punished to the extent that he was? No.
Edit: Oops.
srussell0018
So you think that releasing scientific articles for free should be illegal? Don't you think those articles should be available to the public anyways?
That's the point I'm trying to make at least. It shouldn't be illegal, because he was essentially releasing information that wouldn't hurt anybody, and he did it for no personal gain. That information should be readily available to the public anyways.
Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You’ll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost.
That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It’s outrageous and unacceptable.
“I agree,” many say, “but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it’s perfectly legal — there’s nothing we can do to stop them.” But there is something we can, something that’s already being done: we can fight back.
Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.
Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.
But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.
Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies.
There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.
We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.
With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?
Aaron Swartz
July 2008, Eremo, Italy
idoru
quote:
Originally posted by srussell0018
So you think that releasing scientific articles for free should be illegal? Don't you think those articles should be available to the public anyways?
I don't think that it should be illegal and I feel that, in general, scientific articles should be more easily accessible to the public than having to pay hefty fees to magazines like Science and Nature.
quote:
That's the point I'm trying to make at least. It shouldn't be illegal, because he was essentially releasing information that wouldn't hurt anybody, and he did it for no personal gain. That information should be readily available to the public anyways.
At the end of the day, he still broke into a private system and stole "private" data, regardless of what the data was. In this case, I would argue that the data he stole and his motives for doing it would certainly warrant a far lighter sentence than what he was being tried for, but he should still be tried.
DOOMBOT
Based on what he wrote, it looks like this could have been avoided had there been no such thing as copyright law. It is indeed a strange world we live in when things such as information and knowledge can be "protected" and to use/share/or copy it is considered "illegal" and punishable.
idoru
Yeah, our copyright laws are just one festering pile of , to put it lightly.
hardcore trancer
Another great speech from Aaron:
OrangestO
So who thinks he was suicided by the government?
srussell0018
Probably stupid people.
Lira
quote:
Originally posted by srussell0018
Probably stupid people.
:stongue:
But, yeah, this is very unlikely. He struggled with depression for all his life, so it's not like he needed some help there.
