Aaron Swartz faced more time in prison than people who commit heinous crimes

[Evershadow]

Aaron Swartz for those of you who don't know was an apparent co-founder of one of my favorite ways to kill time, Reddit. The twenty-six year old hacker and information activist took his own life on the 11th of January 2013. Swartz was in trouble with the law for "logging into JSTOR, a database of scholarly articles, and rapidly downloading those articles with the intent to make them public."

If Aaron had lived to be convicted he would have been looking at a staggering fifty years in a federal prison. It's RIDICULOUS! "The young hacker faced a harsher prison than that for manslaughter, bank robbery, or selling slaves." The crime that Swartz has been alleged of committing is attempting to make academic knowledge widely available to the public? I'm afraid to say I'm not an expert on hows and whys to this being so serious in federal eyes. However, to my mind it's a bit mad, I don't see what the problem is here and why scholars desperately holding their work to themselves should have lead to a brilliant young man's life being wasted.

I'm not sure about you but this really angers me. I'd like to hear your opinions on the matter whether your pro or anti his activism or the idea of activists like him. Also, this website gives you a number of examples of the crimes and how much time you get for them.

R.I.P
Aaron Swartz

[★LunaLight★]

Well, I would agree with you if this was all there was on the table.

One, hackers commonly get special deals to get out of jail in exchange for a security job.

Two, he killed himself. Not many people kill themselves over 50 years in jail, so clearly we don't know the whole story here.

Three, the information he is obtaining is incredibly expensive to produce. These articles are written by people who have been through a large amount of schooling. This information is worth money, and doing this is essentially stealing. It is like giving newspapers to everyone who didn't subscribe. Yes it was done for pure reasons, but that does not change the fact that it came at the expense of the very source of the information.

Four, hacking in general is a talent that is truly fearsome in this day and age. If he is able to hack something as secure as a datebase, what else could and has he been hacking. The government is perfectly right to have extremely harsh punishment for hacking, because they have secrets that must remain secrets.

Lastly, unlike robbing a bank and manslaughter(when it is actually accidental and not just a reduced sentence), people who hack are usually not acting out of desperation. They are usually one of the following: highly resolved towards committing the action, wanting attention drawn to their talents, or they are simaltaniously commiting treason.

At the most basic level, it does feel wrong; however, 50 years is an appropriate time for hacking. It might actually get to be higher as technology grows even more important to our lives. Hackers actually scare me, because my life is so heavily dependent on technology which they could destroy or change all on their own. I agree that this man was trying to do a good thing, but he went to the dark side to accomplish it.

[Gwazi Magnum]

This is really just a case of

1. The government being stupid legal pricks
2. Academics trying to be special & 'higher up' by keeping their information to themselves

That's it in a nutshell really.
People could (and no doubt will) go into a long debate about laws, academic rules, copyright etc.
But in the end all those laws, procedures, protocals etc trace back somewhere, and that somewhere is just people who surround themselves with privatized info and legal bullshit so they can hold some high status.

- - - Updated - - -

Well, I would agree with you if this was all there was on the table.

One, hackers commonly get special deals to get out of jail in exchange for a security job.

Two, he killed himself. Not many people kill themselves over 50 years in jail, so clearly we don't know the whole story here.

Three, the information he is obtaining is incredibly expensive to produce. These articles are written by people who have been through a large amount of schooling. This information is worth money, and doing this is essentially stealing. It is like giving newspapers to everyone who didn't subscribe. Yes it was done for pure reasons, but that does not change the fact that it came at the expense of the very source of the information.

Four, hacking in general is a talent that is truly fearsome in this day and age. If he is able to hack something as secure as a datebase, what else could and has he been hacking. The government is perfectly right to have extremely harsh punishment for hacking, because they have secrets that must remain secrets.

Lastly, unlike robbing a bank and manslaughter(when it is actually accidental and not just a reduced sentence), people who hack are usually not acting out of desperation. They are usually one of the following: highly resolved towards committing the action, wanting attention drawn to their talents, or they are simaltaniously commiting treason.

At the most basic level, it does feel wrong; however, 50 years is an appropriate time for hacking. It might actually get to be higher as technology grows even more important to our lives. Hackers actually scare me, because my life is so heavily dependent on technology which they could destroy or change all on their own. I agree that this man was trying to do a good thing, but he went to the dark side to accomplish it.

1. So? What does this have to do with the fact a guy had to choose between death or a life in jail?

2. 50 years in jail is pretty much your entire life, expecially if you're an adult when your sentenced. 50 years of misery in a cell where you can get shower raped? Death seems quite attractive right now.

3. It's expensive to produce yes, but there is little profit made off of them. If there is then we are really being oppressed to our freedom of knowledge.
Yes people can profit off what said info can lead to, such as medicene, technology etc.
But the knowledge/know how itself is not.

You could argue university's and colleges bill for knowledge, but that's more of paying to be offically recognized and trained and have easier access to said info than otherwise.
I could easily give all my college books to a friend out of college, they could read them and know everything they can from my program for free, did we just break the law then and/or commit theft?

4. So... he's being punished for having a skill/talent?
That is oppression and discrimination.
This reminds me of the TV show Merlin where people with magic were hunted and executed just for simply possessing magic and it's potential to do evil.

5. Robbing a bank takes time and dedication, unless if you're doing it really shitty in which case it won't ever work anyways.
And Manslaughter even if on impluse is the loss of a life.

I don't care how much information he 'stole'.
It's still not as valuable as an individuals life.

[★LunaLight★]

This is really just a case of

1. The government being stupid legal pricks
2. Academics trying to be special & 'higher up' by keeping their information to themselves

That's it in a nutshell really.
People could (and no doubt will) go into a long debate about laws, academic rules, copyright etc.
But in the end all those laws, procedures, protocals etc trace back somewhere, and that somewhere is just people who surround themselves with privatized info and legal bullshit so they can hold some high status.

This is a bad argument. You know this is argumentum ad hominem.

Btw, lets pretend all professors make $40,000 dollars a year, works 45hrs a week, and works 52 weeks each year. Even this grossly underpaid, underutilized, and overworked professor makes $17.10 an hour. If every single article took three days(72hrs) to make and was reviewed instantaniously at zero cost, it would still cost $1230.77 per article. Do you now understand how expensive these articles are? Even if I make wildly underestimated values, it still ends up expensive. It is not just people overvaluing their creations. These works are hugely expensive.

[Shon Harris]

This is a bad argument. You know this is argumentum ad hominem.

Btw, lets pretend all professors make $40,000 dollars a year, works 45hrs a week, and works 52 weeks each year. Even this grossly underpaid, underutilized, and overworked professor makes $17.10 an hour. If every single article took three days(72hrs) to make and was reviewed instantaniously at zero cost, it would still cost $1230.77 per article. Do you now understand how expensive these articles are? Even if I make wildly underestimated values, it still ends up expensive. It is not just people overvaluing their creations. These works are hugely expensive.

As someone who is literally hiring a new faculty member in a 4-5 year institution at this moment, I thought I'd point something out: Many schools do not pay you to produce scholarly work. Research institutions may require you to produce such work, or conduct these investigations, but requiring means they might give you access to a studio, research facility, or otherwise give you a leg up in your field. In many cases institutions expect activity, however, do not pay nor intend to pay you for work of this nature. The production of such work is often done by those earning their graduate degrees who must conduct research and those who truly find such information liberating. You'd be surprised how many professional artists, active exhibitions, gallery/museum representation, all that, will produce scholarly literature as they research the background before producing more work. This isn't just art history, theory, or criticism either. My point is that many of us might assume scholarly literature is predominately trucked out by professors at every institution. I wouldn't go into this discussion with that point.

Also, this is more of a question, do you know if your instructors are paid hourly? Mine aren't, so the dollar figures p/ hour might be a useful example, but I'm not sure how accurate they really are. I have staff who might come out short in hours a week, still paid the same amount. Again, not trying to be a dick, but it's important to realize some our assumptions might not be the case for those we're actually speaking about.

@OP: I think it's insane that physical violence is less frowned upon than stealing academia's treasures. Now I know my instructors have produced a few pieces, but you know I've never heard a word from them about earnings from them. In fact, all I've heard really, is the sense of accomplishment upon releasing the information, and how stimulating they find the resulting commentary. Many bring topics from their research into seminar, facilitating rather than guiding us, so that they can an even more rounded conversation about the work as well. My professors might be a small few, but in my experience, when academic work is produced it is not to make an income. That is to say, earning money from it would be wonderful, but having a burning question would be far more agonizing than not having the extra earnings. I doubt if any academian would be so caught up that their work was torrented, still credited however, and more student readers had access in result -- and if they did, I'd quickly question their goals as an instructor.

[★LunaLight★]

1. So? What does this have to do with the fact a guy had to choose between death or a life in jail?
If you take the job, you get out of jail free and get a well paying very stable job. Downside?

2. 50 years in jail is pretty much your entire life, expecially if you're an adult when your sentenced. 50 years of misery in a cell where you can get shower raped? Death seems quite attractive right now.
If my above point wasn't valid then sure I would feel bad. However you act as though hacking is not as serious as other charges only because you don't understand how dangerous it is. Hackers are not stupid, and they are well aware of the consequences.

3. It's expensive to produce yes, but there is little profit made off of them. If there is then we are really being oppressed to our freedom of knowledge.
Yes people can profit off what said info can lead to, such as medicene, technology etc.
But the knowledge/know how itself is not.
What? There is no such thing as a freedom of knowledge. Knowledge is something you earn. Sure people could benefit by having it, but nobody would value it if they didn't have to work for it. There is a reason most Americans don't know the bill of rights.

You could argue university's and colleges bill for knowledge, but that's more of paying to be offically recognized and trained and have easier access to said info than otherwise.
I could easily give all my college books to a friend out of college, they could read them and know everything they can from my program for free, did we just break the law then and/or commit theft?I don't know the laws about this, but honestly if there isn't a law, it is due to the fact that not enough people do this to create losses and/or it is not worth enforcing. Also, learning in a classroom and learning from a book are uncomparible experiences.

4. So... he's being punished for having a skill/talent?
That is oppression and discrimination.
This reminds me of the TV show Merlin where people with magic were hunted and executed just for simply possessing magic and it's potential to do evil.
No it isn't. The government doesn't actively seek out people with hacking potential and monitor them(at least I hope). He used his talents to commit a crime. Crimes are punished even if done for good reasons. The government offers a free way out if they use these talents to prevent the very crime they commited. I usually am distrustful of the government, but this is definitely an exception.

5. Robbing a bank takes time and dedication, unless if you're doing it really shitty in which case it won't ever work anyways.
And Manslaughter even if on impluse is the loss of a life.

I don't care how much information he 'stole'.
It's still not as valuable as an individuals life.
If someone realized how futile it is to rob a bank, they would never attempt it. The money you steal from it is marked as useless. You would have an easier time bombing a police station.

An here we go again. You made this a moral conflict. You seem to think hacking doesn't ruin lives more effectively than killers. A hacker can affect the lives of countless people all by themselves. The things that hackers can do can ultimately kill people, or at least motivate killings. It is scary to think that a single person could single-handly cause such a drastic change it the lives of other. If hacking is not detered, information itself isn't safe! It might even be worse than killing people. Think about not what happened, but what could happen, if people were allowed to think that they could get away with hacking highly secured networks.

^

- - - Updated - - -

As someone who is literally hiring a new faculty member in a 4-5 year institution at this moment, I thought I'd point something out: Many schools do not pay you to produce scholarly work. Research institutions may require you to produce such work, or conduct these investigations, but requiring means they might give you access to a studio, research facility, or otherwise give you a leg up in your field. In many cases institutions expect activity, however, do not pay nor intend to pay you for work of this nature. The production of such work is often done by those earning their graduate degrees who must conduct research and those who truly find such information liberating. You'd be surprised how many professional artists, active exhibitions, gallery/museum representation, all that, will produce scholarly literature as they research the background before producing more work. This isn't just art history, theory, or criticism either. My point is that many of us might assume scholarly literature is predominately trucked out by professors at every institution. I wouldn't go into this discussion with that point.

Also, this is more of a question, do you know if your instructors are paid hourly? Mine aren't, so the dollar figures p/ hour might be a useful example, but I'm not sure how accurate they really are. I have staff who might come out short in hours a week, still paid the same amount. Again, not trying to be a dick, but it's important to realize some our assumptions might not be the case for those we're actually speaking about.

@OP: I think it's insane that physical violence is less frowned upon than stealing academia's treasures. Now I know my instructors have produced a few pieces, but you know I've never heard a word from them about earnings from them. In fact, all I've heard really, is the sense of accomplishment upon releasing the information, and how stimulating they find the resulting commentary. Many bring topics from their research into seminar, facilitating rather than guiding us, so that they can an even more rounded conversation about the work as well. My professors might be a small few, but in my experience, when academic work is produced it is not to make an income. That is to say, earning money from it would be wonderful, but having a burning question would be far more agonizing than not having the extra earnings. I doubt if any academian would be so caught up that their work was torrented, still credited however, and more student readers had access in result -- and if they did, I'd quickly question their goals as an instructor.

I'm aware they aren't paid for their work, nor are they paid hourly. The goal was not to put an accurate dollar value on the articles. The goal was to point out how valuable the information was through a figure that is commonly understood. Just because you don't pay for something doesn't mean it has no value. People could have spent their time differently, but instead choose to provide for the sake of providing. My point is it seems unjust to take such valuable information away from the creators.

[Shon Harris]

Torrenting an article does not stake this information though. See, it is only unjust in the economical, capitalistic way. Because we are told that time=money, therefore, if we devote out time into something, we must receive something from it. That is not where value comes from. An academic could produce a paper and receive a large payday, and the satisfaction of that, but it'd never surpass the superficial. Unfortunately, the people most likely to recognize such a difference might indeed be academics, who'd produce work to expand a body of knowledge or inspire learning/discussion. I'd be willing to wager that someone writing this literature might be more irritated that their students could not afford the readings than that they did not receive as much money as they could have.

And let's be honest, most research or extra projects are funded through grants. Ideally, it costs the researcher no money. In fact it offers them to do what they please at no cost to them, because even if you denied them this grant, they'd work like hell to pay out of their own pocket if possible. The point isn't making your dollar in this field, and anyone approaching it with that aim will likely find themselves very unsatisfied.

What's easy is to say stealing from those not paid nearly enough is wrong. It places all the blame and discomfort on the laps of those stealing. However, it won't solve anything for those not being paid appropriately. We should be more focused on whatever valuing systems place educators so lowly on the scale, because frankly, if someone steals a bunch of academic studies written primarily for other academics, they're probably not seeing much losses here. However, if they're being paid $20k less than they deserve, well, you get my point.

[guinness]

The length of that sentencing is the government/legal system trying to set a precedence for people like Schwartz. The fact he's a high profile name allowed him to be the guy they made the example out of. While what he did may seem noble, it doesn't change that he hacked into a fairly secure network. It has more to do with sending a message to other hackers than it does Schwartz actual crime.

[★LunaLight★]

Torrenting an article does not stake this information though. See, it is only unjust in the economical, capitalistic way. Because we are told that time=money, therefore, if we devote out time into something, we must receive something from it. That is not where value comes from. An academic could produce a paper and receive a large payday, and the satisfaction of that, but it'd never surpass the superficial. Unfortunately, the people most likely to recognize such a difference might indeed be academics, who'd produce work to expand a body of knowledge or inspire learning/discussion. I'd be willing to wager that someone writing this literature might be more irritated that their students could not afford the readings than that they did not receive as much money as they could have.

And let's be honest, most research or extra projects are funded through grants. Ideally, it costs the researcher no money. In fact it offers them to do what they please at no cost to them, because even if you denied them this grant, they'd work like hell to pay out of their own pocket if possible. The point isn't making your dollar in this field, and anyone approaching it with that aim will likely find themselves very unsatisfied.

What's easy is to say stealing from those not paid nearly enough is wrong. It places all the blame and discomfort on the laps of those stealing. However, it won't solve anything for those not being paid appropriately. We should be more focused on whatever valuing systems place educators so lowly on the scale, because frankly, if someone steals a bunch of academic studies written primarily for other academics, they're probably not seeing much losses here. However, if they're being paid $20k less than they deserve, well, you get my point.

Well my basis of comparison aside. There is one unavoidable question I have yet to see answered: If professors wanted to provide free information to the public, then why not do exactly that?

I completely agree that money is not everything. Despite being a very economic-minded person, I think earning lots of money is completely overrated. Yes if everything I did earned money, I could use it to do many things; however I am not interested in that. Like you said, the very act of being able to do these things is worth more than any money you could possibly make off it. Everything in life ends up like that. I can't say how valuable a first kiss is, the feeling of having a child, or having grandkids. However, I do know that everything we do is valuable. It is wrong to take away the things people value.

If this man really wanted to provide information to the public, he would have used his knowledge of social networking to ask professors for their knowledge and consolidate it in a single location. If the professors were willing to provide free information, they would have given it to them. Otherwise, at a rate of thousands per second, he wronged those professors.

[Shon Harris]

Well my basis of comparison aside. There is one unavoidable question I have yet to see answered: If professors wanted to provide free information to the public, then why not do exactly that?

I completely agree that money is not everything. Despite being a very economic-minded person, I think earning lots of money is completely overrated. Yes if everything I did earned money, I could use it to do many things; however I am not interested in that. Like you said, the very act of being able to do these things is worth more than any money you could possibly make off it. Everything in life ends up like that. I can't say how valuable a first kiss is, the feeling of having a child, or having grandkids. However, I do know that everything we do is valuable. It is wrong to take away the things people value.

If this man really wanted to provide information to the public, he would have used his knowledge of social networking to ask professors for their knowledge and consolidate it in a single location. If the professors were willing to provide free information, they would have given it to them. Otherwise, at a rate of thousands per second, he wronged those professors.

Our system is not built for free information. When given a grant or funded by university, there are kickbacks and benefits to those funding the research or projects. In terms of undergraduate projects, let's use an example I'm familiar with, when one or a few undergrads receive a grant for, say a hefty research project accumulating in a body of work informing their study, the university funding that project would likely require they show their show such work on-campus, or otherwise tied to the campus. Part of the glory and all that comes with it becomes attached to those offering the funds, which can often somehow become equivalent to earnings.

If researchers and academics offer their information freely, people gain access to valuable information (without guidance, mind you, a very essential thing) without cost. Those hosting the academic/researcher are likely the ones to take offense, as it might make the institution less valued despite the noble philanthropy. But here's the kicker: Many universities and institutions actually did offer free access to Jstor to their students. Of course there's money paid via tuition. However, this meant all these articles and journals were free, but in recent years more and more pieces of literature there have gained an additional price. You're charging students three times: Once to buy guidance to knowledge (their educational institution), once for access to Jstor (via tuition), and once for access to the literature on Jstor (out of pocket). Does that seem as clear cut?

I think where we diverge, Luna, is that I'm not arguing values (or is it ethics?). In my mind, if a system is faulty and deserves immediate re-evaluation, then those pushing for that to happen are acting justly. What might be wrong in common society, like theft, could be a move toward social awareness and restructuring in a broken system. Guinness pointed out that the sentence is to make an example of Swartz, he's probably right, but we could make an example of Swartz too. We could show that this sort of action, though dangerous, is acceptable to point out significant flaws in our current system.