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Aaron Swartz dead: Internet activist and programmer was 26

Pilot

Pilot

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Aaron Swartz dead: Internet activist, programmer was 26 - chicagotribune.com

Internet activist and computer prodigy Aaron Swartz, who helped create an early version of the Web feed system RSS and was facing federal criminal charges in a controversial fraud case, has committed suicide at age 26, authorities said on Saturday.
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Swartz faced trouble in July 2011, when he was indicted by a federal grand jury of wire fraud, computer fraud and other charges related to allegedly stealing millions of academic articles and journals from a digital archive at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

According to the federal indictment, Swartz - who was a fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics - used MIT's computer networks to steal more than 4 million articles from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service.

JSTOR did not press charges against Swartz after the digitized copies of the articles were returned, according to media reports at the time.

Swartz, who pleaded not guilty to all counts, faced 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted. He was released on bond. His trial was scheduled to start later this year.
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The charges Swartz was facing are crazy. Hacking can be a serious crime, and should be prosecuted. But should stealing articles result in a sentence comparable with murder?
 
It's sad to see someone commit suicide, especially one so young. It is also regretable that the penalties can be so disproportionately high for what is done in damage. Nevertheless, the action he chose should not be tolerated, and many of his backers should be shunned.
 
He should've done all that after incorporating himself. Then that corporate person would've been fined rather than facing charges himself.
 
He had a history of depression from the article and had thought of suicide before. I doubt he would have gotten the max, but I just cannot feel sympathy for his actions that lead to the charges. Even if he was not making money off it, stealing mass digital content from others to force its free availability is not permissible IMHO and should be illegal and those who do it should be punished.
 
Fisher said:
He had a history of depression from the article and had thought of suicide before. I doubt he would have gotten the max, but I just cannot feel sympathy for his actions that lead to the charges. Even if he was not making money off it, stealing mass digital content from others to force its free availability is not permissible IMHO and should be illegal and those who do it should be punished.
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meh... someone should've bought him up for billions as an administrator to secure their networks against big brains like his. Used to always hear about some kid hacking a bank, getting busted, then hired by the business they hacked.
 
poweRob said:
meh... someone should've bought him up for billions as an administrator to secure their networks against big brains like his. Used to always hear about some kid hacking a bank, getting busted, then hired by the business they hacked.
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The FBI had tried to make overtures, but many are digital-era prophet fanatics.
 
poweRob said:
meh... someone should've bought him up for billions as an administrator to secure their networks against big brains like his. Used to always hear about some kid hacking a bank, getting busted, then hired by the business they hacked.
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I heard that was an urban legend. Either way, since he was chased out of reddit apparently, I doubt his inside the inner loop presence was desired beyond the code-writing wing of the building.
 
He sounds like an introvert who loved his computers. He was probably an operational autistic, and jail would have been hell without a computer. Given the punishment he was facing and the problems it would have caused a person like that suicide was probably the best option. They might have been able to get him off on some sort of psych thing, but then he would have the problem of being labelled crazy which can be bad in itself.
 
He was facing 35 years for basically downloading academic papers. That's like sending someone to jail for taking out too many library books.
 
poweRob said:
He should've done all that after incorporating himself. Then that corporate person would've been fined rather than facing charges himself.
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Anyone seen the film The Corporation? It's an old one, but I just saw it recently and think that what was said then still applies now; even more so, in fact. Here's a link to the film in case anyone's interested:
The Corporation - YouTube
 
FinnMacCool said:
He was facing 35 years for basically downloading academic papers. That's like sending someone to jail for taking out too many library books.
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Considering the value of the papers was around 1.5 million I could see a short jail sentence. But other than MIT losing potential revenue there wasn't any actual damage from his actions, 35 years definitely seems excessive.
 
FinnMacCool said:
He was facing 35 years for basically downloading academic papers. That's like sending someone to jail for taking out too many library books.
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Or distributing without consent, saying that it's available to anyone, at any time, without asking the author, the academic journal, or the university from which it came. Pay the subscription fees like everyone else.
 
poweRob said:
meh... someone should've bought him up for billions as an administrator to secure their networks against big brains like his. Used to always hear about some kid hacking a bank, getting busted, then hired by the business they hacked.
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You left out a very important part of the story.

some kid hacking a bank, getting busted, then hired by the business they hacked.

You left out taking responsibility for what they had done. That goes in between the getting busted and getting hired.
 
Pilot said:
Considering the value of the papers was around 1.5 million I could see a short jail sentence. But other than MIT losing potential revenue there wasn't any actual damage from his actions, 35 years definitely seems excessive.
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The funny thing is that none of those professors actually got paid for writing those papers and the company who was hosting them was planning on making them free anyways. Given those circumstances, the punishment was definitely disproportionate to the alleged crime.

Edit: Also he didn't hack anything. I think he just took advantage of a system in MIT which let him download them.
 
Guy Incognito said:
No. Good thing it doesn't.
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Stock takes best interest plea, sentenced for second degree murder
Wednesday, an emotional Cocke County family let a convicted killer hear their anger. Jeffery Lee Stock took a "best interest" plea deal for the murder of 19 year-old Megan Maxwell in 2009.
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Megan Maxwell's family was not happy with the sentence. Stock will spend a little more than 14 years behind bars when they had hoped for life behind bars. He was sentenced to 18 years for the second degree murder charge, but received nearly four years off for time served.
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It sure doesn't result in a comparable sentence, but I don't see that as a good thing. I realize this is not always the case, but it does happen quite often.
 
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