The Darker Side of Aaron Swartz (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/11/requiem-for-a-dream <comment><USER2> I don't think this obsession with Aaron and his death is any good. It feels like a morbid soap opera. He is more talked about in death than in life. I think its better to focus on the living. There is plenty of interesting tech entrepreneurs and activists out there.

<comment><USER3> I think it's less morbid soap opera and more propagandist soapbox. Aaron Swartz has been turned into a martyr for a cause. Ian Murdock, as well. We can expect any technologist suicide to be called a murder at the hands of the state from now on, and for conversation to be steered towards polemics against US policy at every conceivable opportunity, when their names are brought up.

I do believe the subjects (copyright law, police brutality, etc.) are worth discussing, but I also believe the politics around them make it difficult to discuss them rationally. People tend not to invoke Aaron Swartz to start conversations, so much as attempt to end them, or polarize them, or steer them into the same tedious and unproductive circles time and again.

I guess we're lucky there's no way to spin Marvin Minsky's death that way. If he'd gotten so much as a traffic ticket before the end, people would be implying his cerebral hemorrhage was caused by police batons.

<comment><USER4> two, seemingly valid, examples, and "We can expect any technologist suicide to be called a murder at the hands of the state from now on". Your'e the one being hyperbolic.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a correct assertion, although I'm aware of my hyperbolic tone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This passage was interesting to me:

"He was freed of all the disciplining experiences of life," Lawrence Lessig says. "His parents got him out of school early, which was great because it allowed him to become somebody who wasn't the product of puberty in a public school. But it was bad in the sense that it gave him a confidence about his own judgment, which is dangerous."

I hated school and still hate work mostly due to the discipline aspect and the bureaucracy but I endured it. Before now I thought was bad but perhaps this discipline does make me stronger to deal with general bullshit that exists in our world, I deal with it fine for the most part. As a parent now I was thinking I should allow my son to do whatever he wants to avoid the nonsense I sometimes had to put up with but now I don't known if that hurts him too, it's difficult striking that balance.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am pretty sure that a lot of people must have took an interest in the passage. For anyone who has serious issues with the BS that the academic life has to offer, it offers a rather interesting take on the matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm reminded of this Ribbonfarm essay whenever news about Aaron comes up:

[http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/09/17/how-to-be-a-precious- sn...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/09/17/how-to-be-a-precious-snowflake/)

I think Aaron Swartz's life & death continues to fascinate us because many of us see something in him that we wish we could protect in ourselves. He's the ur-snowflake to all of us clods. It would be _nice_ to live in a world of free access to information, universal compassion, freedom from power hierarchies, and everything that he stood for. It's just not very _practical_ , when content creators need to eat and people have differing desires that are often at odds and reality needs to choose between multiple competing desires.

<comment><USER7> < It would be nice to live in a world of free access to information, universal compassion, freedom from power hierarchies, and everything that he stood for. It's just not very practical, when content creators need to eat and people have differing desires that are often at odds and reality needs to choose between multiple competing desires.

What? The activism was directed at giving free access to that should be free! The research that is being hoarded behind paywalls by gatekeepers who didn't create it and don't pay the ones who created it. The creators of the text are people paid by us through our taxes and other contributions and then locked away so only a select few can see it. This knowledge locked away that could save lives, be new areas of business or just simply improve the human condition.

And here you are and talking about this like he was trying to distribute movies for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The title needs a (2013), as this was published nearly three years ago. I didn't realize this until I saw the words "two years ago" in reference to his arrest.

</comment><comment><USER9> > It is clear that he did not anticipate the astonishing severity of the legal > response [to scraping JSTOR].

This is a key lesson. The transition from protected academic life to "The Real World" (as we used to style it) can be alarmingly abrupt. It's best to plan for the worst.

<comment><USER10> We often call things 'The Real World' when we see how harsh and unethical the current reality often is, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for a more ideal one.

We have to work within those real rules, but it would be a shame if those rules define us.

<comment><USER9> Yes, he deserved slack. MIT dropped the ball, for sure.

However, my point is that it's very dangerous to count on slack. Consider the theft of that cannon from Fleming House. Sure, it was a prank. And Caltech didn't press charges. All in good fun. But interstate theft is a federal crime.

<comment><USER10> The whole thing seems politically motivated from an outside source. Precedents at MIT effectively encourage this behavior (the law isn't a moral absolute; you've broken the law at least once; I wouldn't be surprised if I've unknowingly committed a few felonies). If the expectation was otherwise he wouldn't have behavied as he did.

His mistake was likely that he had become somebody important; something of a political figure. That's when people start about caring what you do (by definition).

Remember that bastard that hiked up the price of life saving drugs who got slapped with an old felony? Nobody would have bothered to find it if he wasn't the most hated man in America.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Didn't know he had ulcerative colitis.

For anyone else suffering, there's been new studies on fodmap free diets which have been reportedly effective. [http://bit.ly/fodmapfree](http://bit.ly/fodmapfree)

<comment><USER12> I have UC. I'm lucky that I have access to medication that hold it in check.

Thank you for the link. I'd love to get to the point where I no longer need to take this medication on a daily basis.

<comment><USER11> I used to take lialda.

I've had it for 12 years. I've spent the last 2 years learning everything I can about web, building 2 saas ventures, and now trying to attack this problem: [http://trials.humandataproject.org](http://trials.humandataproject.org)

I'd love to chat with you and learn more about what you've tried.

Keep in mind Tibetans have a 80% incidence rate of IBD. Feel free to reach out to me if you think I can be a resource.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As much as I love what Aaron Schwartz stood for and did (hell, the more I read about him the more amazing he seems), he does seem to be a victim of his own hubris. For example, he concludes it would be easy to take over Australia. Possibly, but unlikely - given he was almost running a guerilla campaign against things like SOPA, surely he would see things aren't that easy? Or that the smaller party often punches above their weight, given he was indeed the smaller party?

Strangely, none of this detracts from this extraordinary individual. Oh, but I wish he hadn't committed suicide! It's not like I don't understand it, I am a person at risk of this myself. I just wish he didn't leave his devastated loved ones behind like that.

</comment><comment><USER14> For me, all that Aaron Swartz's story is for me, is a reminder if how broken and corrupted the judicial system is. I couldn't really care less about what he did when he was alive, just about the horrific things that others did along the way.

<comment><USER15> Don't act like Swartz was an innocent lamb.

<comment><USER13> He's not. You can accept Schwartz broke the law in downloading a bunch of case law that probably would have cost a maximum of $10,000, if that. You don't have to forgive Carmen Ortiz or Stephen Heyman for prosecutorial overreach, or the complete and utter misuse of public resources in prosecuting a crime the supposed victim, JSTOR, had resolved was no longer an issue.

<comment><USER16> The real problem is accepting that he broke into MIT property and tampered with their network as if he had some sort of moral high ground that granted him a right to do so. Private property does not belong to the hacking class simply because they can get to it, and that aspect of the lionization of Aaron Swartz is distasteful at best. This was not just "Robin Hood" freeing research for the poor, it was a man violating the rights of others based on strong desires. Hardly noble. Hardly heroic. That he couldn't face the consequences of the actions once he realized that desire did not translate into a right just cuts down the last tree in that forest, to me. My heroes aren't cowardly.

<comment><USER13> Really? I'm curious here, who was injured? Seriously, tell me the exact person who was harmed by him hooking up his laptop into the MIT network.

<comment><USER17> JSTOR had to shut down temporarily, which hurt everyone who uses it. And MIT would certainly be harmed if they made it known that anyone who liked was allowed to break into their property and hook into their network.

<comment><USER18> "had to shut down" It didn't have to shut down any more than you'd have to burn your own house down after a burglary.

If somebody broke into my house and was caught I supposed I could overreact and go into massive debt fortifying it with castle walls, a moat, and alligators.

But I don't think the legal system should side with parties doing damage to themselves just because they don't understand computer networks.

<comment><USER17> I don't think it's credible to suggest that JSTOR would have shut down if they didn't think it was necessary. I dislike this victim-blaming mentality that some people seem to have in relation to computer-related crimes. JSTOR appear to have done their best to handle the situation, bearing in mind that they cannot be seen to condone violations of the licenses which they have negotiated with publishers.

<comment><USER13> Both JSTOR and MIT declined to pursue civil litigation. They clearly didn't consider themselves to have been materially harmed.

Where did you get the information that the entirety of JSTOR was shut down, even temporarily?

<comment><USER17> >Both JSTOR and MIT declined to pursue civil litigation. They clearly didn't consider themselves to have been materially harmed.

The second statement doesn't in any way follow from the first. There are call kinds of reasons why JSTOR might have decided not to pursue civil litigation. Swartz quite possibly didn't have enough money to make it worthwhile, and it would have been bad publicity. On top of that, given that Swartz was already facing criminal prosecution, there was no need to pursue civil litigation as a deterrent to others.

>Where did you get the information that the entirety of JSTOR was shut down, even temporarily?

[http://swartz-report.mit.edu/faq.html](http://swartz-report.mit.edu/faq.html) ("This activity was in violation of MIT's licensing agreement with JSTOR, and its scale threatened JSTOR's network so profoundly that JSTOR blocked all MIT access for three days in October 2010.") My original post was open to the interpretation that JSTOR shut down everywhere for everyone, which is not the case. But anyway, it's clear that Swartz's activities were significantly disruptive.

What you seem to be missing is that Swartz's actions were a direct challenge to JSTOR's entire business model. The only way that JSTOR can make money out of scanning old journal articles is to charge fees to someone or other for access to those articles. If the entire JSTOR database becomes freely available, then this income stream is cut off. It's worth considering what the effects would have been if Swartz had succeeded in doing what he intended to do, i.e. release JSTOR's entire database of articles. This wasn't merely a prank or a protest. It was something that had the potential to destroy JSTOR entirely. (And JSTOR isn't even evil -- it's a non-profit that does a lot of great work.)

<comment><USER13> You can read JSTOR's statement here:

[http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor-statement-misuse- incident-...](http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor-statement-misuse-incident-and- criminal-case)

"The criminal investigation and today's indictment of Mr. Swartz has been directed by the United States Attorney's Office. It was the government's decision whether to prosecute, not JSTOR's. As noted previously, our interest was in securing the content. Once this was achieved, we had no interest in this becoming an ongoing legal matter."

They genuinely weren't interested in making him an example.

<comment><USER17> I didn't say that JSTOR was interested in making an example of Swartz. I said that _if_ they had wanted to make an example of him, that would _still_ not have given them a reason to pursue civil action, since Swartz was _already_ facing a criminal prosecution that would have acted as a far greater deterrent than any conceivable civil action. There would simply have been no point in spending lots of money on a civil suit (money which probably could not be recovered in full) when the person in question was already facing jail time.

More generally, that fact that JSTOR did not pursue civil action is totally unsurprising given that Swartz was already facing a criminal prosecution, and it tells us very little about what JSTOR did or didn't think about what Swartz did. It's like saying "you must not think that the burglar harmed you by burgling your house because you're not pursuing civil action against him" \-- in an instance where the burglar was already facing a criminal prosecution.

If JSTOR had believed Swartz's actions not to be harmful, they clearly would not have blocked JSTOR access from the MIT network. And indeed, Swartz didn't actually succeed in doing JSTOR much harm _becuase they successfully stopped him_. What you're effectively saying is that being caught before you've succeeded in completing a crime ought to count as a good defense. In other words, if I try to burgle your house and you catch me before I succeed in making off with your stuff, then you can't complain, because after all, I didn't actually get hold of any of your stuff!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The US taxpayer and government funds public research, and the results are given as private profit to publishers. Swartz downloads papers en masse, something he may have had a murky right to do as an MIT fellow. This results in MIT, JStor, and the US government persecuting him. The New Yorker and Larissa Macfarquhar don't look for the darker side of all of this in the government persecutions and taxpayer money for public research privatized by corporations, but in Swartz himself. Conde Nast is just another big corporation (watch the nth generation heir of it in a piece more illuminating than this one - "Born Rich") coming to the defense of another big corporation in the slimy way someone like Larissa Macfarquhar specializes in, although its the New Yorker it's middle-brown, and in a slimy quote subtle unquote way. No articles on the darker side of other big publisher corporations for sure.

<comment><USER20> How does the article "come to the defense of another big corporation"? Which corporation is it coming to the defense of? JSTOR is owned by Ithaka Harbors, a non-profit organization ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaka_Harbors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaka_Harbors)), and MIT is a non-profit educational institution. In any case, the article didn't seem very sympathetic to them.

<comment><USER21> I wouldn't word it like that, but I think _obrero_ definitely has a point. I mean, all this storytelling is pretty disgusting. Enjoy the read, look how pompous, how grandiloquent this is! Look at all this tragedy! And I mean not only the writer herself — the quote of the girlfriend, which serves as an epigraph is already too much.

And it's not just that I'm not a big fan of newyorker's style (even though I'm not), the whole read is composed in a very specific way. It isn't biographical, not documentary, it's more of an essay, purpose of which is not to tell Aaron's story as such, but _the writer 's_ story, with it's own premise and morale.

So what is this story all about? The suicide. And the whole Aaron's life is shown as a prelude to it. The suicide is the point, and the whole life is "an explanation" for it: story, which, we are given to understand, was likely to end with a suicide sooner or later. As the writer eloquently calls it — "the darker side".

It's easy to convey that, because it's a social norm to view a suicide as a tragedy, regardless of circumstances. But let us be cynical just for a minute and look at what happened: some guy was fighting for his ideals; the party he was fighting against was something way bigger than him, a mere mortal; he lost; he died. Suicide never was a big deal, apparently not for Aaron, anyway. What was a big deal for him: his war for the social justice. And, let's face it, there're plenty of other guys who end their lives with suicide, newyorker doesn't write about them. So, as a matter of fact, the suicide isn't a big deal for a newyorker as well, even though MacFarquhar won't admit it, maybe even to herself.

Yet it's made to look as if it is precisely what is the big deal and it's socially acceptable to display it that way. What the story really was about — the fight, and those on the other side of it — that we won't be thinking of, we won't discuss it, we won't remember it. Instead, it will be all about "a darker side" and a tragedy.

Regardless of whether what Aaron did or was doing was right or wrong, regardless of if he was a hero or just a fool — I think it's a pity. To take the most insignificant part of the story, and to make it _The Story_ , because it's so easy to do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> why its 2013 on 2015 is needed

</comment><comment><USER23> What a tortured soul.

</comment><comment><USER24> Victim of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)</comment>