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The biggest tragedy about the actions leading to Aaron Swartz's death is that he's become a martyr for a ridiculous cause. Swartz once worked with a friend of mine, and from what I've been told, "naive" isn't too far outside his personality. I'm told he was an idealist, with little regard for consequences, and often a blind faith that things would work out with good triumphing over evil. Unfortunately, he was stuck living in the real world.

While I agree on the principles of his actions, that science should be freely available, the actions he took to accomplish his goals were asinine. Wantonly breaking the rules of the institution you're trying to change will not actually bring about change; it just makes your opponents mad. When your opponents have vastly superior power, that's a pretty bad idea.

What makes civil disobedience an effective form of protest is that the laws broken are trivial, but the trials must be public, so the whole affair is a PR campaign. Few remember that Rosa Parks' disobedience was not the first of its kind, but rather just the best candidate to go through a full (and widely-publicized) trial. By Parks becoming a celebrity over an injustice, the whole civil rights movement gained popularity.

What I see now is a disturbing trend of irresponsible lawbreaking, under the banner of "protesting". Websites are hacked, contracts are ignored, and people with small problems feel entitled to disrupt all normal business until somebody takes care of them. Somewhere, people have forgotten that change comes slowly.

Bradley Manning could have released his information in small quantities to human rights advocates. Edward Snowden could have sent information anonymously to the EFF. There are responsible channels for changing the world, but they are slow and often frustrating. Swartz had already founded Demand Progress to fight various forms of online censorship; adding scientific lockdown to that campaign would not have taken much effort, and would be much more likely to succeed than going after JSTOR directly.

Can we as a society please stop this madness? Let's stop glorifying leaks, stop vilifying our opponents, and stop encouraging concerned citizens to become martyred heroes. Instead, let's promote patience, compromise, and a steady societal change, rather than an overnight revolution.

I suggest you join the Effector mailing list, and have a good strong look at Demand Progress.

I should also point out Move to Amend while I'm plugging these. This one's actually been introduced to congress.

I agree its probably best to wait until its moved higher up the chain. the frankly depressing news nobody seems to be talking about is what the "six strikes" crap that the ISPs have wholly embraced is gonna do to free Wifi which is kill it deader than Dixie. If you've looked at their little six strikes plans they don't have any kind of "safe harbor" provisions so all it will take is somebody looking at anything the media corps don't like (because frankly their definition of "infringing" seems to be "anything we don't like or aren't directly profiting from") a couple of times for every coffee shop and food joint to have their free Wifi shut down.

And before anybody says "The ISP wouldn't want to give up those customers!" remember how badly the ISPs have been overselling the hell out of their lines while refusing to use profits for anything but CEO bonuses? Well six strikes gives them the perfect excuse to kick anybody that uses more bandwidth than your average grandma, thus allowing them to keep gouging and overselling while using the profits for bonuses and buying out smaller fish to prop up the stock price.

so while this is good new no need to be patting ourselves on the back just yet, we need to see if it stands up to higher courts and we've seen a LOT more attacks on the Internet by the courts and corps in the past few years than ever before so vigilance is required. I'd suggest everybody sign the petition against CISPA 2.0 and write your lawmakers demanding an end to six strikes and for support of net neutrality.

Hilarious, that subdomain is no longer working. Main page works fine.

I think a link to Demand Progress would be in order.

Yep.

I'd like to take this opportunity to point these guys out, while we are on it. Also these.

I put this link on my wall, and it is still there. http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/cispa_facebook/?source=fb And it seems to be growing. Perhaps that is why FaceBook is in GoDaddy PR mode right now. I wonder if that would change if people started removing pictures and personal information?

http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/new_sopa/

Do sign, please. It may not help, but it can't hurt.

While at it, give CISPA a bump... while you still can.

Do sign, please. It may not help, but it can't hurt.

Exactly. By the way, there is a petition/thing to mail your reps about that... http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/snooping_bill The guy above me needs modded WAYYY up for mentioning this. Too bad he's not the first comment.

Do all of you clamoring about a "midnight vote" realize that this bill is still in committee? Even if the House Judiciary Committee passes it, it still has to pass both houses, the reconciliation process, and withstand a veto to become law.

I agree that the best time to strangle and bury this monster is before it leaves committee and becomes a soundbite issue that can be made law in the dead of night, but this isn't quite over yet.

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Oppose SOPA, PROTECT-IP, and other anti-Internet freedom legislation
http://blog.demandprogress.org/campaigns/

It might not do much but here you can email the ISPs here: http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/three_strikes

For this particular case, DemandProgress.org had an online petition you could sign. I don't know how effective that is, but it's probably better than nothing and is easier than getting out of your chair.

Looks like these events aren't making anyone less ignorant:

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/03/15/germany.nuclear.protests/

http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/georgianukes/?akid=360.21834.6IpMej&rd=1&t=1

According to http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/dhscomplaint/ the subject is actually accused of EMBEDDING, not linking. That is, he is alleged to have embedded copyrighted video streams (and/or their surrounding pages) inside his own site with surrounding ad content, instead of linking the user to the actual hosting web site. The major mistake by ICE appears to be a failure to actually use the word "embed" in their complaint. I would expect a takedown or lawsuit if I did this, so it's difficult for me to be surprised. Of course, that's no reason not to retrieve the links from the Internet Wayback Machine and (properly) link them from all of our home pages.

Kind of like how Google Images embeds my copyright images without my consent?

According to http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/dhscomplaint/ the subject is actually accused of EMBEDDING, not linking. That is, he is alleged to have embedded copyrighted video streams (and/or their surrounding pages) inside his own site with surrounding ad content, instead of linking the user to the actual hosting web site. The major mistake by ICE appears to be a failure to actually use the word "embed" in their complaint. I would expect a takedown or lawsuit if I did this, so it's difficult for me to be surprised. Of course, that's no reason not to retrieve the links from the Internet Wayback Machine and (properly) link them from all of our home pages.

I'm sure this has already been posted, but you can sign a petition against the bill here: http://demandprogress.org/blacklist/

Go here to sign the petition against it. They also deliver a message to your state representative.

Will USA soon have a Great Firewall of its own?

http://demandprogress.org/blacklist/

It already does. It's called the DMCA. Why firewall something, which requires enormous support and resources amongst the ISPs, when you can leverage bullshit copyright laws and corrupt, vile, organizations like the RIAA and simply delude the companies hosting objectionable content without due process?

Censorship exists now.

Will USA soon have a Great Firewall of its own?

http://demandprogress.org/blacklist/

How long would a file sharing service such as this last under COICA?