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Aaron Swartz Indicted in Attempted Piracy of Four Million Documents
An anonymous reader writes "New York Times has reported that Internet activist Aaron Swartz has been indicted for stealing more than 4 million documents from JSTOR."
The indictment contains an exciting tale featuring trespassing, MAC address forgery, a Python script or two, and even computers hidden under a cardboard box. El Reg has a decent summary. Demand Progress has released an official response claiming the charges are trumped up nonsense.
Perhaps this goes without saying, but the title is misleading. The Grand Jury did not indict Mr. Swartz on any copyright infringement or acts of piracy on the high seas. There are really only four indictments: wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information form a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer.
You can read the whole indictment here: http://ia700504.us.archive.org/29/items/gov.uscourts.mad.137971/gov.uscourts.mad.137971.2.0.pdf
Criminal copyright infringement is not one of the charges.
Surprised the title or summary didn't mention that.
The "too many library books" thing is a little disingenuous; I wonder whether JSTOR's servers were capable of keeping up with this kind of assault (assuming the factual description of this event is correct). On the other hand, this looks like government deciding to throw the books at this guy because they don't like his organization, and are using this as a pretext.
Dog is my co-pilot.
he is my hero. F R E E Information
"Aaron Swartz, a 24-year-old researcher in Harvard University's Center for Ethics, broke into a locked computer-wiring closet in an MIT basement and used a switch there to gain unauthorized access the college's network,"
How ethical.
"Members of Demand Progress, a nonprofit political action group Swartz founded, criticized the indictment."
Oh, really? No conflict of interest there.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
How many academic articles does one need, anyway?
I mean, I've wanted a way to grab two or three in my lifetime without going through the University, but really? Stealing academic articles?
Fascinating.
Regardless of whether the tale in the indictment is true or not, it seems a weird way to go about just getting a whole bunch of jstor articles...
The defendant's record suggests a reasonable amount of tech savvy and some geek and activist cred. Combined, perhaps, with a little beer money, that should be enough to secure the cooperation of a few students at a great many of the colleges that have site licenses for jstor journals. Within trivial driving/MBTA distance of MIT alone, there are quite a few to choose from.
It seems like you could get entirely the same results, entirely above board, just by scraping a little more slowly, from slightly more endpoints, which would be easy to secure with the permission of their owners. While MIT is fairly laid back, cloak-and-daggering into their wiring closets risks the wrath of some resident BOFH, and it isn't legal. Mere scraping, on the other hand, is just a ToS violation at worst.
summarized: A fellow at the Harvard Center for Ethics engaged in rampant downloads of JSTOR's (MIT's) document library under false identities and without authorization.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mirroring a web site is wire fraud? What?
JSTOR has settled any claims against Aaron, explained they’ve suffered no loss or damage, and asked the government not to prosecute. Indeed, it's not JSTOR suing but the USA government.
Seems like someone's stepped on the wrong toes... Kind of reminds me of Assange and Strauss-Kahn. Why yes, this tinfoil hat goes with my tinfoil shoes.
jesus christ, have you ever had your shit auto-filled in by facebook? do you remember authorizing that shit?
this whole thing is an assault on the intelligence of the public. it is absolutely outrageous abuse of power. the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is being rolled up like a stick and used as a battering ram against the First Amendment. this administration is completely out of control.
MIT doesn't care, but the fact that he's very critical of the government makes him a prime target for shoehorning accusations onto him to shut him and his site up.
JSTOR doesn't want it prosecuted
and neither does anyone with a shred of common sense.
the computer fraud and abuse act is one of the worst laws ever passed in the history of the country.
it is also being used against Bradley Manning and the Wikileaks cambridge people
it was also used against Thomas Drake
they also tried to use it against the Myspace suicide-woman
... and it seems like once you start downloading too much it kicks you off or makes you contact someone.
Seems like he evaded that little scheme and they're charging him with that.
Insane... it'd be like charging someone for disabling pop-ups.
Swartz appears to be an actual criminal
how pointless it is.
its like having a law that says 'its illegal to bad things on a computer'. what the hell does that even mean? its complete bullshit, which is proved by the wide variety of people that have been prosecuted under it.
Drake was not acquitted, he plead guilty to one misdemeanor under the CFAA (instead of 5 felonies under the Espionage Act) - the point of his case is that the CFAA made it criminal to simply take unclassified information and have it in your house. UNCLASSIFIED.
now the CFAA applies to women telling people to commit suicide? AND to a guy who downloads from JSTOR? And to a guy who jailbreaks his playstation? What the fuck kind of a law is that?
Manning is also a criminal. He violated MILITARY law as a member of the military.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
When did breaking into a locked equipment cabinet become free speech?
What Manning did was also a violation of the law, military law.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Kind of like Michael Kristopeit, then. In that case... yeah, burn him at the stake.
This is not what I voted for.
If you voted for Obama, then yes it is what you voted for.
Failure to recognize a shyster at the polls is your own shortcoming.
holy christ man, the world has gone fucking insane.
He is being threatened with half his life in prison for violating a fucking EULA.
If this precedent is set, we are all fucked for life. Especially when the next "Conservative" administration comes into office and decides we all need anal probes to save us from gay terrorism.
No he doesn't, not at all on the facts as presented by the prosecution. And the parent comment appears to have been made by an insane person. Can't really tag the President for every prosecution made by every prosecutor. They're mostly independent or supervised by local authorities. The President is not at the top of a hierarchy of everything.
Doesn't help that he has hardcore-authoritarian Eric Holder as AG. That was one of the first signs that post-election Obama was going to be very different from pre-election Obama.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
they had no authorization to engage in massive copyright violation, scanning millions of copyrighted books that they had no right to, specifically violating the exact same laws that drove Kinko's to lose massive amount of university campus business in the 1980s.
and yet.
Google got away with it. Google books is there for all to see. journals, advertisements, the books, the newspapers, the articles, all copyrighted, all obtained by google without permission.
JSTOR did alot of the same stuff. There is no way in hell they owned the copyright to all the stuff they scanned.
They also probably broke some labor laws when they outsourced the whole scanning operation to the Dominican Republic.
this guy is going to get 35 years so that Obama can prove he is 'tough on leakers'? because Eric Holder lost the Thomas Drake case? What the ?@#
I don't know about you but I'm pretty sure that the President of the United States does not have a hand in every prosecution case. Also what offense can you cite that the President has committed that would warrant impeachment? Calling for impeachment just becaue you don't like who was prosecuted doesn't mean the President committed an impeachable offense.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
So are most of the people on wall street, heading up the FED and taking bailout money, but I don't seen any effort to indict those assholes. And they did a lot worse.
He's a criminal in the same sense that I am a criminal because I once drank under the age of 21, or you might be if you never returned a library book. This is minor stuff, and the only reason for all the effort is to silence political speech.
I cannot make sense of this.
Allegedly, Swartz broke into a computer closet in order to download documents you can download from a Website, and he downloaded a lot of them. Why would he go to that much trouble?
Supposedly, MIT and JSTOR didn't press want to press charges, but the state of Massachusetts is pressing charges anyway. Why?
Some of the speculation here is that it's because Swartz was threatening to the government. I just read some of his articles; it seemed like good stuff from a moderate left. Left of the Democratic party? Sure, but so are thousands of activists, academics, and journalists. What's extraordinary about Swartz that would call for active persecution?
that Obama personally appointed Lanny Breuer, who is in charge of alot of these 'leak' cases.
And as commander of the armed forces, he is directly responsible for the fate of Bradley Manning.
i dont know who is involved in the Swartz case... so maybe i am crazy on that one.
But the argument that the president has nothing to do with federal prosecutions is a bit off the mark. He sets the tone and sets the priorities, he hires people, knowing their records, and he also allows people to stay in their jobs (like William Welch) even after they make a lot of bizarre mistakes.
i thought it was crazy too, until i started reading up on the facts of the cases. Obama is the worst First Amendment president in modern history.
Decora, stop spamming with all this irrational crap about how horrible the government is for prosecuting a guy who (if the allegations are true, which seems likely given that he was caught red handed) violated the terms of service of an academic journal service (not a EULA) in an attempt to steal the entire archive. This is theft. I don't know what kind of an "activist" he is, maybe he thinks he's trying to reform the economics of academic journals or something (which are a bit screwed up), but systematic theft (and DoS to legitimate users due to the way he operated) is not the way to solve that particular problem.
Also, where are you getting 35 years in prison from? Are you just pulling that out of your butt like everything else you've said so far?
You always get burnt like this once with elections. Then you learn you need to check out your candidate's political history.
What bills they've created or co-authored. How they've voted in the past. Where they're getting the bulk of their campaign contributions. etc.
It still burns. You never get over the Candidate standing up there, saying *exactly* how to fix things and make things better. Then doing none of it once they get into office.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
This is not 'piracy', stupid topic
Theft is removing property of another person from their possession and control. Copying is NEVER theft.
The fact that MIT of all places couldn't figure out which switch an IP address/Mac Address was hitting them from, within their own network, speaks volumes about the quality of the IT staff working there. I can think of dozens of different ways I could have stopped him right off the top of my head, and tracking down the location of the computer would have been even easier unless he had plugged in a wireless bridge or something. EVEN THEN, finding it wouldn't have been that hard.
Read your definition again: copying is theft by removing material of another person from their control. If they authorize you to do so, fine, they accept the risks that may result, but if you are not authorized, you are stealing material of which you are not entitled because it is not under the owners control with the owner's blessing.
While I am only going off the paraphrased articles mentioned in the story, I still have to think that this is mostly a slap on the wrist offence (but let him suffer in jail for a bit until the court date perhaps).
Basically all he did was spoof mac addresses to get new ip's to continue to get around him, essentially mirroring, the whole site. Sure, it puts extra load on things, and yes he was spoofing something, but lets be honest, he was still probably only using a single IP at once time (which he is allowed, assumedly), and connecting at the full rate that his network, and the destination servers _allowed_.
The servers crashed on 3 occassions? Why? Most likely because of a half assed linux install that ran out of logging space or hit swap or something. Is it your fault if the telco crashes and every phone in your province/state goes offline, because you made a call during some freak chance time of the night while they were running and upgrade or something? No, fix your setup :)
Now, I do think that the act of hiding harddrives, or essentially network attached storage, devices plugged into a switch he probably didn't have permission to do (likely cause of its ability to evade administrative restrictions on connectivity and/or bandwidth, etc), which is why i think a little bit of jail in the clink is justified, if only to scare some sense into him. But I only think the courts should be lenient due to the nature of what he did; ignore speed limits and download something he had access to anyways.
Basically, at worst, this should be considered a speeding ticket, but someone going really really fast :)
Have you ever met Herr Schwartz?
Going by OP's numerous and incresingly unhinged posts on the article, I'd say its Swartz's mother. If not that, then someone else who would act in complete defiance of reason and facts.
By making a copy, you gain control of a copy, not the original. The owner of the original still has full control over his property.
For it to be theft, I would have to delete, destroy or otherwise remove your ability to make use of your copy.
It can be a license violation, infringing a state sanctioned monopoly or possibly even considered trespass, but NEVER theft.
Look, what part of "TEH GUMMURMINT IS EVUL" did you fail to understand? The GP made this assertion* quite clear. Therefore, all aspects of the US government are a part of this investigation. Do you know nothing about tinfoil hat law?
*: Not "point". "Assertion".
breaking-and-entering is minor stuff?
I don't understand why computer laws are so hard. My computer is my property, as is the data stored on it. Accessing that data without my permission is trespassing.
You're right, it's your property. And unfortunately, because your data exists in abstract space, the government can't rightfully claim eminent domain; that means that your computer is the gateway to the sovereign nation of Yourstuff. However, the government has no treaties with Yourstuff and knows that several other sovereign nations of similar creeds and colors consort with criminals. However, because there are so ungodly many sovereign nations of Hisstuff and Herstuff, the nation can't possibly have individual treaties with each.
When the government attempts to impose its will against these many and disparate nations, a hidden conspiracy sweeps through all of them, giving them all tools to fight any incursion. So, argues the government, in order to stop these insurrections and allow us to find the criminals hidden among the many Hisstuffs and Herstuffs, we have to control the gateway--the hardware and the people who own it.
It's an understandable conceit, but it's not in their authority to do that, and until there's some kind of fair and equitable contract between the computer user and some kind of government-to-computer authority, it shouldn't be. That sort of power should only be handed out when the rules of what can't be done are laid out.
But with data, there is no difference between the copy and the original other than timestamps.
I consider this to be in the same general area as plagiarism - the original work is not affected yet one is improperly capitalizing on intellectual material in a manner they should not.
Is there a word for using others material without warrant? Trespass details the improper access, but what about the subsequent dissemination?
Read the indictment itself. IF the indictment is factually correct, Aaron's method of acquiring the articles included stashing a laptop in a wire closet directly connected to a switch. IF the indictment is factually correct, he did more than merely violate a EULA. He went well out of his way to get copies of these articles--at various times causing the JSTOR service to be unavailable to everyone else on MIT's network because the servers were busy trying to meet all the requests from Aaron's laptop.
I agree that I don't know if the guy actually deserves 35 years in prison. I don't know if he even deserves one year in prison. But IF the indictment is factually correct, then this guy DID download a plethora of documents that he wasn't supposed to be able to download. And he went to some great lengths to circumvent the mechanisms that JSTOR and MIT had in place to prevent such activity. That would be Computer Fraud and whether we like it or not, that's a criminal offense.
One of the nasty points about trying to actively fight the government is that a lot of the folks that are really passionate about it wind up breaking the law at some point. The problem is that, that opens them up to counter-attack from said government.
You should definitely not trust the spin coming from Demand Progress. They're public statement is biased almost to the point of being useless, or at least it was when I read it 6 hours ago. You should check out the actual indictment document itself and read all the bits where Aaron is alleged to have been seen sneeking in a side door to get to the wiring closet with his bicycle helmet held up over his face so the camera can't see his face.
If that's what really happened, then IMHO the dude has opened himself up to a whole world of criminal prosecution. It's a bad time to be Aaron Swartz.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
No he doesn't, not at all on the facts as presented by the prosecution.
So according to you, breaking into buildings to install laptops and hard drives in wiring closets, attaching them to a LAN, and using them to copy a data archive involves 0 crimes? You really can't see that somewhere in there the law is almost certainly being broken?
The government PDF says Swartz was observed holding a bike helmet in front of his face during one of his building entries. I don't think he was under the same illusions you are concerning whether he was committing a crime.
That's not the definition lawyers use. Or rather--that probably is the definition that lawyers use, but they define "property" in such a way that copying any artistic or technical work that's in a fixed form (including electronically stored movies, songs, and computer programs) does count as "taking" the property without permission.
Now you can disagree with that definition if you want. That's fine. I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with that definition either. But the concept of copyright (literally the legal RlGHT to make COPIES of artistic or technical works in any fixed form--look it up) is written into the Constitution itself.
If you ever get hauled into court by the RIAA, MPAA or some other over-powered Big Corp acronym and you try to tell them your 1.5 TB collection of mp3s and avis doesn't constitute stolen property because nothing was ever "removed", they'll laugh you right out of the court room while they hit you with a massive, massive fine just like all those little FBI warnings on DVDs have been promising you your whole life.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
He was an idiot.
What this is really about is incompetence and desperation. How can you unlawfully obtain information from a" protected" computer. If you can access the information then the computer isn't protected adequately . Splitting hairs-perhaps but isn't that the law in a nutshell?Secondly if the information is unlawfully obtained what are you actually saying, the obtaining of information from an obviously " unprotected " source is illegal or that the information is illegal in itself in which case it was illegally obtained in the first place.I know this appears absurd on the surface but it isn't. Illegality is determined immorally by a minority of elitists who only maintain power through legal intimidation and blackmail via an antiquated anti-democratic system the public in this alleged democracy are given no democratic freedom to challenge on mass. Can it really be accepted as legal that the law amounts to no more than an act of minority imposition upon the majority population without their consensual aggreement. Such consent cannot be asumed because it is unchallenged where there is no open mechanism whereby the mass have the practical means to challenge it en masse at the highest and lowest levels.This is the computer age and yet the majority still have no right to vote on policy and law through direct access via a Policy Referendum voting system, yet continue to vote for Party Policy. It is the Party here that is the real problem, for it is they who are shaping these disgusting laws and continue to do so for no other reason than to secure their own employment as Petty-Tyrranos.
Copyright law does not grant the right to copy. It restricts your natural right to copy. Copying is not property, and copying can not be taken away from the author. Inherent in taking something away from the victim is that they no longer have it.
How in any way did you read my statement that copying is not theft to mean that copyright infringement is not civilly actionable and occasionally a crime? My problem is with the god damn corruption of the English language.
Piracy is taking ships by force at sea.
Theft is taking the property of someone else away from them.
Neither applies to copyright infringement which is the enforcement of an artificial monopoly.
Um, in the world of cyber-crime, yes, b&e is peanuts. For that matter, regular old b&e with no cyber-crime aspect is still peanuts. Cops really only give a shit after there is a whole bunch of break-ins in the same area, or if they're doing the breaking in while the homeowners are actually home.
Minor stuff, the sort that you'd expect some probation and community service, at the worst a couple weeks or months in jail, and half-a-dozen repeat convictions before any serious consequences come about.
What can one hope for humanity when slashdot readers agree that getting copies of publicly funded research for the purpose of further dissemination is somehow questionable behaviour? Nay, *criminal* behaviour.
"Aye, he's trying to help people get information. Throw him in the brigg. Pff, the nerve of these peasants." And they all nod solemnly.
Unless there was a ship carrying four million documents and he hoisted the jolly roger, he did NOT pirate them, attempted or otherwise.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
In politics these days, what use are facts?
Democrats and their fawning media (DailyKos Markos and PBS's Gwen Ifill -- a presidential debate moderator -- started it) blasted Sarah Palin as ignorant over her "Party like it's 1773" comment to tea party activists. Doesn't that ignorant slut know it's 1776?
Then Republicans reminded them that she was referring to the Boston Tea Party, which did happen in 1773. So the Democrats are the ones without a clue.
Yet the story remains repeated, just as the one about "I can see Russia from my house" is. Somehow, being informed of their own ignorance doesn't even help. Eleanor Clift on The McLauglin Group during the election:
CLIFT: "And Palin said 'I can see Russia from my house.'"
BUCHANAN: "No she didn't. That's what Tina Fey said on Saturday Night Live."
CLIFT: "Well, that's what she meant to say."
Now it doesn't even matter what a Republican actually says, only what the Democrats say Republican meant to say.
Yes I understand completely there is no real need for computer crimes, but that's not how it works for us. We didn't give you computers to empower you. What we give you is social change and that is to make things easier for us. As an example, we gave you feminism, we used cigarettes in the 30s as one of the vehicles for that.. (thank you Eddie Bernays). Nowadays we give you computers and cell phones to get you used to invasion of your privacy and your property, ... and all with your naively willing cooperation especially from those of you who use social networks (!). You see, every excuse we have to get into your life we will use, in the end we will criminalize you for tampering with the mandatory heart monitor on your future cell phone, we will put you in jail for hacking your washing machine to run outside the permitted hours. It's coming... for you cattle :-)
"Our current notions of property exist because they benefit enough of society that people have approved the appropriate force required to enforce those notions."
For more on that theme, see: ... Under our system of laws, the ultimate owner of all "property" is the sovereign -- the government. That is who originally granted your "rights". Our system of laws and government defines your rights, and creates an entire infrastructure to regulate them. There are courts that will "enforce" your rights â" that is send out the local muscle man known as the "sheriff" to chuck "squatters" off your property. Every state in the union has a system of publicly recording the documents that establish your "title" in order to put the world on notice of exactly "owns" what. So, how are these "property rights" created? That's easy. They are created the same way all mythological realities are created -- with a little mumbo-jumbo. ..."
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"... The first thing they teach you in law school -- and I mean the first thing-- is that "property" is a collection of legal rights. They are mental abstractions. They were created in more or less their present form in the middle ages by common law judges.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I consider this to be in the same general area as plagiarism
Yes, but while plagiarism is dishonest, it is not actually "theft".
Is there a word for using others material without warrant? Trespass details the improper access, but what about the subsequent dissemination?
Sure, we call it copyright infringement. As an author, I have the exclusive right to control who copies my works (until they go into the public domain.)
If I don't have a copyright on the material in my possession, trespass is all that is left if someone breaks in, takes it, and shouts it to the world.
If it is, then I'm going to copyright the number seven and fuck all you people.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I've often wanted to read science. Is there a way I can do so without breaking the bank?
Most people I've asked share passwords... I don't know if I'd want to get into that... though my usage would be so low it would probably work.
A blog I run for the wealth
The figures you cite are just for federal personal income tax and ignore the disappearance of corporate taxes as well as the rise in regressive taxes related to sales, social security, medicare, and housing. They also ignore that we have the largest rich/poor wealth disparity than in any time since the run up to the last great depression.
"I'm not sure about others, but in my small group I work with, I know many, many people would walk away from the job if the top rates went back to 91%."
Terrific! More jobs for other people who want them or need them. :-) Other people can grow into becoming "top performers" if we need that. Right now, the rich get richer, and the tallest sunflowers shade out the small ones and suck most of the nutrients out of the soil with bigger root systems. We need to address that somehow, otherwise, frankly, beyond our democracy disappearing socially now, the whole system may just disintegrate physically (perhaps in global war with nukes, plagues, killer robots, and whatever else) as poverty increases and the income-through-jobs link breaks as the "top performers" are increasingly robots and AIs. There is little political democracy without some financial democracy.
Social security and medicare for all, regardless of age, would go a long way to addressing the problems the USA faces, including the problem that the richest Republicans are the worst socialists as far as privatizing gains and socializing costs for pollution, war, ill health, and risk.
But sure, if you'd rather a wealth tax than an income tax, see also:
"Basic Income from a Millionaire's Perspective?"
http://www.livableincome.org/amillionairegli.htm
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"Party like its 1773" to tea partiers. Get it? It was a great line (whoever wrote it), but it was twisted by a media that is obsessed with destroying her.
"and didn't she attempt to imply that by being able to see russia from a random island in alaska gave her foreign policy credentials"
The statement was a response to the moderator's challenge to her previous statement that Alaska's proximity to Russia gives her international experience. It does, since Alaska has quite a bit of direct dealings with Russia due to the proximity, mainly in fishing, gas and oil. The true statement that you can see Russia from Alaska was trying to reinforce this fact with a visual in the minds of the viewers.
My point remains, bashing these days doesn't require the truth. The statements of both Gore and Palin were true, the bashers need to twist it in order to make them look bad.
Then you have the middle ground, the standard gaffe. They deserve a good laugh for that every once in a while, but it's not indicative of some general ignorance or deception. It's like Bachmann saying Lexington and Concord are in Hew Hampshire or Obama's 57 states, his "Austrian" language, his misspelling of "advice" or signing the Westminster Abbey guest book this year as 2008.
A question you need to ask yourself right now: When I mentioned those Obama gaffes, did you immediately doubt they were true, did you immediately think it may be the same twisting as done to Gore? Did you give him the benefit of the doubt before further research?
Now the big question: Did you give Palin and Bachmann the same consideration? Likely not, given you didn't know about the context of the Russia argument. You just took it as given. .
Be careful, partisanship can cloud your mind. I've see the most vicious idiocy ever directed at Palin and Bachmann. They pore over their every word in real-time, hoping to be the first to publish a story of their supposed mistakes without bothering to do one second of research or even thinking.
For the record, I am neither a Bachmann nor a Palin supporter. They're too religious fundamentalist for me.