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JSTOR an Entitlement For US DoJ's Ortiz & Holder
theodp writes "If Aaron Swartz downloaded JSTOR documents without paying for them, it would presumably be considered a crime by the USDOJ. But if U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz or U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder did the same? Rather than a crime, it would be considered their entitlement, a perk of an elite education that's paid for by their alma maters. Ironically and sadly, that's the kind of inequity Aaron railed against with the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, a document the DOJ cited as evidence (pdf) that Swartz was a menace to society. On Thursday, Ortiz insisted Swartz — who she now characterizes as 'mentally ill' — received fair and reasonable treatment from the DOJ. But that wasn't good enough for Senator John Cornyn, who on Friday asked Eric Holder to explain the DOJ prosecution of Aaron Swartz."
Federal prosecutors have come under heavy criticism for their handling of the Swartz case. Legal scholar Orin Kerr provides counterpoint with two detailed, well-reasoned posts about the case. Kerr says that, as the law stands, the charges against Swartz were "pretty much legit," and that the law itself should be the target of the internet community's angst, rather than the prosecutors. "...blame the system and aim to reform the system; don’t think that this was just two or three prosecutors that were doing something unusual. It wasn’t." James Boyle, co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, disagrees with Kerr (partly), arguing that Swartz's renown is simply drawing people together to collectively shine a light on poor legislation and poor prosecutorial practices.
While he may have had issues, it's dangerous to characterize different opinions as mentally ill.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
First let me say that my area of research is medicine. There is a lot of tax payer funded research that is inaccessible to the public despite their hand in its creation. I think that this aspect needs to be discussed, as well.
Argh. The laws of science be a harsh mistress.
The law kills people...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"On Thursday, Ortiz insisted Swartz â" who she now characterizes as 'mentally ill' â" "
Yeah, they used to say that about dissidents in the Soviet Union, too.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I have no idea what the summary talks about.
While true that, in theory, prosecutors are just enforcing the law, they have significant discretion when it comes to things like even bringing any charges in the first place. As any victim of petty crime and they will usually have a tale of how the police or prosecutor just didn't bother doing anything even though the law said crime was committed.
Aaron Swartz is dead now. You've lost your persecution leverage against him personally.
My question is: Now, how are you going to stop his message? How do we serfs penetrate this invulnerability/hypocrisy force field that employees of our government are "entitled" to?
These prosecutors are nothing unusual- completely dedicated to enforcing the letter of the law, with no regard or concern for justice.
Rather than a crime, it would be considered their entitlement, a perk of an elite education that's paid for by their alma maters.
The list that is linked to does not include Stanford...but that is where Swartz started college. The suggestion that he did not have access to an elite education is rediculous under the circumstances. So not only is the premise of the idea that people as alums of certain schools would not be prosecuted for pulling every journal off JSTOR and putting it out on the web laughable but the particulars not really compelling. Stanford is a pretty good school.
I see they are complaining about Holder having access and if a normal person did it would be considered illegal. Why are people not complaining about Holder's department being responsible for the deaths of hunderds of Mexicans and then covering it up? Judical Watch is now being told that their FOIA request should be considered illegal when attempting to get documents to find out why guns were given to Mexican criminals. We are told Holder had nothing to do with it, Obama had nothing to do with it, yet the documents are being held secret via "Executive Privledge" which would ONLY pertain if they related to communications directly between Obama and Holder. So by invoking Executive Priviledge they are telling us they are both involved.
How many people have to be killed by this administration before people will finally say enough is enough and force them to release information on what really happened. BTW, the ATF whistleblower that first brought this all to light was just fired from his position for being a whistleblower, yet we hear no outrage about that either.
Just add this story as YET ANOTHER DEATH at the hands of Eric Holder, and watch him go on like nothing happened with no reprocussions to him or his office. How many people have to die/be killed before ANYONE will hold Holder accountable. Janet Reno was responsible for killing 86 in Waco and was never held accountable, Holder has at least doubled that number without even the hint of a charge. It looks to me like the DOJ has become the assassination wing of the DNC when they control the White House, and they don't have to even answer questions.
I don't understand the point of this article. Holder and Ortiz (or somebody, if they were on scholarship) paid for those college educations. If one of the perks of that payment is lifetime journal access, what on earth does it have to do with this case?
If this was an overzealous prosecution, then it should be investigated, and possibly procedures changed to prevent it in the future. And I certainly agree that journal access has become utterly disproportionate.
But most of what I read about this case is a rush to judgment that makes no more sense than the prosecution is being accused of. And articles like this bolster that impression, jumping to conclusions and engaging in character assassination because we liked one guy and therefore hate the other guys.
Things need to be fixed, but that's best achieved with clarity, not more obfuscation.
Volokh analysis of what Swatz actually did, with detailed history:
http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/
I assure you, an MIT enrollee or grad would have gotten the same treatment.
It`s not the fault of those who enforce the law. The weight falls on our shoulder because we activily participate into the political arena 1 day every few years to vote for an incompetent guy and then we sit back in front of our laptop watching movies until the next elections. When was the last time you did anything to change something?!? WHEN ?
Prosecutors have been running rampant all over the country for years now for their personal aggrandizement. This time they just chose a very public and sympathetic target.
Hang 'em all.
expandfairuse.org
From the second Kerr link:
Why are you hearing that Swartz faced 35 or 50 years if it was not true? First, government press releases like to trumpet the maximum theoretical numbers. Authors of the press releases will just count up the crimes and the add up the theoretical maximum punishments while largely or completely ignoring the reality of the likely much lower sentence. The practice is generally justified by its possible general deterrent value: perhaps word of the high punishment faced in theory will get to others who might commit the crime and will scare them away. And unfortunately, uninformed reporters who are new to the crime beat sometimes pick up that number and report it as truth. A lot of people repeat it, as they figure it must be right if it was in the news. And some people who know better but want you to have a particular view of the case repeat it, too. But don’t be fooled. Actual sentences are usually way way off of the cumulative maximum punishments.
So if it serves as a deterrent we should be fooled, but if it applies to ourselves we shouldn't be? Personally I would be scared shitless if I saw the DOJ itself make statements like that about me. Just be truthful. The US already is highly punitive [pdf, see page 11-12] compared to other western countries (27 times as high as where I live). If that by itself doesn't work as a deterrent then exaggerations probably won't do much either, apart from increasing the likelihood of people killing themselves.
If bullying is part of the system, then yes, the system should be targeted. But not just by outsiders, the prosecuters themselves should have opposed the system instead of participating in the bullying. And as they did participate they should be targeted as part of the system.
I guess she should know a thing or two about mental illness since she is, herself, a sociopath.
Yeah, they used to say that about dissidents in the Soviet Union, too.
And Christian heretics, Rival Kings, Pharoahs, Senators, Mandarins, Greek Philosophers, Abolitionists...
OK, sometimes they mixed it up with other choices like demonic possession, homosexuality, epilepsy, and more.
The key to remember is that people judge and condemn others. Sometimes it is fair. I do see some kooky opinions. Sometimes it is not.
It's a bit disingenuous to drive someone to suicide and then claim that the fact that they did so means they were mentally ill. It's kind of like throwing someone in the East River wearing concrete shoes and blaming them for being unable to swim.
Carmen Oritz routinely destroys other people lives in order to advance her career without any signs of conscience. For me this is psychopatic behavior. And if her career is the only thing she actually cares of, I'd even call her narcissistic psychopath. Unfortunately, the economic and political system in US promotes psychopaths at the cost of basically everyone else.
I wouldn't pay much attention to what she has to say, she just covers her ass. Psychopaths typically don't show any remorse for their actions - when caught on misbehaviors and lies, they tend to cover it with even bigger bunch of lies.
Is anyone still under the illusion that our governance isn't corrupt to the core? This is one of many cases that could be cited in an ongoing campaign of unbridled judicial malfeasance. And even if Ortiz or Holder are found to be in violation of the law, exactly what will happen to them beyond a slap on the wrist?
Serfs and lords, and that's all you need to know.
"...blame the system and aim to reform the system; don’t think that this was just two or three prosecutors that were doing something unusual. It wasn’t."
Soooooo, if I understand correctly, she was just following orders...
blame the system and aim to reform the system; don’t think that this was just two or three prosecutors that were doing something unusual. It wasn’t.
Typical don't hate the players, hate the game talk.
I'm perfectly capable of hating both.
What baloney. Prosecutors make decisions about whom to go after and for what all the time. The law is the law is just total BS.
I will repeat, so I can be labeled as flamebait again, that the real culprit here is Mr. Unequal Justice himself, the POTUS and his slimy DoJ, of which the Boston prosecutors are just cogs in a smoke manufacturing machine.
I am an alumnus of one to the members of the JSTOR alumni program (Yale).
This article is VERY misleading.
JSTOR is a non-profit company founded by an ex-president of Princeton University aimed at reducing costs associated with maintaining large archives of journals at universities.
The alumni access to JSTOR described was part of a PILOT PROGRAM. This has been extended to all institutions that participate in JSTOR.
In addition JSTOR had nothing to do with the criminal charges brought against Aaron Shwartz. JSTOR asked that no charges be brought.
This was solely the result of actions taken by MIT and the DOJ.
JSTOR in fact is very inclusive. They have programs that provide access to secondary schools, public libraries and so forth.
http://about.jstor.org/fees/13006#tab-fees
Also JSTOR hosts significant public domain content that is available free to anyone.
A) JSTOR withdrew their support of the charges much earlier;
B) they're a non-profit institution;
C) don't like that their web server bandwidth costs money and so does digitizing papers, so they can't offer it all for free? Donate more to them so that they can pay the bills;
D) publishers still retain copyright for a lot of the content in JSTOR (and many other journals), and that means terms for public release of the journal content have to be negotiated;
E) while I agree with Swartz's and many other people's principle that publicly-funded research should be free access to the public, there are practical challenges (see D and E), and I still don't agree with his approach of "Fine, so I'm going to download them all in violation of the terms of access and set them free". Regardless of the law and technical implementation, I thought what he did was wrong even if I agreed with the principle he used to justify it;
E) none of this changes the fact that the prosecutors were going way over the top with charges; and
F) it is a tragedy that he didn't get enough help before he killed himself.
...it's not like there haven't been young people committing suicide after being railroaded on charges for things they absolutely didn't do, in this country, for years.
But they're minorities and poor and must have been guilty, right?
Let a tech-elite white kid run afoul of the legal mechanisms, though...
A hero is someone who knows when to run away. I am a hero. -Trent the Uncatchable
... so they won't be members of the Establishment.
Members of the Establishment look after themselves, and cut the fingers off anyone who is trying to grab them round the ankles. Get used to it - it's the way life works.
What a bunch of crap. The system allowed for Mrs. Ortiz to not Charge Aaron at all if she so chose. Certainly, she didn't have to charge him with a dozen of felonies. http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/aaron-swartz-and-prosecutorial-discretion/
This should be +1 interesting, -100 off-topic. Seriously mods.
"It's not my fault, I was just following orders."
I thought as a society we had long ago decided that was not an excuse. I thought all lawyers on whatever side were agents of the judicial system and were looking for justice.
It seems our society has forgotten something. If you are doing wrong you are responsible, no matter the chain of command, it is an individuals responsibility to not do wrong and to reject a bad system. This should go doubly so for any agents of the justice system.
Shame on the system. Shame on the individual.
What should happen next?
If any of this seems over the top, consider how over the top the accusations and threats against Swartz were.
I'm wondering about Senator Cornyn. Could he actually be in support greater intellectual freedom? It seems 99% of politicians and judges are crusty old fools who blindly swallow publisher propaganda, and their knee jerk reaction to any alleged copyright violation is to believe the accusers and join the pack screaming that it's "theft" and howling for the blood of the accused. A demonstration of this is Ortiz's profound words of wisdom: "Stealing is stealing". But perhaps Cornyn, who sponsored PIPA, is having a change of heart?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
" Kerr says that, as the law stands, the charges against Swartz were "pretty much legit," and that the law itself should be the target of the internet community's angst,"
No, BOTH should be the target of the "internet community's angst" and societies in general. One can't happen without the other, prosecutors continually demand more harsh and less restrictive laws "to catch the bad people". And when it is proven beyond all doubt that they targeted the wrong people with their near unlimited "proprietorial discretion" they demand complete indemnification from criminal/civil responsibility because prosecution of the "bad guys" would be imperiled if they had to worry about their freedom & livelihood. They can't have it both ways, at least not in a free & just society. They can either have extensive powers with severe penalties if they mess up, or they can have very limited powers with limited liability. To do otherwise breeds nothing but corruption & imprisonment of the innocent.
And the international bankers that are bankrolling this POTUS.
New Economic Perspectives
If Google put into their website terms that anyone in law enforcement or a member of congress was not allowed to use Google's services, how long would it be before breaking a site's terms was no longer a criminal act?
Actually, even if Google does not do this, how about a grassroots campaign to do it?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Here is the petition to fire Ortiz:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck
How to Subscribe: "The Alumni Access participation fee for subscribing institutions is 10% of the institution's total AAF. Subscribing institutions must support the bifurcation of alumni from their main JSTOR account via IP based access methods."
Well, at least someone gets it.
If any of this seems over the top, consider how over the top the accusations and threats against Swartz were.
When is telling a guy that committed multiple felonies that he's going to jail over the top?
He was given a choice between 6 months and 7 years. He chose the death penalty and I for on am glad. It means another scumbag that will never break the law again.
International bankers donated far more to the last Republican presidential candidate than they did the current POTUS.
Cornyn should shut his fat hypocritic yap. It's his kind that wants to make IP abuse a criminal matter where it should be civil. He's in the crowd who would make violation of TOSs a federal crime. Now he is crying crocodile tears that the Justice Department applied laws he rabidly supported?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
JSTOR makes a fortune for those associated with the organisation. Do not let the 'non-profit' tag fool you for one moment. This simply means the corrupt scum that oversee the operation gain all their profit in the form of massive salaries, consultancy fees, and expenses pay-outs. Of course the MIT higher-ups, with their hand in the till, exploded when they learnt Aaron was acting to end their gravy train.
JSTOR needs to be seen in the light of any similar 'mob' operation. JSTOR gathers up intellectual work that is not theirs in the first place, and is largely by authors that see no payment, and want their work freely available. Then JSTOR demands 'protection' money to gain access to this resource. When anyone crosses JSTOR, they take him 'out back' and ensure not only does that person never bother them again, but the lesson is learnt by anyone else who might challenge their 'operation'.
We see the same behaviour with organisations that claim to represent 'artists' in most non-English speaking nations, and Canada. We see the same behaviour with the giant State-approved charities (the ones that tend to have a royal patron at their head). the non-profit label is the ultimate dream for the corrupt criminals. It means no oversight. It means the assumption of do-goodery. It means continuing giant pay-outs to those that are associated with the organisation, regardless of the financial climate.
JSTOR butchered a young man purely to protect the money flow that enriches the bank accounts of JSTOR's controllers. What is a life worth? People are frequently murdered for thousands of dollars. When hundreds of millions are involved, you think anyone is going to think twice before squashing a 'problem' person like a bug. Grow up!
..and theodp remarks are brilliant and spot on!
Naturally, one would expect AG Holder, who made his big bucks at Covington & Burling, defending Chiquita (formerly United Fruit) and Coca Cola and the oil companies, for their hiring of assassins to murder labor organizers, protesters and pro-democracy activists in South America and West Africa. And please don't neglect the record of Ortiz:
http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/01/17/carmen-ortizs-sordid-rap-sheet/
And please let us never forget the ultimate entitlement:
The "right" of the banksters to "create money" and make the rest of us pay them for it! (Unconstitutional, as the US Constitution only gives the right to coin the currency to the gov't, not to any private concern --- Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy exercised that constitutional right, and history shows us their horrendous outcomes.)
God bless you, bzipitidoo, God bless you....
http://www.democracynow.org/live/democracy_now_livestream_of_aaron_swartz
http://www.democracynow.org/live/democracy_now_livestream_of_aaron_swartz
Here is the equivalent petition for Steve Heymann:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb
Heymann's still needs more signatures to get over the minimum required for a mandatory response.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Sue them for theft, and perhaps racketeering. Also sue them under the anti trust laws for price fixing.
I get the suspicion you have no idea what JSTOR is or what it does.
"Sue JSTOR for violations of FOIA requests. Sue them for theft, and perhaps racketeering. Also sue them under the anti trust laws for price fixing."
They are non-profit and anyone else who so desired could gather up the paper versions of copyright-expired journals, digitize the journals themselves, and put them up on a web site for free. They could also negotiate their own legal agreements with publishers to digitize and make publicly available the papers that are still in copyright. What's that? Digitizing papers and indexing them is time consuming and expensive to do right, lawyers charge money for negotiations, and running a web site also costs money? Well, I guess you could set up a non-profit organization and accept donations to fund the whole thing ...
Oh, wait.
I believe, I have to bring to everyone's attention one uncomfortable fact -- a suicide of a person was sufficient to bring important issues to the attention of public and institutions when everything else utterly and completely failed.
Now, everyone who ever repeated anti-suicide formulas about suiide being inherently cowardly, selfish, pointless, etc. act, is welcome to kiss his dead ass. While it's true that most suicides result in nothing remarkable, so do most lives.
On a lighter note, Aaron Swartz is now both a hero and an hero.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I didn't see anything on the JSTOR Alumni program page that said alumni had the right to hide their faces from security cameras, break into networking cabinets, jack into the gigabit ethernet switch, spoof their MAC address via a randomizer script, and bring down JSTOR access for their entire institution.
I was just wondering if people could contact the state bar, and file ethics complaints against her. It seems like this is an opportunity for people to exercise their collective social muscle. This and other recent situations reminds me of the quote:
"First they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me."
--Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller
That was because of taxes and because they were insane enough to think that Americans would be dumb enough to fall for Mitt Romney.
Make no mistake. Obama 2008 was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street. He expected raising money from them to be just as easy the second time around, because he had done everything they asked. They wanted more.
I've spent so much time publicly cataloging the long list of lies, grotesque appointments, and errors of omission and commission that I'm not going to repeat them for a quoter of irrelevant statistics such as you are.
The Dow was down 313 points the day after Obama was elected. They had bet on the wrong horse the second time around. Why haven't we seen a temperamental fit of reprisal from Obama? Why should he bother? He won't be running again. People who embarrass him, though, like Aaron Swartz, Bradley Manning, and Julian Assange,...now there's something worth getting worked up over.
The REALLY grotesque irony is that Romneybot would have been a disaster for Wall Street. As it is, we never saw meaningful Wall Street reform and we never will, for reasons that have been crisply explained by others.
Prosecutors have no obligation to enforce bad laws. They are part of the justice system and as such when a law discriminates, violates the natural rights of man including selective enforcement it is the prosecutors duty to be certain that they do not perpetuate an injustice.
Even when an event touches so-called national security there are serious issues. As tax payers we are considered good enough to fund all kinds of governmental and military projects but somehow we are not worthy of knowing about what we pay for. A tax payer divided against himself will not only stand but is likely to revolt.
The one check that the founders of the US government gave the people is the power for a jury to refuse a law be upheld. That is the only protection we have against the rule of unjust law. In today's legal climate however, juries are instructed to behave precisely the way a Judge says, and jury findings can be ignored if it's found by the judge to oppose a matter of law.
Every trial should necessarily put the law on trial as well. We have plenty of law making bodies, but THERE IS NO LAW UNMAKING BODY. Not anymore. That power has been stripped from the people, and we can no longer perform our duty to keep the Judicial branch in line. Might as well not even have the requirement for a "jury of peers" anymore -- They're not educated as to their duty and are now used as mere formalities, coached by lawyers and judges alike to narrow their minds and even presume the law to be correct when deliberating! This is hardly different than a Judgement as a Matter of Law by a Judge!
Beside the Supreme Court, only Jurors can legally stand against the unjust rule of law and say, "This law is unjust, the consequence for breaching it are null and void."
"Nice to read Kerr's nuanced read of the situation, good antidote to the shrill, half-witted shrieking of the chronically ignorant slashdotters."
Doesn't matter what is right under the law, what matters is what is right period. Bad law is meant to be broken and bad prosecutors enforcing said laws broken harder. Prosecutors are in a position to decide right from wrong, but do they if they remember how? Laws are guidelines, at least if you believe the Supreme Court that has been bouncing all over the place in this issue for the last hundred years, lately its been guidelines. If that's true the prosecutors are the primarily responsible party when pressing charges and making mistakes. Because it's standard procedure is a poor excuse for a bad decision because you didn't bother to think about the life you were ruining.
"don’t think that this was just two or three prosecutors that were doing something unusual."
I'm reminded of "If everyone jumped off a bridge...". The prosecutors decision making power based on the facts of the case got short circuited in the name of career building. Somehow I don't think anything good could've come of this anyway. That's besides the opposite ramifications of trying to shut someone up pointing out failures in proper government behavior in a tortuous way.(where's that quick and speedy trial)
PS I'm still reminded of "If everyone jumps off a bridge...".
Aaron Swartz wasn't a Unibomber. Having a "manifesto" does not necessarily mean you are a menace to society (or even to government), it only means you are a menace to the status quo. Government, unfortunately, cannot tell the difference; more and more, it seems that government views its mission as preserving the status quo rather than improving (or empowering people to improve) it.
Is that you, Tom Dolan?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Why is anybody surprised that the rules that people like Eric Holder apply to themselves are different from the rules they apply to us? I know this is Slashdot, where left-leaners like to ignore history, but get real, this is Obama's man Eric Holder..... have you forgotten this stuff?
We are all equal ..... but it seems some of us are more equal than others of us. Don't worry though, it's all double-plus good
The prosecutor isn't the judge and the jury. A lot of people seem to be making this mistake. If the charges were bogus then the judge and jury would decide.
Federal/state laws are public domain and freely available online. (If you want to complain about copyrighted 3rd party codes being incorporated, complain about that). If you or your lawyer pay Reed Elevier money it's not because that's the only way to access that information.
No. The Federal/state statutes are easily accesible in book or electronic form. But the statues are only half the law. The rest of the law is embodied in precidents which determine how the statutes are applied. If you are aware of the precidents you can go and get actual trial documentation from the courthouse, assuming that it was not destroyed. But to dig through the rulings in different jurisdictions over a long period of time, without electronic access is at best problematic. Or as Douglas Adams put it:
"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display ..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."
Yes, because intent is fundamental to how actions are perceived. Intent that is associated with an action is codified in our legal system as well. But thanks for stating the obvious!
The man obviously had mental problems and while taking his own life is tragic, he brought all of the actions that were carried out against him upon himself. He chose to break into private property, he chose to illegally access JSTOR and download the documents and then he chose to publish them.
If he disagreed with the law surrounding the openness of access to information, he should have worked within the perfectly valid and accessible confines of the law to get the law changed. Instead he chose to do something rash and poorly executed and was caught and put on trial for it as a result. He then, rather than own up to his actions and face the consequences, chose to take the coward's way out when confronted with actual hardship that would have resulted from his actions.
He is actually a very good example of what younger generations, with their sense of entitlement and lack of ability or desire to take responsibility for their actions is leading towards.
"The big, bad, government bullied him into killing himself!" cried his parents and friends, all the while failing to assign responsibility for all the actions he willingly took to land him in the situation he found himself in.
No doubt this will be modded down to oblivion because it is not a popular position to take anymore. To stand up for personal accountability and responsibility even in the face of bad laws. Yes the laws should be changed, but if you willingly violate them to prove a point, you should be aware of the consequences and be ready to own up and face them head on. Instead of what could have been a watershed moment regarding getting the law changed, we now have a dead guy and everyone involved in his life trying to absolve him of any responsibility whatsoever for his actions.
If you want to absolve him of guilt then you should be agreeing that he was mentally unwell and therefore not responsible for his actions instead of trying to lay blame at the feet of those charged with upholding the law. Don't even bother with the tired old argument about "unjust laws" and no duty to obey them. There is nothing about this law that is violating your fundamental civil rights as a human being. You're more than welcome to go get a JSTOR account and pay for access to their information. That line of reasoning cheapens the cases where we do have an actual duty to disobey unjust laws. This law is very clearly not one of those cases.
Eric Holder is THE MAN now. He doesn't have to explain anything to you, whitey!
"[Orin] Kerr says that, as the law stands, the charges against Swartz were "pretty much legit," and that the law itself should be the target of the internet community's angst, rather than the prosecutors."
There is no reason why both issues can not be considered together. There is more to moral behavior than following the letter of the law.
What should happen next?
If any of this seems over the top, consider how over the top the accusations and threats against Swartz were.
No, it seems over the top because it's clear you have no idea what those actions, charges, and torts you're talking about are. What grounds would you have to disbar Ortiz and Heymann over? Your reference to "attorney misconduct" requires a lot more than just "I don't like them" - look specifically in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the ABA Model Rules of Ethics and find something they actually violated. And involuntary manslaughter? Let's be honest - you don't even know what that means. It simply doesn't apply here.
I found out through this article that my "elite university" allows access.
Go Gators!
"If Aaron Swartz downloaded JSTOR documents without paying for them, it would presumably be considered a crime by the USDOJ. But if U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz or U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder did the same? Rather than a crime, it would be considered their entitlement, a perk of an elite education that's paid for by their alma maters." http://about.jstor.org/alumni#Institutions-in-program Many universities on that "elite" list of institutions are public universities with very liberal admission policies, and alumni are "entitled" to use JSTOR after working for several years on a degree and presumably providing tens of thousands of dollars in tuition to the university who is paying the benefit. I know we have a lot of "Occupy" fans around here, but do we have to inject the us-vs-them narrative at every opportunity? Give it a rest. Of course, the author may just be taking their cue from the manifesto itself, where Mr. Swartz insisted that scientists and students have been "given a privilege" in being able to access research articles. Because, you know, the $23000 I made last year as a research assistant and PhD student was such a privilege for someone with an engineering degree and a family to feed. I'm also privileged to carry about $50000 in student loan debt between undergraduate and graduate studies...how wonderful. And when I graduate and hopefully find a good job, the narrative of how privileged and entitled I am will continue. Sadly, despite poor execution, Aaron had a great cause. Open access is the _only_ way to publish, and publishers like Elsevier that make it wholly impossible to do a decent research project without a large budget or affiliated institution are the devil. However, what "children of the global south (quoted from his manifesto)" really need is material like the Khan academy videos followed by Coursera/Udacity/etc... They aren't going to find their way to a better life in the stuffy annals of academic journals which most college graduates cannot comprehend (I'm working on a dissertation and still can't comprehend many of the articles in my field). If you want to make a difference, start asking researchers at your local university if they have considered publishing in open access journals. If not, ask them why. Ask them if they would consider paying the open access fee to a more prestigious journal so that their research can be read freely. At least ask them to do this for work with broad impact and importance, even if the fee isn't deemed worth it for every paper they generate. Finally, start hitting up the sources of funding and try to get them to include open-access requirements for research they pay for. There is a push to do just this with all federally-funded research, and I think that would be a great start. If you are feeling extra frisky, you might even consider making a donation to an open-access journal, but I think the "children of the global south" would probably appreciate a donation of food, water, or mosquito nets even more. It seems to me Aaron jumped to illegal activity when there were plenty of legal options left to pursue. That's unfortunate. This wasn't worth a human life, and the parties who blew this out of proportion should be ashamed of themselves. On the other hand, plenty of people have the 'hammer dropped' on them every day and don't commit suicide. So those in Aaron's inner circle also failed him. In the end, we all lose.
It sounds like you don't know what a jury does. They never make a judgment regarding a matter of law, for starters. This is not "today's legal climate", it is how it has worked for over 300 years.
Prosecutors can also choose to not prosecute, or prosecute on a lesser charge. It's called prosecutorial discretion. The ones in question showed no discretion; they had an agenda.
That was my first thought too when I heard he hung himself with a belt.
please read and counter any of points raised here: http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/
How to piss off a republican: Gun Control, Same Sex Marriage /.er: Microsoft, Copyright law
How to piss off a democrat: Entitlement reforms, 2nd amendment
How to piss off a
Saying it's not the prosecutors who were at fault, it was bad laws, is complete BS. Being lawyers, they should know it was bad law, and know that bludgeoning someone with bad laws is wrong. Instead of saying, this guy broke the law, but the law is bad, something should be done about it. They said let's bully him with bad laws, and see how many broken laws we can pile on top of the guy. If the prosecutors don't know right from wrong, they don't belong there.
A jury the prosecutor arguably has an upper hand in choosing, and a judge that, in most jurisdictions, is predisposed to side with the prosecution to keep the police unions & politicians happy. Grand Juries are a pretty good example of how lopsided the justice system has become, at least in federal cases around 98% of grand juries side with the prosecution. While the grand jury system is intended to only prove "reasonable cause", even most prosecutors laud them as being a "rubber stamp". One NY judge suggested that "any prosecutor worth her salt can indict a ham sandwich".
The federal government needed a human sacrifice, to restrict use of the Internet as a tool for human freedom (except in countries the U.S. doesn't like).
Aaron got picked because he was smart and motivated enough to get out of line, to stand out.
Who will be next?
When journalists PAY people to do it to them so they can write sensational stories... it just isn't "torture". Can't recall any journalists ever paying anybody to break their bones, dislocate their limbs, burn them, etc .... though I suppose it's possible that some journo's in S.F. might have paid people to electrocute their private parts.... but I digress.
When it's something the US has long done to members of its own forces (in certain specialties) as part of their training.... it might be unpleasant but it just isn't "torture". No "real" torture methods are performed on any of our people as part of their training.
The basic problem is that some in the press who hated the Bush admin went out of their was to mislead people into thinking that what was done to, if I recall properly, THREE people at gitmo (the hardest of the hard-core Bin Laden followers) was equivalent to some VERY DIFFERENT things done by the Imperial Japanese army during WWII. It was quite a stretch. I've lost count of the people I have discussed this with who have been convinced by the press that the US waterboarded hundreds of people and that some did not survive..... this is propaganda.
I made this drawing as a tribute to Aaron Swartz: http://goo.gl/E3v6F
Blog Post(Taiwan): http://caq-qoq.blogspot.tw/2013/01/aaron-swartz.html
The agents carrying out an unjust law are complicit and responsible. We *OUGHT TO BE* 60 years past "just following orders" as a justifiable excuse. We're free to do what's right, Ortiz was free to refuse to prosecute so aggressively.
Kerr, you messed up.