If you are talking about the B&E then not for a first time offense. Maybe with a very stern judge he might get 3-6 months. I guess if you want to call it computer hacking then I guess the sky's the limit. Summary execution maybe.
And then there are people too stupid to realize that there is a limit to how efficient your body can be and that the idea of "starvation mode" is a myth. The body can make use of calories with some greater efficiency, but not to any sort of order of magnitude. Starvation diets do work. At least for a while. They don't stop working because the body has become more efficient at deriving energy from food. They stop working because the people on them just can't take them anymore. The most weight I've ever lost in a short period of time was by only eating with a skinny friend of mine and only eating exactly the same amount that he ate. The night time cravings for snacking on things like cookies was immense, but if he didn't eat I didn't eat and it worked very very well.
Ending it would be even better, but we both know that is unlikely to happen. Carmen had no power to change the system herself, but it was within her power to just go after him for normal trespassing charges or not at all. No one forced her to try to give him life in prison. That was a moral choice that she made. What I'm saying is that it would be better to have people in such positions who have a bit more humanity and don't drool over the idea of someone like Schwartz getting 50 years for what was merely a minor transgression without any real victims. Some of us don't even believe he did anything wrong. Putting Schwartz away for 30 years (or getting him to kill himself) is not going going to repeal any laws.
There's no need to end up in a courtroom if you are willing to kill yourself first. Suicide makes you immune to pretty much any punishment. He could have shot one of the prosecutors and escaped punishment by just killing himself. Being suicidal, genuinely suicidal, makes you tremendously powerful for a short time. It allows you to completely ignore any consequences of whatever action you might want to take. And the idea that suicide isn't heroic is merely your opinion. I disagree.
What makes you think that Schwartz could find a girl he liked enough and found attractive enough to marry and who liked him back just as much? He doesn't seem to be the most physically attractive guy. I'm in my 40s and I've only ever had one girlfriend. Back when I was a teenager. So much for your whole marriage and kids thing. Not everyone is born beautiful and we have to accept that our lives will have some limitations: mainly a lack of intimacy of any kind. I happen to have other things to live for. Tech stuff mostly, but I admit that it does make it more likely that I would commit suicide than people who have people they love etc. No one would care if I died. Not even me. So please stop making unwarranted assumptions about someone you don't know.
Is it civil disobedience just because you say it is? Please give me your email address so I can email you before I am about to break some law so that I know whether or not my actions are civil disobedience.
If Carmen had any dignity she would kill herself out of shame and guilt. She is directly responsible for the death of another human being. I would hope that she would want to pay for that in some way. That would be justice.
Do we really want a world in which prosecutors arbitrarily drop charges because they like the reasons the defendant violated the law? I think that's the wrong way to go about it
Yes, because it is better than the alternative. I don't think it is unreasonable to hope that even a prosecutor has normal human emotions and doesn't want to destroy a young man's life for such petty reasons, regardless of what some bought and paid for law might say. Just like we expect and hope that a judge would have enough empathy to not go for the maximum sentence and essentially executel a young man for downloading some documents (documents that should have been in the public domain anyway). The system may be bad but it is still run by humans and those humans have the choice to be compassionate.
The guy was doing it to take a stand, it was heroic. But he knew what he was getting himself in to, he was an adult.
Even if this is true it does not mean that the prosecutor and all of the hard-line copyright-is-sacred / copyright-infringement-is-worse-than-theft people who encouraged him are not partially to blame for this man's death. In my view the prosecutor directly caused this tragedy. He may as well have saved the taxpayers some money and just shot him. The result would have been the same.
I don't think so. It is not the job that causes people to become sociopaths (well except for the police and prison guards maybe). It's just that sociopaths tend to gravitate toward fields where their lack of empathy is an advantage.
Does it really matter whether it is 35 years (essentially a life sentence) or only 10? Either way I think suicide is a 100% rational choice in such a circumstance. You can wait until you are found guilty and sentenced but by then it will be too late to suicide via a method of your choice and it may not be possible at all.
I agree that a happy person with no psychological problems would probably not commit suicide over this. If they had the money they might flee the country though. In this case that is probably what I would have done.
If I didn't have the money for that I would probably wait a bit to see how the trial is going. If it isn't going well I might commit suicide before a verdict is reached because by the time a verdict is reached it is usually too late. Normally the judge sentences you and you go directly to jail from there and it is not easy to commit suicide while in custody.
Is going to jail a "valid" reason to commit suicide? Hell, yes. I would definitely prefer death to even a year in prison. Just spending one night in a holding cell made me freak out, pacing in my cage all night constantly despite the fact that I was badly injured and could barely walk and it was painful to even make the slightest movement. I can't imagine being caged for a much longer time. In states with 3 strikes laws I would imagine it is actually quite common to at least try to kill youself on the third strike. Ideally in a shootout with the police. That's what I would do at least.
This was an example of pushing someone over the edge. Not all of us are so happy that we are willing to endure any amount of suffering to continue living.
I have posted many times here about my recent experience with the law. I was facing up to 3 years in state prison. According to my lawyer 3-6 months was more likely (if a jury had found me guilty), but that depended on the judge.
My plan was to not eat while in prison. To just drink water. I was 100% serious about this and would have gone through with it. I fully realized that this probably meant I wouldn't survive or if I did that I would be in a state of such poor health I would just finish the job when I got out. It's possible that the prison would have tube fed me if they noticed my condition. I would have done my best to avoid their notice.
So are you diagnosing him as having major depression yourself or was he previously diagnosed with the condition? If he were I haven't yet read about it. If he hasn't been do you at least have a masters degree in psychology or a medical degree? Without that surely you don't expect anyone here to take your diagnosis seriously. Major depression often means you can't even get out of bed. That doesn't sound like it was the case here.
When people use the term 'psychopath' they generally mean 'sociopath' which is a clinical term for someone without so called normal emotional responses toward others. I remember my psych 101 prof saying something like, "they can murder or seriously injure someone like you or I might take a drink at a water fountain." It just refers to people who feel not the slightest hint of empathy toward others. Who don't tend to feel guilt or remorse about their own actions at all even when they violate their own beliefs about right and wrong.
Agreed. That attitude is all too common in the US. No empathy. Just hang everyone who may have a different sense of right and wrong from you. And definitely don't feel at all bad about all the cruelty and death. Instead, rejoice in it. For great justice! At least until something like this happens to someone they know personally and care about. It reminds me of all the people who have no problem with the TSA strip searching and sexual violations. Until it happens to them. Then all of a sudden they see the problem.
Fuck their dirty subscription money. This guy was a hero. He was dedicated to freeing information and thus improving the world for everyone. As opposed to restricting information so that a few guys can get rich. Not everything can be free as in beer, but information is one of the few things that can be. At least in this digital age.
1. His attempts were not misguided. 2. There is nothing wrong with breaking the law. The law is arbitrary and stupid. Particularly in this case. It's the folks behind JSTOR that should be in jail.
"The bits" require a fairly long key to actually do anything useful.
Not if my version comes from TPB.
Ah, but its not YOUR software I want to buy, but VMWare's
Only until they release it into the world. After that it belongs to everyone. And to no one.
So is creating a hypervisor as fully featured as vShpere (or [insert your favorite solution here]). Just as "delivering me a free cake" doesnt do much for the baker, "delivering me a free Enterprise Plus key" doesnt do much for all of the VMWare employees who are expecting a paycheck this month.
If you feel sorry for them or want to do your part to encourage them to continue to create new versions you can always give them money. No one is stopping you. That doesn't change the fact that free riders don't hurt them. It doesn't hurt them if I use the software. They won't even know about it.
I really dont get how people can try to justify this.
All you have to do is ask, and I think many of us would be happy to explain it to you. That is what I am endeavoring to do here.
VMWare spent substantial resources creating a solution, and have employees to pay. Those employees get paid on the basis of how good the software is, with the expectation that that results in sales. Their entire model revolves around you buying a license. How are you going to justify taking their work for free simply because "their livelihood" == "just bits"?
Unfortunately for them they are information creators. They make bits. The problem is once those bits are released into the world they have no control over them. In fact no one does. Of course that is merely a practical matter. That loss of control. The fact that they require money to continue to make new versions of the software says nothing about the fact that my using the software for free does not injure them in any way. It hurts no one. Anything I do that hurts no one is not something that I ever feel guilty about. It really is that simple.
None of that applies if I wouldn't have purchased the product anyway. Either because I don't like it enough and think it is overpriced or because I simply don't have the money. In many cases the only reason I download something is because it doesn't cost me anything to check it out. It doesn't cost the content creator anything either. No one is harmed.
My actions have no effect on the creator. He doesn't know me. Doesn't know who I am. He will never know whether I use his software or not. If I like his software I may pay him for it. Or I may not. That's the problem with the information selling business. You have to settle for what people are willing to give you. Once those bits get out there you can't take them back.
I still can't figure out what you guys actually do with your smartphones that is worth both their initial cost and the huge monthly fees. I can make calls and send text messages with my dumb candy bar phone just as well as your fancy iPhone or whatever.
It's a very serious crime. Like stealing a policeman's helmet. May we all burn in hell for our transgressions against, uh...Hollywood? Record companies? I don't know those uber-rich corporations and executives with Ferraris and $10,000,000 homes on the ocean don't make the most sympathetic of victims.
If you are a creative person then you too are a thief. There are no original ideas anymore. They've all been taken. So anything you come up with that you think is worthy of protection is actually itself the same sort of crime you complain about. Idea theft. A very serious crime indeed. So the rest of us will voluntarily turn ourselves in if the content creators go first.
Bzzt. Sorry. No one from the 16th century would understand that explanation. Try again. First you'll have to explain to them what a bit is (yup, the old digital vs. analog thing). You might start by first describing what a switch is. Then you can move on to how you want to sell information without also keeping that information secret.
One way to describe it to them might be with a cooking analogy. You come up with a great recipe for a nice fluffy golden butter cake. You don't want to be in the cake selling business though. You want to sell the recipe to people. This works okay for a while, but eventually you find that people are telling their friends about this cake. Giving them your (once secret) recipe. Ruining everything! Those are all people that might have paid you for that recipe. Oh my god! Lost revenue! So you start suing as many of those blabbermouths as you can and when that doesn't deter people from sharing your information you bribe the mayor of the town to start fining people who are caught sharing your recipe. Occasionally someone gets caught, but it doesn't seem to deter people. "Your" information has become their information. In some some ways it seems a lot more practical just to sell cakes. Information is what it is. It's not going to change for you or anyone else no matter how many laws are passed. No matter how many palms are greased.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are talking about the B&E then not for a first time offense. Maybe with a very stern judge he might get 3-6 months. I guess if you want to call it computer hacking then I guess the sky's the limit. Summary execution maybe.
And then there are people too stupid to realize that there is a limit to how efficient your body can be and that the idea of "starvation mode" is a myth. The body can make use of calories with some greater efficiency, but not to any sort of order of magnitude. Starvation diets do work. At least for a while. They don't stop working because the body has become more efficient at deriving energy from food. They stop working because the people on them just can't take them anymore. The most weight I've ever lost in a short period of time was by only eating with a skinny friend of mine and only eating exactly the same amount that he ate. The night time cravings for snacking on things like cookies was immense, but if he didn't eat I didn't eat and it worked very very well.
Ending it would be even better, but we both know that is unlikely to happen. Carmen had no power to change the system herself, but it was within her power to just go after him for normal trespassing charges or not at all. No one forced her to try to give him life in prison. That was a moral choice that she made. What I'm saying is that it would be better to have people in such positions who have a bit more humanity and don't drool over the idea of someone like Schwartz getting 50 years for what was merely a minor transgression without any real victims. Some of us don't even believe he did anything wrong. Putting Schwartz away for 30 years (or getting him to kill himself) is not going going to repeal any laws.
There's no need to end up in a courtroom if you are willing to kill yourself first. Suicide makes you immune to pretty much any punishment. He could have shot one of the prosecutors and escaped punishment by just killing himself. Being suicidal, genuinely suicidal, makes you tremendously powerful for a short time. It allows you to completely ignore any consequences of whatever action you might want to take. And the idea that suicide isn't heroic is merely your opinion. I disagree.
What makes you think that Schwartz could find a girl he liked enough and found attractive enough to marry and who liked him back just as much? He doesn't seem to be the most physically attractive guy. I'm in my 40s and I've only ever had one girlfriend. Back when I was a teenager. So much for your whole marriage and kids thing. Not everyone is born beautiful and we have to accept that our lives will have some limitations: mainly a lack of intimacy of any kind. I happen to have other things to live for. Tech stuff mostly, but I admit that it does make it more likely that I would commit suicide than people who have people they love etc. No one would care if I died. Not even me. So please stop making unwarranted assumptions about someone you don't know.
Are you saying that he wanted to be caught? That he was caught intentionally?
Is it civil disobedience just because you say it is? Please give me your email address so I can email you before I am about to break some law so that I know whether or not my actions are civil disobedience.
If Carmen had any dignity she would kill herself out of shame and guilt. She is directly responsible for the death of another human being. I would hope that she would want to pay for that in some way. That would be justice.
Do we really want a world in which prosecutors arbitrarily drop charges because they like the reasons the defendant violated the law? I think that's the wrong way to go about it
Yes, because it is better than the alternative. I don't think it is unreasonable to hope that even a prosecutor has normal human emotions and doesn't want to destroy a young man's life for such petty reasons, regardless of what some bought and paid for law might say. Just like we expect and hope that a judge would have enough empathy to not go for the maximum sentence and essentially executel a young man for downloading some documents (documents that should have been in the public domain anyway). The system may be bad but it is still run by humans and those humans have the choice to be compassionate.
The guy was doing it to take a stand, it was heroic. But he knew what he was getting himself in to, he was an adult.
Even if this is true it does not mean that the prosecutor and all of the hard-line copyright-is-sacred / copyright-infringement-is-worse-than-theft people who encouraged him are not partially to blame for this man's death. In my view the prosecutor directly caused this tragedy. He may as well have saved the taxpayers some money and just shot him. The result would have been the same.
I don't think so. It is not the job that causes people to become sociopaths (well except for the police and prison guards maybe). It's just that sociopaths tend to gravitate toward fields where their lack of empathy is an advantage.
Does it really matter whether it is 35 years (essentially a life sentence) or only 10? Either way I think suicide is a 100% rational choice in such a circumstance. You can wait until you are found guilty and sentenced but by then it will be too late to suicide via a method of your choice and it may not be possible at all.
I agree that a happy person with no psychological problems would probably not commit suicide over this. If they had the money they might flee the country though. In this case that is probably what I would have done.
If I didn't have the money for that I would probably wait a bit to see how the trial is going. If it isn't going well I might commit suicide before a verdict is reached because by the time a verdict is reached it is usually too late. Normally the judge sentences you and you go directly to jail from there and it is not easy to commit suicide while in custody.
Is going to jail a "valid" reason to commit suicide? Hell, yes. I would definitely prefer death to even a year in prison. Just spending one night in a holding cell made me freak out, pacing in my cage all night constantly despite the fact that I was badly injured and could barely walk and it was painful to even make the slightest movement. I can't imagine being caged for a much longer time. In states with 3 strikes laws I would imagine it is actually quite common to at least try to kill youself on the third strike. Ideally in a shootout with the police. That's what I would do at least.
This was an example of pushing someone over the edge. Not all of us are so happy that we are willing to endure any amount of suffering to continue living.
I have posted many times here about my recent experience with the law. I was facing up to 3 years in state prison. According to my lawyer 3-6 months was more likely (if a jury had found me guilty), but that depended on the judge.
My plan was to not eat while in prison. To just drink water. I was 100% serious about this and would have gone through with it. I fully realized that this probably meant I wouldn't survive or if I did that I would be in a state of such poor health I would just finish the job when I got out. It's possible that the prison would have tube fed me if they noticed my condition. I would have done my best to avoid their notice.
And we demand retribution! Summary execution for starters. Right? Nice try though.
So are you diagnosing him as having major depression yourself or was he previously diagnosed with the condition? If he were I haven't yet read about it. If he hasn't been do you at least have a masters degree in psychology or a medical degree? Without that surely you don't expect anyone here to take your diagnosis seriously. Major depression often means you can't even get out of bed. That doesn't sound like it was the case here.
When people use the term 'psychopath' they generally mean 'sociopath' which is a clinical term for someone without so called normal emotional responses toward others. I remember my psych 101 prof saying something like, "they can murder or seriously injure someone like you or I might take a drink at a water fountain." It just refers to people who feel not the slightest hint of empathy toward others. Who don't tend to feel guilt or remorse about their own actions at all even when they violate their own beliefs about right and wrong.
Agreed. That attitude is all too common in the US. No empathy. Just hang everyone who may have a different sense of right and wrong from you. And definitely don't feel at all bad about all the cruelty and death. Instead, rejoice in it. For great justice! At least until something like this happens to someone they know personally and care about. It reminds me of all the people who have no problem with the TSA strip searching and sexual violations. Until it happens to them. Then all of a sudden they see the problem.
Fuck their dirty subscription money. This guy was a hero. He was dedicated to freeing information and thus improving the world for everyone. As opposed to restricting information so that a few guys can get rich. Not everything can be free as in beer, but information is one of the few things that can be. At least in this digital age.
1. His attempts were not misguided.
2. There is nothing wrong with breaking the law. The law is arbitrary and stupid. Particularly in this case. It's the folks behind JSTOR that should be in jail.
"The bits" require a fairly long key to actually do anything useful.
Not if my version comes from TPB.
Ah, but its not YOUR software I want to buy, but VMWare's
Only until they release it into the world. After that it belongs to everyone. And to no one.
So is creating a hypervisor as fully featured as vShpere (or [insert your favorite solution here]). Just as "delivering me a free cake" doesnt do much for the baker, "delivering me a free Enterprise Plus key" doesnt do much for all of the VMWare employees who are expecting a paycheck this month.
If you feel sorry for them or want to do your part to encourage them to continue to create new versions you can always give them money. No one is stopping you. That doesn't change the fact that free riders don't hurt them. It doesn't hurt them if I use the software. They won't even know about it.
I really dont get how people can try to justify this.
All you have to do is ask, and I think many of us would be happy to explain it to you. That is what I am endeavoring to do here.
VMWare spent substantial resources creating a solution, and have employees to pay. Those employees get paid on the basis of how good the software is, with the expectation that that results in sales. Their entire model revolves around you buying a license. How are you going to justify taking their work for free simply because "their livelihood" == "just bits"?
Unfortunately for them they are information creators. They make bits. The problem is once those bits are released into the world they have no control over them. In fact no one does. Of course that is merely a practical matter. That loss of control. The fact that they require money to continue to make new versions of the software says nothing about the fact that my using the software for free does not injure them in any way. It hurts no one. Anything I do that hurts no one is not something that I ever feel guilty about. It really is that simple.
None of that applies if I wouldn't have purchased the product anyway. Either because I don't like it enough and think it is overpriced or because I simply don't have the money. In many cases the only reason I download something is because it doesn't cost me anything to check it out. It doesn't cost the content creator anything either. No one is harmed.
My actions have no effect on the creator. He doesn't know me. Doesn't know who I am. He will never know whether I use his software or not. If I like his software I may pay him for it. Or I may not. That's the problem with the information selling business. You have to settle for what people are willing to give you. Once those bits get out there you can't take them back.
I still can't figure out what you guys actually do with your smartphones that is worth both their initial cost and the huge monthly fees. I can make calls and send text messages with my dumb candy bar phone just as well as your fancy iPhone or whatever.
It's a very serious crime. Like stealing a policeman's helmet. May we all burn in hell for our transgressions against, uh...Hollywood? Record companies? I don't know those uber-rich corporations and executives with Ferraris and $10,000,000 homes on the ocean don't make the most sympathetic of victims.
If you are a creative person then you too are a thief. There are no original ideas anymore. They've all been taken. So anything you come up with that you think is worthy of protection is actually itself the same sort of crime you complain about. Idea theft. A very serious crime indeed. So the rest of us will voluntarily turn ourselves in if the content creators go first.
Bzzt. Sorry. No one from the 16th century would understand that explanation. Try again. First you'll have to explain to them what a bit is (yup, the old digital vs. analog thing). You might start by first describing what a switch is. Then you can move on to how you want to sell information without also keeping that information secret.
One way to describe it to them might be with a cooking analogy. You come up with a great recipe for a nice fluffy golden butter cake. You don't want to be in the cake selling business though. You want to sell the recipe to people. This works okay for a while, but eventually you find that people are telling their friends about this cake. Giving them your (once secret) recipe. Ruining everything! Those are all people that might have paid you for that recipe. Oh my god! Lost revenue! So you start suing as many of those blabbermouths as you can and when that doesn't deter people from sharing your information you bribe the mayor of the town to start fining people who are caught sharing your recipe. Occasionally someone gets caught, but it doesn't seem to deter people. "Your" information has become their information. In some some ways it seems a lot more practical just to sell cakes. Information is what it is. It's not going to change for you or anyone else no matter how many laws are passed. No matter how many palms are greased.