Not to mention that Swartz had a JSTOR account, which means he was legally entitled to download the things that he did. The part they didn’t like was that he used scripts to download en-mass, and a bunch of boomer fucks thought he actually committed a crime.
Well in the Social Network movie and chapter 2 of the Accidental Billionaires, Mark Zuckerberg used
wgetin shell scripts to get copyrighted images for private servers.Can we give punish him?
Spotify also originally got all its music by pirating it. But later it started printing money for record labels (while fucking over musicians) so all was forgiven.
To be fair, he broke and entered a networking closet as well. But I guess that is a separate issue.
broke what
The university AND jstor were pretty quick to get as uninvolved from that mess as quick as possible, so it really doesn’t matter… But what you’re saying has nothing to do with the case and is also not true. “Broke and entered” implies forced physical access into a clearly forbidden area. The network closet was a room that was left unlocked and was frequently used by janitorial staff to put junk in.
I’m with you right up to the ageism. The folks who persecuted Aaron were older than him, but they were not boomers, and what they did had nothing to do with his age or theirs.
Bigotry is always wrong.
Boomer is a mindset.
Fine. Use a word for it that isn’t a bigoted slur.
Boomer isn’t a slur.
When it is used to denigrate a “mindset” that you don’t like, it is most certainly a slur. When used to refer to folks who were born between 1945 and 1960, it is not.
We’ve all agreed (almost all) to stop using the word retarded to refer derogatorily to folks who do not have that medical condition.
Any word can be used as a slur.
Any word can be used as a slur? Really? Please explain what a slur is to you. I agree that every word can be used as an insult, you absolute Brokkoli, but that’s down to tone and context, more than anything, isn’t a slur more than that?
Old people and overreacting to normal things because new ideas are scary and confusing
Name a more iconic duo
I fear getting old because of this
Rest in power, Aaron. 🫡
Eat the rich.
They’d make better fertilizer (especially with that plastic-eating fungus on hand), so there’s taking a bite outta world hunger in the same stroke. 🤷🏼♂️
Important to note Aaron was helping democratize information while companies like Meta, Amazon, Google and Microsoft just centralize, twist and redact information to monetize access to a dumbed down and censored version of it.
Meta hoards the commons like a dragon, pillaging open archives to train its soulless algorithms, while Aaron Swartz—a true steward of knowledge—was hunted down for daring to share.
One gets a slap on the wrist, the other gets a noose of legal threats. Justice? No, this is corporate feudalism, where the lords rewrite the rules and the serfs pay with their lives.
Aaron wanted liberation; Meta wants monopoly. The system rewards the parasite and punishes the visionary. Remember that next time you scroll through their ad-soaked wasteland.
They know that liberation is a threat to them.
Is it safe to assume that every single author (apart from the ones that cannot prove their works were in any of those archives at the time) can sue meta for plagiarism and theft?
You can but you won’t win unless you can prove anything, so good luck with that.
Even if you can, you’re fighting against a company that has annual revenue similar to some country’s GDP.
No company should be allowed to get this big.
*unless it’s product is collectively owned by the public and for the public as a civil service.
I am getting so sick of this fucked up world.
I love Anna’s archive. I still buy e-books, but will download a drm free copy from the archive.
Goes to show how much of a joke copyright is. These laws are bought by and made to protect the interests of corporations. disgusting. rip aaron schwarz, your ideas live on.
Fuck meta and a BIG FUCK OFF to AI and all the companies slurping up ai slop “tech” to implement it in their rubbish software, apps, white goods, appliances… Fuck. It’s just infected every conceivable facet of our lives and no one is objecting it, it’s like everyone suddenly forgot about how many engineers spoke out about the dangers!
There is a very good documentary about Aaron’s life: The Internet’s Own Boy
Its license is Creative Commons, so it’s on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M85UvH0TRPc
I genuinely believe that if he was still around he’d of ended up a proponent for federated social media. I’m pretty sure he was the driving force behind opening it’s source, and it wasn’t until four years after his death that it was closed off again.
Another reason to tell Obama to fuck himself.
Along with his treatment of Snowden doing a public good.
And the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz
Crazy idea:
If copyright was invented to prevent printers from scooping authors’ work and out-competing them for sales…
Maybe copyright should only apply if you’re trying to compete with the author?
So like, not if you’re just a lowly individual trying to keep up with the references all of society is making, or understand the world you live in.
out-competing them for sales…
Boy that is a really mental gymnastics way of saying “profiting from someone else’s work”.















