- cross-posted to:
- technology
- us_news@lemmygrad.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology
- us_news@lemmygrad.ml
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As far as I can recall he didn’t share any articles. Authorities could only guess what he was going to do with them based on a manifesto he wrote about how knowledge should be more accessible but that is technically not a crime. So the feds and MIT killed him for basically nothing. I think they wanted to make an example out of him.
Despite what the image says, Aaron Swartz was actually never convicted of a crime in a court of law, and hence never sentenced. He was harassed by prosecutors, who posthumously dismissed the charges against him they were hounding him with (possibly because they were annoyed by earlier legal conduct of his that got prosecutors reprimanded by judges for inappropriate inclusion of private data in unsealed filings).
Sounds like the prosecution only dropped it because people were blaming them for his suicide and there was a public outcry. More cowardly than generous for them to drop the charges TBH. I doubt they did it because they actually realized how asinine the charges were.
This tweet has some serious inaccuracies. He was offered a six month plea deal, which he turned down. The charges he faced carried a maximum time of 35 years, but that assumes they were served consecutively and to their maximum extent. Even without the plea deal, a first time non-violent offender with little chance of reoffending would have gotten a quite lenient sentence. However, he was never sentenced because he committed suicide before it went to trial.
I remember how sad I was when he died. He was a talented young man who had already made a name for himself in Internet culture. He’s also very close to me in age, so I saw some of myself in him. But it doesn’t serve his memory well to surround his death with falsehoods.
His death was caused by that very revolutionary thing he made a name about. He was against locking of big chunk of humanity’s knowledge behind paywalls making it effectively inaccessible for everyone and mostly from third world countries.
You certainly are demeaning his sacrifice by insinuating his suicide didn’t had any thing to do with going against JSTOR and hence US capitalism.
Also, the feds were involved in this from the very beginning, and hid their involvement, suggesting they had other reasons to go after swartz, possibly his correspondence with Assange. This was a time when the Obama admin was ruthlessly going after whistleblowers and open information activists.
Swartz was the second computer-person from the same prosecutor that resulted in suicide, the first being Jonathan James, and wikileaks claimed after swartz’s death that he had been in contact with Assange, and was possibly a source.
You certainly are demeaning his sacrifice by insinuating his suicide didn’t had any thing to do with going against JSTOR and hence US capitalism.
I didn’t say anything of the sort. This tweet is simply stuffed full of oft repeated lies.
Well thanks for setting things straight I guess. Not sure what you were trying to achieve but good job.
I saw a misconception that’s been floating around for a decade. I corrected it. Simple as that.
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Someone is wrong on the Internet. :)
Why do you always feel the need to carry water for your regime?
Why do you always assume that I am either acting in bad faith or stupid? I saw something that is objectively false and corrected it. Simple. As. That.
It’s because you’re incapable of acknowledging basic facts about the nature of the empire. The tweet is objectively correct. You could argue it’s not nuanced, but it’s simply a fact that Swartz committed suicide as a result of being prosecuted by the US regime.
I’m not nitpicking. It’s simply objectively incorrect to say he was sentenced (he wasn’t) or that it was 35 years (off by 70x compared to the plea deal). Could you argue that a six month plea deal was itself too much? Absolutely, and I would agree with that, especially given that MIT never asked for charges. But you can argue that plenty well with the facts and not resort to repeating lies.
Sure, he likely wouldn’t have got the maximum sentence, but that’s just distracting from the point that prosecution by the regime was what led to his suicide.
So he knowingly committed a political crime with zero monetary benefit and when he was caught the secret service got involved and he immediately killed himself? for the digital equivalent of stealing library books?
TIL pirating some scientific papers from JSTOR (read: not the CIA or anything) is a political crime.
Also, he was caught by the MIT police and regular police. Where the hell did you get secret service from?
you misunderstood me, I’m saying it sounds like he got killed by James Bond… It says on his wiki page the secret service got involved which is super weird for such a low level crime, I know they get involved in counterfeiting sometimes but wtf?.. and hell yeah its political JSTOR basically middleman’s students and makes huge fees charging students for copies of scientific papers that most of their authors would give out for free, and if you call most of the authors they will actually send you for free, whatever places like JSTOR are trying to charge you for, out of protest of this shitty system. This was hacktivism.
This would be like if one of those guys who threw soup on the paintings were threatened with 35 years it’s just silly, any freshman law school student will tell you thats bullshit and would never hold up in court, it’s just a tactic to scare people into plea bargaining. So again he was committing a political crime, meaning he wasn’t doing this to get millions of dollars or revenge. It’s highly unlikely any normal person would commit suicide over this tactic. Much less someone who was going out of his way to commit a political crime in protest. He knew he might go to jail for this, that’s the whole point, if you’re so afraid of jail the thought makes you want to kill yourself, you dont do things like hacktivism.
He knew he might go to jail for this, that’s the whole point, if you’re so afraid of jail the thought makes you want to kill yourself, you dont do things like hacktivism.
Way to victim blame someone who was clearly suffering from a collapsing mental health at the hands of the US empire.
okay well now you’re just purposefully twisting my words around, may I ask why or is that a secret?
Were you not implying that because he knew he could go to jail, he’s somehow foolish for killing himself when that possibility surfaced? A la he should have seen it coming and if he couldn’t deal with it it’s his own fault?
Again, your exact words were:
if you’re so afraid of jail the thought makes you want to kill yourself, you dont do things like hacktivism.
Implying that his literal death was his own fault.
Because that’s victim blaming. It’s not that different logically from “she wore skimpy clothing in a dark alley so it’s her own fault she was assaulted!”
literally the first sentence is me saying I think he was assassinated, did you even read it, or are you just like on a tear?
you misunderstood me, I’m saying it sounds like he got killed by James Bond…
I literally thought this was sarcasm. Like, genuinely didn’t connect that line to a serious statement of “I think he was assassinated”. Maybe don’t reference a movie franchise when expressing that you think a real person was really killed by a real regime? Even if people realize that’s what you’re saying, IMO it’s still in poor taste.
But yes, if your intended context was that you think he was murdered and did not commit suicide, then no it wasn’t victim blaming what you said. My mistake.
did you just edit your comment and a bunch of extra shit after I replied to make it look like I was dodging your questions?
No, I was providing more information on why I thought you were victim blaming. I didn’t ask any extra questions, I copied and pasted a quote from you.
He didn’t immediately kill himself. He was hounded for many years by authorities to point that he and his family could not afford the legal fees.
