Saturday, January 12, 2013

They Don't Really Care About Us



6 comments:

Hank Roberts said...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21002651
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Peter Eckersley, Electronic Frontier Foundation, non-profit digital rights group

writes: "Aaron did more than almost anyone to make the Internet a thriving ecosystem for open knowledge, and to keep it that way.

While his methods were provocative, the goal that Aaron died fighting for - freeing the publicly-funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it - is one that we should all support.

Moreover, the situation Aaron found himself in highlights the injustice of US computer crime laws, and particularly their punishment regimes."
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Lawrence Lessig, Harvard law professor and ex-mentor

blogs: "Here is where we need a better sense of justice, and shame. For the outrageousness in this story is not just Aaron. It is also the absurdity of the prosecutor's behaviour.

From the beginning, the government worked as hard as it could to characterise what Aaron did in the most extreme and absurd way. The "property" Aaron had "stolen," we were told, was worth "millions of dollars"- with the hint, and then the suggestion, that his aim must have been to profit from his crime.

But anyone who says that there is money to be made in a stash of ACADEMIC ARTICLES is either an idiot or a liar. It was clear what this was not, yet our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed.
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J Bowers said...

JSTOR begins offering free yet limited access to its online academic library

EliRabett said...

JSTOR has a comment on this mess with a link on its front page.

EliRabett said...

There are White House petitions asking for the removal of the DOJ Federal Attorney, Carmen Ortiz and her deputy Steven Heymann, who pushed this prosecution.

Holly Stick said...

Cory Doctorow:

http://boingboing.net/2013/01/12/rip-aaron-swartz.html

willard said...

> JSTOR is a not-for-profit service and a member of the internet community.

The NHL, the NFL and the PGA are not-for-profit organizations too:

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/10/16/1023441/gop-senator-pro-sports-non-profit/