Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

spelk

In Commonwealth countries, it's possible to initiate a private prosecution (by a person who hasn't received criminal justice). These don't usually get very far, but I honestly wish these could be used to prosecute people who are treated differently for the same crime because of their status, or at least set a precedent that such activities are definitively okay.

milkytron

The part that still bothers me so much about the US vs Swartz case is that JSTOR didn't pursue civil litigation against Aaron. It was the US government that pursued him. There was little for the government to lose in the case. In a case vs Meta, at the scale it has reached, it could have wide ranging economic implications limiting the investment in AI, which the US is absolutely not willing to pursue at this point in time (or possibly ever). Basically, being a rich public company provides legal advantages when the US government has similar goals. The whole thing is incredibly sad and exposes the hypocrisy of the US court system and government as a whole. RIP Aaron.

cucumber3732842

If you cut down a couple acres of forest you own because you want to have a hay field or whatever you're <screech> violating federal environmental law <screech> But BigCo can grease a few palms and do 10x more and the useful idiots will screech about how responsible they're being by installing those stupid stream spreader things on their parking lot culverts and putting up a few birdhouses to please the local commissioner. What happened to Aaron Swartz is little different.

ck2

vaguely related I was thinking of yet another irony where the orange infant calls datacenters "beautiful" and now is arranging to give them federal land to build on to get around all the protests while at the same time calling solar and wind turbines ugly and loud and giving billions to companies already contracted to NOT build them it's all the irony of wild greed and infinite corruption, if only Aaron could have seen this future

mukmuk

The attorneys who did this were Carmen Ortiz, Stephen P. Heymann, and Scott Garland. To their everlasting shame.

lgleason

Everyone is under the illusion that the US is still a democracy. It is not. It is a plutocracy. The rich control everything and the rest are modern day serfs.

buran77

The US has normalized so much moral rot and legal breaches in the past few years, all in the interest of making more money... Rarely does a country degrade so much, so fast, and I'm afraid this isn't even the low mark.

Yizahi

Too small to scrap (c) Basically if you are sufficiently big, you can get away with any crime (by making it legally non-crime).

touwer

Class justice in optima forma

ionwake

its really sad and doesn't even make much sense, and thats from me just following the story loosely from the uk over the years.

tpmoney

Ok and so what? We have been informed of an injustice, we are now angry. Now what? What do we want? Do we agree that the prosecution was unjust and wrong, celebrate that Meta is not being criminally prosecuted, lash out at the publishers filing the lawsuit and advocate for an official apology from the prosecutors and government that went after Aaron? Or do we think that the prosecution was correct, apologize ourselves for any protests we might have voiced against the prosecution and demand similar prosecution of Meta and everyone who continues to torrent “Linux ISOs”? Personally I agree that the prosecution was unjust, and so I find it to be a good thing that the stranglehold of excessive copyright is being weakened by the new AI moment. But that also why I find the sudden turn to copyright maximalism that seems to have taken over large parts of the tech industry so baffling. Why are we wasting our time pretending we want Meta prosecuted rather than spending our efforts ensuring that all these products that come out of this massive blending of human creative outputs are owned collectively by us all with no such recourse to the same copyright laws that they so valiantly shattered?

imjonse

Aaron Swartz's most famous book recommendation, in a now 20 years old blogpost ( http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/epiphany ), Chomsky's Understanding Power, contains many examples of such cases of those in power, big corporations and the government getting away with crimes. I should probably reread it, even though it can be depressing - but not quite as depressing as Manufacturing Consent. RIP Aaron.

IncreasePosts

Calling him "effectively assassinated" is ridiculous. He was offered a plea deal of 6 months in jail. Which he turned down. And then he killed himself - something which he attempted multiple times in the past when he wasn't being prosecuted for anything

tptacek

I don't think it matters much for the argument, which is valid (or not) regardless of whether you get the precise facts about the Swartz prosecution right, but Swartz was not facing 35 years. That's the statutory maximum sentence you'd get if you ignored the sentencing guidelines and grouped none of the charges, which is not how anything works. The prosecutors threatening Swartz and his attorneys claimed they'd pursue something like 7 years. But Swartz's own (well regarded, well qualified) attorney, writing after his death, when there was ample reason to take shots at the prosecution, believed that even had Swartz lost the case, he'd be unlikely to receive a custodial sentence.

qarl2

TLDR - the rich get unequal treatment.

gsky

What's the point of having democracy when it's working only for the rich?

gsky

US gov even threatens foreign govs for punishing rough american companies.

firesteelrain

Aren’t the two cases fundamentally different?

searealist

Swartz was federally charged with wire fraud and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act based on allegedly unauthorized access, not simply prosecuted for copyright infringement or “downloading articles.” Also, he was offered a plea deal of 6 months and his own attorneys did not expect him to serve any time even if rejecting the plea deal and convicted. Meta is accused of civil copyright infringement. Very different things.

dannyobrien

The best state of affairs is that neither Aaron nor Meta nor anyone else should be targeted for scraping. It shouldn't be a crime. I understand the ire about the injustice, but I don't think the right situation is that because Aaron's case was wrongly pursued, we should somehow enforce that error in the name of consistency.