Shane 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 06:08pm

    Re: Re: Re: It's called a trigger

    Heh.

    Ok, buy I do blame her, and the Feds, and I am pretty sure blame is the word I mean to use.

    The knew they were doing something wrong, and should have known there was a reasonable risk of causing him to behave in a self destructive way, seeing as harassing him was more or less the entire point of the exercise.

    That, to me, is more than blame-worthy. Again, the issue is negligence. You can't just put a paper bag over your head, walk into a nursery, and start wildly swinging your baseball bat, and then get all mystified when someone "blames" you for hurting the baby.

  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 06:02pm

    It's fine

    They've been systematically upping it as more and more people use it. The petition for Swartz was already underway, and has already met its threshold, which was 25k.

    https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck

  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 05:55pm

    Re: Re: Re: NOTHING wrong?

    He didn't understand how bad the reaction would be because he knew exactly what rules he WAS breaking. The Terms of Service. Which, for the thousandth time, is not a Federal offense.

    All the charges against him are bogus. They involve unauthorized access, when he clearly had authorization both through his position at Harvard and by virtue of being in the open MIT computer lab.

    The things he knows he did that the system would call wrong were things that have nothing to do with the charges. He was shocked at the response because it was an illegitimate and wildly disproportional response!

    There is no excuse for what the government did here. They trumped up bogus charges trying to make an effective prank-level violation of a generic terms of service agreement into something akin to using your computer to steal money or goods.

    They lied. He's dead now, little doubt in no small part because of their harassment.

    Now is not the time to wag the head and tsk at Aaron. It's time to take action against the people harassing him.

  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 05:50pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: NOTHING wrong?

    Have you posted this like three times in three different threads? I find it hard to believe that many different people know about this article.

    It conflates "authorization" with technical alterations to avoid getting his connection cut during downloads. He had full authorization to download.

    Everyone and their dog admits he violated JSTOR's terms of service. That's not a Federal crime, I don't care how many shills you line up to imply he did.

    I am disappointed in Kerr though. He is not normally someone who supports this kind of nonsense.

  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 05:43pm

    Re: Re:

    Because the information is being spun to make it look legitimate, is the real answer to your question. I imagine there ARE a handful of people marching somewhere, being ignored as usual by your government and your media.

    And by most of you.

  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 05:41pm

    Re: Re: Re: My comment about this article over on the "Opposing Views" website

    How 'bout what Ronald McDonald said? That's why we have trials. But this guy, who is admittedly normally pretty pro reform, is conflating "authorization" with access. What Aaron did was fiddle around with his (and MIT's) computer settings in order to get around the Terms of Service, NOT access the files without authorization.

    That's where Kerr goes wrong, and I could care less whether he's a lawyer or a hamburger flipper. You don't prosecute people for violating a terms of service agreement. You let the people providing the service decide if they want to cut off their services.

    JSTOR was quite clear that they did not want to do that.

    So the Feds trumped up a load of bogus charges, and you're complicity here is shameful. Rather than making excuses for their evil, you should be demanding redress. Why are you not?

  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 05:36pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: My comment about this article over on the "Opposing Views" website

    Unless you invite them into your campus to use computers for free, which is what MIT does. And MIT didn't press charges.

    If there were a Federal crime to be had it would not matter to me if MIT wanted to press charges or not. But there wasn't.

  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 05:28pm

    Re: Re: Re: My comment about this article over on the "Opposing Views" website

    Thanks.

    Note the complete lack of a "trespassing" charge.

    These laws were meant to deal with people using computers to steal, not to download stuff that's already free.

    He used his technical saavy to download things faster than the ToS allowed. These charges are bogus.

    Theeeeee end.

  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 05:25pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: My comment about this article over on the "Opposing Views" website

    This has really gone on long enough.

    What he was charged with were wire fraud, computer fraud, and something else related to such. Trespassing or anything like it is highly unlikely to be a Federal jurisdiction.

    Just quite trying to make excuses for it, ok? He violated a terms of service agreement and the Feds trumped up some charges because they did not like his political activism.

    There IS no Federal law against what he did.

  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 04:57pm

    Re: Defense Attorney

    Whaaaaat you say?

    Look, I'm no lawyer, so forgive me if I speak out of turn, but I do have three in my relatively close family and NONE of them think squaring off with the Feds is a cake walk, innocent or not.

    You don't sound credible to me.

  • On the post: Is The US IP System Really 'The Envy Of The World'?

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 04:52pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Red Meat for the True Believers

    I never said global. In fact, I mean specifically private, and competitive. Like any endeavor, government would be involved, but only to the extent it is involved at whatever level the clearing houses are situated. Local government for local clearing house trades, and so on up the ladder.

  • On the post: Dear HBO, Disney, Netflix Et Al: Fragmenting Online TV Lets Piracy Keep Its Biggest Advantage

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 12:08pm

    IP

    What rubs me the wrong way about IP is what rubs me the wrong way about interest. Someone, somewhere, is getting paid NOT to work, and the person paying them is having to sacrifice something real for something that is not real.

    In lending, the thing that is not real is the medium of sale. That is, you are "buying" the right to buy, which you already had as it turns out. In IP, you are buying the right to copy.

    IP is worse because at least when you buy money, there is some convenience in having this generic intermediate trade good. But being required to buy a copy of something I could more easily and cheaply copy myself is rather infuriating.

  • On the post: Former Chief Judge Of Patent Court: We Need To Strengthen, Not Weaken, The Patent System Because [Reasons]

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 12:00pm

    You Make Me Smile

    =)

    There's something in the air. I don't know if it's a legitimate revolution or the imminent demise of civilization as we know it, but there's definitely something in the air.

  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 11:58am

    Re: Re: Re: It's called a trigger

    Your user name is hilarious!

    I think they are going to get away with it anyhow, and that's why it is infuriating to me that people are trying to paint this as if it were a tragic but unavoidable death.

    It was gross abuse and something akin to negligent homicide, is what it really was. Yet many seem to feel honor bound to defend the indefensible.

  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 11:54am

    Re: Re: It's called a trigger

    You're not going to tend to hear anything about such things because they tend to be what is colloquially referred to as "none of your business".

    =)

    I mean, I get your concern, but... it's no one's business. The prosecutor, on the other hand, should have been aware and, in any event, was harassing an innocent man, so to my mind is guilty of misconduct. The (other) authorities need to look into her behavior and treat her overreach with the seriousness it deserves.

  • On the post: Is The US IP System Really 'The Envy Of The World'?

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 11:51am

    Blergh

    Because a politician asserting out of the clear blue sky that the US IP system is the envy of the world is the very soul of a well researched and statistically valid statement of fact, I suppose?

  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 11:47am

    Re: Re: Re: NOTHING wrong?

    And if someone decides to take their own life because someone is currently tormenting them, the tormentor is not the proximate cause? You're not being honest.

    Swartz very obviously did what he did with JSTOR thinking it would allow him to return to life as normal, but I doubt very seriously he thought what he did was wrong for all the reasons I mentioned above and which you conveniently refused to comment on, most likely because you do not have a viable response.

    Blaming the victim is not appropriate.

  • On the post: Is The US IP System Really 'The Envy Of The World'?

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 11:44am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Red Meat for the True Believers

    And I would add that not all money is purely symbolic. Metal coins represent a commodity that has been standardized specifically to be used as an intermediate trade good.

    This is why I like the idea of clearing house based trade. The real trade is in actual goods and services. The convenience of fiat or "symbolic" money could then evolve though through the continually updated relative trade values of actual goods. One could get credit with the clearing house, and store it to be used later on other things. The clearing house would make money on fees and perhaps on exceptionally beneficial trades they can make by being in constant control of products people have traded for their credit, and thus being able to take advantage of the ups and downs of supply and demand to maximize their own profits on the eventual actual trade of goods.

    If you follow...

  • On the post: Is The US IP System Really 'The Envy Of The World'?

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 11:40am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Red Meat for the True Believers

    hehehehe...

    Ok ok, touche, but you see where I am coming from. I just wish some of you would comment on the tie to IP I am seeing here.

    Tally sticks anyone?

    Actually, I guess that is debt as money again, isn't it? N/M

  • On the post: Is The US IP System Really 'The Envy Of The World'?

    Shane ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2013 @ 11:38am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Red Meat for the True Believers

    That's an interesting point YOU make, but no, that was not really my point. My point is that the way money works is tied to the way business works.

    Certain people hold that patent could be reduced or eliminated as things stand now. I tend to doubt that. I nevertheless see at least the possibility of a necessity for some sort of centralizing economic force, whether that be a central bank, a centralized fiat monetary system controlled by the government, or (my personal favorite) a well regulated system of local, regional, and national "clearing houses" for lack of a better term where people's goods and services would be traded openly, and where some reasonable facsimile of a generic "credit" might be formulated.

    But back to the topic of patents and the banking system, my objection to the idea that we can significantly reform it is that it is doing precisely what it is designed to do - it is creating a commodity out of an idea so that a large, centrally controlled organization (a company) can monetize it through the usual channels (a bank loan to help seize market share.)

    I don't know if that is at all clearer, but that's the point I am trying to make.

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