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Comment by selamtux

9 months ago

Aaron Swartz didn't seed or distribute articles too

Swartz killed himself before the trial actually took place. Its entirely possible that the court would have ruled in his favor.

  • Maybe, but getting arrested with the FBI involved is a pretty traumatic event for a citizen. Having your company's lawyers mail back and forth with the DoJ less so.

I don't think that what Aaron did was* wrong.

Meta's wholescale theft, however, is pretty hard to defend, and Meta knew it. That's why they went to some lengths to hide it.

Similarly, that OpenAI whistleblower, the one whose family was calling for a murder investigation, might be alive today if it wasn't pretty well known that stealing the work of thousands/millions of people to make a for-profit imitation machine isn't exactly cool or legal.

Edit: egregious typo.

  • What Aaron did was not wrong.

    He intended to make journal articles publicly available. They should be, as many are publicly funded, and academic publishers like Elsevier do not pay for these articles. Scientists provide them to journals. Universities, libraries, and we then have to buy back access.