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Comment by nekusar

7 hours ago

Might as well say "Annas Archive OWES ELEVENTY HUNDRED BILLIONTY-TRILLIONTY INFINITY DOLLARS!!!!!111" ala elementary school playground make-believe.

I remember when RIAA was shaking down 15 year olds for $7000 for a single Metallica download from Napster. Or how Aaron Schwartz was executed by proxy by JSTOR and the feds, for what should have been free to access for all.

But hey, Anthropic, OpenAI, X, and others can pirate to their hearts content with for-profit piracy, but "we" (royal) are OK with that. We just cant have the poors have access to the sum of human knowledge.

20 comments

nekusar

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mmooss  4 hours ago

> I remember when RIAA was shaking down 15 year olds for $7000 for a single Metallica download from Napster.

Why didn't Metallica's fans rebel? That would have stopped it quickly and set a precedent and example for the rest.

  • npongratz  3 hours ago

    Many of us did, and I certainly still do, but there obviously weren't enough of us rebelling to convince them of how reprehensible it is to sue your own fans and sic the guns of the state on them.

palmotea  7 hours ago

[flagged]

  • tetris11  6 hours ago

    People can be predisposed towards something, and then have a tipping point brought by periods of great stress

    Jason Arday recently committed suicide due to media pressure, and even when the media was told that he was not mentally well and should please back off, they didn't.

    The man was accused of plagiarism, and there was no final verdict on if he did. The institutions that hired him clearly had no issues in vetting him. And yet he committed suicide.

    There are absolutely horrible people out there right now who's entire careers are shams, and don't even come close to thinking about it. People are built different, and have different triggers

    • sejje  6 hours ago

      > The man was accused of plagiarism, and there was no final verdict on if he did.

      Bullshit. It wasn't the first round of plagiarism, or redactions. His whole supposed life story was a fraud. He passed off other researchers' patient interviews as his own.

    • KennyBlanken  5 hours ago

      > accused of plagiarism

      Weird way to spell "lied about nearly every facet of his life and anyone who questioned it was aggressively accused of being racist."

  • kenanfyi  6 hours ago

    Sure. That he was facing 35 years in prison for his “crimes“ had nothing to with his suicide.

    • KennyBlanken  5 hours ago

      Please educate yourself about how the US criminal justice system actually works, especially around plea deals. Also especially around sentencing for white collar crimes in terms of what white collar criminals are actually sentenced to, and what is typically taken into consideration by judges during sentencing phases (like, say, mental health issues.)

      Please also educate yourself about how federal prosecutors treated Schwartz after he scraped PACER.

      Please also educate yourself about how long prosecutors attempted to negotiate a plea deal with Schwartz, what their final offer was, what his family, friends, his girlfriend, and his team of top-shelf, famous lawyers advised him to do, and what he actually did.

      1 reply →

  • Catloafdev  6 hours ago

    If only you were able to take your perspective one step farther. Why did he commit suicide?

    • palmotea  3 hours ago

      > If only you were able to take your perspective one step farther. Why did he commit suicide?

      If I get dumped and I commit suicide because of it, does that mean I was "executed by proxy" by my girlfriend/boyfriend?

      "Executed by proxy" is ridiculous, overheated rhetoric.

    • sejje  6 hours ago

      Because something was wrong in his brain and he couldn't handle the stress of his situation.

      Many people have faced similar or worse charges, and did not commit suicide, so we'll have to point at something else.

      Fuck them for what they did to him, but we should be rallying to get him set free. We can't start pointing fingers at other people for suicides. We have agency.

  • nekusar  6 hours ago

    "We are going to jail you for half or more of your life, restrict any medicines you might be on, treat you in deplorable conditions, constitute you as a slave of the state if we decide so". And there is no parole in federal prisons.

    Feds did NOT have to choose to go the route they did. Their pursuance of a victimless "crime" lead to Aaron's only path was 'Exit'.

    Sure, he committed suicide. Why? Because his life was already significantly threatened with what amounts to torture by prison.