Comment by suprgeek
12 years ago
This has been long time coming. These days if a student or young person does what Steve Jobs (phone device) or Bill Gates (exploiting bugs for more Computer time) did and got away with, they face lawsuits and decades in Jail.
It is up to Universities like MIT to aggressively intervene in these cases and ensure that young people are free to (some extent) break systems and exploit system weaknesses in the interest of learning.
MIT did the opposite in the Aaron Shwartz case, their conduct was in large part responsible for Ortiz & Heyman getting Aaron over a barrel of 30 years in the pokey. They miserably failed in their moral obligations in that case - and the time is long past for changes to this policy.
> MIT did the opposite in the Aaron Shwartz case, their conduct was in large part responsible for Ortiz & Heyman getting Aaron over a barrel of 30 years in the pokey
Swartz was, if he rejected the plea bargain that would have given him a few months at most and went to trial and lost on all charges, looking at around 7 years at the extreme outside, tops, not 30. If you would like the detail on why this is so, take a look at any of the dozens of prior discussion of the Swartz case here, since this has been explained in great detail in nearly every one of them.
Uh huh, but the prosecutor threatened him with 30 to try and scare him into bargaining, and Swartz apparently believed him, so I'm not sure what your point is.
This is also totally false. Any competent attorney understands how charges group under federal sentencing law; not only was he not facing a 30 year sentence, he could not face a 30 year sentence.
Swartz had competent legal representation from the jump. His counsel at the time of his suicide wrote in a postmortem on the case that he believed Swartz stood little chance of any custodial sentence, even were he to be convicted. It's not hard to see why: the sentencing guidelines for first-time offenders of non-remunerative CFAA offenses aren't very demanding.
Swartz was likely to be ruined by the cost of defending a complex federal charge, faced the prospect of potentially spending months in federal prison, and an overall likelihood of the whole incident concluding with a felony conviction on his record, which may have been problematic for his future endeavors. He was oppressed by his prosecution in a variety of ways. It's unnecessary to manufacture new ways.
1 reply →
This does nothing to address suprgeek's point: Excessive prosecution has a chilling effect on technological exploration and entrepeneurship.
The feds tore apart his life. They forced his girlfriend to speak out against him. He couldn't trust anyone, his coworkers, the school. They were out for blood, his blood. You want a felony on your record? Say goodbye to financial aid, and look forward to explaining it to everyone that runs a background check on you - if you even get the chance to explain.
Maybe he shouldn't have repeatedly broken the law if he didn't want to deal with the consequences?
So they treated him like a criminal? Do tell.
The world in which Jobs and Gates grew up was very different, one in which computers didn't play as vital a role in everyday life, and compromising a computer system could cause less in the way of damage, simply because people did not rely on them as heavily. In our modern world, saying that young people should be free to break and exploit systems has very different implications.
We do not tolerate young people "learning" how to pick locks by breaking into peoples' homes, and we certainly don't argue that universities have a moral obligation to support such "learning." So why should it be different in the digital world? There was a time maybe when we tolerated that because you could do a lot less damage breaking into a computer than breaking into a house, but that time is long gone.
We do not tolerate young people "learning" how to pick locks by breaking into peoples' homes...
"Due to the top secret nature of the work, Los Alamos was isolated. In Feynman's own words, 'There wasn't anything to do there'. Bored, he indulged his curiosity by learning to pick the combination locks on cabinets and desks used to secure papers."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman#The_Manhattan_...
Be careful what you wish for. History has shown that countries which are free to think will eventually outthink those that aren't. And what you're arguing for is restriction of thought.
You're free to think whatever you want. This is about interfering with other peoples' property.
Personally, I think people over-romanticize hacker culture in saying it's a key part of technological progress. Scientific advancement is a process that overwhelmingly happens purposefully, not through tinkering. It's DARPA funding defense contractors to invent TCP/IP, not some kids "learning" by breaking into other peoples' property.
The stuff Bill and Steve did--they did it because they were smart kids and could get away with it. But saying it was a necessary component of their future success is just romanticization.
18 replies →
I'd say a university should support students learning to pick locks by ignoring (as long as no particular damage was caused) them using campus locks for practice.
>This has been long time coming. These days if a student or young person does what Steve Jobs (phone device) or Bill Gates (exploiting bugs for more Computer time) did and got away with, they face lawsuits and decades in Jail.
Jobs didn't avoid jail because times were more permissive. He stayed out of jail because he didn't get caught. People went to jail for phone phreaking.
>It is up to Universities like MIT to aggressively intervene in these cases and ensure that young people are free to (some extent) break systems and exploit system weaknesses in the interest of learning.
I don't understand how anyone could come to this conclusion. Students breaking the law should be expelled, not coddled.
So by your reasoning, students caught smoking marijuana should be expelled? What about people like Edward Snowden? Should he have gotten the Aaron Swartz treatment too if he were at MIT? Right, because all laws are just.
>So by your reasoning, students caught smoking marijuana should be expelled?
Depends. If it's a felony where you are, then yes.
>What about people like Edward Snowden?
What about him? If the feds ever catch up with Snowden he'll go to jail, and that's where he belongs.
>Should he have gotten the Aaron Swartz treatment too if he were at MIT? Right, because all laws are just.
Justice is a subjective thing, and that's why legislatures write the laws. If you're going to have the rule of law you have the rule of law. The upside is people in power have to obey the laws just like everyone else. The downside is everyone else has to obey the laws too.
10 replies →