Interesting way of putting it. I would have said "removing the data from his possession"
This is part of a standard narrative to treat copyright infringement as theft analogous to theft of "tangible" traditional property. You will also notice terms like "documents were stolen" in the original indictment. Although to be fair to JSTOR, their official statement did not use such (imho) misleading language.
http://about.jstor.org/news-events/news/jstor-statement-misu...
Well that must've narrowed it right down.
RUN FASTER. I really can't stress this enough. The reason he got caught is because he didn't run fast enough. If you're going to do stuff like this, LEARN TO RUN FAST. Cops are fat and slow. You can usually get away from them, especially in a place like MIT.
Look at that kid! That is not a fast-looking person. Run faster, guys.
Perhaps we should consider the fact that the secret service was involved.. I bet that guy is pretty fast. I don't know why I think that though, just seems more "tough".
Another thing: Aaron is a really important person to have writing/researching/hacking outside of prison. Surely it's a net win to just pay a faster/sneakier kid to do this for him? Do you think he thought for one second he might get caught?
35 YEARS IN PRISON? Avon Barksdale is only serving seven! :)
I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one. That would be outrageous. Actually any jail time would be ridiculous, he's not a dangerous person at all.
So... where is tptacek assuring us all that he won't spend a night in jail?
Actually, if he's accused of wire fraud, his lawyers might get him off; as I don't think he did anything fraudulent. At what point did he misrepresent a fact, which was relied upon by the victim causing losses? He lied about his name, but that didn't cause the loss. He lied about his IP number, but I think he simply represented his IP number to be a "John Doe" - any other number than the one that was blocked; not the IP number of a privileged user. I would debate that nobody expects your IP number to remain constant under all circumstances anyway, unless you have a privileged IP which the admins have specifically greenlisted.
So how did his "lies" (dummy name, and maybe a dummy IP number) cause any losses?
And is changing your IP number to some other random IP (once or twice, not in an automated way) really misrepresenting a material fact?
It's 20/20 hindsight, though. It's obvious from the way he behaved that he didn't think this was anywhere near as big a deal as it's turned out to be. And I might have easily made the same mistake.
In hindsight we can think of lots of ways to defend against this kind of detection, but which of us would really think they would get the Secret Service involved to catch a person who was downloading public domain documents under a legal license awarded to the library of one of the most tech-savvy places in the world? It really should have been expected that something like this would happen. It's almost conceivable that it's not really unusual to see MIT students going to a wired connection in a network closet if necessary.
While there are lots of ways to keep things private, most of us aren't constantly on maximum guard. There has to be a cost-benefit analysis, and apparently someone at JSTOR has friends high up.
Got COM?
Throwing a constant stream of criticism at those in power keeps the system healthy. There is no reason to let them rule over us and heap them with praise.
The actual damage done here was negligible, especially considering the questionable locking-down of the content in the first place (i.e. maybe it should always have been free, and it was still valued at only $50,000 by the school, not $1 million). Swartz maybe did something stupid, but his ability to contribute to society is still far greater out of jail than in. There is also every bit of evidence to suggest that his intent is to contribute positively to society.
In other words, if he serves more than a few months in jail for this, or is actually asked to pay a million dollars, I will be incredibly disheartened by the "legal" system.
I feel that deterrence is a stronger argument here - maybe you are right in that he'll be a net positive anyway as a free man, but there is some validity in that it will make the next guy who wants to secretly install laptops in server closets to think twice.
(and maybe pay the fine with 20 copies of the database)
Everything Aaron does is out of good intentions. I know, I've worked with him before.
His crime isn't "borrowing" the data...it's getting caught.
Gilbert Bland Jr traveled to university libraries around the country for years, stealing maps from irreplaceable antique books, by physically removing them with a razor blade. The total value of the maps that the FBI was eventually able to recover was over $500,000. In the end he paid $70,000 and served 17 months in prison.
Related: the kids who ran LOIC to send a few megabytes of data to some websites are being charged with crimes that carry more jail time than is typically given to people who throw bricks through windows as part of a protest. Heck, you could probably burn a cop car without being in greater trouble.
For comparison, Bland was facing a maximum sentence of 120 years. (Six charges of up to twenty years each.)
JSTOR didn't get those documents through magic or witchcraft. However they collected them, a motivated, brilliant millionaire genius might be able to collect them as well. If they are in the public domain, then he could distribute them for free. Or, he could run around hiding laptops at MIT, and get arrested. I guess the latter is probably more exciting and more likely to get you laid.
To be clear, I think it's obscene that they are prosecuting him for this, and I think it will get thrown out in the end. Maybe he just wanted to make a political statement to get the discussion rolling. Maybe he just doesn't give a fuck.
802.1X is infinitely more interesting.
Why was a Secret Service Agent on campus in the first place?
Something is just not adding up as FBI has jurisdiction not Secret Service..
Plus, what is the other 2% that was downloaded that was not JSTROR stuff?
Or ie ah do some journalism before writing the article?
http://www.secretservice.gov/criminal.shtml
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00003056----...
Because only their wire taps (or laptops) are allowed in network closets... when other people do this, it is illegal ;)
