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Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

https://blog.curiousquail.com/im-upset-again-about-a-co-creator-of-rss-being-prosecuted-for-something-meta-is-doing-with-little-consequence/
108•speckx•1h ago

Comments

spelk•47m ago
In Commonwealth countries, it's possible to initiate a private prosecution (by a person who hasn't received criminal justice). These don't usually get very far, but I honestly wish these could be used to prosecute people who are treated differently for the same crime because of their status, or at least set a precedent that such activities are definitively okay.
bigfatkitten•39m ago
In Australia at least, the Director of Public Prosecutions has the power to take over the matter, and they often do.

They can then do one of two things. They can either continue running it if it’s in the interests of justice to do so (public interest, reasonable prospects of success etc), or they can shut it down, as they tend to do for sovereign citizen nonsense and the like.

milkytron•44m ago
The part that still bothers me so much about the US vs Swartz case is that JSTOR didn't pursue civil litigation against Aaron. It was the US government that pursued him.

There was little for the government to lose in the case. In a case vs Meta, at the scale it has reached, it could have wide ranging economic implications limiting the investment in AI, which the US is absolutely not willing to pursue at this point in time (or possibly ever).

Basically, being a rich public company provides legal advantages when the US government has similar goals.

The whole thing is incredibly sad and exposes the hypocrisy of the US court system and government as a whole.

RIP Aaron.

bigfatkitten•34m ago
And even then, it wasn’t really about justice but more for the prosecutor, Carmen Ortiz’s career advancement.

The case ultimately did not help her in her run for governor of MA.

DoctorOetker•9m ago
the blood of a prodigy as status symbol make-up
arionhardison•29m ago
Maybe the real issue is selective outrage about legal injustice. I totally agree that this was wrong and he should not have been prosecuted but a large part of the effort that dealt this injustice to him was facilitated by the fact that the vast majority of people willfully turn a blind eye when the same thing or worse happens to people are not of their ilk. If we were to finally stand up and say that justice for all means justice for ALL; we might be able to prevent the next Aaron Swartz.

Edit: As someone that has done both state and fed time, the thing that makes me the saddest here is that the charges would have been drastically reduced if not dismissed and his appeals would have had a high probability of success. They use this "scare tatic" so much and I understand why it works; the possibility of facing those years is terrifying. I don't mean that in any demeaning manner, 25/26 and never having done time I cannot imagine how terrified he must have been.

Edit: I would also like to bring attention to the fact that M. Zuckerberg aggressively pursues these types of cases against people for doing far less than he has done.

spwa4•2m ago
It absolutely is. Youth services is one such thing that people just refuse to get upset about. Not when they attack kids for flimsy reasons. And, conversely, people also utterly refuse to react when kids eventually figure out that their way out is to attack people, other kids, social workers and anyone else in institutions, which is one factor that makes them such horrible places to be.
cucumber3732842•41m ago
If you cut down a couple acres of forest you own because you want to have a hay field or whatever you're <screech> violating federal environmental law <screech>

But BigCo can grease a few palms and do 10x more and the useful idiots will screech about how responsible they're being by installing those stupid stream spreader things o their parking lot culverts and putting up a few birdhouses to please the local comissioer.

This really is no differennt.

czgov•41m ago
B2B crime ought to be handled in a gentlemanly way through litigation. C2B crime deserves the full weight of the law and prison consequences. United Health killing people by denying coverage for care is OK. Luigi killing one of the executives is not.
ck2•19m ago
vaguely related I was thinking of yet another irony

where the orange infant calls datacenters "beautiful" and now is arranging to give them federal land to build on to get around all the protests

while at the same time calling solar and wind turbines ugly and loud and giving billions to companies already contracted to NOT build them

it's all the irony of wild greed and infinite corruption, if only Aaron could have seen this future

mukmuk•16m ago
The attorneys who did this were Carmen Ortiz, Stephen P. Heymann, and Scott Garland. To their everlasting shame.

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Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

https://blog.curiousquail.com/im-upset-again-about-a-co-creator-of-rss-being-prosecuted-for-somet...
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