[xibalba]

I don't agree that "the system" punished a smart altruist.

As this article makes clear, Swartz did something he knew to be illegal. This was not his first brush with mass copyright violation. He was then prosecuted for his crimes. IMO, the charges were vastly disproportionate, but you expose yourself to prosecutorial overreach when you (knowingly) commit crimes.

This appears to have been a trend with Swartz. He seems to have had something of a God complex. And thus, for him, the ends justified the means, because he was right and they were wrong.

He does not even appear to have been especially ethical or rational. For example, Reddit sells to Condé Nast. A condition of the sale was that he would work out of Condé Nast's SF offices. He took the money, but then rejected the terms post hoc and disappeared. When he was tracked down and it was clear that he'd simply flown the coup, he was justifiably fired. All of which he, and his enablers, viewed as a great injustice! They don't seem to entertain giving back the money though...

He was a human, with all the attendant frailties and blindspots. He was not murdered. He was a person who struggled with mental illness, like so many of us. He committed suicide.

His suicide is tragic. He was clearly a bright and dynamic person. But he also seems to have been pretty misguided, and his darker tendencies appear to have been rationalized, justified, and enabled by his family. That to me, is the greater tragedy. It didn't have to be like this.

[AlchemistCamp]

> I don't agree that "the system" punished a smart altruist. > > As this article makes clear, Swartz did something he knew to be illegal.

Depending on the laws, sometimes an altruist must do things that are illegal.

In the extreme case, consider that when authoritarian regimes round up ethnic or religious minorities, they invariably make non-cooperation with their attrocities illegal.

Laws should align with altruistic ideals, but it's a grave error to assume they always do.

[cryptica]

I think it's a big deal that the charges were disproportionate in this case. Maybe what he did was illegal on paper, but it was not unethical.

Disturbingly, there seems to be increasingly many things in our modern society which are ethical yet illegal. You'd think that in those cases, authorities should be more lenient; that they would have a sense of what is right and wrong from the perspective of the average citizen. The fact that they seem to be particularly more aggressive in those cases is what I find disturbing and why I'm saying that altruism is being punished.

In many countries, the concept of right and wrong is increasingly being decided from the perspective of a tiny minority. We appear to be reverting to a society of lords and serfs. The government's moral compass is increasingly based on the elites' perspective.

[xibalba]

I don't agree that what he did was ethical. For me, and I think many people, it is clear that what he lied and stole. The works that he stole fall under clearly defined and well established copyright laws and which have licenses to which Swartz would have had to agree. He knew all of this and stole them anyway. He knew exactly what he was doing. This is why he hid his laptop and concealed his face when retrieving that laptop.

In terms of how this IP is copyrighted and distributed, that should be corrected at the funding level. The U.S. government (and other funding sources) should forbid publication and distribution via publications that do not make the information freely available for any science which they fund. But... we live in society of laws. You don't get to just decide which you like and thus will follow.

> right and wrong is increasingly being decided from the perspective of a tiny minority

I'm not sure I agree with you. I suspect your point might be motivated by a worldview (i.e. an ideology), as a opposed to be borne by evidence.

But I could definitely be wrong. To that end, point me to a law that is 1) written from the perspective of a tiny minority of elites and 2) forbids something that most people would consider ethical. By this I mean, not your outsider opinion on the law, but rather, real evidence that it is written to serve the elites and that the forbidden activities are considered perfectly ethical by the majority of people.

[yesenadam]

> we live in society of laws. You don't get to just decide which you like and thus will follow.

Tell that to Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Thoreau, and the many benefactors of mankind who have seen a law was wrong, and refused to obey it! And all those that admire their courage and efforts.