Internet censorship

[Haykakan]

Aaron Swartz who fought internet censorship very effectively was found dead in his apartment. They say he hung himself because of the depression brought on by the prosecutor who hounded him relentlessly. This kid was 26 years old and had done more for freedom of information then anyone i know. It always puzzles me that they rule deaths like this a suicide. Like how do you know he was not murdered? The world is turning upside down these days-the french are now the socialists and the russians the capitalists-the leader of the "free world" is morphing itself into a fascist state- Maybe the mayans were not wrong afterall. Maybe this is the end of the world as we knew it and the begining of a new one. Starting with the NDAA and stringing along tons of other attempts by the Obama administration (romney would have done the same sheet) to erect a fascist state, the US government leaves no doubts about its intention to censor everything and detain anyone for any reason (real or made up). Despite all of this the USA government still calls other countries a buncha names implying that they deprive their people of freedoms. The hypocracy is obvious here but what is not so obvious is why the people in the USA are not doing much about their vanishing rights. Regardless on which side of the fence you sit on (left or right) i doubt anyone wants less rights but other then a few people no one is really doing much about it.

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Internet censorship

I'm sure "suicide" is a method those in power do use to get rid of unwelcome or troublesome people.

I think the ex-CIA boss David Petraeus was fortunate to have been allowed to just resign rather than being found to have "committed suicide". James Forrestal, a previous US politician who had similarly upset the xxxish Lobby and who thus had to be gotten rid of, did not escape so luckily.

[Artashes]

Re: Internet censorship

The police found him at the bottom of the river.
He was bound by 3 heavy chains, stabbed 17 times, 2 gunshot wounds to the head, and a 100 pound sack of cement tied to each leg.
The chief of police said : that's the worst case of suicide I've ever seen.
Artashes

[Sip]

Re: Internet censorship

"Freedom of information"? This kid hacked into a site and downloaded a ton of xxxx that didn't belong to him and wanted to argue that somehow he was entitled to all that.... and he got depressed? Oh boo hooo ... it is entirely this sense of complete entitlement that is going to be the doom of the new generations. They think they are entitled to free music, free movies, free books, free scholarly articles, free shipping, free roads, health care, government protection, etc etc etc etc.

And then some of them one day flip out and either kill themselves or take out a whole bunch of other people with them. He thought he had it tough with his felony charges? (not even convictions?) ... let me try to live as a teenage girl in Pakistan or something one day.

[Haykakan]

Re: Internet censorship

It was downloaded from a free site-meaning everyone can read these articles anyways. I wouldnt be to sure about the suicide part because by fighting censorship he made enemies in government. I can suffocate u then hang u and no one will know u were murdered. You can say todays generation is spoiled but try putting yourself in their shoes first. The texbook for the class i am teaching is $250.00, facing costs like that you would be screaming for help to.

[Sip]

Re: Internet censorship

What is criminal here is professors that make their students buy $250 books! Those are the ones that should be hanged (preferably after being tortured by the KGB and then by the CIA).

[Haykakan]

Re: Internet censorship

Professor has nothing to do with it. The higher ups in the system decide about books and other important stuff.

What is criminal here is professors that make their students buy $250 books! Those are the ones that should be hanged (preferably after being tortured by the KGB and then by the CIA).

[Sip]

Re: Internet censorship

Professor has nothing to do with it. The higher ups in the system decide about books and other important stuff.

Higher ups? Are we talking about a university? Usually the professor gets to decide what he or she wants to teach. Who made the decision for your book?

[Haykakan]

Re: Internet censorship

The "system" decides. Professors are losing power in favor of the centralized system. I teach at a college. Some of the teachers were complaining about this very issue.

Higher ups? Are we talking about a university? Usually the professor gets to decide what he or she wants to teach. Who made the decision for your book?

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Internet censorship

"Freedom of information"? This kid hacked into a site and downloaded a ton of xxxx that didn't belong to him and wanted to argue that somehow he was entitled to all that.... and he got depressed? Oh boo hooo ... it is entirely this sense of complete entitlement that is going to be the doom of the new generations. They think they are entitled to free music, free movies, free books, free scholarly articles, free shipping, free roads, health care, government protection, etc etc etc etc.

And then some of them one day flip out and either kill themselves or take out a whole bunch of other people with them. He thought he had it tough with his felony charges? (not even convictions?) ... let me try to live as a teenage girl in Pakistan or something one day.

Really Sip - I'm surprised and disapointed that you wrote the above.

ANYONE can download whatever they want from JSTOR for free as long as they are accessing it through an account. The account used was MIT's JSTOR account, which Swartz had legitimate access to. Clicking "save as" is not hacking!

JSTOR created none of the works on its server, and JSTOR pays nothing to the actual authors of the works downloaded - because the works are either out of copyright, or they are articles that can be extracted as royalty-free extracts from journals, or have been made available to access by the copyright holders. JSTOR pontificates about itelf being an enabler of academic research, however this case revealed JSTOR as just another corporate body - a company that wants to maintain its monopoly of being the SOLE SOURCE of those titles and was playing the US legal system to retain that monopoly.

Will Jimmy Wales, advocate and enabler of genuine and openly-admitted copyright theft on a vast scale (the wholesale theft of hundreds of thousands of digitised images created by the world's museums and galleries together with the setting up of teams of editors to remove the copyright notes from the stolen images) ever get threatened with 30 years in prison? No - because the activities and goals of Wikipedia makes corporate America happy - it centralises content so that it can be easily controlled and eliminates or renders unimportant content that cannot be easily controlled (i.e content not hosted in the US).