The best tribute to Aaron Swartz
January 15, 2013 by Giulio Prisco
Aaron Swartz in 2012 protesting against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (credit: Daniel J. Sieradski/Wikimedia Commons)
If you are a scientist, you can pay the best and most effective tribute to the memory of Aaron Swartz by sharing PDFs of your published work on pdftribute.net via the hashtag #pdftribute on Twitter.
Researchers are now offering open-access versions of their work using this hashtag.
I also suggest to boycott the pay-walled journals of the science mafia and publish on arXiv, or one of the many excellent open access science journals like PLoS and eLife. Hit them in the wallet where it hurts; it is the only effective way to protest.
New Scientist | Hundreds of researchers have been sharing PDFs of their work on Twitter as a tribute to Aaron Swartz, the internet freedom activist who committed suicide on Friday.
Swartz was facing hacking charges from the U.S. government after accessing the network of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and downloading nearly 5 million articles from the digital library JSTOR.
In a statement following his death, Swartz’s parents criticized the Massachusetts U.S. attorney’s office for pursuing charges against their son, and MIT for failing to support him. [NOTE: see also Time | Aaron Swartz’s Suicide Prompts MIT Soul-Searching.]
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, tweeted his own tribute: “Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep.”
Update Jan. 15, 2013: ars technica | On Monday afternoon, a group of online archivists released the “Aaron Swartz Memorial JSTOR Liberator.” The initiative is a JavaScript-based bookmarklet that lets Internet users “liberate” an article, already in the public domain, from the online academic archive JSTOR. By running the script — which is limited to once per browser — a public domain academic article is downloaded to the user’s computer, then uploaded back to ArchiveTeam in a small act of protest against JSTOR’s restrictive policies.
Comments (62)
by Peter the printer
I see the inevitable result of free being everyone thinking they are experts and their opinion is equal to that of professionals, already starting to happen with climatre change where deniers think they have the right to express simplistic opinions as if they had the right. What to do when every bit of research is thus open to the ‘opinions’ of the stupid, the corrupt, the vested interest? With professional journals editors ensure papers are up to scratch, and peers are peers. In your brave new world of free, all the shills in the world will be making themselves heard, drowning out the real science and substituting faith. We’ve seen how the internet blurs distinctions, enables shills to obfuscate and cloud issues. And you really think this is going to lead to more scholarship and understanding? It’ll be the lowest common denominator, and we know what that is – creationism.
by Jim Mooney
Lest we forget, MIT also falsified the results of the cold fusion experiments, effectively destroying Flieschman and Pons, since everyone else then piled on. MIT ridiculed the experiment before it started, in a very unscientific manner, then hid some results indicating anomalous heat generation, causing one man to resign in protest.
Although I think Flieschman and Pons had the wrong theory, even NASA is now proposing LENR reactions. I do not think they were frauds or fools, just reporting anomalies. And for this, thanks to MIT, they were destroyed. MITs motive, obviously, is that they get millions for hot fusion experiments.
MIT should apologize to a lot of people for their non-scientific, non-open attitude
by twm114
Welcome to the ‘grinding chaos’ of a world without property rights.
by mpbw1879
Within a generation it will seem not merely unacceptable but as morally unintelligible that thought and knowledge should be traded for profit as it now seems to us that the bodies of slaves were so treated. Doubtless if he’d been around in 1863 twm114 would have made the comment above on hearing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
by Peter the printer
You sound like someone who a) doesn’t have to earn a living b) doesn’t have anything to sell c) thinks it’s fine for freeloaders to help themselves to the results of others’ hard work. What’s ‘morally unintelligible’ about being paid for one’s work exactly?
I’m all for freely using the products of huge capitalist enterprises priced out of the pocket of all but the rich, but a free for all where anything goes would mean some would just not earn a living and would have to stop working. I produce a scientific journal for a small publisher; who is going to make it worthwhile for them and me if everything is free?
by jerry searcy
Nothing is free. Someone has to go through the machinations to produce the product. Someone has go through the machinations to get the product to the consumer. Only parasites think otherwise. Parasites…that’s why America is fast heading for the drain!
by Nyk
A very different understanding of history (as opposed to the mainstream one) provides an explanation for why this has happened:
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.ro/2013/01/noam-chomsky-killed-aaron-swartz.html
The university system in the US is one of the sources of political power (the primary one, as the author of this article reveals in previous posts). Swartz happened to inadvertently become a dissident to the system and was dealt with accordingly. The only way to prevent such tragedies from happening in the future is to wrest political power from the universities when that option presents itself (a nearly impossible task). Until then, we should try to submit to their rule; for our own good.
by Dr. X
He was dealt with because he committed crimes. No other reasons than that. It just happens that current society in US do not tolerate criminals.
by de Broglie
I like Mencius Moldbug for his entertainment value. His writings are surprisingly dense and need to be read in a Straussian manner.
by Alan Palanker
Tenured professors obstructing up and coming teachers, outrageous costs past on to hapless students, focus on alumni and athletes, higher education is finished
by Peter the printer
It failed to teach you the difference between past and passed that’s for sure ;-) so perhaps it is finished.
by Peter the printer
A link to a deranged rant which I gather [I couldn't force myself to read that far] is all about the left having won all the arguments, so a right-wing-nut rant; they all hate Chomsky, his brain is the size of a planet compared to the average rightwingnutjob, and they have no arguments against him that stand up, so of course they hate him.
by Peter the printer
‘the primary one, as the author of this article ‘reveals’ in previous posts’ I think the word is opined rather than revealed.
by jerry searcy
Here’s how one “wrest political power from the universities”: Vote for people who hold that government should not be involved in education in any way except where fraud and violence exist.
by Giulio Prisco
Science doesn’t need pay-walled science journals. See:
Mathematicians aim to take publishers out of publishing
http://www.kurzweilai.net/mathematicians-aim-to-take-publishers-out-of-publishing
by Peter the printer
‘Pay-walled science journals’? Giulio, why are there not pay-walled movies, pay-walled magazines? People need to earna living. Journals charge reasonable rates, mostly paid by university departments, for access to the product of people’s work. Why is that morally different from the work you do, assuming you aren’t a millionaire playboy? Why isn’t food free? Housing? Clothing? Because they all take time and skills which people NEED to be paid for in order to live – buy food, pay rent/mortgage, buy clothes.
If you’re suggesting eradicating the monetary system, fine, let’s have some details, but why picking on science journals? Because you want to read them for nothing?
by Giulio Prisco
http://falkvinge.net/2013/01/15/petition-to-fire-aaron-swartz-prosecutor-reaches-goal/
Early Tuesday morning, the petition to the U.S. Administration to fire Carmen Ortiz reached the prerequisite 25,000 signatures. Carmen Ortiz was the prosecutor that drove the prosecution against Aaron Swartz, which many mean contributed or led to his tragic suicide. The U.S. Administration, by its own rules, must now take the petition seriously and respond to it.
by godot
Peer-review is an important tool used in separating the grain from the chaff. There is more information available than ever before, and filtering to determine where to concentrate our all-too-small bandwidth of comprehension is of increasingly greater importance. (Hence the KurzweilAI newsletter.)
The peer-review mechanism is supported by revenue generated from the “pay-wall” to which you refer. When you have destroyed the peer-review mechanism by depriving it of funds, will you rejoice? Is the blind acceptance of political fashion propelling us to a world of indiscriminate data?
In such a world you will be presented with an ocean of publications in which psychotic musings are presented alongside and on an equal footing with important works by dedicated scientists. Is this what you are striving toward? Is this the best use of your resources? Is this really what you want?
Psychological literature likens the effects of LSD to inducing a break-down of the lower-level filtering mechanisms of perception, resulting in a flood of indiscriminate data to the brain. Is this what you advocate? A publishing system of academic research based on induced schizophrenia?
Sure, peer-review has its flaws. It often initially rejects breakthrough ideas based on conformism and cognitive dissonance of the group. But are we supposed to advocate banding together in a mob mentality to throw out the baby with the bathwater?
Not to be contrary or detract from Aaron Swartz’s good works, but this seems like a bad idea to me.
I submit that academic publishing is not the real culprit in this unfortunate episode; it is a legal system gone out-of-control. Can someone suggest an act of protest which would focus on the real culprit, and in which I could participate with a clear conscience?
Thank you.
by Giulio Prisco
Re “Sure, peer-review has its flaws. It often initially rejects breakthrough ideas based on conformism and cognitive dissonance of the group.”
Add to this the ridiculous delays, and the fact that the process is plagued by childish jealousies and gossip. Often reviewers don’t even read carefully the articles that they are supposed to review, but there are two cases where they do read them very carefully: 1) when the paper is from a competitor whose prestige they want to destroy, 2) when they want to publish similar results first. We should never forget that scientists are people like everyone else.
This “pee review” process is broken beyond repair and introduces huge delays in the diffusion of scientific advances, which is a necessary per-requisite for new advances.
Re “an ocean of publications in which psychotic musings are presented alongside and on an equal footing with important works by dedicated scientists.”
Publish a paper on arXiv. If the paper is not good, it will be ignored. If it is good, it will be tweeted, shared on Facebook, picked by science news sites news sites and blogs, and other scientists will comment. This de-facto peer review after the publication, facilitated by modern Internet platforms like Stack Exchange, is much better than the obsolete traditional model and offers most of its advantages without most of its disadvantages.
Re “Can someone suggest an act of protest which would focus on the real culprit, and in which I could participate with a clear conscience?”
If you are a researcher, give your preference to open access journals and always publish on arXiv first. If you are a librarian, propose to cancel some subscriptions to pay-walled journals. If you are a taxpayer, remember that you _have already paid_ for state funded research, and it belongs to you, so support open access publishing and boycott pay-walls. Boycotts are the most effective means of protest, and they are totally legal.
by Jim Mooney
If you look at the history of science, a la Kuhn, you find that many of the greatest discoveries were ridiculed and refused publication at first. Perhaps with an alternate publication system they might get through the politics of science. After all, department heads are usually the most inferior scientists. The real ones are doing science. The hacks become Administrators and sit on the neck of people who have new ideas.
by jimekus
debit and credit funding mechanisms can be likened to pixels and, in the same way that pixels can be replaced by vectors, dollar values can also be replaced by the vectors of derived reasoning.
by Peter the printer
Agreed. Except that LSD isn’t understood by phychologists since they won’t take it and experience it first hand, so are somewhat theoretical about the topic. But otherwise, agree with what you say, there will be floods of deranged theories alonside real science, and the ignorant multitudes will drown out what some object to paying for.
by tedhowardnz
For me, the issue of open access to publicly funded research is clear cut.
If anyone accepts public money for any aspect of their research, then the results need to be in the public domain, freely available immediately. In all other cases there should be quite rapid expiry of copyright and patents, no more than 15 years max, and usually around 5 years. If people can’t get a market return in that time, it isn’t going to happen.
Scholarly journals need to stand or fall on the services they supply to their readers (including editorial work, peer review, timeliness of delivery, relevance, etc). The power taken from the public, and given to journals through the current interpretations of copyright law, are, to my mind, without any shadow of doubt, an abuse of power resulting from market values.
3 years ago, when I was told I likely had less than 5 months to live because of metastasised melanoma, I spent many days scouring for information. Much of what I wanted to read was hidden behind $30 a time pay per view firewalls, and all of it was funded with public money.
I refused to pay.
I got enough information from free sources to work out an effective survival strategy (in the face of medical advice saying that no such thing was available).
I have since spent a lot of time investigating the nature of the incentive structures within our society that create such perverse outcomes for the majority of people, and I am now very clear that it is markets, and market valuation mechanisms (aka money) that are actually the single greatest threat to human survival at present.
All monetary systems (market based valuation systems) are scarcity based. The more scarce something is, the more valuable it is; and conversely the more abundant something is the less it is worth. This is completely contrary to the human need for abundance of basic survival commodities.
We have the technical ability to deliver such abundance of basic needs to every human (including information, knowledge and wisdom), but there is zero incentive within any economic system to do so (in fact significant incentives not to do so).
Thus Aaron’s death is something of a wake up call to many of us.
I only met him once, and I liked him very much.
I am greatly saddened by his death.
It is time for a concerted effort to move a majority of humanity beyond the paradigm of markets and market valuation.
It is time to reclaim the legal system to the public domain, and away from the market.
It is time to bring human values back to the law.
It is unlikely to be a smooth journey!
by Amit
Well said.
by Bri
I hole heartedly agree with your analysis of markets. Sometimes even when there is an abundance certain market player alter the outcome for the sole purpose of their own selfish greed. There are more lawyers per square inch in this country, yet the exorbitant fees they charge keeps going up. Everyone should be able to make money on that scale, yet it is a rigged game that they control. The valuations of the capitalist system are driven by greed. It’s a system that needs to be changed.
by Mr.X
“Everyone should be able to make money on that scale, yet it is a rigged game that they control.”
The corresponding value of money (or more accurately: the currency at hand) would drop.Wouldn’t help aforementioned anyone.
And who is they?I like conspiracy theorists, “they” always forget to get specific about their claims (lest one could check them).
The ultimate conspiracy theory: Things just are;)
Ps: Maybe “everyone” (whomever you mean by that) already is able to “earn” money on such a scale (provided not everyone does), but they just don’t do it.Equal chances don’t equal equal outcomes. Of course, 100% equal chances are not practically possible.
by Giulio Prisco
Ted, I couldn’t agree more, and congratulations for working out an effective survival strategy (in the face of medical advice saying that no such thing was available).
Science publishing is controlled by an entrenched mafia only interested in its own survival. It is now time to break this system. The best way to do so, as usual, is boycotting it. There are many good open access research journals, and I wish to encourage all researchers to use them instead of the pay-walled dinosaurs of the obsolete paper press. Your bosses will try to persuade you that publishing with the dinosaurs is more “prestigious,” but remember that your bosses are part of the problem.
by Dr. X
You should move to North Korea. You will be way better off there.
by Peter the printer
You don’t understand, it isn’t the ‘publicly-funded’ scientist who is charging for his or her results, it’s the journal which publishes them, and they charge for their costs – editing, proofreading, typesetting, printing etc. for those new to publishing – the scientists don’t get paid, they are glad to be published. No one makes loads of money, charges are low and only realtime costs are covered. In which other area are people expe3cted to work for nothing? Do you?
by Bertram
regardless of everything there was no reason for him to commit suicide
by JOHN DULANEY
Giulio,
Do you think men like Jesus and Alan Turing need to have acts of ignominy associated with their names for them to have done good otherwise? Is Aaron’s reputation and eventual lore enhanced for the good by malefactions against the public? Is crime to be the de facto rule that must be committed to gain the public assent? Ciao.
by Giulio Prisco
John – No, I am simply stating the _fact_ that they had acts of ignominy (according to the stupid laws of their times) associated with their names.
by JOHN DULANEY
Then, Giulio, I believe you have allowed that committing a crime, even by a very smart and creative person, cannot be justified nor should it he be lionized for it. I think you will allow this…?
by Giulio Prisco
@John – NO. Helping Jews escape Auschwitz was a crime in Germany between 1930 and the end of WW2. Should we then condemn those who helped Jews escape Auschwitz as criminals? No, we honor them, rightfully, as heroes.
by Mr.X
Think about this:
Without all this emotionalizing of yours, the matter at hand is actually rather simple:
Judicial right doesn’t necessarily equal moral right (as historical cases have proven, of which you only need one to show this), laws are based on strengths within a given system (state/country), and if we think we know better and think we have the necessary leverage we ought to change laws for the better.
Another way to see this:
Does anyone here think the laws of their societies are perfect (!) for all times to come?
Does anyone think that people within “the system” lack incentives to interfere with positive change?
Does anyone here think that necessary improvements also necessitate change?
Do you think it is right to be able to bully someone just because of your position in the state apparatus?No?
Do you think we should not allows this to become “de-facto” law? Yes?
If you agree with this, then it should be clear that change is a necessity, must be helped from the outside of the system, by which I mean helped or even initiated by citizens who are not state-employees, and that someone ought to do it.
It is a truism that a democracy needs an educated, alert and active citizenry!
Another truism is that it is better to do something about a problem instead of just complaining (I wanted to use a stronger word)!
It follows you have to take action.
E.g people who can should sign that petition mentioned here.
What we have heard about was a clear case of someone deriving satisfaction from the abuse -with dire and ultimate consequences- of the powers bestowed upon her by the people, and this therefore should not go unpunished by the people (which is partly you).
Ps:
I had to fight hard against my urge to mention our your country and it’s glorious human right record.
Anyway: Why bring all this emotional, historical baggage into something that’s actually quite simple?The law isn’t always right, even if those to the right of us think so.
by Giulio Prisco
Mr. X, I see that you may have taken offense at the mention of Germany. Sorry, no offense intended, every culture has very unpleasant episodes in its past. We should, of course, learn from the past. The lesson here is, as you say, that the law isn’t always right. It can be very, very wrong, and we must change it when it is wrong.
by JOHN DULANEY
Sophistry…I can’t compete with it…sorry.
by Atmic
Just because it works against your point doesn’t mean you can just dismiss it as sophistry. Yes, if someone works towards creating a positive change and the positive change is something worth striving for — then they should be lionized. We create the change we want to see in the world — laws should work with us to get there. Publicity brings more eyes and awareness, which transmutes to change.
To blindly dismiss or ignore a cause or person’s actions simply because they are unlawful is active ignorance. I’d refer you to ideas found in Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience.
As Howard Zinn said, “Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”
by Giulio Prisco
Re “Is Aaron’s reputation and eventual lore enhanced for the good by malefactions against the public?”
Is it a malefaction to give back to us what we have already paid for with our tax money? I don’t think so.
Aaron was a great man, and he acted like a great man.
by Mr.X
“Aaron was a great man, and he acted like a great man.”
He shouldn’t have killed himself though, and it is sad that those who have taken up his banner didn’t do so earlier.I think this could have been avoided.
I also think the punishment for what he did is ridiculously high, especially if you compare it to the punishment of people who actually killed, assaulted etc others and get away with less.
“Is it a malefaction to give back to us what we have already paid for with our tax money?”
Newspeak… of course not.In a sense states are partly (as to date) necessary bullies, whose elements always try to look how far they can go in maximizing their utility.Certain laws are akin to theft.Only consens makes it look otherwise.
Ps: John’s comment about Turing is extremly ridiculous.He harmed nobody, following this line of reasoning we should use technology to punish even thought crimes preemptively.
And if jesus would have been a mainstream jew, nobody would have heard about him.
Which acts of ignomy did they commit, that are not just called so by definition?
Arbitrary or harmful rules should be ruled out^^
by JOHN DULANEY
No matter how a man may be perceived in life if he knowingly breaks the law he must expect concomitant action. There is little place in a civilized world for a Robbinghood to be glamorized and idolized for his crimes no matter how public sentiment may run. The loss of a life is to be deeply contemplated however and a human heart and mind must never be discounted. Let us lay our sadness at the feet of his grieving parents.
by Giulio Prisco
@John re “if he knowingly breaks the law he must expect concomitant action”
Open a history book on a random page, and chances are that you will find some great person who made history by knowingly breaking stupid laws, from Jesus to Alan Turing.
by melajara
@Giulio,
On the other hand, very famous thinkers put themselves blindly under the laws, by the very fact that they were the laws. Remember Plato’s Crito and the (somewhat pompous) prosopopea of the Laws?
Athens laws are “speaking” to Socrates and listening to them, he refuses the escape path prepared by his friends adjuring him to follow them out of the jail. He knows that the ruling he was subjected to was grounded on false accusations, nevertheless he accepts the death penalty by abiding to the institutions.
By the way, Socrates made 3 military campains for Athens and didn’t questioned the legitimacy of the Peloponnesian war, nor did Plato however disastrous this war proved to be as Athens never fully recovered from it (and actually there were no winners).
Even the brightest minds have their blind spots.
by Mr.X
“Even the brightest minds have their blind spots.”
If we take untestable metaphysical beliefs out of this, we can substitute mind for brain.
If we do so, it should become immediately obvious that a 1,5Kg lump of gray mass formed by blind trial and error can’t even physically be able to cover the whole range “of what really is and should be”, in this vast and “complex” universe.
Furthermore another way to see this:
A brain with perfect knowledge about something that is not perfectly frozen still undergoes changes in the course of living, and every change from this perfect condition leads to one that’s less than perfect.Or do you think there are many perfections and no ultimate truths that can be determined according to rationally chosen criteria?I think there is one way things really are, so bear with me;)
Therefore, our brilliant persons -which we recognized by the products of their thoughts, and thus by actions [change]; by living- must have minds with blind spots in their knowledge (which is the material of their judgement).
There are millions other reasons why a normal human being must have blind spots, only the ape in us lives in denial, because want’s some paternalistic authority to look up to and to misuse in arguments that could be entirely decided by looking at the objective facts of a given situation.
by Amit
Yes…John…brain-washed by the intellectual property mafia
by JOHN DULANEY
Do you have the tel. no. for “the intellectual property mafia”…?
by Mr.X
I think intellectual property is relatively good thing, at least today.Do you want to force us all to “indulge in” manual labor?And if yes, why should anyone create anything else but the products of manual labor for you?
Don’t you think we have more advances and progresses in all fields of endeavour if there is some incentive for those bringing them about?
I bet, and no offense intended, that you don’t hold the prospect of creating something that would be under the protection of intellectual copyright, ever.
Ps: Ray didn’t gift me his new book, either ;(
by Bri
I seem to remember a man name Gandhi that said unjust laws should be broken. He performed acts of civil disobedience not for himself, but for the benefit of society. I think Aron broke those laws selflessly. If everyone did thing for others rather than themselves, everyone benefits. When everyone act strickly for themselves, most of the time it’s at someone else’s expense.
by Atmic
Thank you. There are some closed-minds and cold hearts prowling on these pages.
by your name
There’s nothing wrong with creating a pay wall for the research you do. Just don’t use taxpayers’ money against them to enforce copyright.
by Giulio Prisco
In fact, we taxpayers have _already paid_ the research done with public funding.
by your name
Then only publicly funded research should be made available.
by Amit
Next to impossible to monitor. Ergo, research papers should be open access.
by your name
No, only publicly funded research should be open access.
by melajara
I considered myself to write something about this sad story and this miserable prosecution.
A brilliant and disinterested young man facing up to 30 years of imprisonment, i.e. a ruined life, just for having downloaded, without reselling in any way nor disseminating for free, AFAIK, the incriminated material downloaded from a JSTOR database?! How absurd, how disgusting!
Now Mr. Prisco, you beat me on that one and with a good proposal in memoriam of Aaron, thank you so much for this initiative!
This case is tragically shedding light on the utmost urgent need for a serious reconsideration of fully outdated and now inappropriate laws governing copyright, especially for scientific content which, IMHO, should be promoted, if not enforced, as public and sharable knowledge.
Aaron committed suicide primarily because he was suffering from an acute depression. Of course the feral MIT legal team is not responsible of this outcome but their miserable and very stupid prosecution didn’t help either.
With such kind of initiatives as the one you are endorsing refuting exaggerated copyright, it could happen that indeed, Aaron Swartz’s premature death will not be a totally vain event.
A meager but better than nothing consolation, so, thank you again Giulio for this article.
Aaron will be remembered, requiescat in pace.
by Bri
The problems with copyright would not dissipate upon review. Capitalism driving force is the rewards that you’ll receive. The problem is in the motivations. They are center around self.
by Bri
I must admit thati find his death suspicious. A lengthy trial would have put the issue in the spotlight. Not only that, as public sentiment keeps evolving toward free exchange of information, his trial could have been a disaster for those looking to cash in on new research discoveries. In legal terms he wasn’t that exposed. He wasn’t anti social in fact he contributed to society. Something that is taken into account during sentencing. He didn’t do it to profit from it. The plaintiffs could have asked for punitive damages but they would tend to be low because the information wasn’t destributed. He had no previous record of criminal behavior and he wasn’t doing it to be malicious. Their have been many high profile copyright cases. Sometimes involving minors and theft of extensive copyrighted material, that often times was widely distributed for long periods of time after the theft. I’m not a lawyer but I feel he could have come through with a relatively minor sentence and even avoided jail. It would have catapulted his cause to center stage and actually helped it. Think of Nelson Mandelas case. It often brings about a higher level of celebrity. Too many issues were actually in his favor. Proper council and social support would have given him the emotional strength to endure. Hopefully his death will not have been invain and it will garner the needed attention to the copyright issue. The foundations of capitalism must change. We are all stuck together on this rock. We should realize this and work for each other rather than for ourselves
by Anon
Petition to Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck
by Giulio Prisco
Very good initiative. “A prosecutor who does not understand proportionality and who regularly uses the threat of unjust and overreaching charges to extort plea bargains from defendants regardless of their guilt is a danger to the life and liberty of anyone who might cross her path.”
by Amit
Everyone please sign.
by Bri
I agree, the district attorney did not act with an even hand. Instead of being blind and weighing on the scales of justice the repercussions of Aaron’s actions, they vilified him and tried to make an example of him. A classic witch hunt. The DA should be removed. At best Aaron’s punishment should have been in the realm of community service with little or no jail time.
by Mr.X
” The DA should be removed. At best Aaron’s punishment should have been in the realm of community service with little or no jail time.”
This! We don’t always agree (^^); but sometimes we do.
Have a nice day.