8/20/2026 at 8:25:37 PM
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.
by milkytron
8/20/2026 at 8:41:20 PM
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.
by arionhardison
8/20/2026 at 10:07:08 PM
"Maybe the real issue is selective outrage about legal injustice."The real issue is selective enforcement of the law. If it applied equally to everyone, then more people would be outraged as it affected them.
by giantg2
8/20/2026 at 11:03:27 PM
> If it applied equally to everyone, then more people would be outraged as it affected them.In order to do this you need to have laws that are designed to be reasonable for people to actually follow instead of laws that are designed to allow prosecutors to find a violation whenever they want to.
Actually enforcing them would create pressure to do that, but it would also create pressure to go back to selective enforcement when powerful people object to being subjected to the unreasonableness of existing laws.
A better solution might be to make a showing of selective enforcement a means to strike down a law. If you can show that someone else was doing the same thing without being charged then the prosecution either has to charge them too or that law is struck down and no one can be charged with it anymore.
Then instead of the incentive not to charge powerful people creating pressure for selective enforcement, the same incentive creates pressure to strike down the laws that can't reasonably be uniformly enforced.
by AnthonyMouse
8/20/2026 at 11:06:43 PM
>> A better solution might be to make a showing of selective enforcement a means to strike down a law. If you can show that someone else was doing the same thing without being charged then the prosecution either has to charge them too or that law is repealed and no one can be charged with it anymore.This is very interesting. I suspect there are a lot of unintended consequences that might follow.
by anthonyrstevens
8/20/2026 at 11:12:00 PM
If you're going to say things like that you have to give examples.by AnthonyMouse
8/21/2026 at 3:05:26 AM
This is basically asking for discovery of another case when you are being suing for one case.I think the US court system is famous for being slow. Not sure if anyone wants to make it go even slower.
by j16sdiz
8/20/2026 at 11:30:46 PM
You just created a large, TBTF corp's veto. Pass a law or have a law passed a corp TBTF doesn't want? Break it and force the Government's hand to strike it down.by salawat
8/21/2026 at 3:19:46 AM
TBTF is not a thing. It's all in your mind. Evergrande and Country Garden would've been classified TBTF in the minds of many USians, yet they failed.The dead comment below by AnthonyMouse already pointed out that even in your scenario there's no difference with the status quo anyway. It's insane that it's dead and reeks of astroturfing, as nothing about it is worth flagging.
> Isn't that the other way around? The law already can't be enforced against the TBTF corporation, so what do they care if it stays on the books? But now you can't enforce it against someone else or they can point to you not enforcing it against them.
> Except that's the point. The government would now have to do that or they lose the law. If it's a good law then they don't want to lose it, but if it's a good law then they should be enforcing it against them.
> And, of course, the correct way to deal with this is to break the TBTF corporations into many smaller pieces so that stops being a problem.
by deaux
8/21/2026 at 7:36:48 AM
Off topic:The dead comment below by AnthonyMouse already pointed out that even in your scenario there's no difference with the status quo anyway. It's insane that it's dead and reeks of astroturfing, as nothing about it is worth flagging.
If you see such a comment, you can vouch for it (small menu point next to flag) and revive it. I did that now because I agree with your assessment - of late I do this very often because even comments which quote articles/laws etc. verbatim and with a link are flagged/voted to death.
by frm88
8/21/2026 at 12:57:09 PM
I do this and did it in this case, but I've never seen it make a difference.by deaux
8/21/2026 at 12:23:35 AM
Ideally what would happen is the corporation starts having enforcement action against it and then its leadership is forced out to rescue said corporation from failing.This certainly seems better than just making TBTF (which I assume means too big to fail) entities be above the law.
by john01dav
8/20/2026 at 11:54:03 PM
Isn't that the other way around? The law already can't be enforced against the TBTF corporation, so what do they care if it stays on the books? But now you can't enforce it against someone else or they can point to you not enforcing it against them.Except that's the point. The government would now have to do that or they lose the law. If it's a good law then they don't want to lose it, but if it's a good law then they should be enforcing it against them.
And, of course, the correct way to deal with this is to break the TBTF corporations into many smaller pieces so that stops being a problem.
by AnthonyMouse
8/21/2026 at 3:00:12 AM
Congress (and state legislatures) pass laws, but don’t necessarily authorize the resources to prosecute all offenders, so prosecutors are given some latitude who to target.IANAL, but my understanding is this: Malicious prosecution is a defense. Selective enforcement is not. The difference is for judges and juries to decide.
by JackFr
8/20/2026 at 11:26:00 PM
"If you can show that someone else was doing the same thing without being charged"It's unlikely people would have enough evidence of high enough quality to make that case. The prosecution will just say the evidence isn't enough.
by giantg2
8/20/2026 at 11:57:29 PM
The prosecution can say whatever they want, but the worst of the existing laws are the one that are pretty easy to prove, and it's the court rather than the prosecution who makes the decision.You'll also get some nice incentives where the government will be arguing that a particular behavior is not a violation of the law so they don't have to charge someone they don't want to, which in turn leaves you with that precedent if the judge agrees with them and then they want to charge someone else for doing that later.
by AnthonyMouse
8/21/2026 at 12:31:27 AM
I think part of the balance is that law requires discretion because humans are not good at making deny lists which the law boils down to.by skinfaxi
8/21/2026 at 1:31:40 AM
That's just conceding that you don't actually want to have laws and really only want to punish people when you don't like them.by AnthonyMouse
8/21/2026 at 2:37:50 AM
That's pretty reductive. Or do you not see a difference for example between someone speeding to get to the hospital vs speeding to elude police after a bank robbery?by skinfaxi
8/21/2026 at 3:52:46 AM
> If you can show that someone else was doing the same thing without being charged then the prosecution either has to charge them too or that law is struck downI’ve often thought this about laws involving speed limits. When 95% of the people driving in a major downtown area are technically breaking the law, what is the purpose of the law but to target whoever you like then? Either enforce it unilaterally or come up with new laws.
by Xcelerate
8/21/2026 at 6:52:44 AM
Going after every possible case would be staggeringly expensive for marginal gain, the cost society would massively exceed the benefits. Yes the system as it is that relies on discretion, but there’s always discretion involved, and we rely on separation of powers, public pressure, etc to act to try and correct excesses. Of course that is not guaranteed to work, and won’t work perfectly, but no system will. Societies are dynamic systems.by simonh
8/21/2026 at 2:19:38 PM
It’s all well and good until the person who has that discretion comes after you personally.by forestry
8/21/2026 at 1:00:53 AM
In fact most people are okay with selectively stretching time limits and elevating a low class misdemeanor into a felony in order to prosecute someone where the party who would be the injured party said there was no injury.And lest people think this is a one way street, each side thinks the other deserves interpreting the law to “get the real baddies.”
by mc32
8/21/2026 at 4:17:48 AM
Careful there, you're attempting to introduce elements of reason and justice into law. When has that ever worked?by zombot
8/21/2026 at 2:42:20 AM
Our system has that built in. You can only be punished as to the norm and standards, findings can create precedent for other cases, etc. The workaround is they just use an 'as applied standard' so that it only can 'apply' to the one case due to that case's unique 'circumstances'. They do it all the time to prevent precedents from being set. 'As applied' rules are excluded from setting precedent.As applied needs to be changed so that it can be included in setting precedent and when considering the norms given out for punishment because right now it's highly abused to prevent establishing legal norms from judicial findings the way our system is supposed to.
by _DeadFred_
8/20/2026 at 10:49:19 PM
For the in-crowd the law protects but does not bind. For the out-crowd, the law binds but does not protect.Can’t remember where I read that but it has stuck with me.
by genghisjahn
8/20/2026 at 11:03:05 PM
“For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law.”The credo of the corrupt, courtesy of General Benavides
by pixelready
8/20/2026 at 10:55:31 PM
Maybe from here: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12517091-conservatism-consi...by edoceo
8/20/2026 at 11:25:24 PM
It originated in a comment on a blog: https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...by carbocation
8/21/2026 at 12:11:15 AM
I don't read CT anymore but it was one of the great ones.by senderista
8/21/2026 at 12:36:59 AM
That was it.by genghisjahn
8/20/2026 at 10:30:17 PM
Perfectly equal enforcement really isn't possible, but it should be the policy to enforce in proportion to active harm. The bigger the ongoing active harm, the quicker to react we should be. Some individual torrents a single movie? NBD. No matter the side of the argument you are on this should be ignored. A company intentionally throws content strikes causing legitimate harm to large numbers of content creators? That should addressed.Reality should always have a place in the law.
by jmward01
8/20/2026 at 11:14:30 PM
Finland links speeding fines to income. I'd like to see something that get far broader application. That prevents the wealthy or huge corporations from seeing lawbreaking as a business cost, without destroying a small business or individual who commits the same crime.by GolfPopper
8/21/2026 at 12:34:28 AM
In the US speeding can lead to your license being removed and then you can't drive at all. Speeding is not just a fine.by charcircuit
8/21/2026 at 12:45:09 AM
Again, this is a wealth tax. Rich get driven around and don't loose their jobs for loosing their license. Try being poor though and having this happen.Edit: should have said 'poor tax'
by jmward01
8/21/2026 at 3:39:28 AM
Being poor is no excuse for breaking the law. If you can't afford having your license revoked then don't do things that can get your license revoked.by charcircuit
8/21/2026 at 8:20:28 AM
That's a straw man though. The argument isn't that poor people should get to break traffic laws but that those who can afford to loose their license shouldn't get to break them either.by account42
8/21/2026 at 5:34:23 AM
Quick question, without looking it up, can you list the number of laws you can break which will result in your license revocation?The law is sufficiently complex and broad that there is essentially zero chance that you are not breaking a single one each day. The rich have gotten so powerful that can literally evade the consequences forever in most cases. For the rest of us, all we can hope is to avoid the scrutiny of the law.
by khriss
8/20/2026 at 11:24:49 PM
Proposals like this are how you get the billionaire paying their chauffeur's $50 fines so they can get everywhere faster while sticking some small business owner in an industry with feast or famine years with a $50,000 ticket for having a slightly miscalibrated speedometer.Creating new arbitrage opportunities benefits the powerful, not the weak.
by AnthonyMouse
8/20/2026 at 11:59:58 PM
It is a common complaint that fixed penalties are just the fee the rich get to pay to break the law. Doubly so for big corporations especially when the penalties are less than the gain they got doing the harm.It sounds like you're implying that it is impossible to create a system that makes penalties scale instead of just being a fee because the system will always be gamed.
Do you believe that or did I misunderstand you?
by collingreen
8/21/2026 at 12:46:34 AM
It's a common complaint but the complaint is ridiculous because the penalties already scale with the scope of the activity. It's typical when you sue a corporation for the penalty for willful violations to be treble damages, i.e. three times the actual damages. If you rip customers off by $10,000 then you pay $30,000. If you're huge and rip customers off by $10 billion then you pay $30 billion.Whereas the proposal is typically to make the penalties scale with entity size, which a) is actually easier to game than the scope of the harmful activity, and b) does a bunch of things that make no sense, like increasing the amount of the fine for an oil spill if the company also generates additional revenue from producing solar panels.
The reason we run into trouble here usually isn't that the penalties are wrong, it's that the enforcement is weak. If you can steal $10 billion with only a 10% chance of enforcement that requires you to give back $30 billion then your expected value is an $8 billion gain. But that has nothing to do with the scale of the business. The exact same thing happens to with a company that steals $10,000 with only a 10% chance of enforcement.
And using disproportionate penalties doesn't really fix it either, because then they just roll the dice and file for bankruptcy if they encounter enforcement. You can't fine them more money than they actually have. When the rate of enforcement is too low, that isn't enough to make them comply, because a small chance of -100% is profitable against a large chance of +50%. Whereas if enforcement is consistent then disproportionate penalties aren't even necessary.
by AnthonyMouse
8/21/2026 at 8:14:22 AM
Penalties are not just to compensate for the harm done but also to incentivize against doing the harm in the first place. This only works if penalties * p(getting convicted) > profit. p(getting convicted) very much depends no the size of the entity so penalties need to be increased accordingly to attain the same deterrent effect.Being able to game a naive implementation of such scaling is not an argument for not scaling penalties but for designing the concrete implementation to be hard to game and/or applying even higher penalties when someone has been found to try to game the system - which is something that should be done more in general.
We can absolutely make it so that people hiring private chauffeurs share in the liability for breaking traffic laws just like we can absolutely hold CEOs liable for illegal activities done by employees under their purview.
by account42
8/21/2026 at 2:14:11 AM
So then you outlaw that, too. It is an idea with merit to be refined not rejected outright because you found the one flaw. Under the current system, the wealthy can speed themsleves and pay small fines.by Hnrobert42
8/21/2026 at 12:00:02 AM
This isn't arbitrage, it's looking for loopholes.Presumably your "feast or famine" business owner did the responsible thing with leveling their income, no? They didn't? Oh, why would that be the public's concern. That would level out in their feasting years, after all (assuming you're using the previous year's taxable income, or an average income over the previous three years or so).
The chauffeur is subject to the rules around their CDL or similar, or is in service of their employer. When driving a work vehicle, my fines are already directed at my employer.
It blows my mind how much we are willing to bend over backwards to ensure the powerful won't suffer a moment's inconvenience in this country.
by FireBeyond
8/21/2026 at 1:19:37 AM
> This isn't arbitrage, it's looking for loopholes."Have someone who pays the lower amount do the thing" is precisely arbitrage.
> That would level out in their feasting years, after all (assuming you're using the previous year's taxable income, or an average income over the previous three years or so).
Their income for the last three years was $10k, $10k and $1M. Their 20 year average is $80k but the three year average is $340k. So now you're increasing their exposure even more -- before they get a hugely disproportionate fine if it happens to be in the one year they made $1M. Now they still get a disproportionate fine but are exposed to it for three times as long.
> The chauffeur is subject to the rules around their CDL or similar, or is in service of their employer. When driving a work vehicle, my fines are already directed at my employer.
Michael Dell hails a cab and then the driver gets a speeding ticket. No evidence driver had any idea of his passenger's net worth; no evidence the passenger ever requested exceeding the speed limit and couldn't see the speedometer from the back seat. Is this a billion dollar fine? Who pays it, the person who has nothing like a billion dollars or the person who did nothing wrong?
It's clearly unreasonable to impose the fine in that case, but it's also easy to use it for arbitrage if you don't.
> It blows my mind how much we are willing to bend over backwards to ensure the powerful won't suffer a moment's inconvenience in this country.
Maybe we should have a preference for rules that are effective rather than performative.
by AnthonyMouse
8/21/2026 at 9:24:58 AM
So long story short: adapt that rule so the beneficiary of the fraudulent service pays the bill. There, I fixed it.by soco
8/21/2026 at 12:18:25 AM
"John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."Not quite how he phrased it, but close. Original is here: https://wist.info/steinbeck-john/46582/
by GolfPopper
8/21/2026 at 1:04:22 AM
Ok, how did it work our for countries where it did took root?by geodel
8/21/2026 at 1:46:33 AM
Good enough, France, the Nordics and many other countries besides have done well.by jacquesm
8/21/2026 at 11:29:46 AM
"Done well", but not as good as the US. [depending on which stats you cherry-pick]The US was always about dreamers taking big risks for big rewards. There are a lot of things that can be fixed that don't remove that ceiling that other countries have.
by mlrtime
8/21/2026 at 5:18:11 AM
>...Not quite how he phrased it, but close.The "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" quote is from Ronald Wright. The Steinbeck quote is actually very different than the Ronald Wright quote.
The actual quote is mocking wealthy armchair leftists rather than explaining why the American working class rejected socialism:
>>Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: “After the revolution even we will have more, won’t we, dear?” Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picnickers on her property. ...
by opo
8/21/2026 at 1:32:48 AM
Even flat-out rejecting the desire to charge them more wouldn't be bending over backwards for them. It would simply be charging them based on harm done rather than what affects them.And the post you're responding to is making a much less extreme position, that it's hard to scale the fine properly.
by Dylan16807
8/21/2026 at 2:40:31 AM
With laws, you generally want to charge and cover for the harm done, but also to disincentivise law breaking.For instance, someone might be significantly speeding for 10 years, and never hurting anyone or causing any harm (financial or otherwise). Should they pay nothing?
Or should we distribute harm from all speeders (accidents, injuries and deaths) to everyone speeding?
But does a fixed fee speeding ticket disincentivise behaviour that is known to cause harm statistically?
by necovek
8/21/2026 at 4:30:31 AM
> Or should we distribute harm from all speeders (accidents, injuries and deaths) to everyone speeding?Yes, that one. Increasing everyone's risk is harm, sorry if I wasn't clear about that part.
> But does a fixed fee speeding ticket disincentivise behaviour that is known to cause harm statistically?
The line of thought here is: Does it matter? If the average speeder pays $2 of fines per $1 of harm, it's a net positive. Yes that does let rich people buy priority. But rich people can usually buy priority. At least they're not getting a helicopter involved.
by Dylan16807
8/21/2026 at 5:18:32 AM
I am pretty sure speeding ticket fines have never been established based on economic or emotional harm (how much does 200 lives lost cost? is it their accumulated net worth? expected earnings through what would have been left of their careers? how about lost limbs, emotional damage etc? and how can you even be sure how much has speeding and not something else mainly contributed to the harm)by necovek
8/21/2026 at 7:33:37 AM
> I am pretty sure speeding ticket fines have never been established based on economic or emotional harmProbably not, but we can look at the averages anyway.
> how much does 200 lives lost cost? is it their accumulated net worth? expected earnings through what would have been left of their careers? how about lost limbs, emotional damage etc?
200 statistical lives are worth about 2 billion dollars. That question has an easy to look up expert answer, and you don't worry about the details of each case.
> how can you even be sure how much has speeding and not something else mainly contributed to the harm
We have some useful numbers on the impact of speeding, and for something like this assume the worst plausible impact.
Edit: If there's around 1 death per hundred million vehicle miles and it's worth ten million dollars, that's ten cents of death per mile. If a quarter of deaths have speeding as a factor and we exaggerate that to 100% blame, that's 2.5 cents per mile divided by how rare speeding is. If we guess 15% of people are speeding at any moment, that's 17 cents of damage per mile. To pay double they'd need a $200 ticket every 600 miles of speeding.
by Dylan16807
8/21/2026 at 10:29:54 AM
I am not saying it's impossible to come up with numbers, but that they will be somewhat made-up.You'd also need to amortize the damages over years, and then spread it to all the speeding tickets issued.
So I'd actually simplify it: if we say $40000 billion (11k deaths annually times $2b plus non-deaths too and financial damages to cars and infrastructure) of damages amortized over 10 years and spread to 40M tickets annually in USA, that's actually around $100k average per speeding ticket.
I'd also note that we can't assume worst possible impact as there will be combined offenses too — eg. simultaneous drunk driving and speeding — and this means that some damages need to be covered by drunk driving ticket instead :)
Edit: update numbers to reflect annual deaths attributed to speeding in US.
by necovek
8/21/2026 at 12:32:05 AM
Perfect may not be possible but with AI society will be able to scale law enforcement to way more than what a few individual officers can handle.by charcircuit
8/21/2026 at 2:39:02 AM
And it will still have the amazing characteristics we see today.by chanux
8/20/2026 at 11:30:35 PM
[dead]by opello
8/21/2026 at 5:05:44 AM
The violation of the law as practiced is that a Little Person did this and threatened a Player's profits. A Player can do what they like to another and form some kind of mutually beneficial arrangement afterward... but Schwartz did not have enough commas in his bank account to be allowed to dabble, not a single investor behind him. Nor was his goal the overriding morally correct goal of maximizing social stratification through profit seeking. Knocking down paywalls is dead weight loss, not market predation. He had to go. He had to be made an example of. For the system, this was personal.by mapt
8/21/2026 at 2:38:23 AM
It all started going downhill once they started calling corporations "legal persons" and gave them all the same right as people, but without all of the constraints associated with having a body.A corporation has more legal rights than a person if you think about it; no wonder they took over. A corporation can't go to jail, doesn't need a visa to work in a foreign country.
Imagine if the legal system took jail off the table and people could move to any country without a visa; only fines... We'd be overrun by criminals. They'd be able to monetize these two facts easily; they'd make more than enough money from criminal activity to cover all the fines.
by jongjong
8/21/2026 at 3:01:25 AM
>It all started going downhill once they started calling corporations "legal persons" and gave them all the same right as people, butThe 1860s?
Or do you meant he royal charter companies from centuries prior?
This goes back so far that you can't even understand it.
>A corporation has more legal rights than a person if you think about it; no wonder they took over. A corporation can't
Corporations only exist because your government (especially if you live in Delaware) blesses them into existence. The moment that courts and government offices stopped recognizing their existence, they'd wither away like a bad dream on a sunny morning. You get that right? And yet you've never once questioned what allows them to exist. You've never challenged the government's power to create them in this manner. It'd be one thing if you decided that they should exist, and you explicitly granted your government the power to create them...
But everyone here behaves as if they were some inevitable law of physics and there's nothing to be done. Or maybe, secretly, you love corporations, and just hope that your political faction will somehow manage to wrest control and use them to your own ends. Sometimes that's what it feels like.
by NoMoreNicksLeft
8/21/2026 at 12:11:29 AM
[flagged]by unpop
8/21/2026 at 12:38:16 AM
The point here is that as you stated: "you still do not understand". For those of us that have been under the thumb of the judicial system it can feel like the world is on you. We have no idea of his mental state, we have no idea of the nuance or motivation but what I do think we know is that the actions of the state here far exceeded any interpretation of what would be deemed an appropriate punishment for the said "crime" committed. What we do understand is that if he hand not been attacked by an over-zealous prosecutor there is a far greater probability he would have been able to handle the situation in a logical manner and maybe even still be here today to defend himself.We are not asserting that any specific outcome is empirically superior to another just that given the facts of the case, it was not adjudicated fairy given what we know of similar cases.
by arionhardison
8/21/2026 at 2:48:33 AM
Yes. 100%, the idea that we are all equal under the law is a joke.And the worst part is that it looks that way from the perspective of the people at the top. You only understand that it's not the case if you are not among the privileged few.
So your point about "We have no idea of his mental state" is highly pertinent. I also would emphasize that he was a highly rational guy and his mental state was likely a rational consequence of his environment.
by jongjong
8/21/2026 at 12:47:04 AM
[flagged]by unpop
8/21/2026 at 1:36:10 AM
You are a coward; which is why you cannot use your name or identity and only feel comfortable insulting people online because it makes you feel like a big bad keyboard warrior.I feel bad for you because not only is your argument irrational and baseless its not even entertaining. I am not one of the "thugs" that harassed him. I never met him; but I was a huge fan. I am also not employed by anyone that would participate in such things. If you had even a modicum of intelligence you would just look at my other post and easily infer as such.
I suggest you drink some water, check-in with a loved one and get some rest.
Be well.
by arionhardison
8/21/2026 at 8:42:14 AM
Commiserations on the abuse from that sockpuppet. Please don't let it dent your enthusiasm for the community: you are welcome, and i wish you long life and health.by psd1
8/21/2026 at 6:46:10 AM
.erohw toggaf ,seiceps namuh eht fo daetsni flesruoy lliK .thgin dna yad yreve nietspE yerffeJ ffo dekcus evah dluow ohw ,hsart hsirohw dassoM/AIC ekil dnuos uoY .em ton ,erohw toggaf ,flesruoy gnibircsed era uoY .srettel wef tsrif eht dnoyeb daer t'ndid Iby yourselfyoudesc
8/21/2026 at 6:35:24 AM
[dead]by uarefag
8/21/2026 at 12:18:36 AM
>How would it help the world for Aaron Swartz to download 3.5 million research and primary source PDFsKnowledge is power.
by zymhan
8/21/2026 at 12:40:40 AM
So, pay for access, or go to your local library, or browse the internet, or get free access in a similar way that Aaron Swartz did? Knowledge often requires funding to be created in the first place.by unpop
8/21/2026 at 7:10:57 AM
Why does every research team and lab use SciHub and/or Library Genesis?by DANmode
8/21/2026 at 8:03:46 AM
I mean, they don’t, exclusively, or no-one would be giving money to JSTOR. And certainly, no-one would be scanning millions of old journal articles for free.by foldr
8/21/2026 at 2:32:02 PM
Comparatively few individuals are giving money to JSTOR these days.Mostly institutions that they’ve previously captured.
by DANmode
8/21/2026 at 2:41:57 PM
I don't know where people get the idea that JSTOR is one of the bad guys. It's a non-profit that scans old journal articles that would otherwise be a huge pain to access. It costs money to do that. What specifically have they done that you disapprove of?by foldr
8/21/2026 at 8:57:40 AM
Hi @dang, the reason I've flagged this account is not this comment itself, but the extremely suspicious account with the same creation date that posted vile abuse to arionhardison.by psd1
8/21/2026 at 1:16:29 AM
How would it help the world for Aaron Swartz to download 3.5 million research and primary source PDFs?Example 1: antibiotic and antiviral production technology for developing countries. Even if we limit ourselves to out-of-patent molecules, the primary literature describing the discovery, production, modification and testing of life-saving antibiotics was, at the time of Aaron Swartz, largely hidden behind strict paywalls that typically were accessed through a university library subscription. Access to all that information allows countries and institutions with very limited resources to set up generic medical production pipelines for life-saving medications they couldn’t afford to import - or to become international market competitors to established interests.
Again, that’s just restricting the argument to out-of-patent products that can be generically manufactured with no legal issues. What about life-saving but patented products that are too expensive for poor countries and regions to buy on the open market? Does that added-value IP charge justify unnecessary deaths in such cases?
And about that IP - the vast majority of paywalled research literature was produced with taxpayer funds delivered via government funding agencies, and there’s a very good legal argument that this alone puts it into the public domain. If private companies want to set up Bell Labs 2.0 with no government funding and patent everything they discover, that’s their own capex risk, but just hovering around and scooping up publicly funded discoveries via exclusive licensing deals with universities and researchers makes no sense - instead, patents should be available to any citizen of the government that put up the funds, and research papers should be available to anyone.
As far as the argument that widespread distribution of the knowledge to produce antibiotic, antiviral, and other complex biomolecular products represents a biological weapons risk? Notably that’s why no LLM provider service will help develop technical protocols for antibiotics production, or insulin, or anything similar - claimed dual-use risk fears. This conveniently slows the rise of legitimate independent competition in the pharmaceutical sector, which helps if the goal is maximizing profit margins via monopoly power. Bioweapons production realistically requires nation-state or large-corporation scale resources, and the solution is not obfuscation of basic knowledge but rather international treaties, select agent rules, laboratory operation and equipment purchase licensing requirements, etc.
That’s just one sector - there are at least a dozen other examples besides biomolecular drugs of ‘how it would help the world’ to make all published research literature available to anyone with a network connection, ask any LLM to enumerate them.
by photochemsyn
8/21/2026 at 6:39:02 AM
"It would help the world if we force candy makers to give out candy for free!""Give them money in return for the candy such that they can sustain the work? No way, easier to enslave them and work them to death without compensation."
"What do you mean that there is no one interested in candy making????? Time to enslave some randos and force them to figure out how to make candy. And then repeat enslavement once they have been worked to death."
by uarefag
8/20/2026 at 10:18:26 PM
I can't believe his lawyer didn't explain all of that to him? An important role for an attorney in this situation is as a counselor, to explain the actual reality and the possibilities.by cortesoft
8/20/2026 at 10:39:54 PM
I have had the misfortune of hiring many attorneys for a variety of different legal issues. They’re almost always fucking useless.by irishcoffee
8/21/2026 at 8:32:36 AM
And that's another advantage corporations have over individuals. If you break the law at scale you can afford to retain lawyers and evaluate them based on past performance.by account42
8/20/2026 at 11:27:34 PM
The trouble with lawyers is that their quality varies tremendously but the client has very little ability to tell the difference until after it's too late.In theory this is why they have to be licensed but in practice that consistently leads to the profession capturing the licensing board and using it for protecting the providers rather than the customers.
by AnthonyMouse
8/20/2026 at 11:37:55 PM
Whoever can create an objective way to determine the quality of legal representation is onto a real winner.I find it near impossible, even as someone with a lot of legal knowledge, to tell whether a lawyer I hire is going to advocate zealously and correctly and comprehensively on my part once I hand over my retainer. They all talk a great game.
by qingcharles
8/21/2026 at 10:32:02 AM
Here in the UK we have "Duty Solicitors", who are on-call in the police station should you need them.Problem is, the pay out from the government for their services is atrocious, so not many are willing to go onto the list. And the ones who are, aren't the good ones.
by marysol5
8/21/2026 at 10:31:13 AM
I can attest to this.My duty solicitor on the day of my arrest kept making comment that he believed I committed the accused offence (I didn't). Mostly because he didn't understand it it, so that's proof enough it seems.
He then sent me a letter outlining what he understood, which outright stated he believed I did it (again, I didn't). Dropped him like a hot stone when I got charged, and paid for my own. Who after some research was actually half-good.
Then the barrister I had at trial said "You'll likely go down, the judge you have is a bastard, and has sent a lot down", great..
And now when I'm trying to get some reconciliation for all this nonsense. The legal firm I hired to sue, are ignoring my instructions and went for something entirely different and offering a whopping £1000 compensation.
My legal costs alone were many times that
by marysol5
8/21/2026 at 10:27:28 AM
Not all legal professionals are good, and not all are even working in the interests of their clients.by marysol5
8/20/2026 at 11:04:16 PM
The real issue is that in the US, everything is for sale.by mmorriso
8/20/2026 at 11:07:49 PM
Humans have incentives everywhere. Its not quite the same.I dont think anyone bought the judge or prosecutor for Aaron
by s1artibartfast
8/20/2026 at 11:17:49 PM
My implication wasn't that there'd be "low level" corruption of that nature, but that there's "high level" corruption in both instances; The direction to prosecute Aaron Swartz, and not investigate Meta, are both driven by an interest of the State to protect large enterprises, rather than citizens.If we consider campaign financing and lobbying, I don't think it's a stretch to believe that almost any outcome can be bought in the US if there's enough money involved.
by mmorriso
8/20/2026 at 10:51:04 PM
the sentences that US courts dream up around digital offences are absolutely obscene and seem to only exist as a means of coercion. However because they're still technically real and it feels disgusting.by Quarrelsome
8/20/2026 at 11:02:01 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_v._...The prosecution offered 6 months in low security in a plea deal.
He had been mass downloading and evading them at MIT for months until he had MIT and FBI involved and was finally caught on camera.
I bring this up because A. maximum exposure to charges are rarely applied but makes great headlines for outrage and B. the plea deal seems reasonable to someone who was unreasonably persistent in the details of the case.
by 9x39
8/20/2026 at 11:38:47 PM
> The prosecution offered 6 months in low security in a plea deal.That's the racket. Getting any jailtime for "mass downloading" is a severe penalty, but that gets turned into the carrot because the stick is so unreasonably disproportionate.
by AnthonyMouse
8/21/2026 at 12:13:04 AM
> turned into the carrot because the stick is so unreasonably disproportionate.John Kiriakou talks often about his own lawyers showing up at his house to convince him to take the deal. And then ending up in a higher security prison.
https://youtu.be/b-wc8tRNoJk?t=980 Has some context around what went down with him going to jail in case one is unaware.
by zer00eyz
8/20/2026 at 11:10:39 PM
> maximum exposure to charges are rarely appliedand if you pay up to the mafia then they generally don't kill your relatives, but they still threaten to kill your relatives. I feel like they're only on the book as a means of intimidation. It doesn't feel like a healthy justice system, especially given its a non-violent crime in this case.
If he was performing digital crimes to pay for human trafficking then I'd get it, but that's far from the case.
by Quarrelsome
8/20/2026 at 11:19:16 PM
You keep shifting the goal posts...He did something illegal, repeatedly, he got caught, he got offered a lenient plea deal of a few months. Those are the facts.
Yet somehow y'all turn it into: he was harassed, his family's life was threatened, he was going to get life in prison.
by gertop
8/20/2026 at 11:35:21 PM
I think you're being hysterical. Getting threatened for 35 years in jail is absurd for the crime. Stating "oh well it would never have actually _been_ 35 years" is akin to pretending to punch someone and stopping just before you hit them and then mocking them for flinching.> I wasn't _actually_ going to hit you, quit being a baby.
Which is why its actually illegal to do that to people in a lot of places.
My issue is that the sentence is artificial and used for intimidation as opposed to being a rational basis for a justice system. Hence the mafia analogy.
Imagine if the US had a maximum sentence of 35 years for mere possession of a firearm but in practice, it would only be used in very unlikely conditions. It wouldn't last a minute. It's only allowed to be like this because nobody cares about tech.
by Quarrelsome
8/21/2026 at 12:49:22 AM
> Imagine if the US had a maximum sentence of 35 years for mere possession of a firearm but in practice, it would only be used in very unlikely conditions. It wouldn't last a minute. It's only allowed to be like this because nobody cares about tech.This is effectively how all federal sentencing and reporting about that sentencing works, all the time. A lawyer blogger Popehat has talked about this for years[1]. Headlines pull add up all charges and the maximum statutory sentences for those and report it as if that's even remotely close to a likely outcome and it's not. In fact, Popehat actually wrote about that as it applied to Swartz in the aftermath of his suicide[2].
If you read about the Swartz prosecution, you saw people decrying the fact
that he was facing 35 years in prison. That's more than rapists and murders
serve, they say. But they are talking about the maximum possible sentences,
not any sentence he was remotely likely to get. Recently in the context of
another case I explained how federal sentencing works, and how it's driven by
an arcane set of rules producing a recommendation that federal judges often
follow — rules that on most occasions produce a result well below the
maximum possible sentence.
[1]: https://www.popehat.com/p/beware-the-flood-of-trump-sentenci...
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150604204913/http://www.popeha...
by tpmoney
8/20/2026 at 11:30:51 PM
> He did something illegalRead the book Three Felonies A Day. The law is so bloated now that we all do illegal things all the time, we can't help it.
What Swartz actually did was to download copies of scientific papers that should be in the public domain to begin with, because we paid for the research already with our tax money. The fact that such information is considered "proprietary" and JSTOR and other companies are able to keep it locked behind paywalls is an outrage.
Further, after Swartz returned all the material he had downloaded and agreed not to do it again, both JSTOR and MIT said they were satisfied and no further action was needed (though JSTOR was more emphatic about it than MIT was). Which, combined with the above, should have ended the case then and there.
by pdonis
8/20/2026 at 11:36:11 PM
> Swartz actually did was to download copies of scientific papersThat's the root, but I think what Swartz actually did was anger someone at MIT, who called the Secret Service. The federal involvement persisted even after JSTOR and the state quit, and they had him served on a plate with MIT's help.
You can set a surprising amount of government force in action with a concerned phone call, as it turns out.
by 9x39
8/20/2026 at 11:54:57 PM
> I think what Swartz actually did was anger someone at MIT, who called the Secret Service.MIT was concerned that someone (they didn't know who it was at the time--in fact IIRC they didn't find out until the police told them after they caught Swartz) was using their network in a suspicious way. I don't know that anyone was "angered".
> You can set a surprising amount of government force in action with a concerned phone call, as it turns out.
I don't think the people at MIT who called in the police (and they were, IIRC, fairly low level people) had any idea what a shitstorm they were going to unleash. Nor do I think the (higher-level, but still IIRC not at the level of the top MIT administration) people at MIT who ended up interacting with the Federal prosecutor thought through what was actually going on as they should have, or had the issue considered by the MIT administration as a whole as it should have been.
by pdonis
8/21/2026 at 12:08:42 AM
MIT evidently added a camera. Later that day, the MIT police made their first contact with him.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_v._...
"When it was discovered, a video camera was placed in the room to record Swartz; his computer was left untouched. The recording was stopped once Swartz was identified,"
IME, months-long internal investigations in an org with Secret Service involvement would be unlikely to escape senior management, but I'm just speculating and only have the same info as everyone else. You might be right.
by 9x39
8/21/2026 at 10:20:41 AM
If they were even slightly concerned that the scope went beyond what they were aware of with JSTOR, they would've either immediately contacted police or disconnected the laptop. The timeline in the report outlines that they discovered the laptop at 8am, and were in internal communications with their bosses and MIT's lawyers before someone finally contacted police at 9:45am.They knew what was going on before they found the laptop. They had been briefed by someone at MIT who was in contact with JSTOR. I suspect that everyone on the networking staff (and possibly most of the university) knew of the JSTOR downloading situation after the second incident in October. JSTOR had blocked MIT for 3 days, and that must have caught people's attention.
Once they found the laptop, they involved police despite knowing to a virtual certainty that the problem with the laptop was that it was scraping JSTOR, again. They didn't know yet that it was Aaron, but they would've known it would turn out to be someone ideologically just like him.
There was nothing suspicious about it. It was simply jeopardizing MIT's contract with JSTOR. The use of a data closet like that was very bad manners.
by harshreality
8/21/2026 at 12:44:14 AM
I don't think the issue is the time in prison.I think it is the criminal record. Other places in the world, once you've served your time you can often go right back to living. Not that it is easy but it doesn't hang over you.
In the US, once you have a criminal record - any criminal record - there are flow on effects that keep fucking with you for life.
by _carbyau_
8/21/2026 at 10:34:02 AM
He'd been caught once already, then continued and went around ever barrier they put in place to try and stop him.by marysol5
8/21/2026 at 10:33:32 AM
Not in this case, also why because it's "digital" does it change anything.SWATing is "digital" but leads to very real death
by marysol5
8/20/2026 at 9:28:38 PM
> 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 ilkReminds me of Marx's 1870 letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt:
Every industrial & commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps ... The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life ... regards himself as a member of the ruling nation & consequently becomes a tool of the English [ruling class] against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination [over his own self]. He cherishes religious, social, & national prejudices against the Irish worker ...
The Irishman ... sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.
This antagonism is artificially kept alive & intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power.
... The antagonism between Englishmen & Irishmen ... enables the governments of [the US & England], whenever they think fit, to break the edge off the social conflict by their mutual bullying, and, in case of need, by war between the two countries.
by ignoramous
8/20/2026 at 10:23:03 PM
The exact same mechanism is used to keep poor white Americans voting Republican: even if they're poor, they see themselves as the white ruling class over black and Hispanic people, despite the fact that they themselves are kept poor by the real ruling class.by mcv
8/20/2026 at 11:18:00 PM
The con is largely directed at the religious right, of which, poorer whites make up the largest cohort. That's how they convinced people directly targeted by the bigotry to still vote for them.by kevin_thibedeau
8/20/2026 at 11:49:11 PM
You're missing the symmetry. The two party system is a false dichotomy. The enemy is not the other party, it's the system that causes there to be only two alternatives that are both captured by mostly the same interests. Each party convinces half the population that the other is trying to destroy them so that their votes cancel out.And then Marx calls this a criticism of "capitalism" even though it's fundamentally a generic criticism of what happens when you centralize political power and then allow special interests to divide people into camps.
by AnthonyMouse
8/21/2026 at 7:10:42 AM
The two party system is absolutely part of the problem, but there's also definitely the culture war being waged to distract people from the class war that's being waged against them. But the two-party system definitely enables that, making it easier to win by discrediting the other, because there only is one other.by mcv
8/21/2026 at 8:43:22 AM
And which party started the culture war? By definition it's not the conservatives.by account42
8/21/2026 at 9:01:23 AM
What do you mean "by definition"? They do nothing else. Against transgenders, against gay people, against foreigners, against hippies, against black people; it goes back a long time, and always to recruit the support of poor white people by giving them a sense of superiority over an even more oppressed group. Culture war is their primary weapon to distract from the class war they're also waging.by mcv
8/21/2026 at 9:14:15 AM
Continually inventing new categories of "opressed" people and then demanding that others grant them special protections is exactly how you start a culture war.by account42
8/21/2026 at 9:15:48 AM
Those people were always there. Just stop oppressing them. They don't need "special protections", just the same rights as everybody else. Why is it so important to have an oppressed class?by mcv
8/21/2026 at 10:27:45 AM
You can't just call everything oppression to force people to go along with your views. And no, progressives haven't wanted the same rights for everyone for decades. The spiel has been all about giving them more rights to compensate for perceived (often hereditary) oppression for too long that anyone can claim that with a straight face.by account42
8/21/2026 at 11:05:43 AM
I don't call everything oppression, I only call oppression oppression. Slavery was oppression. Jim Crow was oppression. Discrimination against Irish, Italians, Hispanics and black people was and is oppression. Denying people the right to be who they are, restricting their rights based on who they are, denying them rights that other people enjoy, is oppression.The issue is that conservatives have always tried to force people to go along with their views, and reacted with oppression and violence towards anyone who didn't fit into their straightjacket.
> progressives haven't wanted the same rights for everyone for decades
It's been a developing journey. It started with rights for people who weren't noble born, then men who weren't rich, then women and ethnic minorities, then gay people, then transgender people. It's a gradual expansion of rights until everybody is able to enjoy the same rights.
by mcv
8/20/2026 at 9:07:54 PM
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 youth services facilities such horrible places to be.by spwa4
8/20/2026 at 10:46:33 PM
Remember it was MIT that dobbed him in.MIT then helped the criminal prosecution even after JSTOR settled with him.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/mit-aarons-swartz-case...
by RachelF
8/21/2026 at 1:53:06 AM
And whitewashed their own involvement.https://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.p...
by jacquesm
8/21/2026 at 12:06:37 AM
I mean he was arrested initially not for the material downloaded but the fact that he, not an MIT student, was found hiding in a facilities closet with his laptop hooked into the network.I get that MIT's police were meant to join him in a chorus of "Information wants to be free", but let's not act like it's unreasonable to want someone arrested or prosecuted who was not authorized to be in an equipment closet with their computer wired into a switch.
by FireBeyond
8/20/2026 at 8:36:01 PM
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.
by bigfatkitten
8/20/2026 at 9:00:39 PM
the blood of a prodigy as status symbol make-upby DoctorOetker
8/20/2026 at 9:28:43 PM
How does prosecuting someone who downloaded articles in a broom closet help her career advancement?by IncreasePosts
8/20/2026 at 9:41:56 PM
I suppose in pleasing the right people with money and power.by lukan
8/20/2026 at 9:42:30 PM
prosecutors with higher conviction rates are typically viewed more favorably than prosecutors with lower conviction rates.by john_strinlai
8/20/2026 at 10:51:19 PM
She could have just never even brought the prosecution in the first place.by IncreasePosts
8/20/2026 at 10:53:01 PM
im not saying she did the right thing, im just answering the question of "how does prosecuting someone help her career advancement".by john_strinlai
8/21/2026 at 1:29:47 AM
The point is the prosecution's case was ultra weak. He rejected a 6 month plea deal because they were confident they would win in court. That's not the kind of case you bring to get ahead in your careerby IncreasePosts
8/20/2026 at 9:40:14 PM
Easy notch on her belt.by bitwize
8/20/2026 at 10:52:03 PM
Aarons lawyers expected an acquittal which is why he rejected the plea deal of 6 monthsby IncreasePosts
8/20/2026 at 9:43:00 PM
"look at me, I'm serving the interests of the incumbent education and medical industries by prosecuting the shit out of someone who dared give them the bird, now donate to my campaign".by cucumber3732842
8/21/2026 at 6:02:05 AM
This is the (John Perkin's coined term) "Corporatocracy" at work.If you want to know how and why it is like this, read Perkin's books (atm I'm reading "The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"). It's why Meta will not get sued but Aaron was, and it is why ships are now lining up in front of the Panama canal paying as much as 400k for a crossing with little of that wealth making it to the people of Panama.
by teekert
8/20/2026 at 11:28:32 PM
In many cases it's "all about the money" (and the lawyers). Take the case of Billionaire hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors who was famously pursued by federal prosecutors as their ultimate "white whale" in a massive insider trading probe. Though his firm pleaded guilty and paid a record $1.8 billion fine, Cohen himself was never criminally charged or convicted. Yet two lower underlings were convicted and served time (the 2 fall guys).An "Army of lawyers", no less than 6 top lawyers appeared in the courtroom that day representing Cohen (he did not appear), as a "shot across the bow" message to the US Government that Cohen was prepared to spend a vast sum of his wealth to defend himself and make it a huge undertaking for the government if they wished to proceed.
Lawyers present for Cohen:
Peter Nussbaum: SAC Capital's General Counsel, who entered the plea.
Theodore "Ted" Wells Jr.: Renowned partner from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.
Martin Klotz: Partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Cohen's personal attorney.
Michael Schachter, Daniel Kramer, and Michael Gertzman: Senior litigation partners assisting the defense.
Because the defense consisted of prominent partners from multiple top-tier firms simultaneously, analysts famously calculated that the collective group was costing SAC Capital roughly $10,000 an hour (mere pocket change for a successful hedge fund guy).
by DivingForGold
8/21/2026 at 8:41:19 AM
> Steven A. CohenOwner of the New York Mets now, by the way, which maybe non-sports following readers will be happy to hear remain a boondoggle. He tried very hard to spend his way to glory, leading the league in payroll at the beginning of the 2025 season, only to crash and burn and end up in last place this season.
by nonameiguess
8/20/2026 at 11:31:38 PM
That’s infuriating.by drivebyhooting
8/21/2026 at 1:28:45 AM
Yes, it's also solvable; the crux of the issue is that these people have made it problematic to even discuss any solutions that do not serve their personal, financial and nationalist interest.All and any fact should be up for discussion. For example, the black community; my community has a serious problem with violence that has caused increased police presence as it spilled out and impacted other communities. We can discuss the why but the fact exist and its up for discussion.
All discussion of the conditions which allow situations like this to occur are shut down and labeled an ism, ist etc...
by arionhardison
8/21/2026 at 2:12:12 AM
Meta's bots are spectatularly awful, and if your organisation needs to use facebook advertising, they're also unblockable. There are ways around it that doesn't exactly block them but does clearly communicate they should GTFO, but it just shows you what an awful company Meta is.by singingfish
8/20/2026 at 9:57:00 PM
JSTOR dropped civil litigation only after getting about $25k in the settlement from him.by jampekka
8/20/2026 at 10:02:05 PM
It was Carmen Ortiz, not abstract "US Government".by stackedinserter
8/21/2026 at 2:40:40 AM
I believe JSTOR did, and then backed off after public outcry. JSTOR is not an admirable operation, for this and many other reasons.by talon8635
8/21/2026 at 9:31:40 AM
This is an argument against capitalism.Under capitalism money and power are inextricably linked. Your influence in a democracy is tied directly to your access to capital.
This is why expensive elections are are desire of those funding Super-pacs. The more elections cost, the fewer people decide them.
Aaron didn’t matter because he was poor. Had he been named Musk, or Zuckerberg, he would suffer the consequences they do when they break the law which is zero.
This is how capitalism is supposed to work and does.
You can’t have capitalism is being rich doesn’t confer privilege in every area including the legal system. It’s why American oligarch can safely “ask forgiveness not permission”. The risk to them personally is nil.
by MrSkelter
8/20/2026 at 11:59:21 PM
the government is made up of the people. the people are mostly greedy because our culture worships wealth. broken people, broken culture, broken government.by frogperson
8/21/2026 at 4:05:55 AM
He was done in by a career prosecutor who just wanted to use him as a stepping stone in their path. They had little or no humanity.by orochimaaru
8/20/2026 at 11:41:47 PM
Luigi Mangioneby Varelion
8/20/2026 at 10:32:09 PM
Who was it ? The ^US government^ .. or for that matter, any government or corporation doesn't pursue litigation. It is humans who make this decision (at least for now ...).Who in the government bureaucracy made the decision and followed through? It's sad that we've become accustomed to accept governments/corporations as entities by themselves when they clearly aren't.
by devnonymous
8/20/2026 at 10:34:51 PM
Is that not how it always goes? Robbing a bank got you in jail a lot longer than assaulting a woman.by PearlRiver
8/20/2026 at 10:14:51 PM
I think the root problem is Corporations being Legal Persons.An alternative would be the CEO to be the “legal person” of each Corp. and be the one against all legal actions should be targeted.
In that case it would Zack himself the one facing any legal action.
A Corp’s actions result to the death of a person. CEO should be trialed as if they were the one driving the car.
by noncoml
8/21/2026 at 12:37:08 AM
The issue is limited liability. I don't think companies should shield stockholder, shareholders, or owners from any liabilityby calvinmorrison
8/21/2026 at 12:53:54 AM
While this sounds good in theory, I suspect the actual result would be much worse for justice in most cases. With the corporation acting as its own legal entity, if you are wronged, you sue and obtain justice from the corporation. If instead you needed to sue each and every shareholder to obtain their share of the liabilities, you'd likely spend many more years in court as each individual owner argues why they aren't personally liable for the given act because they didn't have knowledge, or control over the specific chain of events that caused you harm, and the courts have to sort out each individual case.by tpmoney
8/21/2026 at 3:17:00 AM
I think you missed the point: you can still take damages from the corporation, but if corporation cannot provide them (bankrupcy), owners are held liable for them instead. This is how non-LLC companies are treated.The instrument of Limited Liability exists to encourage business formation and risk taking for small businesses to kick off.
The way large corporations and rich individuals would structure their projects into a number of corporation-owned LLCs is an obvious gap being addressed in law systems throughout the world.
by necovek
8/20/2026 at 10:14:22 PM
>Basically, being a rich public company provides legal advantages when the US government has similar goals.This has always been the case. It's why lots of us who came up in the 80s and 90s embraced the "fuck corporations" and "information wants to be free" zeitgeist of the times.
It's also why the corporate bootlicking on this site is so grating at times. IDK, maybe I'm the only one but it seems like the veneer has worn off and over the last couple years I've realized HN is "special", not because of the reasons its proponents will recite but because it's where you come to post about the interesting technical challenges you solved while designing a system that goes down to the corner store and buys Hitler a pack of his favorite smokes and everyone laps that up.
by stackghost
8/20/2026 at 9:25:56 PM
I feel like you just made the opposite case you actually madeby inquirerGeneral
8/20/2026 at 10:43:53 PM
[flagged]by throwaway563262
8/20/2026 at 9:26:03 PM
Yes, you know why - it had nothing to do with copyright infringement - he was going to win the fight to get money out of politics.by andy_ppp