Hal Abelson (L), Eric Salzman, and Larry Lessig (R). Photo by David Kindler, Dec. 8, 2012.
Prof. Abelson, the Creative Commons founder and MIT computer scientist chosen to investigate MIT's role in Aaron Swartz's prosecution, has made a statement about his investigation here. Interestingly, he says this:
I expect to find that every person acted in accordance with MIT policy. More than that: they acted in the belief that their actions were legally and ethically proper.
Well, like Lessig at Harvard, Abelson likely doesn't want to lose his position over this and so perhaps he is setting the stage for simply finding "tragedy" -- human error, lapses in judgement, negligence that wasn't malicious -- or simply beliefs that people were doing right that they could only see as "wrong" in retrospect.
It really is important what he ends up saying, and whether he exonerates MIT or condemns it. I hope it's the former, and that the extremists are put down.
But...He was obviously chosen not due to his impartiality, but due to his credibility/trust factor for the baying mob who want blood over this death -- the extreme hacker community.
Just last month as we can see from the photo above, he was at a party with Lawrence Lessig (the 10th anniversary of CC). Lessig is the professor whom I blame for Swartz's death -- that is, after Swartz himself who bears the lion's share of blame for his death. I certainly don't blame MIT or prosecutors who did their job; I blame professorial overreach, mentoring child geniuses and siccing them at the anti-copyright cause and then stepping back when they go too far.
Here's my response, in the moderation queue as it always is at these "open source" cultists' websites:
Prof. Abelson,
While I understand the reasons for the MIT president selecting you for this role when he is facing a baying mob of hackers, relatives and media, it must be said that despite your computer science credentials, you are not a credible person for this investigation.
That's because you are a founder of Creative Commons, and therefore a believer in decoupling commerce from copying and discouraging payment online for content -- in a word, a copyleftist. That's a conflict of interest because you will be supportive of what Swartz did as a hacker to smash the ability of JSTOR and MIT to charge for content or create walled gardens for content.
It was to pursue his mentor Lessig's obvious goal of removing commercial enterprise from knowledge transfer and indeed all digital content that Swartz made a deliberate act, a "propaganda of the deed" abusing MIT's servers.
This tragedy is too big and has too many public policy consequences not only for MIT but US law in general that you should have a whole commission, of both professors and lawyers, and not just hackers and copyleftists, but those also devoted to the integrity of the Internet for a variety of purposes outside the open source cult. It should be more impartial and credible than it is now.
http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state
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The breathless hacker supporter Declan McCullough has reported that this investigation should be out in "a few weeks," and once again fails to mention the six-month plea bargain and other obvious aspects of the case.
And just in case I'm erased there:
Declan,
You are always so incomplete and tendentious in your reporting of this story.
Once again, you failed to mention the six-month plea bargain offered by Ortiz before Swartz's death, and Ortiz's public statement after his death that reiterated it and noted his lawyer was free to seek probation. Name one case of a hacker who has gotten anything remotely like 35 years or even 7 years in America. They get 1-2 at the most; may get off.
You fail to know that Abelson is hardly a credible investigator because he's a founder of Creative Commons and avid supporter of the copyleftist cause. Maybe MIT thinks they can fend off criticism from the rabidly extreme hacking community inside and outside of MIT, but for the larger public, Abelson is not credible. If it is that serious, there should be a panel that has various views, of lawyers as well as computer scientists.
The questions invited aren't "from the public" as the public cannot comment there, but only of the MIT community.
I don't see that MIT is fairly characterized as "acting as prosecutors". Aaron broke into their servers disguising his identity and using a circumvention script and took 4 million files. It doesn't matter what JSTOR says or whether JSTOR thinks it wasn't harmed now, under pressure from the mob, of course. MIT has a right to protect its servers. It has a reputation already for being open and lax and catering to the hacking egos. So they draw limits and they drew them there, and that's okay. They suffered damage and had to clean up. And they have to have a credible deterrent or there servers will be on open season and also used to hack and harass and steal from others.
The rule of law gets to be applied over the unruly Internet; it's not special.
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