MovieChat Forums > The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014) Discussion > There were people who could be hurt by w...

There were people who could be hurt by what Aaron did.

posted 9 years ago by squigee07
2 replies | jump to latest

During the movie, one of the interviewee's stated that when someone uses a crowbar and "steals" something it directly affects the individual, and that in this instance nobody was hurt or affected.

In this case, I actually disagree. Sure Jbooks (or whatever the name is) is reaping profit off of the work of scientists, etc.. but it is also a corporation that no doubt has thousands of workers there, most of whom work to support their family.

At some point, Jbooks had to "buy" those copyrights and somebody did profit from it. Perhaps the author, perhaps the institution that sponsored the author. At the end of the day, research costs a lot of money. Scientists would not and could not be able to perform their research without financial support. Otherwise, why are Scientists or Professors simply not working for free at the public library to educate anyone who might be inclined to listen?

"If" Aaron were to decide to download all of the copyright material to the web, do people not realize how many individuals would be out of a job? How many universities would cease to encourage prof research and sabbaticals? There would be less information to begin with if this theology was in place from the beginning, thus negating the very issue Aaron has with the theory of "free" information.

Is the system flawed? sure, but that is not up to Aaron to decide. Did he need to be charged with a crime and/or felony? I believe so, he was definitely guilty of stealing. Regardless of his intention, what he did was reckless. He was smart enough to know that if he truly wanted change he would have to "play" the game in order to create that change. Aaron had many options to choose from in which to create change and was very successful in the SOPA bill being killed.

He had more value to society as an activist, and sadly his life was cut short by his own will. He committed a crime, should have come to terms with it, taken the plea deal - gone to jail for 3 months and be done with it. The only downfall to that (other than ego) was that he would not be able to have a "career" as a felon. I disagree, I think he would have been fine. As genius as he was, his inability to see beyond a plea deal is such a shame.Nobody would have cared, and he'd still be here today making the type of change he wanted.

[–] killer_oo7 8 years ago

I usually don't reply on imdb forum but since no one has replied to this post so far and your post some factual error regarding JSTOR (your JBOOKS), i would like to clarify few things.

The research that are generally published in Journals which JSTOR ( and others) are publishers of, in most case funded by public money (since its done in public institutes) except for few private academic institutions. In no case what so ever i know of, JSTOR (and other) publishers pays up for research.

An academician does his research --> writes paper --> submit to journal --> gets accepted--> Journal get published by JSTOR or others.

If any point there if flow of money from publisher (JSTOR), its the royalty to the Journal editorial board. But lets me be very specific, its peanuts. Hence most highly ranked Journals are non-profit, making enough just to cover editorial cost. In most cases, none of academic staff of Journal editorial board is paid (since there isn't any money to pay).

Alternative to these closed access Journals are open access Journals which charges 'fee' from the author to cover its cost (but believe me, this fee is not even 1/5 of what JSTOR and other publisher charges for individual access to a single paper). However these are all relatively new journals with lessor impact factor (impact factor basically determine how high standard and authoritative a journal is) and hence less preferred by academicians.

Higher impact factor --> More and better submissions by academicians --> Higher IF

So why does old journal use close access? Simply because most high IF factor journals are much older than internet when the books have to printed and distributed and hence publishers were required. They still use them because: A) Resistance to change B) Charging author for publications is consider a no - no since this is done by only low IF journal C) Many have signed long duration contract with publishers.

As for employment part, I won't go into arguments here, but here is a question. Do u still use telegram? It use to employ huge number of people when it was widespread.

[–] Vic_Hitler 8 years ago

Jbooks had to "buy" those copyrights

No they didn't. The documents are public access.

Which "crime" did Aaron commit?

You don't know what you're yapping about.