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Yes, he did that. He also settled the problem with jstor, returned the files as part of a civil settlement. This was overzealous prosecution after the affected

by josh_p 27d ago

Yes, he did that. He also settled the problem with jstor, returned the files as part of a civil settlement. This was overzealous prosecution after the affected party got their remedy.

9x39 27d ago
MIT was another affected party, who reached out to the government for help.
- protocolture 27d ago
  Please sir, we lost entire megabytes of bandwidth as someone accessed free resources on the internet, we are such an aggreieved party.
  - 9x39 27d ago
    Amusing, but a long string of rogue cyber intrusions coupled with Jstor blocking MIT altogether a few times isn’t something to ignore. Hard to imagine just ignoring the risks and potential of that unknown. MIT and Jstor had a bunch of incident response going on, and it isn’t a leap to consider Jstor would cut them off for good if the situation went unresolved.
    - josh_p 27d ago
      Why do you seem so desperate to characterize Aaron as some amoral super-spy hacker? His ethics are well known. He took issue with Jstor's business model of gatekeeping tax-payer-funded research behind another pay wall, stole some articles, got caught, settled with jstor and MIT. Life could have gone on. The OP's blog post is about how the law isn't applied equally in the United States. Aaron was an individual and an easy target for the overzealous prosecutor. Meta's a faceless corporation, guilty in the court of public opinion, and they don't even get a timely investigation because they have the money to tie up the broken legal system indefinitely. Aaron was an example - if you're small enough, you will be caught, tried, and punished in whatever way we see fit to prove that the justice system "works". If you're a billionaire, do whatever you want wink wink.
      - DeepSeaTortoise 25d ago
        There are two entirely different issues: 1. Is the law aligned with moral and ethical expectations? Probably not. 2. Is the process reliable? At least since the Derek Chauvin trials, I'm having doubts, but it doesn't seem it had failed in this case. Sure, cases of the former need urgent fixing (and we're not getting that), but the latter scenario falls into the "The end is nigh" category.

by josh_p 27d ago

Yes, he did that. He also settled the problem with jstor, returned the files as part of a civil settlement. This was overzealous prosecution after the affected party got their remedy.

9x39 27d ago

MIT was another affected party, who reached out to the government for help.

protocolture 27d ago
Please sir, we lost entire megabytes of bandwidth as someone accessed free resources on the internet, we are such an aggreieved party.
- 9x39 27d ago
  Amusing, but a long string of rogue cyber intrusions coupled with Jstor blocking MIT altogether a few times isn’t something to ignore. Hard to imagine just ignoring the risks and potential of that unknown. MIT and Jstor had a bunch of incident response going on, and it isn’t a leap to consider Jstor would cut them off for good if the situation went unresolved.
  - josh_p 27d ago
    Why do you seem so desperate to characterize Aaron as some amoral super-spy hacker? His ethics are well known. He took issue with Jstor's business model of gatekeeping tax-payer-funded research behind another pay wall, stole some articles, got caught, settled with jstor and MIT. Life could have gone on. The OP's blog post is about how the law isn't applied equally in the United States. Aaron was an individual and an easy target for the overzealous prosecutor. Meta's a faceless corporation, guilty in the court of public opinion, and they don't even get a timely investigation because they have the money to tie up the broken legal system indefinitely. Aaron was an example - if you're small enough, you will be caught, tried, and punished in whatever way we see fit to prove that the justice system "works". If you're a billionaire, do whatever you want wink wink.
    - DeepSeaTortoise 25d ago
      There are two entirely different issues: 1. Is the law aligned with moral and ethical expectations? Probably not. 2. Is the process reliable? At least since the Derek Chauvin trials, I'm having doubts, but it doesn't seem it had failed in this case. Sure, cases of the former need urgent fixing (and we're not getting that), but the latter scenario falls into the "The end is nigh" category.