I'm not completely clear on the connection with Sesame Street, but for the record it isn't funded by PBS. It's funded through the Childrens' Television Workshop, and it has received a mix of public funds and corporate sponsorship over the years. $7.9 million sounds like a lot of money, but it's a very small part of Sesame Street's revenues, and an almost invisibly small particle of the federal budget.
Thread, I don't recognize Aaron Swartz, a gifted technician and passionate activist, in your description. What we're talking about is an act of civil disobedience rather than a crime for personal enrichment. We don't insist on jail time for every kind of crime: we can discriminate.
I can relate, having had to pay a ton of $$ to access scientific journals when I was writing my thesis for college. I used to think that the researchers got paid when their work was published (common misconception?) but the fact that they aren't and the people who need to access them have to pay a ton of money just doesn't sit well with me. There has to be a better system to this, right?
I don't agree with Swartz's methods; what he did wasn't legal but his goal or message, I understand completely.
Sesame Street is federally funded with over $7.9 million taxpayer dollars received in 2011. They also enjoy a tax free status.
So that Tickle Me Elmo that people love so much is 100% taxpayer supported royalties profit for Sesame Workshop in 2011 was $44.9 million. All tax free.
Sesame is the biggest pig at the trough, but name a popular PBS show and you have the same business model.
Why should there always be no prison time for cyber crimes?
Maybe the examples of past lenient sentencing were mistakes and he was going to be the example of the new policies under Obama/Holder?
Stinks for him, but I agree that too many people like him have been let off easy. It is about time they slammed someone to protect the rest of us.
When is enough, enough? Why should society be easy on people just because it is a cyber crime they committed?
While his death is tragic, I hope future cyber activists take this as a warning that they too will be pounded by the law. I hope the DOJ keeps hammering people like him.
I hope the parents fail in this one last effort at being the lifelong enablers of him bad behavior it seems they were.
The worst legacy they could pass on about their son is to push back at a society trying to bring order to an increasingly disorderly part of the world. A wolrd of disorder he helped create.
Thread, I think everyone--including Swartz's friend, the attorney Lawrence Lessig--agrees that he was breaking the law, and that consequences must follow.
The complaint is about the seemingly disproportionate nature of the consequences threatened, and the DoJ's relentless pursuit of case, including the insistence on prison time.
Absolutely agree, mhhfive. There's every reason colleges should start supporting open publication. Sorry for the handful of publishers which rely on this racket--but it's unjustifiable.
colleges only recognize publications in certain, designated journals as counting towards tenure.
I understand that peer review is vital, but it's not a sufficient excuse for the status quo.
Peer review is part of the publishing process for open journals, too, so I'm not sure there's a problem with that aspect of open publishers. The bigger problem, as you point out, is that colleges don't recognize publications in non-traditional journals. The problem there seems to be that academia is stuck in assessing "impact" using outdated formulas which are heavily weighted towards old-school journals. Hopefully, as more academics publish in arxiv and similar open access journals, the tenure formula will start to include open access journals and closed journals will slowly wane...
It is a simple concept lost on many people in the tech industry.
When you knowingly break the law you must deal with the consequences. So many people think of the Internet as the lawless wild west where anything goes.
Who cares about copy write laws, who cares about intellectual property.
An author can spend his life trying to write "the book" and when he does some nit wit posts the work on line for free. In a click a person's life work goes down the drain the one shot they have to hit it big.
He complained about the rules and how unfair they were yet he broke them constantly when it was not his money being taken.
It may sound cold hearted, but call him a hacktivist, call him anything you want, the bottom line is he broke the law.
The old saying is still true. If you cannot do the time, don't do the crime.
Obviously he could not stand the thought of doing the time.
As for the state of mental healthcare in the US. You can thank all of the liberal activists in the 1970s and 1980s who pushed for the closure of thousands of mental health facilities on the grounds they were cruel.
What they did was avoid fixing known problems and instead they supported and encouraged callously throwing hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people on to the streets of the US with no care what so ever. They destroyed any semblance of a support system for generations of mentally ill people that followed.
What they should have done was push for proper reforms of the facilities with known problems. Sadly the very act of diagnosing and treating mental illness was abhorrent to these activists. They felt the sick persons preserved freedom was more important than their health and the safety of both the sick people and society in general.
Individual people in need of help and society as a whole has suffered ever since.
..To add to your thought, Mitch, it is a lack of Courage. I was, needless to say, shocked by his death when I saw it. It seems to me that we ought to nurture, understand and support such talent. One, however, cannot expect much from a culture that has generated such ideas as SOPA/ETc. We, as those who care about the freedom to interact,, debate and assess ideas, must be at the forefront. Gandhi reminded us to be the change we want to see in the World. I do retain faith in humanity..but I will admit it is tough at times--as I see from the reaction, for instance, to POTUS' proposals on Gun Control.
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Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
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