mhhfive - I don't think this suicide can be blamed on the healthcare system. Swartz did well with an early investment in Reddit that made him wealthy at a young aid.
America has the greatest healthcare system in the world -- for those who can afford it. And Swartz definitely could.
I am sad that he took his own life, but I am not sure if it is all of the prosecutors fault. It seems like that he had to have some other stuff going in as well. It just seems like it takes a lot to push someone over the edge and I am sure we will never know the full story.
Thread - What harm did Thread do, that he should have deserved to be the subject of criminal prosecution -- itself a harsh punishment -- as well as a lengthy prison sentence?
In Western law, we have the principle that punishment for property crime should be proportional to the value of the damage done. One teen might soap the windows of the school, another might burn the building down. One of those teens gets sentenced to clean off the windows and pick up trash on the side of the road for a couple of days. The other kind gets hard prison time. That's justice.
The ideal is that we should leave it to countries like North Korea to throw people in prison for minor offenses.
It's probably unlikely there would have been much if any prison time given for such a crime if proven. The complexity of suicide and depression leaves a lot of uncovered ground for what would drive one to such means.
The question of what should be public domain and what should have fees attached is still a sticky one. I shouldn't think for example bankrupcy records should require the public to pay fee to see online, buy the Federal courts think otherwise.
Same for medical research and journals. Why should they not be available since many are funded in part by public dollars?
Good for you, Kim! I'm scared to start looking, having done this for so long and for so many publications over the years. But it sounds like a good rainy day project.
Alison, it can be interesting sometimes to run a search for yourself, and see what people have published without permission.
Then there's the time I reached for a book in a bookstore, and found three of my articles published without attribution. Won some damages on that one! :)
With so many content mills on the Internet, I know of several well-respected full-time freelance writers whose work has been used by this type of company, without any request to the writer or the site that originally published the work. No one received payment, either. But this is a far different topic from Swartz's situation.
Stotheco, I agree. I think the message is an important one. I understand publishers want to stay in business, but charging fees to access old articles, written by people who never received a cent; and even articles which are in the public domain but -- of course -- hard to find elsewhere. It's pretty outrageous.
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