this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Fuck meta and a BIG FUCK OFF to AI and all the companies slurping up ai slop "tech" to implement it in their rubbish software, apps, white goods, appliances.. Fuck. It's just infected every conceivable facet of our lives and no one is objecting it, it's like everyone suddenly forgot about how many engineers spoke out about the dangers!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

I love how ai isn't resulting in the collapse of everything, its just an annoyance. The worst thing so far is the excessive scraping and shrimp jesus.

[–] [email protected] 286 points 1 week ago (14 children)

Not to mention that Swartz had a JSTOR account, which means he was legally entitled to download the things that he did. The part they didn't like was that he used scripts to download en-mass, and a bunch of boomer fucks thought he actually committed a crime.

[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Well in the Social Network movie and chapter 2 of the Accidental Billionaires, Mark Zuckerberg used wget in shell scripts to get copyrighted images for private servers.

Can we give punish him?

[–] sus 47 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Spotify also originally got all its music by pirating it. But later it started printing money for record labels (while fucking over musicians) so all was forgiven.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago

That feels a bit disingenuous. The record labels were already thoroughly fucking over musicians.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago

No, he's part of the US oligarchy. Don't criticize too much or you might happen to have sudden, unexplainable tech problems and legal trouble. /s

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Old people and overreacting to normal things because new ideas are scary and confusing

Name a more iconic duo

[–] Gingernate 18 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I fear getting old because of this

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I am getting old. My parents told me that I'd understand how the world works when I get older, but I just hate it more and more.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

Sounds like they were right

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

My grandma is the opposite of this, he embraces learning new technology and wants to stay informed with new developments.
So far my dad is like this as well.
I strive to become like them, they're both pretty great people all-round!

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can't remember his name but one particular Cia or FBI fuck was trying to make a name for himself and spun the whole thing as a big deal when crime wise, it could have potentially been trespassing at the maximum. They had been following aaron and looking for reasons to charge him which was giving him justified paranoia outside of this particular event

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

To be fair, he broke and entered a networking closet as well. But I guess that is a separate issue.

[–] thisisnotgoingwell 22 points 1 week ago

The university AND jstor were pretty quick to get as uninvolved from that mess as quick as possible, so it really doesn't matter.... But what you're saying has nothing to do with the case and is also not true. "Broke and entered" implies forced physical access into a clearly forbidden area. The network closet was a room that was left unlocked and was frequently used by janitorial staff to put junk in.

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[–] [email protected] 205 points 1 week ago

Important to note Aaron was helping democratize information while companies like Meta, Amazon, Google and Microsoft just centralize, twist and redact information to monetize access to a dumbed down and censored version of it.

[–] [email protected] 160 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Rest in power, Aaron. 🫡

Eat the rich.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 week ago

It's Luigi time!

[–] [email protected] 88 points 1 week ago (2 children)

There is a very good documentary about Aaron's life: The Internet's Own Boy

Its license is Creative Commons, so it's on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M85UvH0TRPc

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Behind the bastards had a great episode on Swartz. It was their annual Christmas non bastard episode

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

The movie is on CC? Doing Aaron proud.

[–] ertai 68 points 1 week ago

Goes to show how much of a joke copyright is. These laws are bought by and made to protect the interests of corporations. disgusting. rip aaron schwarz, your ideas live on.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 week ago

He was murdered. He did not commit suicide.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Meta hoards the commons like a dragon, pillaging open archives to train its soulless algorithms, while Aaron Swartz—a true steward of knowledge—was hunted down for daring to share.

One gets a slap on the wrist, the other gets a noose of legal threats. Justice? No, this is corporate feudalism, where the lords rewrite the rules and the serfs pay with their lives.

Aaron wanted liberation; Meta wants monopoly. The system rewards the parasite and punishes the visionary. Remember that next time you scroll through their ad-soaked wasteland.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

They know that liberation is a threat to them.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 week ago

I am getting so sick of this fucked up world.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Another reason to tell Obama to fuck himself.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago

Along with his treatment of Snowden doing a public good.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago

I love Anna's archive. I still buy e-books, but will download a drm free copy from the archive.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Crazy idea:

If copyright was invented to prevent printers from scooping authors’ work and out-competing them for sales…

Maybe copyright should only apply if you’re trying to compete with the author?

So like, not if you’re just a lowly individual trying to keep up with the references all of society is making, or understand the world you live in.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

If we had the political power to fight Disney, then we could enact a UBI so everyone can get free art all the time.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

LotR should have entered the public domain in 2023.

Instead we got the Rings of Power.

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[–] kn0wmad1c 25 points 1 week ago

It's becoming more and more obvious that they were always referencing bank accounts when saying we're a country of checks and balances.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago (12 children)

Is it safe to assume that every single author (apart from the ones that cannot prove their works were in any of those archives at the time) can sue meta for plagiarism and theft?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago (4 children)

You can but you won’t win unless you can prove anything, so good luck with that.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Even if you can, you're fighting against a company that has annual revenue similar to some country's GDP.

No company should be allowed to get this big.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

*unless it's product is collectively owned by the public and for the public as a civil service.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago

Aaron Swartz lives on

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago

I genuinely believe that if he was still around he'd of ended up a proponent for federated social media. I'm pretty sure he was the driving force behind opening it's source, and it wasn't until four years after his death that it was closed off again.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (3 children)

This is like the worst example possible, considering Aaron himself was rich, which should tell you the obvious, that being rich was never a sole differentiator.

But that might be too disruptive to the current echo chamber.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago

You need to be "i own several politicians" level of rich before it helps

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

Tbh I just couldn't think of a good title. Maybe "Laws don't matter if its a company doing it"?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

Force Zuck to commit suicide!!!!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

laws for thee not for me

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