• SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      11 hours ago

      What Swartz did was not even close. What he did was absolutely fair use. He downloaded shit from JSTOR while at MIT which is fine because MIT allows students and employees to access JSTOR. There was no evidence that he shared anything.

      • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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        11 hours ago

        His real crime is threatening profits of a corporation…

        MIT is forever disgraced for their conduct and should be stripped of their tax exempt status.

        • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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          1 day ago

          No. Do not spread more conspiracy theories.

          He was driven to take his own life. It was tragic and wrong and the truth is important. Don’t just throw some bullshit out there without evidence.

          • Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 day ago

            Yeah, it probably wasn’t murder, but considering that the US is quickly becoming a fascist oligarcny just like Russia is, and more and more American whistle blowers seem to be mysteriously dying… I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he was murdered. The oligarchs are evil af and any government that can aggressively fund a baby killing genocide is also evil enough to kill people for petty reasons

            • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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              1 day ago

              That was 12 years ago. 1 year into Obama’s second term. And don’t give me some “we were always a fascist state“ nonsense. You need evidence that he was murdered, even in the current climate. And 2013 was nothing like 2025.

              “I wouldn’t be surprised“ is not enough to repeat your conspiracy. Certainly not to claim you are “pretty sure” he was killed by the powers that be. It is irresponsible of you to assert that with any confidence.

              • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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                8 hours ago

                He also wasn’t a whistleblower he was just downloading scholarly articles from a service he had legal access to use.

                The theory that he would be murdered over this is pretty wild as any college student or person with a JSTOR account has access to these same articles, so what necessitates murder in Aaron’s situation? He wasn’t exposing anyone or anything. It was just some douche of a federal employee trying to advance his career by “making an example” out of some kid who arguably didn’t even do anything illegal.

              • DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca
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                1 day ago

                To be fair, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if…’ isn’t a testimony or claiming something happened, it’s voicing a level of disillusionment with something, nothing but opinion.

                • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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                  15 hours ago

                  “I wouldn’t be surprised” means “I can still believe it despite no evidence/evidence to the contrary and so can you but I can’t say that explicitly.” The only acceptable answer is “we have no reason to believe that.”

                  “I wouldn’t be surprised” is a very squirrelly phrase. You get to act confident/skeptical (which is rarely frowned upon) but you leave a back door for you to say “I never said it was true.” We all know this.

                  The government is capable of a lot of things. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn anything because it has vast capabilities. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out Trump killed somebody once. None of that means I have any proof or grounds to assert anything.