I’m fed up with the Aaron Swartz hagiography and subsequent bullshit garment-rending from people who didn’t know him well, or at all. I’m still reading fresh examples of anguished wailing and blogging and Twittering about the guy. But to me, he seems unworthy of the sainthood that’s being thrust onto his corpse.
I don’t think I ever met him (I might have, at an O’Reilly conference in San Jose years ago); I may or may not have ever corresponded with him many years ago, and I can’t be bothered to look through my email archives to check. I know I read a bunch of his words at one point, possibly on a mailing list or on his blog. But I had no personal connection with him, as far as I can remember.
I knew of him, but mainly because of his well-known, well-honed talent for being an arrogant jerk to many people, often to people who had extended a helping hand to him at one time or another. I’ve been hanging around the geekosphere long enough to have heard of one or another of the many spats Swartz triggered when he viciously turned on somebody.
I knew he was a smart kid. So did he. Boy, did he know it. And he loved to share that knowledge, via his palpable contempt for, well, just about everyone who didn’t agree with him (read this account by his partner, who denies Swartz killed himself due to depression, to get a feel for just how arrogant and contemptuous he was about most people).
Because I’d read his words, and seen how he lashed out at people, I had him pegged in my mind as “Really smart but asshole kid who might grow up someday and learn to be a smart adult, but for now, ignorable.” But even years ago, I thought he was special, and didn’t really expect that to happen. I expected him to turn out like Eric Raymond or Richard Stallman, get a sinecure from some open-source group, and live out his days haranguing the rest of us about how disappointed he was that we didn’t live up to his lofty standards.
I wasn’t the only one who felt that way; after learning of his death, I said to Dori, “Hey, remember that Aaron Swartz kid?” She replied, “Yeah, what stupid thing has he done now?” I said, “Well, it looks like he killed himself.” Dori doesn’t lack compassion, and of course she had no idea that something bad had occurred. The point I’m making is that Dori, who pays way more attention to geek society than I do, was also primed to think that he was likely to do something foolhardy or attention-seeking. Because to the casual observer, that was the way he lived his life.
I’d heard of his caper with PACER, when he released a significant portion of US case law to the public, because he was morally offended that it was behind a paywall. It’s speculation, but that was most likely the same stunt he was trying to pull again when he got busted after downloading a large amount of academic journal articles from JSTOR, another paywall. (Aside: I agree with Swartz that this data should be publicly available; I disagree with his methods).
He knew that what he was doing with the JSTOR data was criminal, or at best unauthorized; he tried to hide his identity while doing it. But Swartz was offended, so even though he had previously been around the block with the law after the PACER caper (he was investigated then, but no charges filed), he decided his moral outrage trumped the petty laws of the stupid. So he took what he wanted, because he wanted to, and because he could. This is the moral calculus of a child or a criminal, not an adult.
Then he got caught. And this time he drew a prosecutor who clearly decided to make an example of this arrogant kid. I completely agree with those who think Swartz got a raw, unfair deal. The prosecutors abused their discretion. Prosecutors who want to impose harsher penalties for Swartz’s alleged crimes than for murderers or rapists have lost their own moral bearings.
From reports, Swartz didn’t think he had done anything wrong or criminal, and more or less expected to be let off the hook for his actions. In his experience, people had always recognized his brilliance and let him off the hook before. When that didn’t happen, he was bewildered and defiant. It’s possible this was the first time he was faced with the real possibility of serious consequences for his choices. According to Wikipedia, the prosecutors were seeking a plea bargain that would result in a six month jail sentence.
Swartz’s many apologists are, if effect, arguing that his actions should be completely excused because he was morally in the right. I’ve seen the more fevered comparing his actions to Martin Luther King. This is a nearly obscene comparison. King repeatedly risked his life for the civil rights of his people, proudly stood as the leader of his movement, and took responsibility for his actions. Swartz surreptitiously downloaded a bunch of data from a closet, tried to hide his face when he slipped away with the loot, and wasn’t willing to pay any penalty.
I remember many of the civil rights activists in the Sixties breaking unjust laws for their moral convictions. The ones we revere today didn’t say, “I’ll do the right thing as long as I get no punishment.” They knew the risks, took them, and stood tall when they faced the consequences. Those were acts of true courage.
Swartz’s defenders say the prosecutors killed him, but that’s not what happened. He was not killed by the state. Swartz hanged himself before his consequences had even been decided. The woman who lived with him, who knew his mental state better than any of the rest of us, says he was not chronically depressed, and she does not believe he suffered from mental illness. We’ll never know the exact reason for his suicide, but it seems more likely than anything else that he killed himself to avoid going to jail for six months, and therefore he was too cowardly to face the harsh results of his actions.
My personal view is that killing yourself and leaving your body to be found by your lover is a profoundly horrible, selfish, and unforgivable action, and one that deserves our disgust, not our compassion. I’ll reserve my compassion for the woman whom he presumably loved, but he knew would find his corpse.
The Saint Aaron bandwagon so many people have piled onto nauseates me.
He wasn’t a saint.
His moral judgments were not superior to everyone else’s.
He did not die for anyone’s sins.
He wasn’t depressed and mentally ill. His death has no lessons for us in that area.
He was a very smart kid who got himself in over his head, was overcome by fear, and killed himself. That’s a shitty thing. But his death, though regrettable, is meaningless for the rest of us. When you hear differently, you are being sold somebody’s agenda. Beware.
File under:
Extremely poor taste
Tactless
SEO whoring
You may very well be correct about Aaron, it sounds like he might have been been a bully. However, you’re being a total dick for mocking his PACER “caper.” PACER documents are indeed public domain, the website is absolute junk and it’s almost impossible not to accidently incur a charge you didn’t intend to. These days if you only download a handful of documents a quarter, PACER is free. Yet, that wasn’t the case back then. I believe Aaron had something to do with the change, although the system remains incredibly problematic. That was a good thing, a great thing. So stop being so fucking smug for no reason.
The good thing about you arrogant, asinine blog post is, it gives people an idea about these qualities of yours in addition to your venomous jealousy over the impact the loss of Aaron Swartz has had.
THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT SEEING THIS, MAYBE FOR THE FIRST TIME, YOU CAN CARRY ON OR, YOU CAN CHANGE.
What the hell has tact to do with it?
If you want to understand, then you need to ask the hard questions and take the answers whether you like them or not. I’m convinced that Swartz expected the usual “prodigy pardon” and was blind to the notion of consequences, largely because I was exactly the same way as a young fellow. I very nearly died of naivety, and cluing in was a long, difficult struggle (which included paying the required penalties, both private and public). Writing this off as “another depression”, failing to learn the hard lessons, and letting it happen again (by pardoning behaviour that not everyone thinks is particularly pardonable) is abdicating your responsibility as a human being. Ignore evidence of incipient übermenschlichkeit at your peril. Some become me, some become Swartz, some become Leopold or Loeb.
Love that final phrase!
I appreciate someone saying what at least a few have been thinking. Personally I see this sorry mess (all proclaimed “brilliance” aside) as being akin to death-by-cop. Looking for bigger and bigger righteousness prey until martyrdom success achieved.
Osiris: When all you can do is name-call, you don’t have an argument. As for the accusation of “SEO whoring,” that’s hilarious.
arparp: “Caper” and “stunt” are fairly common descriptions of Swartz’s actions regarding PACER and JSTOR. Do a Google search and see. It’s entirely possible Swartz ended up bring a force for good for PACER users; it’s his methods I question. Ends don’t always justify means.
j. cale: Again, more or less incoherent name-calling isn’t useful.
Stan Rogers, Ipsum Lorem: Interesting thoughts. Thanks.
I appreciate your posting this. I’ve seen a lot of suggestions of sainthood for Swartz (who I knew little about), and people are now using his death to point the finger at “bad guys” who are oppressing internet freedom fighters. You would think it was Kent State and the National Guard all over again. I knew there had to be more to it, and I’m grateful for the edification about the “other side of the story.” My takeaway from all of this is in the realm of maturity. To make a depth psychological distinction that may have no meaning for anyone but myself, Aaron comes across as a puer (Peter Pan) figure, not a Hero (Hercules). In other words, he couldn’t take the heat, and he may have been too young and impetuous to be allowed in the kitchen. What a shame. Thanks again for having the courage to post this — no doubt you will be villainized by his supporters, many who probably have nowhere near the depth of experience that you have. I’m sorry for that, but daresay you will handle the heat better than Swartz did — if only because you wouldn’t do what he did to your wife.
Well said. Completely agree with you.
You will most likely get flamed but I guess you already knew that.
As usual, well reasoned and well written, Tom. Glad you spoke out on this.
I actually wrote similar on my twitter & tumblr the day(s) following and was pretty much instantly shot down by a bunch of angry apologists.
Meh, I wasn’t even nearly as straight-up, either. I don’t understand people sometimes…
Amen! I clicked to this article from my HN RSS feed and then was sad when I clicked through to it on HN to give you an upvote only to find it was dead. I’d give you a thousand upvotes if I could. Great post. Sorry to see you got flagged to hell.
I don’t know how Hacker News works, so thanks for explaining it. I saw them in my referrers, but went there and saw the link was dead. So apparently, so many people were mortally offended by an unpopular opinion that they voted to banish it from the site? That’s a weird thing. More groupthink in action.
Thank you for posting. I appreciate having a broader understanding of the facts surrounding Aaron’s suicide.
I’m glad you published this post. Like the other commenters, I’m disappointed that Hacker News deleted the link to this piece.
I think there are actually lessons for all of us. The people who encouraged Aaron, at age 14, to live like an adult, ought to learn from this experience. No matter how smart a child is, he is still a child. He wasn’t ready for the adult world. A little encouragement is good, but he should have been in school, and to use a cliche, hanging out with kids his own age. And with adult supervision, not adults calling him an “elder” as Tim Berners-Lee did.
I didn’t know him either, but I read all I could find about him and by him when he was Topic #1. He was brilliant, precocious but still a kid. The tragedy of his death is that we thought that because he knew a little XML he was some kind of super-human prodigy.
Aaron Swart was not a saint. Neither was Martin Luther King. Or Rosa Parks.
People are complex and there is often more than one side to a story but the impact that people have cannot be denied. You may disagree with the methods but you cannot deny the results: because of Aaron’s actions around PACER, about 20% of US code law is back in the public domain.
A stunt? Well, you could call it that but what other efforts have you seen out there that accomplished quite as much in terms of liberating data we all paid for through our taxes from the hands of profiteers who locked it up and won’t release it unless you pay?
Because of Aaron’s actions, JSTOR has now been pressured into offering its content for free. Once again, you may argue about the methods but the results are hard to argue against. Thanks to Aaron’s actions, a lot of data that had been privatized has been brought back into the public domain where it belongs.
So at times he was a jerk (and I’ve been sitting on both sides of Aaron as a friend and, at times, an opponent) but he always tried to get meaningful changes for the world and, in his short 26-years life, he has done more to help the internet stay free than the majority of people.
So feel free to spit on his grave if you want but what have YOU done to make the world a better place? And, having done anything, think back: have you accomplished as much with your years as Aaron Swartz did with his?
As noted above, “stunt” is a common word to use about Swartz’s PACER and JSTOR actions. It’s not used as a pejorative. Let me quote Cory Doctorow, who was a good friend of Swartz’s, from the obit he wrote:
Essentially, you’re making an “the ends justify the means” argument. I note from your site that you call yourself a journalist and you are implicitly asking for people’s trust in your current business venture. In either realm, given your endorsement of the above argument, why should people trust that you’ll see beyond your own self-interest?
I don’t believe that I’ve been spitting on anyone’s grave. I object to whitewashing, hagiography, and the use of this kid’s tragic death to promote other people’s political agenda.
As to what I’ve done with my life, I’ll leave that judgement to others. I’m comfortable knowing that I’ve done what I set out to do, which is teach a lot of inexperienced users how to use technology to make their lives better and more enjoyable. In my family tradition, spreading knowledge is an honorable use of a life.
First of all, there is little self-interest in my defending Aaron Swartz. In fact, one could argue that doing so on your own site goes against my self-interest in that it does not do anything to benefit me in any way, shape, or form, and runs the risk of ostracizing potential readers, thus going against my interests. As to people trusting me, it’s up to them to decide what they want to do with my opinion.
But you are not addressing the core of my argument, ie. the results. Aaron was trying to increase access to public information over the internet. Proponents of that idea are using his death as a clarion call to alert more of the masses to this cause. It seems consistent with the message he was trying to push.
As far as mention of asking yourself whether you have done as much as Aaron did for our society in his life, it is a question between the reader and the reader’s conscience. If you feel you’re doing fine, great but the question was “have you done as much?” It’s a question only you can answer for yourself and if the answer is anything less than yes, then the next question might be “why tear him down, then?”
If the core of your argument was the need for more dissemination of public data, then I addressed that in my original post:
It appears your argument is that an act can be disassociated from its result, as long as you consider the result to be just. That’s awfully convenient for your cause, but it’s not an argument I particularly find interesting or compelling. Swartz had the opportunity and the smarts to find ways of freeing the information he thought should be public without running afoul of the law. He chose not to do so; his friends describe him as impatient.
Finally, you’re asking me to compare the accomplishments of my life with Swartz’s. That’s kind of silly, isn’t it? Do adults really do that?
Since you know so much about what Aaron was doing and how it seems there was a better path, what alternative methods would you have chosen, had you been in his shoes?
And secondly, I’m not asking you to PUBLICLY compare your accomplishments to his but rather to look in your own soul and do that studying. If one is to speak ill of the dead, then one must have a sense of self-justification in doing so.
Tristan,
As someone who knows and loves both you and Tom, I have to say this publicly. You owe Tom a massive apology.
Of course, you’re welcome to whatever political, legal, or technical arguments you wish to disprove Tom’s post. But the personal, “what have you done?” challenge is always tacky. And in Tom’s case, it’s more wrong on more levels than you can imagine.
Because the answer, which I state publicly only with Tom and his wife Dori’s permission, is this:
What Tom has done with his life is raise another man’s child to manhood, after the child’s father committed suicide.
The question that I raise is not for the public to consider but for Tom himself to consider. If he believes that he is better than Aaron, then he may have a justification in speaking ill of the dead.
[I've repeatedly said I have no interest in measuring my life against other people's. And I don't need any justification (or your permission) to say anything I wish on my own blog. -- TN]
If I owe Tom an apology, then he owes one to all the people who are mourning Aaron these days for he has decided to belittle their pain with this post.
[I've belittled nobody's pain. Suicide is horrible for the survivors, and they have my sympathy and compassion (I expressed that for his partner in my original post). But the facts that a man kills himself and others mourn does not mean the man must be considered a saint. You, on the other hand, came to my blog and started trying to insult me. I'm sure that you are above reproach, however. --TN]
My view is that when one walks into a funeral and tries to bully those left behind, someone has to stand up to that person. A corollary to that view is that if the person has a legitimate reason for their action, the person should be above reproach.
[This is stupid analysis on several different levels. I've written a blog post, on my personal blog. I've made no attempt to shove my opinions in the face of those who mourned Swartz's death. I've walked nowhere. Anyone who read this post came here of their own volition and read it, or other folks chose to copy and paste it elsewhere. I did exactly as much publicity for this blog post as I do for every other post: I wrote it, then tweeted I wrote a post, with a link. All my tweets flow through to Facebook. The stuff about how I have to be above reproach to have an unpopular opinion is your fantasy. -- TN]
De mortuis nil nisi bonum.
I think you are blinded by grief, my friend.
I say this with compassion, for you, for Aaron’s friends and family, and for Tom and Dori. When someone reacts to a suicide in the way that Tom did, your first thought should have been, “There must be something behind this I don’t know…”
This will be my last post on this matter as it is eminently clear that we are not getting anywhere by talking to each other here.
[I've edited out approximately 250 words of self-satisfied, twee, precious self-justification and attack, including both Latin and Shakespeare. No, you don't get to fling poo and run on my blog. I was planning on ending his participation today anyway. -- TN]
“And, having done anything, think back: have you accomplished as much with your years as Aaron Swartz did with his?”
I’m pretty sure Tom hasn’t broken the law multiple times, no.
“Once again, you may argue about the methods but the results are hard to argue against”
Oh, and snark aside, are you really going for the “ends justify the means” argument?
You should always be wary of something that puts you on the same epistemological side as John Yoo.
I disassociate the end from the means specifically for that purpose and focus on impact solely.
You can argue until you’re blue in the face about the legality of the PACER strike (the government seems to have seen the action as legal after it investigated) and JSTOR (the fact that JSTOR would not bring charges and MIT stayed mostly silent on the issue leaves that in a very gray area).
What you cannot deny is that, in 26 years, Aaron put 20% of our legal code back into the public domain where it belongs and brought up some serious questions about whether we, as a society, want to keep our tax-payer funded content locked up behind a paywall.
I’ve accomplished a good amount in my life but what I can say is that when I measure my own contribution to society to that Aaron made before he died, I come up short.
… and when I look at that, I do think that the amount of grief and loss felt by the community is warranted.
But to go back to the basic point of the article: that Aaron defied the authority and expected to get off Scott free. That point is a complete strawman. Wikipedia can say what it wants but the fact is that, prior to Aaron’s death, the prosecutor was seeking between 35 and 50 years in prison for Aaron’s crime of downloading information that had been tax-payer funded and was sitting behind a pay wall. If that’s not prosecutorial over-reach, I don’t know what is.
That type of pressure is what eventually led Aaron to take his own life. But before questioning the grief those who’ve been fighting the right fight to keep information accessible feel for a fallen brother, I want to know what are you doing that’s giving you the right to question that grief?
Now, on to the comparison to civil rights leaders. If the comparison were to be fair and put in the context of the kind of prosecution Aaron’s crime ended up, then people fighting for civil rights should have been presented with a choice between defending their ideals or ending up in Guantanamo bay for the rest of their lives, labeled as terrorist and enemies of the state. So did Aaron have courage?
Yes, he did. He didn’t cry to the public about the prosecutorial overreach. He didn’t beg for mercy. But when the pressure got to be too much, he internalized that pain and eventually had that internalizing destroy him.
You can handwave all you want, but what you explicitly doing is saying that Aaron was justified–in both cases–in breaking the law because what he achieved was so impressive. You are saying that the _ends_ justified the _means_ he used to get there. Again, that puts you on the same side as John Yoo.
I strongly believe that the law will evolve to eventually show that what Aaron did was seen as illegal due to a twisted legal system, just as what Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King’s actions were once seen as illegal.
Sometimes, there are laws in this world that are subverting what democracy ought to be and it is not until they are challenged openly that society realizes the wrongness of such laws. Once, it was illegal for black people to sit at the front of the bus and law breakers like Rosa Parks openly challenged such laws. Once it was illegal for black people to march in Montgomery and MLK openly challenged such laws.
We look to those people as icons now because the laws were changed and we, as a society ended up in a better place.
I am of the belief that a generation from now, we will look at people like Aaron Swartz as among the first line of defenders of our online rights.
Does the end justify the means? Honestly, I do not know but what I do know is that the end makes for a better civil society. How we decide to judge the means is something that will be left up to history but my gut tells me that the current regime of locking up public information is one that will evolve in the future.
Martin Luther King’s actions were once seen as illegal.
You might read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and reflect on the fact that MLK wrote that because he understood that civil disobedience meant taking the punishment that came afterwards.
@Total,
Aaron knew that there might be retributions for what he did. The CFAA talks about a fine or a maximum of 10 years in jail as a misdeameanor and he was willing to go along with.
What Aaron did NOT expect was to be charges with 13 counts of wire frauds, tampering, organized crime, and terrorism, with a MINIMUM sentencing of 50 years as a felon.
You may think that what he did was wrong. You may think that it’s illegal (it certainly was) but if the law is just and fair, why is it that people on both sides of the political spectrum (Democrats AND Republicans) are now working together in congress to repeal those provisions?
Why is it that, if there was no financial gain there, the prosecutor decided to go so hard on him? Why is it that JSTOR, the victim, decided to not press charges? Why is it that the campus where it happened, MIT, decided to not take any position on the matter? Why is it that MIT, in light of Aaron’s death, is now investigating its own behavior in this matter? Why is it that JSTOR, after the prosecution started, decided to open up its data, just as Aaron had tried to do?
True, I do not hide behind a pseudonym like so many who decide to attack my counter in this forum. But I, like Aaron, and like many others, am willing to stand for what’s right. Today, it’s the CFAA, tomorrow, it’s the right to post anonymously in forums like this (don’t scoff, SOPA and COICA, 2 laws Aaron help defeat, had provisions that would have eliminated anonymous speech on the net).
So yeah, there are causes out there that are using him as a martyr to their cause.
He may not be a saint (and, in the eyes of catholic church never can be as he committed suicide) but to deny prosecutorial overreach is, in the best of cases, misled, and in the worst one, deluded.
There are very few people out there willing to stand for what is often seen as unpopular but it is often those standard bearers who change the world. Yesterday, it was in Montgomery, or Selma, or Stonewall; Today, it’s on the internet.
So when, in the war for a better world, a soldier falls, the only reaction I’d consider normal is “De mortuis nil nisi bonum”
What Aaron did NOT expect was to be charges with 13 counts of wire frauds, tampering, organized crime, and terrorism, with a MINIMUM sentencing of 50 years as a felon.
Please don’t propagate that bullshit anymore. Swartz was offered a plea deal that would have included six _months_ of prison.
As to the rest of your comment, you haven’t said anything that changes what I said in my first response.
Tristan, he didn’t spit on his grave. He expressed sympathy for Aaron’s memory. He said things that needed to be said about the people who are using his name for political causes. They should be able to make their case without stretching the story of Aaron’s life. Let’s strive for the truth. And to learn from our mistakes, while we’re still alive to do something about it. Because Tom knew in advance he’d be enflamed, we should be thankful to him for doing this, the same way we were thankful to Aaron for enduring pain to make things better.
Thank you. I’m glad to see someone stand up to all this hero worship.
Shortly after the Reddit acquisition, I met the other co-founders. They didn’t know me, I didn’t know them. The word was pretty clear, Aaron was smart, but he was arrogant and lazy as anything. He didn’t pull his weight at all at Reddit and they were upset he got to make money off their back. He had been basically useless. That’s a pretty bold statement, especially when you’re telling a stranger that.
People should learn from this. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or think you are. You’re not above anybody else. Smarts doesn’t give you the right to slack off or to be a dick. And it doesn’t put you above the law either.
Let’s put the false talking point that Swartz was seriously facing the maximum penalties to rest. It’s true that prosecutors originally charged the maximum; that’s what prosecutors do, for publicity reasons and to try to scare the crap out of the accused. But before his suicide, Swartz knew there was a six month jail term plea bargain on the table.
http://news.yahoo.com/mass-lawyer-told-prosecutor-swartz-suicidal-225608074.html
“Swartz’s most recent attorney, Elliot Peters, said prosecutors told him two days before Swartz’s death that Swartz would have to spend six months in prison and plead guilty to 13 charges if he wanted to avoid going to trial…they rejected the deal and he [Peters] believed they would win the case at trial, which was scheduled to begin in April.”
Presumably, prosecutors would have withdrawn the offered and rejected deal before trial. But during the trial, especially if things were going badly for them, they could have substituted a better deal, or even dropped the charges. Nobody knows. But given the facts of the case, it’s reasonable to think any subsequent deal would have been better for Swartz, not worse.
1. The article you point to says the attorney warned the prosecutor that Aaron was suicidal. If that’s the case, how do you resolve that with your assertion that he wasn’t depressed ?
[It's apparent your reading comprehension is flawed. The assertion is not mine; it's from his partner's public blog post, linked above. She had a better, more recent view of Swartz's mental state than anyone else, including the quoted lawyer, and I believe her. -- TN]
2. The plea deal was “plead guilty to 13 counts and you’ll only get 6 months in jail.” In other words, don’t defend yourself and go to jail for 6 months. Considering that JSTOR and MIT didn’t want to press charges, why would he consider pleading guilty to all 13 counts?
[I am uninterested in that sort of speculation. In this comment, I've merely pointed to factual reports and tried to puncture a false talking point. -- TN]
You really can’t even keep track of what you’re arguing. So, you’ve backed off the idea that he was going to get 50 years in jail, have you?
Housekeeping note: I find nested comments more than 5 levels deep to be increasingly unreadable, so we have always had that as the maximum setting. It’s never been an issue until today.
[...] via Hacker News http://www.backupbrain.com/2013/02/enough-already/ [...]
[...] Enough, already – Can you believe it? Someone actually has the nerve to disagree. My friend Tom says: "I’m fed up with the Aaron Swartz hagiography and subsequent bullshit garment-rending from people who didn’t know him well, or at all. I’m still reading fresh examples of anguished wailing and blogging and Twittering about the guy. But to me, he seems unworthy of the sainthood that’s being thrust onto his corpse." [...]
The entire “ends justify the means” argument never works in the way people like tristan use it, because it is *not* a “get out of the consequences of your actions” free card. It never has been.
It is a way of saying that when the end goal is “good” (for whatever value of “good ” used here. Sometimes, that includes evil. Point of view matters a lot here), if you have to use less than forthright means to get there, so be it.
It does NOT mean “BUT I WAS RIGHT, SO YOU CAN’T TOUCH ME”. That is what I call “8-year-old logic”, because that’s about the age you stop putting up with it. Using MLK as an example is particularly stupid, because MLK was always operating under the assumption he could be jailed or killed. (both ended up happening) He never expected to dodge the consequences of his (at the time illegal) means. He knew the ends were worth jail time or even his life, and in that manner, justified the means. Same think with Malcom X, and the rest of the civil rights folks.
They knew the penalties were real, and paid them, even when those penalties included their lives. They knew ahead of time what could happen. They watched it happen to friends and family, and still they did what they felt had to be done.
Aaron Swartz never seriously considered the penalties for his actions, and, in what can only be called immaturity, was shocked when his assumption that because he and others felt what he was doing was right, that he should pay no penalty at all.
People can call Aaron a genius all day long, but if that is how he actually viewed the world, then he was not a genius, he was a savant at best. This reminds me of the reply during the SOPA/PIPA kerfuffle, to the “Congress needs to learn how the internet works” meme: “The internet needs to learn how congress works”. I agree with tom that the prosecutors were being especially egregious in their behavior with regard to swartz, but that is always a potential outcome.
He spent more time researching “supertaster” than he did “the laws I’m about to break”. It’s pretty clear he didn’t consider the latter that important, and just like the horse thief about to be hung, he felt little remorse for his actions, but he was terribly, terribly sorry he’d been caught. As Sammy Davis Jr. once sang, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”
I also agree with tom that Aaron’s goals were noble, but his methods were flawed on many levels, most of all by his overweening arrogance in assuming he was somehow untouchable. Once that was shattered, it was obvious he had no idea how to function in the world outside of the internet, and for that, I feel equal parts sympathy and indifference.