snowisgone

https://twitter.com/hides_minimally/status/13487046708820377...

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Aaron Swartz @aaronsw died by suicide eight years ago. He represents a kind of left-libertarian current that's lost among present technologists —our generation centers the debate on regulating the internet or, most radically, democratizing platforms.

After @aaronsw attempted to communize academic intellectual property, the state destroyed Aaron, while Bush administration officials, Wall Street, and British Petroleum executives walked with impunity.

And therefore, some have pointed out that, despite both MIT and JSTOR not wishing to press charges, the state slamming @aaronsw with 35 years in jail and $1M in fines was a prosecutorial overreach and a grotesque miscarriage of justice.

No,@aaronsw committed a transgression intolerable in capitalist society. The state brutalized him not on the basis of legal injustice but because what he did struck at the heart of our society and property relations. What he did was like the digital version of burning down Target

In a framework that is animated by capital, the state did the right thing: you can't just let people like @aaronsw vandalize and loot intellectual property. You have to go after him. If you don't, then there's nothing worth prosecuting.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25646810