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A comment on The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz (Part 1: The Law). Parent comment

Re:The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz (Part 1: The Law) by chris_wot on Monday January 14, 2013 @08:47AM (#5054592)
JSTOR, the offended party, sorted it all out with Aaron out of court. It was an issue of copyright infringement, not theft, but Ortiz characterised it as such. She decided to pursue it out of some misguided and rabid attempt at sticking Aaron's head on a pike a a warning to others, and to make her CV look good.

There are fingers to point, and they need to be pointed in the right direction.

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Re:The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz (Part 1: The Law) by maxharris on Wednesday January 16, 2013 @10:43PM (#5070813)
Copyright infringement is theft. At root, all property is intellectual property.

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/patents_and_copyrights.htm...

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Re:The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz (Part 1: The Law) by chris_wot on Tuesday January 22, 2013 @09:01AM (#5097090)
Interesting take, but as with much of Ayn Rand's work, fundamentally flawed. An idea can be had independently. The idea if a computer was independently conceived upon in the UK and in Germany at around the same time. Intellectual Property laws weren't needed to "protect" the idea.

All that I really being said is that the person who comes up with an idea should be properly compensated. You don't need IP laws to do that. Many businesses agree - they file patents for inventions for their employees, and pay them a wage (and possibly a bonus).

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