Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death

Re:Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death by Ygg2 on Friday January 03, 2014 @11:39AM (#7006315)

If you see a drowning man and do nothing you are guilty of inaction. In this case they knew what was happening and before issuing an informal warning went for the nuclear option.

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Re:Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death by pdonis on Friday January 03, 2014 @12:31PM (#7006702)

If you see a drowning man and do nothing you are guilty of inaction.

Yes. But if you take a man and throw him in the water with chains around his arms and legs so that he drowns, you are guilty of something worse. I'm not saying MIT is blameless; I'm saying that there are degrees of blame, and the prosecutors deserve more than MIT does, because MIT failed to help but the prosecutors actively sought to harm.

In this case they knew what was happening and before issuing an informal warning went for the nuclear option.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. What "informal warning" could MIT have issued? They didn't know who had broken into their network until after Swartz was arrested. As for "the nuclear option", see above.

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Re:Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death by Ygg2 on Saturday January 04, 2014 @09:32AM (#7011127)

The article implies that MIT knew that students were downloading JSTOR files illegally.

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Re:Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death by pdonis on Saturday January 04, 2014 @05:39PM (#7013289)

Swartz wasn't a student, so even if MIT had issued some sort of warning to students, he wouldn't have seen it.

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