As someone that actively engages in disobedience it is disheartening that they'd award $250k to a single winner instead of $50k to five, $10k to twenty-five, etc.
So many people struggle to make a difference, no matter how small, and being honored for their efforts, when it's most likely that it rarely if ever happens in real life, would be inspiring to them to keep up what they're doing.
For those interested in reading about the original post covering in detail the thoughts behind the award, see this blog post:
＊＊＊Aaron Swartz＊＊＊
Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
I've already wrote about that on HN, but I believe it's worth reiterating.
Alexandra Elbakyan is not an example of disobedience. In fact, she is very obedient to the rules of society she lives in (she is an avid Putin's supporter), it's just those rules are different from the West. Her risks over SciHub project is negligible while she lives in Russia, and given her views, I think it's unlikely she want to live somewhere else. In her early interviews/posts in Russian, she considers the project as a Russian crusade over the West of some sorts, so I don't believe this is in any way similar to the Aaron's case. Aaron was a political activist and a champion of human rights, and Alexandra is neither.
To be honest, the way in which Western media frame her baffles me: they used a common western narrative and slotted her into it instead of telling the true story.
Alexandra Elbakyan is staying in Russia, yes. That's why she's still alive while Aaron Swartz unfortunately isn't and given that the award has to go to a live political activist and champion of human rights, that's why I've nominated her. Demanding our heroes die to prove their sincerity is, let's just say, not a helpful position to take.
You are over-dramatizing things. EFF members or the judge who overturned Trump's travel ban are alive. It's not like people are routinely killed in US over copyright infringement or political protest as your comment implies.
>a live political activist and champion of human rights
You emphasized "live" there, but I would rather emphasize
> political activist
> champion of human rights
Alexandra Elbakyan is neither. It's just an opportunistical breaking of rules that are not enforced in Russia, and nothing I've read from her (except her interviews to Western media) implies her "political activism" or "championship of human rights".
However, if you still thing that she is worthy of the prize, I would also suggest nominating the owners of pornolab.net. It's one of the largest porn trackers out there, and it's online for a dozen years at least. It's in Russian, which I believe is one of the main reasons it's still online.
On the more general note: the enemy of your enemy is not your friend, it's a tactical ally.
The award is clearly for people who are being disobedient for the benefit of society.
Breaking rules for the sake of breaking rules is just anarchy or trolling. You're just inconveniencing people who set out to recognise real contributions to society.
Unless there is an Aaron Schwartz foundation or something, nominate people who are still doing work.
This isn't about Aaron. It's about the next person who downloads too much free stuff doing it emboldened by the thought that MIT will have their back when the feds come knocking. If only because not doing so costs MIT 250 thousand dollars.
That would be a much bigger contribution to society than any one person walking away with this award.
> This isn't about Aaron. It's about the next person who downloads too much free stuff doing it emboldened by the thought that MIT will have their back when the feds come knocking. If only because not doing so costs MIT 250 thousand dollars.
The next person? There are people CURRENTLY downloading free stuff and sharing it.
Nominate an appropriate person. Vote for someone who really deserves it NOW. Show these people that we support civil disobedience when it benefits society. Take the fucking money.
At this point, I have to believe that the people who want to flood them with ineligible nominees are simply trolling HN and trolling the MIT Media Lab. You guys are potentially throwing away 250K for no real reason.
Also from the page
> Both individuals and groups are eligible to win the prize.
While we are on this topic, let's not forget the real culprits: cfaa and widespread abuse of discretionary power by prosecution.
We must repeal (and not replace) the cfaa. Of course, we should name and shame MIT at every junction (shame on you, MIT!) However, we shouldn't lose sight of the bigger picture. CFAA is evil.
> It's about the next person who downloads too much free stuff doing it emboldened by the thought that MIT will have their back when the feds come knocking.
Aaron Swartz was not an MIT affiliate, alum, faculty, or student. MIT had no obligation to "have [his] back" for violating MIT network policy and federal law.
> Aaron Swartz was not an MIT affiliate, alum, faculty, or student. MIT had no obligation to "have [his] back" for violating MIT network policy and federal law.
Having "no obligation" to do something is never an excuse for any behavior.
Aaron Swartz was literally my first thought too. I'm submitting him anyway, he should win and the money should go to like-minded worth individuals and causes.
After reading the comments on this page, I am a little disheartened that apparently most people want to give what is basically a work grant to a dead guy. Regardless of what you think of someone like Aaron Swartz, there are plenty of people who are currently doing good work who could greatly benefit from something like this. Giving it to a dead person simply to make a political statement diminishes any impact this award could have.
> Giving it to a dead person simply to make a political statement diminishes any impact this award could have.
Giving it to Aaron Swartz would provide both the title and the money to advance the cause of Aaron's Law or similar reform of the CFAA, enacting which would do more for socially positive disobedience than the equivalent amount of money.
As you likely know, but some may not, grants have legally enforceable constraints on how the funds will be spent, and often require proof that the funds were spent as required; not spending the funds as required might result in civil and criminal legal complaints being filed.
The funds presented to the winner of the award are not a work grant. There are no strings attached as far as I am able to tell by the rules or hidden agendas via the applications; for example, "If you are the winner, how might the $250k prize make a difference?"
Basically, to have expectations of how the winner might spend the funds is what it is, but to state it's basically a work grant is inaccurate.
It doesn't matter if Aaron Swartz is ineligible. We should still nominate him. We should nominate him so many times that granting the award to anyone else makes this award an obviously disingenuous publicity stunt.
Unpopular opinion: Aaron Swartz abused the trust which was placed in him by MIT as its guest when engaging in his civil disobedience, and MIT was perfectly justified not to intercede in his case.
A bit like if your friend comes to your house, you tell him, "don't smoke weed outside, the cops around here will arrest you," and your friend says "I support marijuana legalization, so I'll smoke wherever I want." Your friend smokes up on your front steps, you try to get him to stop (it's your house after all), and then the cops show up, rough you up a bit, and arrest him.
There are many more deserving than Aaron Swartz of this award, within and without the MIT community.
That is simply not what happen. He was never warned off MIT campus. The case was never one of trespassing with MIT - otherwise he'd have been slapped on the wrist with a local case.
Rather he was arrested by a federal secret service agent for CFAA violations that were based on extremely tenuous arguments that at the least most legal commentators concede was an egregious case of over-prosecution.
I'd love to hear your list of deserving award winners who are somehow notable dissidents without breaking something as lowly as a trespass law.
I'm not talking about violating trespass laws or any other legal principle---I'm talking about guestright. Aaron Swartz abused MIT's institutional journal subscriptions, which he had access to as a guest of the institution. He was warned to stop by MIT IS&T to an e-mail address he wasn't monitoring. When his IP was blocked, he got a new IP and kept downloading. He knew, or should have known, that his behavior was out of line, and yet he continued.
Do I think he should have been rung up on federal charges? No. But he wasn't a student, or a teacher, or a visiting researcher, or an alum. He had no official affiliation to MIT, and he showed no understanding of or respect for our culture. The flip side of an open culture is respect for and maintenance of the commons, and instead he exploited ours. It was really hard to defend him at the time for abusing the openness of the MIT community.
(And now, in fact, MIT affiliates like Aaron and me no longer have access to MIT's institutional subscriptions, in what I can only assume is partly a response to his actions.)
MIT's history has no shortage of people who were part of the institution and part of the culture, who the administration failed to support when that support was more justified and more needed than it ever was in Aaron's case. I'm sorry for the outcome, and I don't think he deserved it, but I don't think he deserves either some kind of posthumous award, nor does MIT deserve the scorn heaped on it by those who would canonize him.
Look: there were a lot of people to whom he mattered, whom he left behind, and they're good people, a number of them my friends, and I care a lot about them. Their voices and concerns deserve to be heard, whether or not I agree with them.
The people who never knew him, and who don't know MIT or MIT culture, and who want to turn Aaron into some kind of Internet freedom martyr all out of proportion to who he was and what he actually accomplished, those are the folks who I have a beef with.
There are many messages to take from Aaron's death.
I think one of the messages is that mental illness can affect anyone. Even people who seem perfectly normal. Even those who are rich. Even elites.
One reason Aaron took his own life might be that he felt he had no one to turn to. Or maybe he felt he shouldn't turn to anyone because he'd somehow be considered a failure.
Although it's perfectly valid to say that he was a victim of an injustice, I think we should also be conveying an additional message: That if you're dealing with something heavy, it's ok to reach out.
Hand in hand with that, the stigma against mental illness needs to end.
However, what 26 year old computer nerd without a black belt wouldn't give suicide some thought when staring at an unjust sentence in a federal prison of fifty years, AKA five decades, AKA half a century, AKA the majority of their remaining life expectancy, AKA about twice as long as their entire life up to that point and more than twice as long as they can remember?
Who wouldn't at least consider suicide when faced with the realization that even with time off for good behavior, by the time they got out they'd be closer to retirement age than to a reasonable age for restarting a career? That they'd have spent the most productive years of their life rotting away in prison instead of producing?
Weighing your pain avoidance instinct against your self preservation instinct is entirely rational. We don't put all of the blame on mental illnes, even if the person was mentally ill, when someone jumps to their death from a burning building or when a cancer patient opts for euthanasia. It's inappropriate to do so for Aaron Swartz.
It's not at all MIT's fault, blame lies with the prosecutor. In fact, blame also lies with the prosecutor when the defendant didn't end up committing suicide; and by extension, the various societal institutions that one way or another have allowed such overzealous legal harassment to be accepted.
I'd vote for Swartz or Snowden any day. But IMO voting for Swartz would serve mostly to shame MIT. Voting for someone else might make a difference to a live person.
MIT needs to be shamed publicly, regularly and continuously until they publicly apologize for their shameful behavior.
Giving this award to Swartz, and giving the money to his parents, along with a public statement of remorse and a public commitment to behaving more honorably in the future, would be an excellent way for them to do this.
If MIT were a person, sure. But it is a large organization with members holding multiple competing views. If one group is trying to do something good, do not shame them for another groups deeds, use them.
I'm not saying that this prize corrects the injustice done. It's an orthogonal option to do good. My 2c.
Those good people would hopefully want people to hold MIT to a standard when it comes to things like admissions, community involvement, support of students and researchers etc. rather than formal prizes. But maybe (hopefully) this is important for internal politics at MIT and not the best they can do.
It's not my intention to "punish" Media Lab, I like the work they do. But from the article you just posted:
> The mood changed later in the memorial when speakers began criticizing MIT’s involvement in the Swartz case. Swartz’ partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, asked MIT to consider whether it considered itself a “scientist” or “bureaucracy” and expressed skepticism about the Abelson report.
It's clear from the dialogue in here that this was not a sufficient response for the wider community, and that more reform and response was (and still is) expected. The perception is that there was a largely neutral response from a part of MIT that should have been one of the loudest.
I just spent a month in Cambridge, and while I met some great people working on important things, I have to say, there's definitely some ossification over there and it's a real problem. We need some very loud advocates for online and software freedom in the academic world right now, perhaps more than we've ever needed them. And yes, we still need the right to read research produced with public funding.
I agree with many of the people in here that this should have been named the Aaron Swartz Disobedience Award, in his honor. Or keep the name, but say that it being awarded in his memory. It would have sent a powerful message, both to future Aarons and to the MIT upper admins that have steadfastly refused to own up to what they did.
This award is a great idea, but the silence of not even mentioning his name in it when it's the thing on everyone's mind is deafening.
> I just spent a month in Cambridge, and while I met some great people working on important things, I have to say, there's definitely some ossification over there and it's a real problem.
I see a lot of support for nominating Aaron Swartz on this page. Why not Chelsea Manning instead?
Consider this: her actions parallel Swartz's actions (she liberated information), except that they could potentially benefit many, many more people the world over; Swartz's disobedience would primarily benefit academics (though of course the benefits would sort of trickle down to the rest of the population, eventually).
Additionally, Chelsea Manning is alive, and would benefit from the award. Nominating Aaron Swartz post-humously seems to me like nothing more than an attempt to rub MIT's nose into its own mess ...except of course that the people involved with the award are not the people responsible for Aaron Swartz's treatment.
How about Alexandra Elbakyan who started sci-hub. Her work is pretty similar to Aaron's. I feel that by defying the rules sci-hub has really helped bring the cause of open-access to everyone's attention and we are all watching it change the system for good.
I would like to see the money go to Aaron's parents, Robert and Susan Swartz, in his memory. I believe they expended a tremendous amount financially in the legal fight for Aaron. It would seem fitting to extract some small measure of remuneration from MIT for their complicitness via this award.
When they involved the police, they had no idea who it was that was apparently attacking them. They just knew that an unknown party was causing serious disruptions, and was actively trying to evade their countermeasures, and had moved on to trespassing and equipment tampering.
It was only after Swartz was arrested that his identity became known.
Everything after that was in the hands of prosecutors. MIT did tell prosecutors that MIT did not advocate jail time for Swartz.
Because everyone at MIT has authority to make press releases. Similar to how everyone in the US is allowed to use the Whitehouse press secretary to announce things.
Did you even read the context of the comment you originally replied to? It refers to people, not an organization.
>Aren't these the people that failed to defend Aaron Swartz?
So no, these aren't the same people. However, it is the same parent organization, but I don't think anyone is disputing that even though that's the strawman you are attacking.
>Did you even read the context of the comment you originally replied to? It refers to people, not an organization.
Organizations consist of people. There is some more stuff beyond that -- just some legal documents, buildings, and other assets, but the thing that actually has the agency to drive an organization is people.
>So no, these aren't the same people. However, it is the same parent organization, but I don't think anyone is disputing that even though that's the strawman you are attacking.
They are the same people that worked there and didn't protest publicly about the actions of the organization and/or didn't resign.
>They are the same people that worked there and didn't protest publicly about the actions of the organization and/or didn't resign.
So nobody has left or joined MIT since the Aaron Schwartz case?
Even ignoring that detail, I have a lot more respect for people that change an organization from within rather than quit immediately anytime something disagreeable happens. If everyone operated the way you are suggesting, we would essentially have institutions that would never change because nobody with different viewpoints could join.
Not much of a leap. At some point you either take a stand, even if it's against the official stance of the organization you work with, or you are branded with its decisions.
"I was just following orders" and/or "I disagreed, but I was in the minority" is not an excuse.
I appreciate the spirit of the award, however it seems to be coming from an odd place for an odd amount.
I'm not sure what part of the mission of the MIT Media Lab is really involved with rocking the boat. And 250k seems like a heck of a lot of cash to do this. 50k seems like a good amount. I would rather see 5 winners.
The MIT Media Lab has always had a long list of corporate sponsors [1]. And some of them are real boat rockers. If by boat you mean yacht, and by rock you mean race.
But I notice that Philip Morris isn't on that list any more, like it was in 2004 [2] and 2005 [3].
Philip Morris makes a lot of money from disobedient kids who won't listen to what their parents tell them about not smoking. And they do pay a lot of disobedient scientists who are willing to dispute the scientific consensus about the dangers of smoking. [4]
I feel like a disobedience award should be met with a little disobedience. I'm not sure what all the chit-chat about rules and eligibility is around here, I've nominated Aaron Swartz -- fuck the rules.
Seems like a great way to catch a nasty case of conspiracy to commit a felony. The reason the Nobel committee can give an award to a political prisoner in another country is that they are in another country.
To take another comment, suppose the Media Lab awards Snowden the $250K. What possible conspiracy charge could the Media Lab (or the person(s) who nominated Snowden) catch?
> Federal prosecutors have filed a criminal complaint against Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of documents about top-secret surveillance programs, and the United States has asked Hong Kong to detain him on a provisional arrest warrant, according to U.S. officials.
> Snowden was charged with theft, “unauthorized communication of national defense information” and “willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person,” according to the complaint. The last two charges were brought under the 1917 Espionage Act.
Disobedience only means anything if it upsets somebody somewhere, preferably someone powerful.
So, if you decide to honor disobedient people, you accept it will carry some kind of consequence for yourself, or else you're full of it.
The MIT should definitely honor someone that the US government doesn't like, instead of, say, the Chinese government, as a matter of principle (and consistency).
Not sure where you are drawing your implied conclusion that Snowdon is not engaged in ongoing disobedience, but I would say Snowdon has remained pretty darn engaged with the issues he brought to light. And his disobedience is certainly ongoing, in that he isn't obeying the call from authorities to turn himself in to a system which is virtually guaranteed to deny him fair treatment.
Todays radical act of disobedience for me was disabling JavaScript on this site. Quelle surprise, it promptly broke and was all black, despite being literally a form.
It looks like Typeform which depends pretty heavily on interactivity, like for keyboard shortcuts. It's somewhat surprising they wouldn't have a no JS fallback but on the other hand the experience would be markedly worse than those with JS on.
I nominate Fiskkit.com A new site which is a BS filter for news/online content and lets there be a discussion of an article or text that favors facts and logic. Kinda cool. Anyone can tag news article for true/false/bias and nine other things...democratizing civic engagement and disobedience by putting BS filter into hands of anyone. I know they are looking for help to try and root out the crap that passes for news and discourse online and get people more engaged.
The winner is almost guaranteed to be a conformist, given that the organization selecting the winner is part of the dominant, mainstream power structure.
So expect the winner to be, paradoxically, someone who is completely obedient.
Source: Intimately familiar with the Media Lab. As with most places, there is a type of conformable non-conformance. Kind of like casual Fridays at work, or office humor. The Media Lab, and Joi in particular, would never reward non-conformance. Now, if a liberal in Saudi Arabia breaks conservative laws, that they would reward. But that's conforming to their standards.
Yup. I submitted my application based on the FashionTech wearable I designed, built and wore to protest the lack of inclusion of any local women at a Western tech event here in Shenzhen. http://i.imgur.com/2D8dESV.jpg
I ended up stomping around a mainland Chinese tourist attraction half-naked in it, giving speeches to massive Chinese crowds about an inclusion issue. http://i.imgur.com/9Dz9M9N.jpg
Anyone who knows anything about China will tell you how unbelievably dangerous this is.
But I was protesting the MIT Media Labs best buddy Make Magazine so I'm sure my application has been directly filed in the trash- even though I'd be very surprised if anyone else applying has done anything that dangerous.
Off-topic, but since I started looking at some of your stuff, with the entire trans-humanism and cyborg thing, what implants do you have? I don't mean aesthetic body modification, but things with chips in them.
I'm also in China, a bit further up north, in 山寨版silicon valley, aka. Beijing, Haidian, but I'm really interested in what is going on in Shenzhen. Any chance we could chat?
Hey, I'm going through your Pastebin (http://pastebin.com/u/SexyCyborg) and it's really interesting, informative, and eye-opening. Keep it up, that's some voice!
It is hard not to be cynical about this, coming from an organisation that called the cops on Aaron Swartz and let the attorneys hound him to his death.
It looks like a belated PR exercise to ease their conscience or public image. If they at least named the prize after him, then it might come across as more genuine.
A better name would've been TakeNoBullshit award. Because that is what which rots the world and Aaron tried to fight it to save others from being subjected to the same bullshit.
Like 2muchcoffeeman commented:
>>The award is clearly for people who are being disobedient for the benefit of society.
Breaking rules for the sake of breaking rules is just anarchy or trolling. You're just inconveniencing people who set out to recognise real contributions to society.
How are so many people bringing up Aaron Swartz? Media Lab !== MIT and this is probably entirely Joi's idea. And the MIT administration has changed significantly since 2013.
I just nominated Donald J Trump. He has disobeyed all political conventions in regard to his election campaign and especially in regard to his relationship with the media. In fact, many people believe he has disobeyed the supreme law of the United States: the Constitution with regards to the emoluments clause and not having a religious test with regards to his immigration ban executive order. He has taken personal risk of failure and being the object of ridicule by tens of millions of people throughout the world.
In regards to what good he has done, he is ostensibly trying to make America great. Less controversially, it is agreed by virtually everybody that he has been the cause for dramatically increased political engagement by the complacent American population and has served to expose multiple vulnerabilities in the American political system especially with regards to Presidential powers, that many people assumed were not a threat to democracy.
> “Trump is the Silicon Valley candidate in every way except that the ideology is flipped,” said Sam Altman, a prominent technology leader, chief executive of Y Combinator and a major Hillary Clinton donor. “He’s an outsider. He took on a system he thought was broken and then disregarded the rules, he got to know his users well and tested his product early and iterated rapidly. That’s the start-up playbook. That’s exactly what we tell our start-ups to do.”
(Sam Altman has also built a tool for holding Trump to his campaign promises.)
Interesting perspective. It seems pretty implausible that they would actually give the award to the POTUS, but it is simultaneously great to see Americans start to be more critical readers (analytically not negatively) of news sources, and also quite shocking to see the number of people in this country that blindly and unquestionably accept what they are told even when it lacks credibility and/or sources. I'm hoping Trump can be a positive vehicle for moving more people from the latter to the former.
I disagree that he has done good. Between his attacks on the media and climate change facts, he is causing permanent damage in the popular trust in science.
One can't disobey "conventions". One disobey laws, and in particular, laws that are enforced, and the breaking of which carry real threats to their freedom.
Also, you can't be disobeying if you're the boss and decide who gets tried and who doesn't. So since DJT has been president he can't disobey no more.
Not sure if your comment was ironic; if yes, fine, if not, you're very wrong.
You are playing a semantics game. Replace disobey with ignore, and the intent is the same.
> you can't be disobeying if you're the boss and decide who gets tried and who doesn't
The United States is a constitutional democracy, not a fascist regime. In the past, presidents have indeed disobeyed, and one was consequently impeached.
Coal industry is dead, pretending otherwise is not healthy or helpful.
Attacking the media is not healthy or helpful.
His most egregious crime is destabilizing public trust in climate change facts. The world climate is changing because of human actions, and drastic action must be taken by world leaders to prevent catastrophic damage (aka, human extinction events). Leaders like Trump that deny the facts contribute to the damage that may cause these extinction events.
So if you call contributing to effects that could lead to flooding most of our major population centers with rising sea water over the next hundred years "making america great," by all means support the man.
EDIT: Because Trump supporters always say "but Trump didn't say x y z!"
There is no human organization that should be free from scrutiny. Actions taken by members of the media and academia have significantly contributed to public distrust, long before Trump entered the political arena. He is simply capitalizing quite effectively on those, and other, sentiments.
If coal is dead, so are millions of humans. It remains a significant source of global energy, especially in developing countries.
We can craft strawmen and knock them down with cherry-picked quotes all day long.
Hillary and Bernie hasn't used a bully-pulpit to attack climate change facts.
If we don't do something about climate change right now, it will kill our species. We were doing something, and those efforts are already being reversed via anti-environmental (and anti-human) EPA appointments.
Your arguments about racism are irrelevant to me considering the context.
So many people struggle to make a difference, no matter how small, and being honored for their efforts, when it's most likely that it rarely if ever happens in real life, would be inspiring to them to keep up what they're doing.
For those interested in reading about the original post covering in detail the thoughts behind the award, see this blog post:
https://joi.ito.com/weblog/2016/03/21/on-disobedience.html