this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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Bro flew too close to the server rack (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 100 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Tl; Dr:

  • Savant-genius in our time works on/with and drives a large amount of the early “Web 2.0” era that champions decentralization, openness, and freedom of information
  • This ethos is carried throughout his work in tech, leading him to mass copy databases that are paywalled or closed access to students, that he had permission to use, and dump the info online for free
  • JSTOR and MIT get salty about this, set up a sting at the school servers where he’s doing said mass copying
  • Prosecutor wayyyy overcharges Aaron and seeks to neuter him from using tech, Aaron gets scared and (due in part to a longstanding mental & physical illness) commits suicide

There’s more info and context, but that the broad strokes. Fuck MIT for pushing his prosecution, JSTOR was fine once he stopped uploading their database

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

There is actually speculation that he never intended to dump the files online for free. He was working on information research at the time.