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Cato’s Timothy Lee’s conflict of interest with regard to Aaron Swartz?

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  July 21st, 2011 at 11:00 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

So, let’s walk through this interesting defense-via-faint-damnation of Aaron Swartz by Timothy B Lee.

  • Timothy B. Lee’s article, summed up, is as follows: Aaron Swartz was right to hack into JSTOR and take all those articles without paying for them, but he went about being right very, very stupidly by physically breaking into things while stealing downloading other people’s articles. [Somebody on Twitter made the objection that double-quotes suggest a direct quote, instead of me just summing up Lee in a mean and vicious manner.  Being magnanimous in victory and all that, I'll be nice and 'fix' it. - ML] This is a standard telecommie (one of my readers at MoeLane.com prefers ‘infosocialist,’ which works too) defense; which is… interesting.
  • Well, who is Timothy B. Lee? Well, his Forbes profile says that, among other things, he’s an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.
  • And when you go over to Timothy Lee’s Cato Institute profile, it notes there (but not on his website’s disclosure statement) that Lee “was the co-author of RECAP, a software project that promotes public access to federal court records.”

  • What’s RECAP? “RECAP is an extension (or “add on”) for the Firefox web browser that improves the PACER experience while helping PACER users build a free and open repository of public court records.” “PACER” stands for the “Public Access to Court Electronic Records:” obviously, it’s a government site.
  • Back in 2009, Aaron Swartz came to the FBI’s attention when he script-kiddied a Chicago Circuit Court Library computer to take advantage of a free trial offered by PACER to download somewhere between 18 and 20 million pages of court documents. This only ended when PACER was forced to shut down free access entirely.
  • If this sounds a good deal like what happened with MIT/JSTOR – tampering with computers, unauthorized access, mass downloads – well, that’s because it is, except that no charges were filed back then by the feds.
  • Anyway, Swartz donated those documents to Carl Malamud’s public.resource.org. And who is Carl Malamud?
  • Why, Carl Malamud is a guy that provided RECAP with a good number of its seed documents. In fact, it is because of Malamud and the Swartz download – according to fellow-RECAP creator Steve Schultze, at least – that RECAP was created in 2009.
  • Carl Malamud went on to be the guy that funded Timothy B. Lee’s graduate work for 2010-2011.

So. Timothy Lee writes as spirited an ideological defense as he can manage for Aaron Swartz, a guy who broke into MIT and abused their networks, and nowhere does he mention that there are direct professional and academic ties between him and Swartz, as well as a rather strong indirect financial tie through Carl Malamud. In other words… without Swartz’s habit of breaking into other people’s computer networks with a vacuum cleaner, Timothy Lee would have had a completely different college and post-graduate career; which means probably a less remunerative one, give this economy.

Why did Timothy B Lee not disclose any of this?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

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COMMENTS

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  • http://www.periodictablet.com superamerican

    Period. They are the moral equivalent of God. No more to be said.

  • http://www.periodictablet.com superamerican

    Oops, is “God” a profanity. Only to Liberals.

  • romeg

    But Infosociopath is more accurate.

  • mercyvetsel

    That’s a lot of vitriol to be directed at a guy for merely offering some tepid support.

    First of all, I don’t think Aaron Swartz is a leftist. I checked outand his group “Demand Progress” and frankly it doesn’t seem to be nearly as bad as it sounds. The worst thing seems to be the word “Progress” in the name of his organization.

    Check out his list of campaigns:

    http://blog.demandprogress.org/campaigns/

    It’s all libertarian stuff rather than the typical fascist issues that define most “progressives”. About 90% of the issues he lists should appeal to Bill Buckley conservatives.

    Second, illegal copying is not the same thing as theft. To claim otherwise is an abuse of our language as well as our traditional sense of morality.

    There is no commandment “thou shalt not copy, except as permitted by the government”.

    Intellectual property is substantially different from physical property because it’s possible to be possessed simultaneously and fully by multiple people.

    If you steal my ox then I can’t plow my field, but if you “steal” my design for the yoke that goes on my ox, then my capacity to use my invention to blow my field not affected.

    It’s completely reasonable for a conservative to hold that Illegal copying should be a strictly civil matter and not a crime.

    There are many aspects of our civilization that are universal including marriage, the criminality of theft and murder. IP is not one of them. I’m not aware of any Christian teaching that prohibits copying someone else idea.

    The whole idea behind IP is strictly a statutory invention to encourage invention and creation. Many people think that copyrights especially have been over applied in away that actually diminishes the benefits to society that were supposed to accrue from laws protecting IP.

    So don’t get me wrong. I definitely believe in IP protection and especially patents for genuinely new inventions.

    However, I also think that copyrights are now severely overdone. It’s crazy to me that if you invent a drug that cures cancer you get 20 years to monopolize the product but if you draw a picture of mouse (not that different from other mice) or right a song the monopoly rights last long after your dead.

    -Mercy

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    Tsk, tsk, tsk. Do yourself a favor and get yourself up to speed on the details – as a hint, the first stage of that process is to figure out why “I don?t think Aaron Swartz is a leftist” is such a cringe-worthy statement – and then you can rejoin the conversation.

    No, seriously. Right now you look like a total doofus on that statement alone.

  • powertothepeople

    not to call people morons even when they are obvious morons and because I respect the rules and the rule makers, I will skip calling you one.

    There is a rule in the Bible about stealing someone else property, It is the “thou shalt not steal” rule. It matters little whether or not it is physical property or intellectual property, to take what is not yours is stealing. There is also the teachings of Christ that clearly state you are to abide by the rules of the land (government) unless they directly require you to break the law of God. So yet another reason you are wrong and stating moronic nonsense.

    Do you work? If so, do you expect payment for your effort. Same applies to those who design ideas, movies, music,invention ideas etc. When you steal their property without paying for it, you are a thief. There is no distinction no matter how much you try to justify it. If you are too broke to afford what another has made, wait till you have the money.

    So please, lets not try to excuse your moronic mentality by bringing Christianity into it especially when it is quite obvious you have no grasp on the teachings of Christ.

    But then again, as Moe stated, you look like a total doofus for most of what you wrote.