[liberationtech] Tragic News: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
This is a tragic loss and a terrible blow to the liberationtech community. Yosem http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/swartz.html Aaron Swartz commits suicide Web Update By Anne Cai NEWS EDITOR; UPDATED AT 2:15 A.M. 1/12/13 Computer activist Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide in New York City yesterday, Jan. 11, according to his uncle, Michael Wolf, in a comment to The Tech. Swartz was 26. “The tragic and heartbreaking information you received is, regrettably, true,” confirmed Swartz’ attorney, Elliot R. Peters of Kecker and Van Nest, in an email to The Tech. Swartz was indicted in July 2011 by a federal grand jury for allegedly mass downloading documents from the JSTOR online journal archive with the intent to distribute them. He subsequently moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he then worked for Avaaz Foundation, a nonprofit “global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere.” Swartz appeared in court on Sept. 24, 2012 and pleaded not guilty. The accomplished Swartz co-authored the now widely-used RSS 1.0 specification at age 14, was one of the three co-owners of the popular social news site Reddit, and completed a fellowship at Harvard’s Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption. In 2010, he founded DemandProgress.org, a “campaign against the Internet censorship bills SOPA/PIPA.” -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Google Bows Down To Chinese Government On Censorship
On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 1:14 AM, Hal Roberts hrobe...@cyber.law.harvard.edu wrote: I'd like to back this up. I haven't done any research on circumvention usage for a couple of years, but it doesn't pass the sniff test to claim that a majority of the 500 million Chinese Internet users are on VPNs. Such widespread VPN usage would have large, obvious impacts on the basic structure of the Internet. All you are doing is pointing out obvious flaws in the Wired report. I can just the same present the obvious counter-argument that regular non-VPN users very rarely search for terms related to whatever revolutionary movements are currently considered sexy in the West. I have only quoted Wired and TechCrunch as two sources that did a bit more than rewriting GreatFire's blog post. This says nothing about user experiences. It is certainly possible that Google pulling out the censored words warning was due to something done by the Chinese in the days prior to that, where that something resulted in user experience being worse (e.g.: users being blocked despite using synonyms, or presented with unusable results that will get them blocked anyway). I don't see any reason to trust GreatFire's judgement on the matter, because it took them a month to notice the change, which goes contrary to claims about user experience getting worse. -- Maxim Kammerer Liberté Linux: http://dee.su/liberte -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
[liberationtech] RIP Aaron Swarts (1986-2012)
Hello all, You may have heard that Internet activist Aaron Swartz was announced dead after he apparently committed suicide yesterdayhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-suicide_n_2462819.html. Regardless how he died, it's just important to pay tribute to the significant work he had done for Internet freedom and liberty online and it is with great sadness that we see one of the most remarkable individuals pass away in such a young age. May his soul rest in peace. Sincerely, Walid - Walid Al-Saqaf Founder Administrator alkasir for mapping and circumventing cyber censorship https://alkasir.com walid.al-sa...@oru.se -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
[liberationtech] RIP Aaron Swarts (1986-2013) [Corrected]
Correction in the title of my previous message, it should be (1986-2013). Sincerely, Walid - Walid Al-Saqaf Founder Administrator alkasir for mapping and circumventing cyber censorship https://alkasir.com walid.al-sa...@oru.se On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 6:51 PM, Walid AL-SAQAF alkasir admin ad...@alkasir.com wrote: Hello all, You may have heard that Internet activist Aaron Swartz was announced dead after he apparently committed suicide yesterdayhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-suicide_n_2462819.html. Regardless how he died, it's just important to pay tribute to the significant work he had done for Internet freedom and liberty online and it is with great sadness that we see one of the most remarkable individuals pass away in such a young age. May his soul rest in peace. Sincerely, Walid - Walid Al-Saqaf Founder Administrator alkasir for mapping and circumventing cyber censorship https://alkasir.com walid.al-sa...@oru.se -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Tragic News: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
Irony: http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/1/9/3857628/jstor-opens-up-limited-free-access-to-its-digital-library I can't even think about this, what a loss to our community, what a light guttered out so young! Shava On Jan 12, 2013 3:36 AM, Yosem Companys compa...@stanford.edu wrote: This is a tragic loss and a terrible blow to the liberationtech community. Yosem http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/swartz.html Aaron Swartz commits suicide Web Update By Anne Cai NEWS EDITOR; UPDATED AT 2:15 A.M. 1/12/13 Computer activist Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide in New York City yesterday, Jan. 11, according to his uncle, Michael Wolf, in a comment to The Tech. Swartz was 26. “The tragic and heartbreaking information you received is, regrettably, true,” confirmed Swartz’ attorney, Elliot R. Peters of Kecker and Van Nest, in an email to The Tech. Swartz was indicted in July 2011 by a federal grand jury for allegedly mass downloading documents from the JSTOR online journal archive with the intent to distribute them. He subsequently moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he then worked for Avaaz Foundation, a nonprofit “global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere.” Swartz appeared in court on Sept. 24, 2012 and pleaded not guilty. The accomplished Swartz co-authored the now widely-used RSS 1.0 specification at age 14, was one of the three co-owners of the popular social news site Reddit, and completed a fellowship at Harvard’s Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption. In 2010, he founded DemandProgress.org, a “campaign against the Internet censorship bills SOPA/PIPA.” -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Tragic News: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
..on Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 01:03:52PM -0500, Shava Nerad wrote: Irony: http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/1/9/3857628/jstor-opens-up-limited-free-access-to-its-digital-library This is JSTOR going 'freeware' rather than Free Software. In the programming domain it's comparable to source code that is technically open for reading yet disallows modification or redistribution. Aaron would've been just as pissed about this. On their site they say 'A New Chapter Begins'. There's the irony. We should all stop supporting knowledge mafia like JSTOR by discouraging our peers to publish there. It's bad enough that publicly funded universities push their knowledge output to a private business interest. A great way to channel any despair from Aaron's death is to encourage peers to publish openly. Cheers, Julian On Jan 12, 2013 3:36 AM, Yosem Companys compa...@stanford.edu wrote: This is a tragic loss and a terrible blow to the liberationtech community. Yosem http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/swartz.html Aaron Swartz commits suicide Web Update By Anne Cai NEWS EDITOR; UPDATED AT 2:15 A.M. 1/12/13 Computer activist Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide in New York City yesterday, Jan. 11, according to his uncle, Michael Wolf, in a comment to The Tech. Swartz was 26. “The tragic and heartbreaking information you received is, regrettably, true,” confirmed Swartz’ attorney, Elliot R. Peters of Kecker and Van Nest, in an email to The Tech. Swartz was indicted in July 2011 by a federal grand jury for allegedly mass downloading documents from the JSTOR online journal archive with the intent to distribute them. He subsequently moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he then worked for Avaaz Foundation, a nonprofit “global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere.” Swartz appeared in court on Sept. 24, 2012 and pleaded not guilty. The accomplished Swartz co-authored the now widely-used RSS 1.0 specification at age 14, was one of the three co-owners of the popular social news site Reddit, and completed a fellowship at Harvard’s Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption. In 2010, he founded DemandProgress.org, a “campaign against the Internet censorship bills SOPA/PIPA.” -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- Julian Oliver http://julianoliver.com http://criticalengineering.org -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Tragic News: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
..on Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 02:06:55PM -0500, Gregory Maxwell wrote: On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 1:50 PM, Julian Oliver jul...@julianoliver.com wrote: This is JSTOR going 'freeware' rather than Free Software. In the programming domain it's comparable to source code that is technically open for reading yet disallows modification or redistribution. This is absolutely the case, but at the same time— claims, never heard by big names negotiating with jstor before, that they were planning it all along notwithstanding— it does show sensitivity to negative attention. That some change can be made, even if it's just pretextual, is important. Likewise, while getting the right TOS does matter, access itself is the most important thing. Lets see them prosecute someone for violating their TOS when they execute their rights over public domain works— that would be the kind of unambiguously frivolous litigation which would create the kind of outrage needed to topple the whole thing. You are right that we need to celebrate the small changes. And indeed it's better that these articles are being read. Nonetheless I do find it frustrating to see so many towing the line that JSTOR is opening up their articles to the public when in fact (from the press release) Anyone can sign up for a JSTOR account and read up to three articles for free every two weeks. http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/01/academic-libraries/many-jstor-journal-archives-now-free-to-public/ That's as 'free' as a 1h parking spot. JSTOR's strategy is in the interest of maintaining control, not relinquishing it (naturally). By continuing to use JSTOR - even signing up to download tantalising 'free' papers - is to show support for an ongoing effort to privatise critical thought. IMHO, -- Julian Oliver http://julianoliver.com http://criticalengineering.org -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Tragic News: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 07:50:58PM +0100, Julian Oliver wrote: We should all stop supporting knowledge mafia like JSTOR by discouraging our peers to publish there. It's bad enough that publicly funded universities push their knowledge output to a private business interest. A great way to channel any despair from Aaron's death is to encourage peers to publish openly. As a means of civil disobedience against unacceptable practices, consider submitting liberated content to projects like Library Genesis. -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Tragic News: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
While I sympathize with the open access spirit of this thread, and have no intention to detract from the eulogizing of Aaron Swartz, I think that in all fairness a few things should be pointed out. JSTOR is not a journal publisher. This is an important distinction since it means that JSTOR's terms are, at least in part, influenced by the journal publishers. It also means that it will not always be clear whether or not an article you publish will end up in JSTOR unless you make sure that you are publishing in a fully open access (OA) journal (which is the route I would recommend for anyone concerned with information equity). A directory of OA journals can be found here http://www.doaj.org Also, as a librarian, I have found JSTOR to be one of the least problematic of the academic content providers. This is probably due to the fact that they are non-profit, distribute little in the way of current content (where the profit margins are higher), allow for perpetual access to back runs that are bought, and was established as a way to expand access to journal content in academia. If there was an effective business model to allow for total open access I would not be surprised if JSTOR would be one of the content aggregators most open to such a model. The real bad guys in the academic publishing world are for-profits like Elsevier, which was the target of a recent boycott: http://thecostofknowledge.com Regards, Gabe On Jan 12, 2013, at 10:53 AM, Julian Oliver jul...@julianoliver.commailto:jul...@julianoliver.com wrote: ..on Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 01:03:52PM -0500, Shava Nerad wrote: Irony: http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/1/9/3857628/jstor-opens-up-limited-free-access-to-its-digital-library This is JSTOR going 'freeware' rather than Free Software. In the programming domain it's comparable to source code that is technically open for reading yet disallows modification or redistribution. Aaron would've been just as pissed about this. On their site they say 'A New Chapter Begins'. There's the irony. We should all stop supporting knowledge mafia like JSTOR by discouraging our peers to publish there. It's bad enough that publicly funded universities push their knowledge output to a private business interest. A great way to channel any despair from Aaron's death is to encourage peers to publish openly. Cheers, Julian On Jan 12, 2013 3:36 AM, Yosem Companys compa...@stanford.edumailto:compa...@stanford.edu wrote: This is a tragic loss and a terrible blow to the liberationtech community. Yosem http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/swartz.html Aaron Swartz commits suicide Web Update By Anne Cai NEWS EDITOR; UPDATED AT 2:15 A.M. 1/12/13 Computer activist Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide in New York City yesterday, Jan. 11, according to his uncle, Michael Wolf, in a comment to The Tech. Swartz was 26. “The tragic and heartbreaking information you received is, regrettably, true,” confirmed Swartz’ attorney, Elliot R. Peters of Kecker and Van Nest, in an email to The Tech. Swartz was indicted in July 2011 by a federal grand jury for allegedly mass downloading documents from the JSTOR online journal archive with the intent to distribute them. He subsequently moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he then worked for Avaaz Foundation, a nonprofit “global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere.” Swartz appeared in court on Sept. 24, 2012 and pleaded not guilty. The accomplished Swartz co-authored the now widely-used RSS 1.0 specification at age 14, was one of the three co-owners of the popular social news site Reddit, and completed a fellowship at Harvard’s Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption. In 2010, he founded DemandProgress.orghttp://DemandProgress.org, a “campaign against the Internet censorship bills SOPA/PIPA.” -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- Julian Oliver http://julianoliver.com http://criticalengineering.org -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
[liberationtech] Gmail SSL Certificate Churn?
Hi folks, can you help me understand how to interpret this data? It appears that Gmail's SSL certificate changed fairly frequently during the month of December. That seems wrong to me. What's this all mean? https://www.betweennowhere.net/blog/2013/01/gmails-changing-ssl-certificates/ The weirdest part isn't how the 0E:66... certificate disappeared on November 20th (or December 5th), but how it came back into circulation on or around December 20th. Thanks for any clarification you can offer on this situation, Nick -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Gmail SSL Certificate Churn?
John Adams j...@retina.net writes: On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 2:54 PM, John Adams j...@retina.net wrote: Google has stated publically that they rapidly roll their SSL certificates. Nothing to see here, no blog post to write, move along now... Thanks for pointing that out, I must've missed those announcements. Additionally, while you're complaining about other people's SSL certificates, you should fix yours. :) It's broken for a reason, I'm trying something weird. Nick -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Gmail SSL Certificate Churn?
Rapidly means several days to a week for google.com. We (Cyberspark.net) watch the Google.com SSL certs (not gmail) and it takes at least a few days as they roll new certs onto multiple IP addresses (round robin DNS). I have only monitored this for the last two years, but it's been the same both years. I have never understood why they don't or can't deploy the new certs more rapidly, and it does set off repeated alarms within our systems. But as long as they are valid and properly signed we just watch and smile. DNS rotates the address for Google.com among a number of IP addresses, and they don't update all of those servers at the same time, so it appears to our monitors as thrashing back and forth between the old and the new certs. I wonder if anyone in the group knows whether there's any good reason they should or shouldn't push new certs on all machines at the same time? (Nick -- would like to see what you have online, but won't blast thru a certificate warning. Perhaps you have it somewhere else.) -Sky On Jan 12, 2013, at 2:57 PM, John Adams j...@retina.net wrote: Additionally, while you're complaining about other people's SSL certificates, you should fix yours. :) On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 2:54 PM, John Adams j...@retina.net wrote: Google has stated publically that they rapidly roll their SSL certificates. Nothing to see here, no blog post to write, move along now... -j On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Nick M. Daly nick.m.d...@gmail.com wrote: Hi folks, can you help me understand how to interpret this data? It appears that Gmail's SSL certificate changed fairly frequently during the month of December. That seems wrong to me. What's this all mean? https://www.betweennowhere.net/blog/2013/01/gmails-changing-ssl-certificates/ The weirdest part isn't how the 0E:66... certificate disappeared on November 20th (or December 5th), but how it came back into circulation on or around December 20th. Thanks for any clarification you can offer on this situation, Nick -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Google Bows Down To Chinese Government On Censorship
All you are doing is pointing out obvious flaws in the Wired report. Yes. Since you used it as a source it seems relevant to point out its flaws. I can just the same present the obvious counter-argument that regular non-VPN users very rarely search for terms related to whatever revolutionary movements are currently considered sexy in the West. Examples of search terms blocked on Google by the GFW (sexy in the west?): 中共 (The Chinese Communist Party), 习 (to study, also the last name of the current Party leader), 五毛 (50 cents), 吴 and 周 (common surnames), 太子 (crown prince), 广场 (square), 日记 (diary) and thousands more ( https://en.greatfire.org/search/google-searches). Any search containing any of these terms makes the connection reset and Google Search to be unusable for about a minute. This is clearly a bad user experience affecting a lot of users, including those not searching for revolutionary movements. It is certainly possible that Google pulling out the censored words warning was due to something done by the Chinese in the days prior to that, where that something resulted in user experience being worse (e.g.: users being blocked despite using synonyms, or presented with unusable results that will get them blocked anyway). Please provide any form of evidence suggesting this to be true. I have provided a copy of Google Search when accessed from China, as of early December, demonstrating that the function was working at that point. I don't see any reason to trust GreatFire's judgement on the matter, because it took them a month to notice the change, which goes contrary to claims about user experience getting worse. Yes, it took us a month to report on it and we are surprised as well that nobody else reported on it prior to that. Martin Johnson Founder https://GreatFire.org - Monitoring Online Censorship In China. https://FreeWeibo.com - Uncensored, Anonymous Sina Weibo Search. https://Unblock.cn.com - We Can Unblock Your Website In China. On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 5:58 PM, Maxim Kammerer m...@dee.su wrote: On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 1:14 AM, Hal Roberts hrobe...@cyber.law.harvard.edu wrote: I'd like to back this up. I haven't done any research on circumvention usage for a couple of years, but it doesn't pass the sniff test to claim that a majority of the 500 million Chinese Internet users are on VPNs. Such widespread VPN usage would have large, obvious impacts on the basic structure of the Internet. All you are doing is pointing out obvious flaws in the Wired report. I can just the same present the obvious counter-argument that regular non-VPN users very rarely search for terms related to whatever revolutionary movements are currently considered sexy in the West. I have only quoted Wired and TechCrunch as two sources that did a bit more than rewriting GreatFire's blog post. This says nothing about user experiences. It is certainly possible that Google pulling out the censored words warning was due to something done by the Chinese in the days prior to that, where that something resulted in user experience being worse (e.g.: users being blocked despite using synonyms, or presented with unusable results that will get them blocked anyway). I don't see any reason to trust GreatFire's judgement on the matter, because it took them a month to notice the change, which goes contrary to claims about user experience getting worse. -- Maxim Kammerer Liberté Linux: http://dee.su/liberte -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Tragic News: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
I really respect Aaron's work, and don't mean to detract from it. But perhaps we can use this to talk about the issue of depression in the technology community? (Especially academia - we are, after all on a Stanford run email list) I have several friends in academia who suffer from depression. I am known for being a good listening IRL, and I've offered to be there for many of them. You know what depressed ME? All of them remain oblivious the others exist - because they all believe that publicly acknowledging their mental illness will kill their chances for tenure and/or prestigious industry research jobs, and have sworn me to secrecy. These friends come from multiple universities/companies - it is not a problem endemic to one place. Depression kills more people than terrorism, DUI, heart disease, breast cancer - more than so many popular causes. Again - I do not in any way, shape, or form intend to detract from Alex's contributions. He was a great inspiration to me, and I greatly respect his contributions to us all. But I think that by opening a conversation about mental illness, we can help more people than debating about JSTOR, and do not want to see this opportunity lost. We could remove the stigma from talking about mental illness in academia today, if we chose. And maybe we could save someone thinking of making the choice Aaron made. Personally, I dislike the term suicide. I prefer the wording died of depression - to emphasize that depression is as much as a disease as any other. In closing... I offer my condolences to Aaron's surviving family, and hope we can use this moment to achieve some sort of silver lining to an extremely dark cloud. RIP Aaron. -- Greg Norcie (g...@norcie.com) GPG key: 0x1B873635 On 1/12/13 3:35 AM, Yosem Companys wrote: This is a tragic loss and a terrible blow to the liberationtech community. Yosem http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/swartz.html Aaron Swartz commits suicide Web Update By Anne Cai NEWS EDITOR; UPDATED AT 2:15 A.M. 1/12/13 Computer activist Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide in New York City yesterday, Jan. 11, according to his uncle, Michael Wolf, in a comment to The Tech. Swartz was 26. “The tragic and heartbreaking information you received is, regrettably, true,” confirmed Swartz’ attorney, Elliot R. Peters of Kecker and Van Nest, in an email to The Tech. Swartz was indicted in July 2011 by a federal grand jury for allegedly mass downloading documents from the JSTOR online journal archive with the intent to distribute them. He subsequently moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he then worked for Avaaz Foundation, a nonprofit “global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere.” Swartz appeared in court on Sept. 24, 2012 and pleaded not guilty. The accomplished Swartz co-authored the now widely-used RSS 1.0 specification at age 14, was one of the three co-owners of the popular social news site Reddit, and completed a fellowship at Harvard’s Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption. In 2010, he founded DemandProgress.org, a “campaign against the Internet censorship bills SOPA/PIPA.” -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
