this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2022
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Libre Culture
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What is libre culture?
Libre culture is all about empowering people. While the general philosophy stems greatly from the free software movement, libre culture is much broader and encompasses other aspects of culture such as music, movies, food, technology, etc.
Some beliefs include but aren't limited to:
- That copyright should expire after a certain period of time.
- That knowledge should be available to people, not locked away.
- That no entity should have unjust control or possession of others.
- That mass surveillance is about mass control, not justice.
- That we can all band together to help liberate each other.
Check out this link for more.
Rules
I've looked into the ways other forums handle rules, and I've distilled their policies down into two simple ideas.
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Please show common courtesy: Let's make this community one that people want to be a part of.
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Please keep posts generally on topic
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No NSFW content
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When sharing a Libre project, please include the name of its license in the title. For example: “Project name and summary (GPL-3.0)”
Libre culture is a very very broad topic, and while it's perfectly okay for a conversation to stray, I do ask that we keep things generally on topic.
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Okay, so where am I wrong? And I've been avoiding saying this so far because it feels disrespectful towards the dead, but his suicide was not a foreseeable consequence of being prosecuted. Most people don't react to the prospect of time behind bars by killing themselves. So saying that his prosecution led to his suicide is a stretch at best. It would have been the straw that broke the camel's back.
You're not wrong that he wasn't convicted when he committed suicide. I'm just saying I don't see why you think that's the relevant part of the story. We don't know what the details were or why he chose to commit suicide as a result of this prosecution. Saying most people don't react that way just serves to deflect the blame from the state. He reacted that way, and if the state did not choose to attack him then he would've very likely been alive today. This man is a victim of the US regime plain and simple.
I'm not talking about the story as a whole. I'm talking about this particular tweet. And this particular tweet has a substantial piece of it that is outright false.
Maybe, but that was not foreseeable. He likely had an underlying condition that they did not know of. I don't see grounds to blame the state for his death when they had no idea that he would commit suicide in response. There are obviously greater systemic problems with the US's prison system and treatment of people post-prison, but millions of people go through that ordeal without committing suicide.
You're correct that the tweet gets the part about him having already being sentenced wrong, but as I've explained I don't see that as the key point.
Meanwhile, victim blaming is a really low tactic. Your state has a history of aggressively prosecuting and harassing people to make examples of them. Two examples are Assange and Manning being tortured with solitary confinement. It's almost certain that Swartz was put under psychological duress that led to his suicide. US is particularly sadistic when it comes to political dissidents.
I feel like saying he had already been sentenced and overstating that sentence by 70 times is a major factual error, but maybe that's just me.
I'm not victim blaming. I'm pointing out that prosecutorial decisions shouldn't be criticized based on factors that are unknowable. I'll put it this way. Put yourself in the prosecutor's shoes, deciding whether to prosecute. Would you have ever consider possible suicide as a top factor? And if you say yes, when should anyone ever be prosecuted?
The fact that the regime went after Swartz even though the university did not want to press charges clearly demonstrates this was a malicious prosecution. Furthermore, as somebody else in the thread notes, this isn't the first time a person being prosecuted by the regime ended up committing suicide. Seems like a bit of a stretch to claim that two random people just happened to have predisposition to suicide.
Your argument is based on the assumption that the legal system in US is fair and equal. This is clearly contradicted by mountains of evidence to the contrary. Apply the same logic you would apply if this case happened in China.
Why? To be clear, MIT adopted a neutral stance.
Doesn't seem like a stretch to me. It's not like people who are susceptible to suicide are unheard particularly rare. They get confronted by the prospect of a prison sentence. Maybe they're not thinking so clearly. They then kill themselves. I'm perfectly willing to take the system to task when it hands out absurd punishments, but how is that the fault of the justice system?
The system isn't equal, but Aaron Swartz was not the type of person that the system is biased against.
What was the goal of the prosecution?
You were literally just telling me this is rare in a previous comment:
So which is it?
Seems to me that political activists like Swartz are precisely the demographic that the system is biased against.
From what I understand, Aaron planted a laptop in an MIT networking closet and had it slurping down journal content. That's just not okay. Presumably they didn't want to let him off without some consequences.
Given the number of people going through the justice system, some are going to be suicidal. Now could you answer the questions I posed: "how is that the fault of the justice system?" and "Would you have ever consider possible suicide as a top factor?"
It's mostly biased against people who live in poverty. They are often unable to mount an effective legal defense. Technically the state is supposed to supply a public defense lawyer if the accused cannot afford one, but public defenders are notoriously overworked. This has led to a situation where public defenders often push the accused to take plea deals regardless of guilt simply because they lack the time to put together an effective defense. Aaron Swartz would have been able to raise an effective legal defense.
Seems like the university, who would presumably be the victim here, seemed ok with it. What message in particular do you think the regime was trying to send by going after such activity?
And they just happen to be political activists.
People in poverty are exploited as slave labor. US drug laws in particular are designed specifically to round up poor minorities so that they can be enslaved. This is a pretty well documented fact by the way. However, that's far from the only demographic that the regime goes after. People like Swartz are prosecuted because of their ideas, and it's absurd to claim they can mount an effective legal defence against the power of the regime.