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Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence
(blog.curiousquail.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
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Aaron was not charged with scraping public servers, he was charged with unauthorized access. He "hacked" the server. Meta just scraped publicly accessible information.
Let's be clear about this: Aaron absolutely had authorized access.
I'm on Aaron's side, but didn't he break into a network closet and patch directly into their servers?
It's splitting hairs but the law treats breaking and entering very differently than remote access. When I went to school, I had a job on campus but I'm sure the University would have considered it illegal if I broke into the utility closet of the building I worked in.
No. He placed a computer in a unlocked network closet and used that to download a bunch of data from JSTOR (which he had acces to, and a lot of the data is public domain anyways) and kinda-sorta caused DDoS attack against the service. Prosecution then slapped him with a shitload of federal charges which (in my opinion) were largely at least massively exaggerated if not straight made up. Threat of 50 year jail sentence and million(s) in fines then pushed him to take his own life.
Wikipedia has pretty detailed info about him and the whole case.
Bruh, can you lick metas boots any harder? There's so many examples of them using unauthorized access even long before llm's were a thing...but even if that wasn't the case, they just fucking bragged about their "ai" hacking other companies. Stop spreading lies for the billionaires, it's pathetic.
Take it easy. artyom might just be mistaken you don't need to turn it into a class war.
At this point it already has been turned into a class war. They get away with so many crimes and just a slap on the wrist. If an individual does it life sentences. Almost like the laws are made to be broken by the rich.
I am not "licking boots", I am discussing facts. And I'm gonna keep doing it.
Sure, there's an endless list of awful things they've done, but that's not what's being discussed here.
I'm not talking about random awful things they've done I'm talking specifically about unauthorized access issues which is literally what you named as being the difference. Get some reading comprehension.
Correct, that is the difference between what I said and what the author said. The author is talking about scraping. Get some reading comprehension. You don't even have to read the article, it's literally in the title.
If an AI company ignores robot.txt exclusions and scrapes a site, then turns around and sells that content as a service, is that unauthorized access?
The article is trash, we're talking about your comment, hence why I replied to you. You lied just like the article did.
But he did have access via university. Besides, my understanding is he was scraping research journals, many of which would not have been possible without grants from tax dollars. Meaning the mere fact that the research is publicly funded means the journals should also be public.But they didn't even prove he distributed them. For all we know, he was planning to have an AI use them for training and apparently that isn't a problem.
You do realize as well that almost every site you visit makes API requests. And you can then use the same API to request other data directly. And the difference between "public" and unauthorized access often comes down to whether you used the same API that your browser would call, but instead decided to make other calls to it directly.
Like with command line tools? But that'd be hacking! Egads!
Is it a B&E if the door is wide open...or would that just be an 'E'?
If you let your neighbor walk in to your house as he pleases....can you get mad at him if he walks in like Cosmo Kramer while you're shagging your wife? Assuming you're not into that, of course.
What if he had noble intents...like he heard the moans and thought you were at work and he was about to break up an affair or stop a rape or have some leftovers?
No, a much better comparison is that his backyard is already wide open. Whenever you go there he takes you all around his backyard. There are no signs saying you shouldn't go to certain parts or fences stopping you. You go there to look at other parts and he still takes you there. Then one day he gets mad and says he himself took you to a part of his backyard that he didn't want to, and rather than put up a better fence, he's going to have you arrested for trespassing with multiple felonies... no warning, straight to prison!