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Red Hat HQ
Editor, writer, and developer. I wear many hats, including the red one. Graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill School of Journalism; long-time interest in all things geeky. Editor of Red Hat Magazine and grizzled industry veteran, including time as an archivist for SunSITE UNC (now ibiblio.org) and ten-plus years at my current gig. I love:
- vidya games and other dubious online experiences (Second Life, WoW, DDO, Rift--started out with Zork, IRC, and old-school BBS and MUDD/MOO/etc. groupings... old school nerd!)
- cooking, crafting, and creativity
- smart people
- openness, transparency, honesty, and trust
- coffee in all its delicious forms
I loathe:
- giving the web a version number
- social media "experts" (who send me spam)
- proprietary thinking about thoughts and ideas
- soggy cake or bread
- greed, selfishness, and a lack of humility
Authored Comments
I don't think so. It has always seemed part of the assumption of the American dream (and a common dream worldwide, so perhaps it is more human nature than capitalistic or American) that your kids will be better off than you are.
I remember reading, about five years ago, that people were shocked when Pew and Labor Statistics (found at least one discussion of this, from Money magazine in 2007: http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/25/pf/mobility_study/index.htm) started to come up with data that suggested upward mobility was taking a nose-dive. This was against expectations.
But this is already /after/ X and Y were hitting the job market. That would make Z the first generation to start out without this sort of assumption--that they'd do better than their parents did.
So that's what I was basing that thought on.
That's part of the divide, as I see it. The people who see Swartz as a hero--doing something wrong to illustrate a bigger point--see it as a crusade.
Those who disagree, as some have here, tend to focus on the crime and ignore the questions of intent and value.
My main point of curiosity wasn't whether or not JSTOR was wronged (as a business), but how we codify this kind of wrong. Who does it hurt? What is the punishment? What is reasonable? What is our process for dealing with public and non-public (free and non-free) information as a currency?
Admittedly, the title could be better. I don't like that I used the same word twice! ;P