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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday July 28 2016, @05:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the as-good-for-society-as-Darwin dept.

TechDirt reports

Last week, Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab (and a very sharp thinker on a variety of topics related to innovation) announced a really cool new award that the lab was putting together: a Rewarding Disobedience award, for $250,000, funded by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman:

This prize is a one-time experiment that, if successful, we will consider repeating in the future. It will go to a person or group engaged in what we believe is excellent disobedience for the benefit of society. The disobedience that we would like to call out is the kind that seeks to change society in a positive way, and is consistent with a set of key principles. The principles include non-violence, creativity, courage, and taking responsibility for one's actions. The disobedience can be in--but is not limited to--the fields of scientific research, civil rights, freedom of speech, human rights, and the freedom to innovate.

[...] I particularly like Michael Petricone's suggestion that the award should be named after Aaron Swartz. [...] One [thing] that becomes clear from the book [The Idealist] was the absolute disbelief by Swartz and his family of the fact that MIT refused to support Swartz after his arrest. The university basically turned its back on him completely. It's something that the university still ought to do something about, and naming this award after Swartz would be a step in the right direction.


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @09:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @09:36PM (#381340)

    Here is a recent post by him,
          http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

    From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Beckerman [wikipedia.org]

    > In addition to his legal work, he writes several blogs: "Ohio Election Fraud" (formerly "Fairness"), which deals with the 2004 presidential litigation in the state of Ohio, "Recording Industry vs. The People", which chronicles the above-mentioned lawsuits between RIAA labels and individual defendants, "Ray's 2.0", about social media, and "Fairness", which deals with issues of social justice and human rights.
    >
    > He is a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. A member of the Entertainment Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, he has previously served on that body's Copyright Law, Information Technology Law, and Civil Court committees. He is well known in the Slashdot internet community, where he posts under the username "NewYorkCountryLawyer" and in the Twitter community under the username "raybeckerman".

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