Reddit Cofounder kills himself.

Aaron Swartz, as you might have already heard, killed himself a couple days ago.

Now, before going on to the details you might wonder who was the Aaron Swartz?

as states in his Wikipedia webpage he "Co Founder of reddit and demand progress, and previous cofounder of the Change campaign Committee. He was also technical director of Open Library.2"

Its widely aknowladge he was the subject of a campaign against him orchestrated by the federal goverment which treatened him with a virtual life sentence. He went broke paying for the legal fees.

His crime? He downloaded academic papers from JSTORE over his personal position that it should be the authors and not the publishers who should be compensated.

The response? The government threw the book at him. Charge him with a million dollar fine and 50 years in jail, for violating terms of agreement.

This in continuation of a systematic practice within the United States government that seems to equate hackers with terrorists, and online activists with hackers.

What is the message? If you are a programmer and you don't work for a multi billion dollar dotcom but for open source or truly leftist causes (not you timid garden variety liberalism) “We will lock you in a dark cell and throw away the key the first chance we get to do so”.

edited 15th Jan '13 10:04:36 AM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

I'd heard about it. I note that JSTOR made thousands of articles publicly available in response to his death, in obvious damage control.

Personally, I agree with the opinion given in the link above: you take public funding, your results are open to the public. Fuck Elsevier and your ilk. Advancing human knowledge should not be a for-profit industry and artificial scarcity does nothing for academic inquiry.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

My views on intellectual property and censorship in general are pretty harsh, so I can only hope this guy's actions and predicament can help raise awareness about those issues.

Of course, the media and the government will probably try to brand him as an emotionally disturbed individual, and mention how copyright infringement is a mental disease that makes you suicidally depressed...

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As usual, brilliant insights from Charles Pierce.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

As the man who helped invent RSS (and thus allowed me to follow my oh-so-many webcomics), I must bow in memory of this guy. Just imagine what he could have come up with if he had lived...

Rest in piece.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

@Branding as emotionally disturbed: To choose death over white-collar imprisonment, he'd have to be somewhat unhinged.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

Well, he was clinically depressed before all this happened, and then subsequently driven to bankruptcy by legal fees and threatened with what would effectively be life imprisonment by a rabid team of lawyers that were going against the wishes of the infringed company over the scent of blood.

edited 15th Jan '13 4:16:56 PM by Pykrete

Ah. Depression makes more sense.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

Unsurprisingly, Falkvinge has some things to say on the subject. It'll be interesting to see what happens next with that.

That's not the point. For all I know he might have been a total wacko (I haven't researched the matter). The point is using that as a weapon against what he stands for. They already did it with Assange, with some degree of success; and it's even easier to do it to someone who isn't around to defend himself anymore.

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I have to say that the thing in that petition that says

describes the American criminal justice system altogether. It's true, and it's horrible, but I can't help having the reaction of "You just realized this? Boy, are you sheltered!"

A brighter future for a darker age.

Well, a large fine and a virtual lifetime imprisonment seems less white collar and more "you lose everything".

Why did this have to happen... I don't get how he can get penalized so heavily. *

Fixed.

edited 15th Jan '13 7:09:21 PM by Trivialis

In this case the pronoun refers to the perpetrator, not the (male) victim.

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What he did was still illegal, it doesn't make him a hero.

That being said, the dude was a genius, and it's a real waste having a great mind like that leave way too early.

And from a law enforcement perspective, I think it's bullshit that after the company that was being infringed dropped the charges, the case was even still an issue...

At the very least that's where the bullshit starts. That they were trying to pin a copyright infringer with over twice as much prison time as the average murderer doesn't help.

Handing a handwritten note to a teller asking for $20k is going to get you $20k in the short term and a bank robbery charge in the long term. If it later comes out that you had an account at the bank with $30k in it, the government is still going to charge you with bank robbery.

It might be bullshit... But that's why we have jury trials. If one person on the jury agrees that the charge is bullshit, they just have to say "not-guilty" and you have either a hung jury or an acquittal...

Illegal? Hardly.

edited 15th Jan '13 8:05:08 PM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

It arguably makes him a hero if you believe the laws in question are immoral. ^_~ If we conflate legality with morality, that would make lawyers the saints among us. Anyone willing to swallow that particular pill?

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

he downloaded a bunch of information, he didnt hacked into. It wasnt leaked. The company didnt want to present charges.

This is the sort of thing that gets you fired, not imprisoned for life.

His crime is not that different from creating a fake facebook account.

edited 15th Jan '13 8:38:16 PM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

Wow, that's fucked then, what sort of kangaroo charges did the feds even press on him in the first place? I just read into it a bit more, and I don't see where he broke any laws.

Wire fraud and Computer fraud are the two major components. Those charges are based on the fact that he broke into MIT and access the MIT computer networks without permission... Here's the Indictment. It's in PDF format...

There's another bit of computer fraud with the JSTOR thing... But even taking that out of effect, he'd still get a fine or jail time from the MIT bit alone...

And why break into MIT to download it when you're a member of Harvard, unless you think you might get in trouble for it?

It sure doesn't look like he broken into anything, seeing as it was an open workstation. I don't see how it's fraud.

edited 15th Jan '13 9:17:30 PM by Barkey

I don't see how you can say a restricted wiring closet is an "open workstation"... But okay...

And the fraud is outlined from page 5 to page 8(points 18 to 26)... In essence, he repeatedly circumvented attempts to block his computer from accessing the MIT networks*

, so he could download material from JSTOR...

As fraud is an "intentional deception made for personal gain", what he did fits the bill. So long as the government could prove Swartz gained anything(the fact that he downloaded something shows he did), they could have made a case for fraud...

edited 15th Jan '13 9:52:24 PM by Swish

This doesn't make it sound like he broke into anything.

Honestly... I'm probably going to believe the grand jury indictment more than that.

That said, while entering an unlocked closet isn't "breaking into it", it could still be considered burglary under the law(assuming the intent was to commit a crime in the closet, which he did). The problem is proving unlawful tresspass. And that's difficult to prove because of the guy living there, without issue by MIT, thus no charge of burglary for Swartz.

He did however, "break into" the network of MIT. Changing one's MAC address, in itself, isn't a crime. Doing so in an effort to make the network you're connecting to think the person connecting is not you, in an effort to gain something, is a crime. And it's called fraud.

If the government has enough evidence to prosecute a crime, they should. I see nothing in the Grand Jury indictment to say there is anything less than the probable cause necessary to charge someone and bring it to trail. And as such, it would be negligent for the US Attourney to not file charges...

Now. The expert for Swartz's defense could be right. The entire thing could be completely bogus. But if his expert is correct, and that there was no real evidence to prove guilt, then I have to say Swartz deserves even less sympathy. I mean, assuming the case is the only reason he killed himself like the current narrative says. Because overcharging is the standard in the US justice system, and if he could beat the jail-time offenses(which according to his expert he could), then he wouldn't have anything to worry about...

edited 15th Jan '13 10:30:29 PM by Swish