Internet pioneer and information activist takes his own life
Found on Ars Technica on Saturday, 12 January 2013
Aaron Swartz was arrested in 2011 for scraping articles from the academic archive JSTOR. Facing hacking charges that could put him in prison for decades, Aaron took his own life on Friday.
He founded a group called Demand Progress, which became a key rallying point in the fight against SOPA. He and the team he assembled spent 2011 raising awareness about the problems with the legislation, building momentum for the January 18, 2012 protest that decisively killed it.
Aaron was also outraged about the high prices charged for access to scholarly publications. In a 2008 manifesto, he denounced the legacy system of academic publishing in which scholarly knowledge is locked up behind paywalls.
Big brother needs to make an example now and then. The charges and the looming 50+ years in prison were not about delivering justice, but to intimidate others who consider following his footsteps. Governments don't like people who stand up and question their actions; for those in charge the people should only want two things: panem et circenses.