A short time before he was due for trial in the trial of stealing millions of .pdf files from MITs JSTOR network, information activist and co-creator of RSS, Aaron Schwartz, has committed suicide via hanging and was found like so in his apartment. Swartz had struggled with dark thoughts for most of his life and it seems that this was the last straw for him.
After news of his death broke, Twitter lit up with the hashtag #PDFTribute, where researchers are opening and sharing .pdf documents not previously released to the general public. Also, MITs website was intermittently offline Sunday due to what seems to be DDOS attacks.
Now, MIT is launching an internal investigation into its own involvement in the case.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/14/technology/aaron-swartz-a-data-crusader-and-now-a-cause.html?hp&_r=0
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/13/anonymous-appears-to-have-hacked-mit-website-leaves-swartz-tribute/
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/13/mits-president-orders-internal-investigation-into-how-the-school-handled-aaron-swartzs-case/
http://neuroconscience.com/2013/01/13/researchers-begin-posting-article-pdfs-to-twitter-in-pdftribute-to-aaron-swartz/
http://pdftribute.net/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/aaron-swartz-and-me-over-a-loosely-intertwined-decade/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/weve-lost-a-fighter-hundreds-gather-to-mourn-aaron-swartz/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/opening-arguments-in-the-trial-of-public-opinion-after-aaron-swartz-death/
Very sad, but he shouldn't have killed himself; he could have fought the charges and gained support from people.
Every system we have in place to protect our citizens from government abuse failed spectacularly in his case. If he hadn't killed himself, no one would have ever heard of his plight. His situation, which was not all that uncommon, speaks volumes for a justice system that has run amok. That no one heard about his predicament until he took his own life is a scathing indictment of our press.
Not that we paid attention all that long. This story of the football player who got trolled has kept the media's attention a lot longer than this ever did...
So did he die in vain? Probably. And that sucks.
Perhaps this sounds distasteful but I think his death is getting far too much attention. I respect what he did but people shouldn't get too hung up about this. The fact that he was an activist has led a lot of people to use his death for political purposes, and that's a foul thing to do.
>"We wrote laws designed to punish the worst monsters of William Gibson's nightmares," Goldstein said. "We're wielding them against people who download journal articles and steal naked pictures from Scarlett Johansson."
>Swartz was facing more prison time than he would have if he'd committed a serious physical crime, such as assault, burglary, grand theft larceny or involuntary manslaughter.
Don't get your kids a computer; they might end up in prison for life! Instead, buy them some brass knuckles...