Yahoo News – by Alex Dobuzinskis and P.J. Huffstutter
(Reuters) – Internet activist and computer prodigy Aaron Swartz, who helped create an early version of the Web feed system RSS and was facing federal criminal charges in a controversial fraud case, has committed suicide at age 26, authorities said on Saturday.
Police found Swartz’s body in his Brooklyn, New York, apartment on Friday, according to a spokeswoman for the city’s chief medical examiner, which ruled the death a suicide by hanging.
Swartz is widely credited with being a co-author of the specifications for the Web feed format RSS 1.0, which he worked on at age 14, according to a blog post on Saturday from his friend, science fiction author Cory Doctorow.
RSS, which stands for Rich Site Summary, is a format for delivering to users content from sites that change constantly, such as news pages and blogs.
Over the years, he became an online icon for helping to make a virtual mountain of information freely available to the public, including an estimated 19 million pages of federal court documents from the PACER case-law system.
“Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves,” Swartz wrote in an online “manifesto” dated 2008.
“The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. …haring isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy,” he wrote.
That belief – that information should be shared and available for the good of society – prompted Swartz to found the nonprofit group DemandProgress.
The group led a successful campaign to block a bill introduced in 2011 in the U.S. House of Representatives called the Stop Online Piracy Act.
The bill, which was withdrawn amid public pressure, would have allowed court orders to curb access to certain websites deemed to be engaging in illegal sharing of intellectual property.
Swartz and other activists objected on the grounds it would give the government too many broad powers to censor and squelch legitimate Web communication.
But Swartz faced trouble in July 2011, when he was indicted by a federal grand jury of wire fraud, computer fraud and other charges related to allegedly stealing millions of academic articles and journals from a digital archive at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
According to the federal indictment, Swartz – who was a fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics – used MIT’s computer networks to steal more than 4 million articles from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service.
JSTOR did not press charges against Swartz after the digitized copies of the articles were returned, according to media reports at the time.
Swartz, who pleaded not guilty to all counts, faced 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted. He was released on bond. His trial was scheduled to start later this year.
On Saturday, online tributes to Swartz flooded across cyberspace.
“Aaron had an unbeatable combination of political insight, technical skill and intelligence about people and issues,” Doctorow, co-editor of the weblog Boing Boing, wrote on the site.
Doctorow wrote that Swartz had “problems with depression for many years.”
Swartz also played a role in building the news-sharing website Reddit, but left the company after it was acquired by Wired magazine owner Conde Nast. Recalling that time of his life, Swartz described his struggles with dark feelings.
In an online account of his life and work, Swartz said he became “miserable” after going to work at the San Francisco offices of Wired after Reddit was acquired.
“I took a long Christmas vacation,” he wrote. “I got sick. I thought of suicide. I ran from the police. And when I got back on Monday morning, I was asked to resign.”
Swartz also had been a fellow at a Harvard University research lab on institutional corruption, according to his website.
Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited as the most important figure in the creation of the World Wide Web, commemorated Swartz in a Twitter post on Saturday.
“Aaron dead,” he wrote. “World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep.”
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles and P.J. Huffstutter in Chicago; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Doina Chiacu and Philip Barbara)
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/internet-activist-programmer-aaron-swartz-192411863.html
Suicided for sure
As this article is from Yahoo News, a propaganda medium of the internet, and published by Reuters, the Rothschild dissemination service of news fiction, the only parts I believe to be truthful are:
- Aaron Swarz was a child prodigy.
- He developed the early version of RSS.
- He made 19 millions pages of federal court documents available to the public.
- He believed he, as he had the skills to do so, had the moral imperative to share information being withheld from the public.
As he was an astute, socially and morally insightful young genius, it’s no surprise he would have been dismayed by the total corruption that has infiltrated this nation’s government and higher institutions of learning. And it would be no surprise that the cabal would suicide him by hanging by the neck (what a horrible way to die) until dead for daring to stand up to them.
The big question is what technology and other information is in the garnered MIT and Harvard archives and federal court records that would free our nation and/or send the cabal and their minions into life imprisonment, at the very least.
RIP, Aaron Swarz, and my sympathy to his family and true friends.
And in defense of From The Trenches World Report, these are my thoughts and opinions and not necessarily those of FTTWR.
good call man
Suicide? If it was then it was the establishment that drove him to it!
He challenged them after all!
I am going to say it was murder of the U.S. Attorney’s office and all the bull they pulled with prison this prison that. The whole system really!
This is a guy who was fighting them every inch of the way to stop there stupid censorship Bill BS! Yea the Censorship the Pirating agenda on the internet is just excuse to control the net.
The same people that tried to pull all this crap were actually guilty of also doing it!
My heart goes out to his family.
Don’t believe it.
My Fellow Americans:
Yeap, a classic CIA-contractor hit.
Hanging people is one of the CIA-Hit Trademarks,.. the way the Columbians use to cut throats and pull tongues out the slit.
Just last week, they executed of Keith Ratliff of You-Tube Fame for gun ownership/use and John Noveski of Noveski Rifleworks occurred.
On Henry’s show, we discussed this, and I have publicly warrned him, as well as others, the communists in the Whitehouse have gone “all-in”, and as such,.. one of the typical strategies/tactics they employ before they make their final push for complete overthrow, is to eliminate all of the vocal leaders of opposition.
My warning to Henry, is to ALL Patriots or gun supporters that have any form of public outlet or media outlet,.. you are targeted,.. please for God’s sake,… mind your surroundings,.. you are now in hostile terrority!
These events indicate that we are MUCH closer to D-Day, Zero-Hour than most realize. This step of opposition elimination, that is elimination of people who are simply speaking out and trying to educate our fellow Americans, or simply support the notion of Rightful Gun Ownership as protected by the Constitution, is all to common in the history of communist overthrows.
My warning to ALL Americans: THEY ARE ABOUT TO INITIATE THEIR NEXT PHASE,.. or their,.. “FINAL SOLUTION” to American gun ownership.
Then the global/economic collapse, despair, privation, starvation.
Prepare now!,.. or forever know you caused your own miusery by not preparing when it is all to obvious.
Henry my friend,… Please,… mind your surroundings, watch your back, and try to always have people with, or near you!
We don’t need you as as martyr!,.. the dead can’t fight!,.. we need you to help make as many of these treasonous, communists bags of filth into martyrs as you can!
Take care my friend,… we are all now on what Sun Tzu calls,… “Death Ground”.
Speak with you soon – JD – US Marines – Zero-Hour is almost upon us.
RIP Aaron; you died on the front line of the battle for freedom.
Suicide? Yah … suuuure. This was an obvious hit. INXS front man Michael Hutchence went the same way.
Never even begun to understand how someone could hang themselves.
Especially millionaires.
I don’t believe it either.
Too many key people being deaded up lately.
Stay armed. Stay prepared.
Soon.
the thing nobody has said yet,
for every story like this,
there is probably another 10+ victims that didnt get in the news because they werent famous.
one of the guys behind “Reddit” is reported to be dead yesterday for example. – that was hardly reported.
More hackers should follow this example. Learn REAL literacy. Read a book. Don’t substitute Information for wisdom. Slaves to machines are NOT genii.