Aaron Swartz, a true internet hero, an heros

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-suicide_n_2462819.html

Good night sweet prince.

wow way too young
they can't bother you any more now Aaron RIP

very sad.
http://boingboing.net/2013/01/12/rip-aaron-swartz.html

As someone who doesn't believe in paywalls for imformation, I am saddened to hear of this. I've never heard of him but he sounds like someone I should thank for his wrangling with JSTOR making it legal for me to reprint files I have gotten from there.

The good ones die young. It's the way of things. RIP Aaron Shwartz.

Saved the internet, couldn't save himself.

View attachment 258844_104131489680984_104118713015595_32268_72128

@YourAnonNews : Aaron Swartz left instructions for his digital estate - http://t.co/MuZYnzeB via @nslater

Such a tremendous loss. Very, very sad news.

Too soon. Too sad. Too much. Sad. Rest in peace, Aaron.

http://www.quinnnorton.com/said/?p=641

Goodbye, my love

Posted by quinn on January 12, 2013

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I don’t have anything to say to the world yet. But, not long after we moved in together in San Francisco, Aaron posted what follows. He was pressured to take it down; partly by me, out of fear. We do such stupid things out of fear. I regretted it almost immediately, and saved my little copy, untouched, in a place where I could get to it anytime. I carried it with me. I repost it here, because it should have stayed untouched, and I am done with this regret.
*****
Cozy Domesticity
Some days it seemed like all there was was gray. An overcast sky, a broken bus, a freeway under construction, an edifice of concrete and steel. That office was dullening, full of gray pillars and florescent lighting, drones tapping at computers and talking about synergizing, forced conversations with the pleasant, strained tone of someone who knows they will have to live with these people. But Quinn was different.
A bright red shirt in a field of gray. Cargo pants in the land of business casual. Hunched over an iBook in the corner, surrounded by people with desks. She stood out like a stereotype. And as I walked past her to get some water, I felt electrified by her presence. I went to get a lot of water that day.
Late that night, after everyone had gone home and I was left alone in the dark, reading a New Yorker article on my monitor and listening to They Might Be Giants on my headphones, I felt a tap on my back and jumped. It was Quinn. “Hey,” she said.
There are some people you talk to and you just feel like you’re banging your head against the wall. You can’t understand what they’re saying, they can’t understand what you’re saying, you’re completely out of rhythm and unconnected and you just stand there waiting for a chance to sneak away without making things even more awkward.
Not Quinn. Within moments of seeing each other we’d begin laughing. I, normally shy and reserved, would suddenly find myself boisterous and cracking jokes — good ones, as far as we could tell. I felt like a different person.
Quinn was so out of place she didn’t even have a keycard. Whenever she wanted to walk down the hall for lunch or a snack, she’d ask me to come with her so she could get back in. And one day she asked if I’d go with her to the shooting range. I wanted to be that different person.
We went to Europe and I got fired and she started looking for a new place and asked if I would be her roommate. I said yes and she said why? and I said how else am I going to get out of the house?
We got a sweet little two-bedroom in the Mission, with a gorgeous view of downtown — close enough for you to see the skyline but far enough away that it doesn’t feel like the office. We cooked dinner and went to dinner parties, we bought a loft bed and brought over Quinn’s daughter.
I got a new job and there are days — getting up early to carpool to work, commuting home to a home-cooked meal, a great friend, and a lovely little girl — that I feel like I’ve finally found home.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5047398

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/t...ernet-activist-dies-at-26.html?pagewanted=all

National Suicide Prevention Hotline.
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/jstor-hacker-aaron-swartz-commits-suicide.html

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/20...-digital-pioneer-follow-reports-of-his-death/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...Reddit-dead-New-York-battling-depression.html

http://www.zdnet.com/hacker-activist-aaron-swartz-commits-suicide-7000009725/

Farewell to Aaron Swartz, an extraordinary hacker and activist



https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/farewell-aaron-swartz

http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/

http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully

Anonymous ‏@YourAnonNews
#Swartz We Will Nevar Forget.
Retweeted by Skyz Anonymous
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-mefi user #1

http://www.metafilter.com/123777/Open-access-open-internet-closed-book#4772018

http://www.thenation.com/blog/172187/aaron-swartz

http://soupsoup.tumblr.com/post/40373383323/official-statement-from-the-family-and-partner-of

http://soupsoup.tumblr.com/post/40373383323/official-statement-from-the-family-and-partner-of
Official Statement from the Family and Partner of Aaron Swartz:

http://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2013/01/12/he-was-funny/

Such a good guy and sometimes, being an anon (at least for me anyway) is so hard.
What a sad day. I truly hope that his spirit and mission live on.

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2013Jan/0017.html

W0t??

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...1.0.115.283.3j1.4.0...0.0...1ac.1.rqn5i_cMWJs

Hello all, it has been a while since my last activity on the forum, or on the net period. It has come to my attention just now that Aaron Swartz, the co-founder of Reddit, and an amazing internet Activist and Hacker, took his life only a few weeks before having to appear in a court trial. Aaron Swartz, who was arrested in 2011 and charged with stealing millions of scientific journal articles from a computer archive at MIT, attempting to make them free, hung himself in his New York appartment.

At the age of 26, Aaron Swartz took his life.

latimes.com says:

"Aaron Swartz, 26, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment weeks before he was to go on trial on accusations that he stole millions of journal articles from an electronic archive in an attempt to make them freely available. If convicted, he faced decades in prison and a fortune in fines."

According to the federal indictment, Swartz used the MIT's computer networks to steal over 4 million articles from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service.

Aaron was a co-founder of Reddit, and an online activist who fought to make online content freely available. He was pronounced dead Friday Evening in his home.

Alex Dobuzinskis and P.J. Huffstutter Say:

"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"
(Originaly Alex and P.J obtained this from the blog of Cory Doctorow but I couldnt find the post on his blog.)

thestar.com says:

“Aaron accomplished some incredible things in his life. He was one of the early builders of Reddit (someone always turns up to point out that he was technically not a co-founder, but he was close enough as makes no damn), got bought by Wired/Conde Nast, engineered his own dismissal and got cashed out, and then became a full-time, uncompromising, reckless and delightful shit-disturber.”

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. Aaron had helped create an early version of the Web feed system RSS, which he started on at the age of 14, and he was known as an Internet activist and, computer prodigy, some said.

Swartz Himself said in 2008 on a site known as "manifesto" said:

"Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves,"

Aarons belief that information should be publicly shared and avalible free of charge led him to found the nonprofit group known as DemandProgress, and the group went on, with the aid of several other partys and groups, to lead a successful campaign agaisnt the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), witch was introduced in 2011, in the U.S House of Representatives. The bill was withdrawn amid pblic pressure. But it would have alowwed court orders to curb access to specific websites deemed to be engaging in illegal sharing of intellectualy property.

Larry Lessig said on Tumblr:

“From the beginning, the government worked as hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did in the most extreme and absurd way,”

Lessig blamed the feds for Swartz's suicide, after their heavy pursuit against Swartz, asking why it was necessary that Swartz be labeled a felon. For the long 18 months of negotions between Swartz and the Federal Government, that was what he refused to accept, and so he was faced with a million dollar trial to be held in April, with his wealth diminished, and unable to openly ask us for the financial aid he needed to fund his defense,Swartz was left no options.

Tim Berners-Lee wrote a commemoration to Swartz in a twitter post on Saturday saying:

"Aaron dead... 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."

Sources:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/1314257--reddit-builder-aaron-swartz-dead-at-26

http://news.yahoo.com/internet-activist-programmer-aaron-swartz-dead-26-012556009.html

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...-suicide-in-brooklyn-20130112,0,1934175.story

Blog of Cory Doctorow: http://craphound.com/

Sad. Not suprised tho if well planned murder. >tinfoil on<

Sucks. >tinfoil off<

I think another nice young person gone too soon. fk.

Such a great loss. If some things were left undone please keep us apprised as to how to help.

Maybe the new thread was started due to the title of this one? Maybe a new- more respectful one?

many many pictures of aaron here

http://www.flickr.com/search/?ss=2&w=35034359904@N01&q=aaron&m=text

Thanks for the link, Anon.
Such a sad situation. RIP Aaron.

I feel like I have lost a son.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/01/aaron-swartz/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz_n_2463726.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-0113-aaron-swartz-20130113,0,5232490.story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-american-hero/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21001452