Co-founder of Reddit, Aaron Swartz, hanged himself. He was many things, a hacker, a free information activist, a tech guru. The 26 year old was soon to be charged for what amounts to ‘checking out millions of library books’ from JSTOR. The federal case was on shaky legal footing, but could have netted him decades in prison.
JSTOR, did not pursue him in civil court.
via: The Washington Post
…
JSTOR did not press charges once it reclaimed the articles from Swartz, and some legal experts considered the case unfounded, saying that MIT allows guests access to the articles and Swartz, a fellow at Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics, was a guest.
Criticizing the government’s actions in the pending prosecution, Harvard law professor and Safra Center faculty director Lawrence Lessig called himself a friend of Swartz’s and wrote Saturday that “we need a better sense of justice. … The question this government needs to answer is why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a ‘felon.’”
JSTOR announced this week that it would make “more than 4.5 million articles” publicly available for free.
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2 comments
Actionsho
January 13, 2013 at 12:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To be clear, JSTOR passed this decision prior to Mr. Swartz’s suicide. However, I personally cannot find that any papers within my field are any more available than before, I suspect they have simply passed a few public domain papers back into circulation rather than making newer and more useful research available.
Jay
January 13, 2013 at 1:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
There has been some terribly sad, but wonderful articles written about Swartz.
Here is Rick Perlstein: http://www.thenation.com/blog/172187/aaron-swartz which is one of the best.
Glenn Greenwald says the prosecutor is notorious for her “overzealous prosecutions”. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/12/aaron-swartz-heroism-suicide1
There is a petition to remove her from office over this:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck
We should all keep in mind, that we each commit three felonies a day: http://www.harveysilverglate.com/Books/ThreeFeloniesaDay.aspx
But that that is the tip of the pyramid on how society has over penalizes, over fines, over charges its citizens, over tazes, often at the demand of citizens to crack down on this problem, or use these people to pay for that, or just get tough on crime