6:17:46 PM Aaron Swartz’s suicide: Was he being unfairly targeted? | |
Reddit co-founder, Internet activist and computer prodigy Aaron Swartz, has committed suicide, according to police authorities. His body was found in his New York apartment and he is believed to have hanged himself to death. Swartz’s suicide has sparked a volley of reactions online with many coming out to support and remember him. Swartz was facing criminal charges for stealing more than 4 million articles from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service. In July 2011, Swartz 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 (MIT). Notably however, JSTOR itself did not press charges against him. 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 to start later this year. With his suicide, many have come out to discuss the case, that has been criticised as being unfair and harsh. According to Alex Stamos who was one of the chief witnesses for Aaron’s team in the case, Swartz was did not hack JSTOR. He writes in a blogpost titled, The Truth about Aaron Swartz’s "Crime”
You can read the full post here. The point that Stamos is making is that Aaron’s actions did not pose a threat to JSTOR and MIT and that he certainly didn’t deserve a 35-year-prison sentence. Nor did his actions constitute hacking as the provision to download so many articles was already present in JSTOR. Aaron’s family too has blamed the Prosecution and MIT for his death. In a statement to Ars Technica, they said,
There’s another blogpost by the founder of Creative Commons, Lawerence Lessig , who has come out in support of Swartz and has sharply criticised the prosecution. He writes,
What has irked many online activists is that the prosecution made Aaron to sound out like a thief and criminal despite JSTOR not wanting to press charges. Meanwhile an online petition has started asking President Obama to pardon Swartz posthumously. | |
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