jjacek
11 years ago
And more shit that depresses and pisses me off: Aaron Swartz, computer genius and activist, was driven to suicide this weekend because of legal pressure from overzealous federal prosecutors.
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Nimil says
11 years ago
that was upsetting.. anon hacked the MIT website in his honor this morning
jjacek
11 years ago
He allegedly used his student access at MIT to download massive amounts of academic papers from an online service, perhaps with intent to release them online for free.
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jjacek
11 years ago
For doing that, we has facing up to 35 years in jail and $1 million in fines. There's a good chance he would have been found innocent, but simply defending himself would likely have cost $1.5 million.
jjacek
11 years ago
He was already mentally unstable, as many geniuses are. The pressure of the dire situation apparently pushed him over the edge, and he hanged himself to escape from it.
jjacek
11 years ago
By the way, besides being an activist, this guy was one of the founders of Reddit, and when he was just 14 he helped create RSS, the protocol for subscribing to blogs with a feed reader.
jjacek
11 years ago
And he founded DemandProgress.org and played a pivotal role in the fight to stop SOPA (the bill that Wikipedia and other sites protested by going black)
jjacek
11 years ago
And he's dead because the federal prosecution wanted to make an example out of him, even though the only allegation against him was that he downloaded too many papers from the library.
[Codie ~]#
11 years ago
this may not help a lot but... https://petitions.whiteh...
when will the gov't be put up on charges for bullying :-( my heart goes out to his family and friends....another brilliant mind has been snuffed out too soon :'-(
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