Aaron

dinsdag 15 januari-2013
Afgelopen zondag ontvingen wij onderstaande mail naar aanleiding van de zelfmoord van Aaron Swartz, de formidabele voorvechter van een vrij internet. Wat moet je daar nog aan toevoegen? Hooguit, dat justitie in Massachusetts de zaak inmiddels heeft geseponeerd. Hadden ze eerder moeten doen. Respect, Aaron.

"Aaron Swartz has died of suicide at age 26. Aaron's achievements during his short life were staggering. At the age of 14, he co-developed RSS, the Really Simple Syndication web protocol that is the key component of much of the web's entire publishing infrastructure.

By 19, he'd co-founded a company that would merge with Reddit, a user-generated social news site that is now one of the most highly-trafficked news sites in the world. He founded Demand Progress, which was
instrumental in fights to keep the Internet open and free, and in the battle to defeat SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act.

He developed the architecture for the Creative Commons licensing system and in 2010 he was made a fellow at Harvard's Safra Center for Ethics.

At the time of his death, Aaron was being prosecuted by the federal government and threatened with up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines for the crime of - no exaggeration - downloading too many *free*
articles from the online database of scholarly work, JSTOR.org

He'd used his hacking skills to download these files more quickly and despite JSTOR's declining to press charges or pursue prosecution, federal
prosecutors hit Aaron with a staggering 13-count felony indictment.

In a statement about his death, Aaron's family and partner wrote:

"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach.
Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death."

His death is a good reason to revisit the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the law under which he was prosecuted, since it is far too broad.
It is also a good idea to take a hard look at Massachusetts Federal Attorney, Carmen Ortiz, whose office prosecuted Aaron with such recklessly disproportionate vigor, and who is reportedly considering a run for governor.

It is hard to fathom what Aaron may have continued to contribute to society had he not been bullied to death by the US Government.

"How We Stopped SOPA" by Aaron Swartz (1986-2013)