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Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz58 posts

Aaron Swartz was an American entrepreneur and internet activist. He was known as one of the early members of Reddit and for helping to create the RSS specification. He had been charged with stealing computer documents from MIT but before the trial he committed suicide on Jan 11, 2013, at the age of 26.

 

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12 Jan, 2013

‘A kid genius. A soul, a conscience’

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Lessig writes a tribute to Swartz:

He was brilliant, and funny. A kid genius. A soul, a conscience, the source of a question I have asked myself a million times: What would Aaron think? That person is gone today, driven to the edge by what a decent society would only call bullying. I get wrong. But I also get proportionality. And if you don’t get both, you don’t deserve to have the power of the United States government behind you.

15 Jan, 2013

Father: son ‘killed by the government’

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Robert Swartz says during the service in Highland Park that his son was hounded by the government.

He was killed by the government, and MIT betrayed all of its basic principles.

Swartz’s girlfriend, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, said:

Aaron wanted so bad to change the world. He believed you had to see the world for how it really was to change it. With this [upcoming] trial and everything he was facing the last two years, I think [Aaron] fell into the pain. I love him, I miss him and I’ve learned so much from him.

Tim Berners-Lee, who developed the World Wide Web, and Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, director of the Safra Center for Ethics where Swartz was once a fellow, also spoke at the funeral.

1 Feb, 2013

Congresswoman posts revamped ‘Aaron’s Law’ on Reddit

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Rep. Lofgren (D-Calif.) posts a revised and expanded “Aaron’s Law” — her proposal to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in honor of Aaron Swartz to Reddit. The new draft addresses some of the concerns that were raised when the first proposal was made public. The bill de-criminalizes terms of service violations and defines what “access without authorization” actually means, the main concern of a number of legal experts such as Lawrence Lessig or the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Marcia Hoffmann, who were concerned about the clarity Lofgren’s original proposal. The new bill also ensures that changing one’s IP or MAC address is not a violation of either the CFAA or the Wire Fraud act.

24 Apr, 2013

Swartz documentary Kickstarter project launches

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Brian Knappenberger, the director of the Anonymous documentary We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists, launches a Kickstarter to raise $75,000 to fund his feature documentary about Swartz. The documentary, currently titled The Internet’s Own Boy, will look not just look at the life of the programmer and activist, but at the culture he helped build. In addition to speaking with Swartz’s family and loved ones Knappenberger plans to speak with officials at MIT, which has been reviewing what happened in the JSTOR case since the programmer’s death. Keeping in line with Swartz’s vision, the director said he plans to release the film under a Creative Commons license so that others can build off of what he produces.

1 Jan, 2014

Father wants MIT to admit its part in son’s death

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Boston Magazine reports that Bob Swartz he pleaded with MIT’s administrators and lawyers to intervene, MIT took a position of “neutrality.” It made no public statements for or against Aaron’s prosecution or about whether he should be imprisoned. He can’t walk through campus without feeling that MIT betrayed his son.

“I always felt that MIT would act in a reasonable and compassionate way and that MIT wasn’t the issue,” Bob says. “I didn’t understand the depths of what MIT had done at that point.”

27 Jun, 2014

Documentary release

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ASThe Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz premieres in theaters and On Demand.

10 Nov, 2014

Swartzfiles.com

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Kevin Poulsen, a contributing editor at Wired, launched swartzfiles.com, a compilation of documents, photographs and videos related to Swartz that are released by the U.S. Secret Service under his ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the agency. According to Poulsen, the Secret Service is releasing a new batch of documents approximately every other month. The site also includes FOIA documents released by the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, and documents voluntarily released by MIT and JSTOR.

7 Jan, 2015

White House petition response

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The White House responds to a petition to fire two federal officials involved in the Swartz’s prosecution by refusing the request:

Aaron Swartz’s death was a tragic, unthinkable loss for his family and friends. Our sympathy continues to go out to those who were closest to him, and to the many others whose lives he touched. We also reaffirm our belief that a spirit of openness is what makes the Internet such a powerful engine for economic growth, technological innovation, and new ideas. That’s why members of the Administration continue to engage with advocates to ensure the Internet remains a free and open platform as technology continues to disrupt industries and connect our communities in ways we can’t yet imagine.

As to the specific personnel-related requests raised in your petitions, our response must be limited. Consistent with the terms we laid out when we began We the People, we will not address agency personnel matters in a petition response, because we do not believe this is the appropriate forum in which to do so.