Slashdot Mirror
Aaron Swartz Commits Suicide
maijc writes
"Computer activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide yesterday in New York City. He was 26 years old. Swartz was 'indicted in July 2011 by a federal grand jury for allegedly mass downloading documents from the JSTOR online journal archive with the intent to distribute them.' He is best known for co-authoring the widely-used RSS 1.0 specification when he was 14, and as one of the early co-owners of Reddit."
Get off the internet dad!
We ARE just animals. What are you, a sentient rock?
Although his death is regrettable, everyone must still be prepared to face the consequences of their actions. The journals that published the articles he downloaded depend on subscription money to operate. People working for the publishers have families to feed, etc.. What he did was to damage their freedom to make a living under existing copyright law, which creates incentives for the journals to vet and publish the articles in the first place. I would argue that what Swartz did was to strike a blow against one of the pillars of science - independent peer review.
Unless you can invent a way for everything to be free (as in beer), which is another way of saying you think things should appear out of thin air, Swartz's actions amount to reducing the collection of freedoms available of everyone in the entire scientific journal ecosystem.
Hence we are more free under the current copyright system than we would be if people had no way of earning a living under current copyright law.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death among his age group (after accidental death),
Often enough it isn't even suicide in people of that age. They make a terrible mistake during autoerotic adventures with a noose, and everybody calls it a suicide out of respect. How did this guy commit suicide, again? The article doesn't give any details at all.
I remember 2003 as well.
Or be educated on the concept of a metaphor...