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."
A young man took his own life. And so far, I'm only reading sick jokes and flamebait. This isn't Digg.
The first posters to this discussion should take a long, hard look at themselves.
"So I hope you’ll forgive me for not doing more. And hey, it could be worse. At least I have decent health insurance."
- http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/verysick
If this doesn't get you enraged about the larger problem at hand, I don't know what will.
He chose to take his own life. It was his decision. I don't agree with it, and I don't endorse it as a reasonable choice, but it was his decision.
There is an endless supply of "we want everything to be free and open! don't lock us in! what if I want to ABC? who's to say I can't XYZ?" Are we not hypocrites to say he cannot be free with his own life?
The world lost something of value with his passing. It was his choice to deprive the world of what he gave it. It is sad, and it is hard, but it is done.
"The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. And you have burned so very, very brightly." (Bladerunner)
My little Linux and tech blog
The idea of freedom or choice is irrelevant when there is not someone to choose then nothing to choose from. If the person is dead he is neither free or restrained, he simply isn't.
We have many intellectual works that predate copyright, as probably already know. And you can't conflate ideas with physical objects because there is no shortage of "idea copies": they don't disappear from my mind when you make a copy, so yes, they basically appear out of thin air. Even the originals often do because they appear when you are working on something else.
Non sequitur, sorry. The current copyright system restricts the freedom of the majority for no proven reason in order to provide monetary gain to a minority, and authors are not part of that minority in most cases either. So we have a system that doesn't benefit the general public and benefits very few of the producers. That looks like a net loss of freedom to me.
> I'd rather have the old slashdot with its trolls than the current bleh.
I would rather NOT go back to Ogg, Natalie Portman with hot gritz, and goatse Thank-You-Very-Much.
IF the /. community jumped the shark years ago we have no one but ourselves to blame.
A community is what you put into it. Not only what you get out of it.