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Aaron Swartz Commits Suicide

Posted by Soulskill on from the rest-in-peace dept.

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."

1 of 589 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Have some shame by Charliemopps · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Bullshit. I doubt the court case had a direct influence on this. We know nothing of his personal life. He could have easily have fled the country and not dealt with the trial. Suicide is usually about a general lack of ability to rationalize emotion combined with some sort of psychological trauma. Getting dumped, having your secrets revealed, who knows. This is a private thing for his family and we should stay out of it.