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MIT Investigating School's Role In Swartz Suicide
The untimely death of Aaron Swartz has raised a lot of questions over the weekend. Now MIT is launching an internal investigation to determine what role the school played in his suicide. From the article: "In a statement, MIT President L. Rafael Reif offered his condolences, saying that the school's community was 'extremely saddened by the death of this promising young man who touched the lives of so many. Now is a time for everyone involved to reflect on their actions, and that includes all of us at MIT,' Reif said. 'I have asked professor Hal Abelson to lead a thorough analysis of MIT's involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual activity on our network in fall 2010 up to the present. I have asked that this analysis describe the options MIT had and the decisions MIT made, in order to understand and to learn from the actions MIT took. I will share the report with the MIT community when I receive it.'"
MIT is not responsible.
The Police are not responsible.
It's not "copyright law" that should be changed because somebody committed suicide.
The MPIAA/RIAA/JSTOR are not responsible.
the young man who chose to engage in illegal activity that he knew clearly constituted criminal copyright infringement, whatever his philosophical rationalizations, and then his inability to come to terms with the likely consequences, are the reason. Even if you believe that he's the 21th century equivalent of Ghandi (which he most certainly was not, but still, if), the whole point of being Ghandi is accepting the consequences of breaking what you feel to be an unjust law. Otherwise, there are plenty of LEGAL ways to press home your case.
As such, the blow hards who claim that "they will revenge [sic]" him have no legitimate target for their utterly misplaced angst.
The "duty of care" argument is nonsense EVEN IF HE WERE A STUDENT - WHICH HE WAS NOT. MIT does not have a duty of care to ensure that students who engage in criminal activities be able to cope with the pressures of being called out on the carpet for them.
The irony is that most of you here would agree that the US is overlawyered as it is. Hell, a huge percentage of slashdot bandwidth is spent complaining about what you perceive to be over-reaches of the legal machinery in the USA And yet, here many of you are, proposing outrageous theories of vicarious responsibility (which would necessarily imply financial accountability) because you happen to personally have sympathy for Mr. Schwatz.
Wow, your lack of insight is staggering.