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Calls to Action on the Fifth Anniversary of the Death of Aaron Swartz (eff.org)
On the fifth anniversary of the death of Aaron Swartz, EFF activist Elliot Harmon posted a remembrance:
When you look around the digital rights community, it's easy to find Aaron's fingerprints all over it. He and his organization Demand Progress worked closely with EFF to stop SOPA. Long before that, he played key roles in the development of RSS, RDF, and Creative Commons. He railed hard against the idea of government-funded scientific research being unavailable to the public, and his passion continues to motivate the open access community. Aaron inspired Lawrence Lessig to fight corruption in politics, eventually fueling Lessig's White House run... It's tempting to become pessimistic in the face of countless threats to free speech and privacy. But the story of the SOPA protests demonstrates that we can win in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
He shares a link to a video of Aaron's most inspiring talk, "How We Stopped SOPA," writing that "Aaron warned that SOPA wouldn't be the last time Hollywood attempted to use copyright law as an excuse to censor the Internet... 'The enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared... We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom. They threw themselves into it. They did whatever they could think of to do.'"
On the anniversary of Aaron's death, his brother Ben Swartz, an engineer at Twitch, wrote about his own efforts to effect change in ways that would've made Aaron proud, while Aaron's mother urged calls to Congress to continue pushing for reform to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
And there were countless other remembrances on Twitter, including one fro Cory Doctorow, who tweeted a link to Lawrence Lessig's analysis of the prosecution. And Lessig himself marked the anniversary with several posts on Twitter. "None should rest," reads one, "for still, there is no peace."
He shares a link to a video of Aaron's most inspiring talk, "How We Stopped SOPA," writing that "Aaron warned that SOPA wouldn't be the last time Hollywood attempted to use copyright law as an excuse to censor the Internet... 'The enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared... We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom. They threw themselves into it. They did whatever they could think of to do.'"
On the anniversary of Aaron's death, his brother Ben Swartz, an engineer at Twitch, wrote about his own efforts to effect change in ways that would've made Aaron proud, while Aaron's mother urged calls to Congress to continue pushing for reform to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
And there were countless other remembrances on Twitter, including one fro Cory Doctorow, who tweeted a link to Lawrence Lessig's analysis of the prosecution. And Lessig himself marked the anniversary with several posts on Twitter. "None should rest," reads one, "for still, there is no peace."
Your life is not your own but a gift from God whether you choose to believe that or not.
How would that make it not mine? When someone gives me a gift for Christmas, or my birthday, that gift is mine. If I want to pitch it into the fireplace, I'm free to do so. Nobody who gives a gift would insist that they still own it.
If your "god" thinks he still owns the things he gifts, he's a friggin sociopath.
The parent should have said, "accusing people of sex assault ruins their careers without trial." The point behind Aaron's story is that he was ruined financially before he ever got to court, and the most lenient of the plea bargains that you mention required him to plead guilty to thirteen felonies and spend six months in jail. This is a terribly harsh penalty for a minor offense, which he refused to accept.
His refusal additionally makes sense in light of the fact that this was purposeful civil disobedience - all about making a point in the first place. Really, accepting any plea bargain would undermine that point, though his lawyer does say that they offered to accept a less severe bargain.
Again, the fact that all of this happened before trial is what the parent was talking about. "Due process" is perhaps a little nebulous, so you could say that he received some measure of that, but he never got his day in court and was never convicted.