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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."
year of the lunix desktop?
There's not a single mention of Aaron Swartz at all.
...you control the people.
Information wants to be free = people want to be free, this is what we fight for. Those who are in control, wants to have MORE control. You're always guilty unless proven innocent in the eyes of those who have everything to hide fro you. A thief thinks everyone steals.
Once information is free - those in power realize they must abide by those who hired them to do the job of government in the first place - we the people did, we are their entire purpose, not the other way around. Freedom of information means that no one is safe if they do wrong, because it becomes hard to hide from the general population, and that's the way it should me.
Freedom = to be free, free from tyranny and control.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Oh wait, never mind, he killed himself. The Aaron Swartz message is to just give up and kill yourself, I don't think we should call to that action.
When you think rape tribunals on college campuses are a good idea. Or accusing people of sex assault without trial ruins their careers.
Schwartz would have understood that. Knew what extreme ideology looked like.
He did nothing of value. Considering all the privilege he was given in his life, he really underperformed. Sad!
These Obummer era mistakes must be corrected. Corporations are gaurenteeed by the Constitution, as citizens of this great nation, the rights and freedoms to protect their intellectual property. Bring back SOPA and revert these current network neutrality laws (which only benefit free losers) so that we can have an effective and useful internet once again.
Piracy MUST be stopped if we are to make America great again.
Please, you had Google, and other big money do the job. You're like those Taylor Camp hippies living "off the land" in Hawaii. Turns out they were collecting food stamps. You people stopped nothing! Popular movements without huge finance go nowhere. And besides, what have we gained? Sites are still being shut down and owners arrested everywhere. Bittorrent isn't working so well anymore. And Google is a filtering Nazi! Can't even find small clips. No, if you spent your time developing ad hoc real P2P networks, THEN you would be a hero. As it is you died being nothing more than a "merry prankster", a sad "merry prankster"
And Lessig? No thank you! His tirades against free speech* are positively fascist. Don't want... nope... definitely don't want.
*(euphemised as "campaign reform, not understanding the irony that if he were to win, the issue would be moot)
then you may be a terrorist.
The difference between him and you is he'll be remembered after his death
Even though I very much agree with what he was doing, I didn't remember him at all until this Slashdot article came up. I would argue he just obtained a slightly higher level of obscurity. Lots of us are known to many, and remembered by few. Very, very few will be REMEMBERED remembered in 100 years.
Who was Aaron Swartz? The summary should say who he was. Most of us don't know who he was.
I have been mournfully remembering this day, in my own way.
I worked at JSTOR.
I wrote their security system when I was there.
I remember sending some email to Lawrence Lessig at the time, to talk to... someone.
I hate being a geek sometimes. It's probably like how normal gay dudes hate flaming fags who prance around demanding wedding cakes.
Fuck Aaran Schwartz.
Five years later and a bunch of tools still look to the law as their nuclear option.
Everyone else may have agendas and fail in their full diligence, but Fox fails INTENTIONALLY since its inception
If you claim Fox News is propaganda, without saying CNN is propaganda, MSNBC is propaganda, the NYT is propaganda, then how can we respect your hyper-partisan views?
Here's a hint: It's all propaganda now. Most journalism now is driving you to think a certain way, providing facts that fit a narrative and omitting ones that do not.
Until you realize that you yourself are just another tool of propaganda by denouncing a single source and implying the others are reliable.
P.S. Fox News was not any more designed as propaganda than any of the other news sources, it evolved like the rest of them to where we are now. To claim there is any difference between what Fox is doing and what CNN is doing is what I take exception at. You cannot label them differently.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He got what was coming to him.
Byteboiz want a suicide hero ? Pick Stallman then. Fat bastard still spews, still breathing while hated-to-death by all human beings. Can't beat that combo !
Swartz's ideals were right but his methods were pure idiocy. He could have downloaded all those papers at his desk and released them and he would not have faced anywhere near as much trouble. Instead he entered a wiring closet at the university library without permission and did his downloads there. Being as his office was already on the school's wired network it is unlikely he would have obtained the papers much slower from his office than from the wiring closet that he unlawfully entered.
He then made himself into a martyr by taking the coward's way out of the charges that were being brought against him.
The real lesson we should learn here is to watch out for signs of mental health disorders in those close to us. Afterwards people came forward and expressed concerns they had for him, though there was no record of him having sought treatment in his final months. It's a shame that he took his own life, but we really should take a look at the entirety of what he did to get himself into trouble (rather than cherry-picking it like some want us to) before we celebrate him.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
They murdered him plain and simple.
There is no justice till those responsible for his murder are brought to justice.
He was killed by the US's brutal prosecutorial/plea bargaining system.
That's the reform we should be targeting in his memory.
It doesn't matter to me what the origins may have been; it matters what things are.
I find it pretty stupid to judge the starting point of organizations that were founded decades ago against the more recent Fox News, which was formed when outlets were already turning partisan and was just a bit ahead of the curve.
I'm not dealing in whataboutism; I deal in simple hard truths. And that is that Fox News is no more partisan now than any major news outlet (except possibly the Wall St Journal).
I also find it telling that you hide behind the AC mask to critique others... obviously that makes your opinion on the subject worth quite a bit less than mine.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sorry to be contrarian, but I don't believe Alan Turing committed suicide and I have grave doubts about this verdict for Aaron Swartz. Both individuals had strong personalities and felt it was important to fight the establishment.
and what'd he do and was his death related to what he did?
OK, I'm lazy. But common, editors, tell us a sentence about the person and the circumstances of his death.
Sci-Hub has the papers that Swartz was trying to make universally available. RIP Aaron Swartz.
Who cares
Too bad he decided to do some breaking and entering to install unauthorized hardware on somebody else's network.
It's Like Martin luther king day we celebrate their death because as enemies of the state they where then out of the picture
His name was Aaron Schwartz.
Second developer of WikiLeaks inspired submission system "SecureDrop", security expert James Dolan, aged 36, has tragically died. He is said to have committed suicide. The first, Aaron Swartz, is said to have taken his own life at age 26, after being persecuted by US prosecutors.
Britain's top human rights lawyer who represented Julian Assange and worked alongside George Clooney's wife Amal dies in apparent suicide
A key witness in the Las Vegas shooting massacre has killed himself and his disabled daughter in a horrific murder-suicide shortly after the FBI raided his home. John Beilman was wanted for questioning by federal agents in connection with a communications device discovered in suspected shooter Stephen Paddock's hotel room.
Klaus Eberwein, a former Haitian government official who was expected to testify against alleged Clinton Foundation corruption and malpractice next week, has been found dead in Miami via gunshot wound to the head. The death was ruled a suicide.
Peter W. Smith, GOP operative who sought Clinton's emails from Russian hackers, committed suicide, records show
...break the law? Man up and take your punishment and don't be a coward.