THE INTERNET HAS BEEN WRACKED by the death of Aaron Swartz, the web freedom fighter who passed away last weekend.
A very young man, Swartz was only 26, but one who achieved a lot in so few years.
Swartz
co-authored RSS and was behind Reddit, but more recently had carved out
a place in the history of online activism, freedom and protest. The news that he has died sent shockwaves through the people whose lives he touched the most, internet users.
"Our beloved brother, son, friend, and partner Aaron Swartz hanged himself on Friday in his Brooklyn apartment. We are in shock, and have not yet come to terms with his passing," says a statement released by his family and loved ones.
"Aaron's insatiable curiosity,
creativity, and brilliance; his reflexive empathy and capacity for
selfless, boundless love; his refusal to accept injustice as
inevitable-these gifts made the world, and our lives, far brighter."
But while he was making lives brighter, Swartz has also made enemies and in 2011 he was indicted by the US Department of Justice for misusing and publishing scientific material from the JSTOR scientific and academic database that resides behind a paywall.
His prosecution by the authorities might have contributed to his suicide, and according to another web activist, Lawrence Lessig, Swartz's opponents had come in hard and heavy over the last two years.
"From the beginning, the government worked
as hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did in the most extreme
and absurd way. The ‘property' Aaron had ‘stolen,' we were told, was
worth ‘millions of dollars' - with the hint, and then the suggestion,
that his aim must have been to profit from his crime," he wrote.
"[Aaron] is gone today, driven to the edge by what a decent society would only call bullying. I get wrong."
JSTOR itself is saddened by the news and
regrets its involvement in the case. "We are deeply saddened to hear
the news about Aaron Swartz. We extend our heartfelt condolences to
Aaron's family, friends, and everyone who loved, knew, and admired him.
He was a truly gifted person who made important contributions to the
development of the internet and the web from which we all benefit," it
said in a statement.
"We have had inquiries about
JSTOR's view of this sad event given the charges against Aaron and the
trial scheduled for April. The case is one that we ourselves had
regretted being drawn into from the outset, since JSTOR's mission is to
foster widespread access to the world's body of scholarly knowledge"
Since Saturday academics have
been posting their papers online, in an act of respect and solidarity.
They used the Twitter hashtag #pdftribute, and the papers have poured
out.
It was this release of information that Swartz was so passionate about, and it is a sad, but fitting tribute.
"We need to take information,
wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We
need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive.
We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to
download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks.
We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access," wrote Swartz in the
Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto 2008.
"With enough of us, around the
world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization
of knowledge - we'll make it a thing of the past."
Aaron's funeral will be held on Tuesday, 15 January at Central Avenue Synagogue, 874 Central Avenue, Highland Park, Illinois 60035. µ
This article, Internet heaves with sadness over death of Aaron Swartz, is syndicated from The Inquirer and is reposted here with permission.
Powered by Repost.Us
The Inquirer
No comments:
Post a Comment