R.I.P, Aaron Swartz: Defender of the Freedom to Connect

[Siji Sunny]

Computer activist Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide in New York City, Jan. 11,Swartz was indicted in July 2011 by a federal grand jury for allegedly downloading millions of documents from JSTOR through the MIT network — using a laptop hidden in a basement network closet in MIT’s Building 16 — with the intent to distribute them. Swartz subsequently moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he then worked for Avaaz Foundation, a nonprofit “global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere.” Swartz appeared in court on Sept. 24, 2012 and pleaded not guilty.

The accomplished Swartz co-authored the now widely-used RSS 1.0 specification at age 14, founded Infogami which later merged with the popular social news site reddit, and completed a fellowship at Harvard’s Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption. In 2010, he founded DemandProgress.org, a “campaign against the Internet censorship bills SOPA/PIPA.”

Ref:

http://www.rememberaaronsw.com/

http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/swartz.html

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130113175028-50510-r-i-p-aaron-swartz-defender-of-the-freedom-to-connect

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Siji Sunny