Over the weekend we reported on the tragic death of Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz. The details of his death have since been made public by his family, with Aaron choosing to hang himself in his Brooklyn apartment on Friday.
As you’d expect, there has been a lot written about Aaron over the past two days from those who knew him personally, or through the large body of work he had released over the past 10 years or so. There are also questions being asked as to how he became suicidal, with many pointing to the charges he was facing regarding the theft of JSTOR records from MIT.
Anonymous has been one group to respond to Swartz’s death, and they have done it in a very public way by hacking two MIT websites. The message left on the defaced pages has since been removed, but not before being re-posted across the web.
In the message, Anonymous refers to the prosecution of Swartz by the US government as a “grotesque miscarriage of justice” considering what he was fighting for – open access to documents. Remember, he was potentially facing up to 30+ years in jail and a million dollar fine. The group also called for the reform of copyright and intellectual property law using this tragedy as a base from which to move forward.
An apology is included at the end of the message directed at MIT for “temporary use of their websites.” It is also made clear Anonymous do not blame MIT in any way for the tragedy.
Questions will now certainly be asked about how this prosecution has been handled and why stealing records with a laptop can potentially lead to 30 years in jail and such a large fine. But whatever happens now, Aaron Swartz is no longer with us. However, some good still may come from this tragedy if it leads to a positive change with regards to copyright and IP law, or how charges and penalties related to them are handled.
via CNET