Aaron Swartz, Reddit Co-Founder, Dies At 26
January 13, 2013
Very sadly, Aaron Swartz, one of the early developers of Reddit, ended his life yesterday aged 26.
He had a great talent for computer programming among several other related things.
He had written, several years ago, on his own blog about his depression. This may or may not have been the reason he chose to end his life, but it makes him disabled and so makes this little tribute post relevant to this site.
My thoughts are with his family, friends and all who knew him.
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Same Difference 
Reading some of the tributes posted to him, it seems that, besides the depression he was open about, one of the reasons he chose to end his life may have been that he was facing a trial for having accessed a large number of academic journals (which were being hoarded on a central service by people who charge for the availability but keep the money for themselves and don’t pay the authors), presumably intending to distribute them for free. He had also published a whole lot of American case-law for free (the material is public domain, but the state also makes money by charging for availability). Both of these would have cost some well-connected people a lot of money and thus made Swartz a lot of enemies. As is often the case, federal prosecutors charged him with offences that would have earned him decades in prison if he pleaded not guilty and was convicted. There are quite a number of people in jail for lengthy terms quite out of proportion to the offence and the harm it caused (e.g. Marissa Alexander, currently serving a 20-year sentence in Florida for shooting a gun at a wall to warn her violent husband). Tragedies like this will continue until this practice, clearly motivated by a desire to impress on the part of lawyers, stops. In this country he would at most be facing a fine.
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