Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

[Posted January 12, 2013 by corbet]

Cory Doctorow reflects on the life of Aaron Swartz, Reddit co-founder and co-author (at age 14) of the RSS specification, who committed suicide on January 11. "The post-Reddit era in Aaron's life was really his coming of age. His stunts were breathtaking. At one point, he singlehandedly liberated 20 percent of US law. PACER, the system that gives Americans access to their own (public domain) case-law, charged a fee for each such access. After activists built RECAP (which allowed its users to put any caselaw they paid for into a free/public repository), Aaron spent a small fortune fetching a titanic amount of data and putting it into the public domain. The feds hated this. They smeared him, the FBI investigated him, and for a while, it looked like he'd be on the pointy end of some bad legal stuff, but he escaped it all, and emerged triumphant."

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 12, 2013 18:57 UTC (Sat) by mbanck (subscriber, #9035) [Link]

And Lawrence Lessig on Aaron Swartz: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-b...

Possibly interesting side note: Lawrence says Aaron got arrested two years to the day he committed suicide (which would make the law suit against him appear even more relevant), his wikipedia page says he got arrested in July, citing NYT

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 12, 2013 20:27 UTC (Sat) by karim (subscriber, #114) [Link]

Looks like mainstream media is picking up the story:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/12/us/new-york-reddit-founder-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/technology/aaron-swart...

RIP Aaron and thanks for everything.

The family has released a statement

Posted Jan 13, 2013 0:48 UTC (Sun) by clemenstimpler (guest, #71914) [Link]

Quote: "Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach."

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 13, 2013 1:14 UTC (Sun) by ufa (subscriber, #56005) [Link]

Tim Berners-Lee:
"
Aaron is dead.

Wanderers in this crazy world,
we have lost a mentor, a wise elder.

Hackers for right, we are one down,
we have lost one of our own.

Nurtures, careers, listeners, feeders,
parents all,
we have lost a child.

Let us all weep.

timbl
"
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2013Jan/0017....

RIP Aaron, and thanks for everything :(

my message to Aaron would have been

Posted Jan 13, 2013 2:43 UTC (Sun) by tdwebste (guest, #18154) [Link] (1 responses)

I know the worst thing about depression is not the unhappiness.
It is the self destruction, sleepless nights, and personally neglect that comes with hopelessness, sometimes with the lose of control anger
Please I understand your unhappiness, but please don't be self destructive, or neglect yourself, and I pray you can sleep.
This is all I can do for myself, please do this for yourself.

my message to Aaron would have been

Posted Jan 13, 2013 18:36 UTC (Sun) by tdwebste (guest, #18154) [Link]

Cynicism, doubt with a good helping of hopelessness is an incredibly creative force. Endless tears are like the never ending rain that make the pain hurt less. If it wasn't for the painful tears, there would be no feeling at all. Depression can be an incredible creative force. I doubt he would have achieve as much as he did without it. He turned a curse into a gift enabling him to question this broken world.

MIT asked Hal Abelson to review its involvement

Posted Jan 14, 2013 1:55 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

From Ars, "MIT President Rafael Reif (...) appointed professor Hal Abelson to lead a thorough analysis of the school's involvement (...) and he promised to share the report with the MIT community once it's received." From the little I know about Abelson, he seems to have integrity.

The article also mentions people publishing PDFs as a tribute. This could become a very fitting tribute if it provokes academics to abandon restrictive copyright and start publishing research freely.

Aaron contacted me a while ago to ask if I needed help with a project I was working on. I said I'd get back to him.

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 14, 2013 13:44 UTC (Mon) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link] (5 responses)

Aaron Swartz is a real hero. And perhaps his dearth is not really caused by depression but rather is the final sacrifice that he put on himself in a calculated attempt to bring the issues he was fighting for forward.

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 14, 2013 16:31 UTC (Mon) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (2 responses)

Unlikely. You can accomplish a lot more things by being alive than becoming a martyr for a cause. Though some causes may be so big that most people consider their own death to be small price to pay for accomplishing them. This one doesn't strike me as something meeting that bar.

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 14, 2013 16:54 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

Arguably, Attorney General thought that it _was_ big enough for that. 30 year sentence is a de-facto life sentence.

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 14, 2013 19:35 UTC (Mon) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]

Sentence of $BULLSHIT years is not going to convince me that you are right. It is likely a product of peculiar corruption of the american justice system, that of overcharging suspects for all sorts of ridiculous crimes for the sake of pressuring them to settle without trial.

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 15, 2013 1:37 UTC (Tue) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (1 responses)

Perhaps. Perhaps it was caused by government mind control lasers, or toxoplasmosis or exposure to lead as a child. We don't know. We probably won't know. Would knowing change anything?

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 15, 2013 9:34 UTC (Tue) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]

I do not like the implied cowardice that is assigned to people who killed themselves. It is true that many suicides are in fact attempts to bring attention to themselves and the person hoped that they would be saved. However, this is very unlikely when one hanged himself in an apartment which nobody would visit for hours. Even for a wrong reason, he had strong will to carry out that.

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 14, 2013 15:28 UTC (Mon) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link] (9 responses)

I guess I'm going to have to be Devil's advocate and say: I've seen a lot of comments the past few days (not just here) that seem to at least hint at Mr. Swartz being some kind of martyr. I simply don't see it that way. One can agree or disagree with his advocacy, but in my mind there is hardly any argument that Mr. Swartz, as mentally gifted as he was, was also mentally challenged, and it was the latter that was the main contributer to his passing. The demons in his head were great. He was an easy way out; and he took it.

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 14, 2013 16:33 UTC (Mon) by danielpf (guest, #4723) [Link] (6 responses)

This, for sure, is a too easy explanation.
You have no evidence for what you claim.

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 15, 2013 1:00 UTC (Tue) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link] (5 responses)

I make no "claims". I only offer some perspective that perhaps may not be as "romantic" or "poetic" then what I've usually being seeing on the net.

My perspective is that Mr. Swartz was not a "martyr"... in the sense that, say, a Jesus Christ or a Martin Luther King. Rather, I just see him as some trust fund kid/wannabe-hero who just happened to have some mental issues. And when things got too hot in the kitchen he took the easy way out.

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 16, 2013 0:36 UTC (Wed) by danielpf (guest, #4723) [Link] (3 responses)

You play lightly with Aaron's personal motives without refrain and humility expected by such a tragic event. This is shocking on many grounds for whoever has got a sense of empathy and respect for Aaron.
Actually I was disgusted by your posts.

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 16, 2013 3:06 UTC (Wed) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link] (2 responses)

Well not always, but on occasion, my thinking may not always fit into what is contemporary, conventional, socially acceptable, politically correct, what have you. I did warn that I was perhaps being the "Devil's advocate". For better or worse, I did speak my mind. So be it.

Be sure right brain is engaged before putting mouth into gear

Posted Jan 16, 2013 11:13 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

That happens to us all from time to time. However, many of us have a filter that makes us refrain before speaking in ways that can actively hurt or repulse others. It is not hypocrisy but politeness and respect, as is requested by the comment editor.

This "empathic" filter does not grow spontaneously; it is actively nurtured and educated by your mind, should you elect to use it. I recommend that you do.

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 24, 2013 9:04 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

In future, you might want to ensure that the contents of your mind bear public scrutiny.

You disgusted me as well. Not because you're "not politically correct", but because you're a pig with no empathy.

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 16, 2013 8:29 UTC (Wed) by tdwebste (guest, #18154) [Link]

Go back and read my early posts. I doubt you will ever understand his gift and how it opened his mind. And how truly closed your's is.

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Jan 14, 2013 17:56 UTC (Mon) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link] (1 responses)

Any purported demons in his head have ceased to be. But it would seem that they had accomplices outside of his head, and those are the ones we should be looking at right now.

Cory Doctorow on Aaron Swartz

Posted Feb 8, 2013 20:38 UTC (Fri) by ARealLWN (guest, #88901) [Link]

I would like to note that not only have any demons affecting Aaron Swartz ceased to be but that he was not the the first individual in the field of computing to be affected by some similar affliction(s). An individual by the name of Alan Turing (of whom you might be familiar with) was also subjected to disapproval by the authorities acting under the authority of his government and he also came to the conclusion that an abrupt cessation of his own life was his best option at the time. I don't endorse the taking of one's own life but I do see it as an opportunity to possibly reflect on why an individual felt so driven that the individual saw such an option as the best available one.