Internet Pays Tribute To Aaron, Fed Charges Dropped


Internet Pays Tribute To Aaron, Fed Charges Dropped

Bangalore: The internet lost one of its most passionate proponents yesterday, with the death of Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz who committed suicide at his Brooklyn apartment. The 26 year old was facing federal charges for hacking information from JSTOR academic database and downloading millions of research papers.

As the news was displayed throughout the web and Twitter, there was an outpouring of condolences, grief and sorrow from online, friends and those he had worked for in a number of projects. This also included those form the early development of RSS, the web.py software framework, the Creative Commons movement and the W3C web standards committee.

One of his friends confided that Swartz had so much potential but not enough joy in life.

Swartz was just fourteen when he helped to create the RSS which was a tool to distribute online content. Everything he did was to change the world said a friend, Rick Perlstein.

Federal persecutors of Swartz who accused him of using MIT computers to illegally access millions of articles dropped charges. The case was seen as a showdown pitting the government and commercial interest against ‘freedom fighters’ reports The Los Angeles Times.

The government is being questioned for its aggressive prosecutions against internet activists. Anonymous which hacked MIT’s website also left a comment about building and safeguarding a future that would make Aaron proud. 

Read: Reddit Co-founder Commits Suicide At 26