11 ms·

Official Statement from the family and partner of Aaron Swartz

682 points by mxfh 14y ago

zepolud 14y ago
Extremely happy to see so strong and direct words. We owe him that much.
andrewpbrett 14y ago
> Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death. Damning
- sonabinu 14y ago
  Is anyone reminded of Alan Turing?
  - Gorbzel 14y ago
    Without any disrepect to Aaron's memory (very sad news), no. Interested to hear what reminded you, but Turing committed suicide based on an unjust persecution of a minority by society as a whole. While Aaron's situation also involved injustice, I hadn't (and probably wouldn't) link the two.
    - sonabinu 14y ago
      Did you not feel like his death was the result of authority pushing a him into a corner? Wasn't Turing persecuted by authority as well? Two brilliant tech minds lost before their time.
      - colechristensen 14y ago
        Aaron was accomplished, but Turing far overshadowed. Turing was forced or compelled to take synthetic estrogen because he was gay as well as being convicted and stripped of his security clearance. The hormone replacement could be seen as rather more directly responsible for his suicide than the still relevant stresses of overzealous prosecution.
toyg 14y ago
Fuck yes, make them bleed. I can understand a US Attorney being reckless, but I cannot believe MIT would act so cowardly. If not even hacker-friendly institutions like MIT will side with people like Aaron, it's a sad state of affairs.
- jhuni 14y ago
  > If not even hacker-friendly institutions like MIT will side with people like Aaron, it's a sad state of affairs. MIT hasn't been a hacker-friendly institution since the early 1980s which is why Richard Stallman left MIT to found the free software movement.
  - wololo 14y ago
    What changed?
    - genwin 14y ago
      It's always and forever the same reason: money, and the power that buys.
    - duaneb 14y ago
      He's being hyperbolic; MIT is still a very friendly hacker school. Aaron DID break the law, and I would not expect ANY school to stand behind him when he blatantly violated the law. It's pretty simple: don't break the law, much less using MIT resources to do so. That said, they could have handled it with a lot more finesse, especially when it is such horrible publicity for them. I suspect this has more to do with eager lawyers than it does MIT's culture. Keep in mind that MIT is an academic organization and is committed to, well, academics, not politics; e.g. Stallman did not belong there anyway.
      - rbanffy 14y ago
        > MIT is an academic organization and is committed to, well, academics, not politics Politics is too important to be left to politicians. If you refuse to take control over your environment, you cannot expect it to remain friendly to you, for you are no longer a force shaping it. Academics is politics.
sonabinu 14y ago
It is good to see that those who loved him the most are direct without euphemism.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  The apple apparently did not fall very far from the tree.
shawn-butler 14y ago
I am removing MIT as a benefactor from my will and ceasing donations to the alumni association. I will not reconsider until the institution provides a full accounting and takes responsibility for the actions of its legal counsel in deciding to refer the matter to federal authorities. If you are a current member of the student body or faculty you have a lot more power than me. Please read about this matter and learn what your institution chose to do on your behalf and take some action fully in the spirit of MIT to reclaim what it has lost.
- seiji 14y ago
  This is clearly out of my purview, but why in the world would you have an institution as a beneficiary unless it's one you control? Are they really that accomplished at brainwashing people?
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    You aren't going to control any institution after you are dead. The best you can do is pick one that you feel you can trust.
    - seiji 14y ago
      Okay, poorly worded on my part. I was thinking more in line with Gates leaving everything to the Gates Foundation. My brain can't reconcile why someone would want to donate to something that already takes money from people in return for services. Kinda like the onion half-headline: "Man Has Alarming Level Of Pride In Institution That Left Him $50,000 In Debt."
      - danso 14y ago
        I don't know MIT's specific financial situation, but my impression was that, while tuition covers a great many things such as salaries and programs, every academic institution is dependent on generous endowments in order to pursue large capital projects and initiatives. Hence, why many stadiums are named after their donors.
stesch 14y ago
tumblr.com gets autobanned on reddit. sigh
- worldsayshi 14y ago
  Huh? You mean by vote?
  - stesch 14y ago
    No. Every post with a tumblr.com link gets automatically banned. A week ago I posted something to a subreddit I've founded and it got banned. This spam filter isn't even allowing moderators to post these links. But I was allowed to unban it. So, I wrote to the moderators of /r/technology a few minutes ago and instead of unbanning it they said that tumblr.com is banned reddit wide. No, he hasn't unbanned the link. :-(
    - colechristensen 14y ago
      Despite the occasional high value link, the reddit ban on tumblr makes reddit better.
      - colmvp 14y ago
        Whereas quickmeme.com is edifying?
        colechristensen 14y ago
        Fortunately or not, there are whole sections of Reddit devoted more or less to quickmeme.com. Some subreddits auto-ban quickmeme which I highly encourage, but a sitewide ban is unreasonable because of how engrained it is in the culture. Image captioning is, in our opinion, a bit worthless, but this is what we actually find objectionable not just one site of many which provides this. Blogging itself is not what is objectionable just the general quality of the content from Tumblr, so comparing quickmeme to tumblr is unfair.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
unimpressive 14y ago
Beware would be activists of the forces you put to your axe. Like the tip of an iceberg, their great heft can remain unseen. These machinations have no appreciation for hacks. Even lawful men have much to fear from their vision keen. The unlucky must contend with a 13 stringed marionette. Whose deadly snare targets all free men. Probing at the six lines in every hearts quartet. The song it plays is fell indeed. Moments of silence won't bring this man back. But we can rally as our thoughts are often not thought alone. [0] We can repel the forces who's wishes for the public domain is to sack. We can refuse to reap for us what others have sewn. Don't falter at the sight of a martyers fall. There is always work to be done with one less hand at the helm. Stand up and shout, silence strangles us all! Strangled, by this intellectual miasma that seeks to consume our world with hell. And though this life has been bought, full speed ahead! Eight knots! [0]: In the interest of honesty, I don't feel like I'm doing enough.
mrbill 14y ago
What sort of "standing up" for Aaron was MIT supposed to do? No matter his ultimate intentions, from what I understand, there wasn't much doubt that he repeatedly broke into MIT facilities to access its network without authorization, and then evaded attempts to prevent him from accessing the network. I've not seen anything that indicated he was a student or alum of the school (only that he went to Harvard). What would you expect any school or company to do when presented with an unauthorized intruder on their network, using resources to mass-download data? Just let them waltz in, break into a network closet, and leave a laptop plugged in? MIT did the right thing in this case; it's the government that blew things out of proportion and was using this as a way to get back at Aaron after the PACER incident.
ghshephard 14y ago
I've been thinking about the family today, and what might have caused Aaron to make such a terrible decision. One thing that caught my attention, was Lessig's comment in his post: " ... Aaron Swartz be labeled a “felon.” For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge." So - MIT brings in the Feds, the Government threaten him with 30+ years of Prison, somehow there is no way for him to appeal to the public for support for his lawsuit (which would have been very popular, I'm certain). Does he try and look to his family to liquidate everything they have to help support his defense? Does he plead out to something that he truly believed was not wrong? I can't even imagine how horrible this situation must have been for him, and why he couldn't see how he was going to get out of it...
- genwin 14y ago
  Not everyone wants to solicit support to fight their battles. I can see why Aaron chose suicide. I wish he had fled to one of the few places in the world where American depravity couldn't effectively kill him, but I can see why he didn't.
  - rdl 14y ago
    Realistically, he could have just gone ~anywhere outside the US and probably wouldn't have been pursued too aggressively.
    - genwin 14y ago
      Accused of a crime thought so horrific it warrants 30 years in prison, I doubt that. The US has grabbed people on the other side of the world for lesser charges.
      - rdl 14y ago
        This was prosecutorial overreach. It was probably not in their short list of major issues, and thus I don't think they would have devoted huge resources to it. Which makes this whole thing even sadder. It's entirely possible his (great) IP law firm could have gotten him off, or at least ended up with a brief or suspended sentence. Even though worst case he was facing 50 years, it would have almost certainly been far less. But I am sure he was depressed and so involved in it that he wasn't thinking about it rationally.
lemming 14y ago
He used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place. Here's hoping his memory inspires more folk both here and elsewhere in the world to do the same.
igravious 14y ago
I don't think that I've ever seen anything like this (the sheer number of submissions related to one event) on HN before. I, like most others, follow the tussle between those who desire a world where the barrier to access information is lower and those who want to copyright, lock up and monetize all the information that we generate. Most of the time I feel that it is like a high tech soap opera but this events brings it home to me that alarmingly the stakes can be very high and that the weight of the collective system can crush any one individual. Is this naive of me but would it be possible to set up some kind of fund or foundation that could provide real monetary support to help those that are a braver than the rest of us when they confront the system and as a result get overwhelmed. Apologies if this is inappropriate in any way.
- lizzard 14y ago
  Very good question. And I agree with you. There are people all around us, crushed every day.
- swalsh 14y ago
  "Is this naive of me but would it be possible to set up some kind of fund or foundation that could provide real monetary support to help those that are a braver than the rest of us when they confront the system and as a result get overwhelmed." I think the EFF would be pretty close to this already.
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    Obligatory: https://supporters.eff.org/donate https://supporters.eff.org/donate
- biot 14y ago
  I am only vaguely familiar with Aaron Swartz, so the magnitude of the response on this site surprised me and reminds me of the HN front page when Steve Jobs died: http://www.waybackletter.com/archive/20111005.html http://www.waybackletter.com/archive/20111005.html
  - 14y ago
skorgu 14y ago
Assuming the address is findable would it be weird to leave flowers? I feel like this shouldn't stay bits on wires.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Seems he would have preferred you give to givewell or an endorsed organization. Cut flowers just die in a week.
rogerthis 14y ago
Being a chronic depressed and chronic pain sufferer, I wonder how much problems like these contributed to him killing himself. I think about killing myself everyday. I haven't done it yet because I am a devout Catholic and I believe I can be in a worst place (or better) after death.
- colechristensen 14y ago
  By all means let us know what we can do to keep life interesting!
  - rogerthis 14y ago
    Don't worry. I have the support from doctors, family, friends. And the afterlife keeps this life interesting.
- erpa1119 14y ago
  @rogerthis, please get yourself some help, be it a priest, counsoler, therapist, anybody! Alot of us have been where you are and have come out the other side much better, please get some help.
- sadfasdf 14y ago
  Very sorry to hear this. I understand how being in pain all the time can drive one mad. Try to find some help or some relief. Don't give up.
xijuan 14y ago
I don't know what to say anymore. It really saddens me to see such a great person ending his life. I can imagine the amount of stress he was going through..RIP..
sonabinu 14y ago
The Washington Post calls him an American Hero ... he was one, wasn't he? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-american-hero/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/12/a...
- FireBeyond 14y ago
  At the risk of antagonizing an upset crowd - to me, no, he wasn't. A hero is someone admired for courage and/or other noble qualities. It's also a word greatly overused in culture today. Swartz was accomplished, certainly. Though to me "co-founded the website reddit.com, co-wrote one of many specifications for syndicating content and repeatedly hacked and trespassed to download content to which he was not authorized" does not a hero make.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    Before you make a bigger fool of yourself why don't you go and read up on what Aaron did besides the things you know about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
    - lawnchair_larry 14y ago
      I agree with GP, even after having read that. It is okay for people to have different definitions of "hero", without one of them having to be a fool. In a way it hits home even more, because it shows how any poor sap not unlike myself can be steamrolled by the justice system. I've probably done "worse", or at least comparable things. Weev is about to go to jail for something equally preposterous.
    - FireBeyond 14y ago
      I think it's the height of arrogance to tell someone they are a fool for having a different perspective of heroism from yours. I read that article and see some very worthwhile beliefs and endeavors, though beyond contributions to fighting SOPA, I'm not sure what I didn't "know about". So yes, I'll stand by my belief that I don't see anything particularly 'heroic' there. Which isn't to say he didn't make many valuable contributions to things.
sadfasdf 14y ago
This is the state of America, a kid with a laptop will go to jail for 30 + years and a banker cunt that stole billions or laundered billions for drug cartels gets nothing. How sad it all is.
- Evbn 14y ago
  They don't get nothing; they get millions of dollars.
OGinparadise 14y ago
"Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death...The US Attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims." It's nothing personal, just business. They use these cases to run for higher office by "being tough on crime" and other nauseating BS.
sproketboy 14y ago
Who cares? Only idiots.
larrys 14y ago
Perhaps someone could explain or confirm how anyone really knows that this is actually the "official" statement of the family and partners of Aaron. I understand that this was linked to in some major media, but I can find any way of determining that by the page itself or in any of the stories linking to it. There isn't any contact info and the domain name (which redirects there) was registered by this person: Domain name: rememberaaronsw.com Registrant Contact: Brian Guthrie () 179 Stockwell Dr Mountain View, CA 94043 US As I've mentioned in a comment elsewhere it seems odd to me that all these people got together and got this up so quickly after such a shocking event. Here is one of the stories linked to it that doesn't verify the source: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2013/01/online-activist-aaron-swartz-26-found-dead/ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2013/01/online-activi...
- nwh 14y ago
  Guthrie seems to be a friend. Presumably he is working as a proxy. > I've registered rememberaaronsw.com on behalf of Aaron's family, with whom we're in touch. Please do not be alarmed. https://twitter.com/bguthrie/status/290220755642359808 https://twitter.com/bguthrie/status/290220755642359808
- bguthrie 14y ago
  I was a colleague of Aaron's at ThoughtWorks (he joined early last year), and, I hope, a friend. We're devastated by his loss. For a history of the work he was doing over the last year, check https://github.com/victorykit/victorykit https://github.com/victorykit/victorykit. We're in close contact with Aaron's family and partner Taren. You can take my word for it or not, I guess, but the site and the statement are official.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    Thank you Brian, for all you're doing in what must be incredibly hard times. I can't begin to express how this all makes me feel, it will take weeks to sort it all out I'm still too stunned to properly react. What a terrible loss. I have a short list of people that I think I've identified that will change the world in a material way, Aaron was at the top of that list. The fact that we persecute such people rather than give them the benefit of the doubt and encourage them to right what is obviously wrong is what bothers me most, the one thing that stands out for me about Aaron at the moment is that he consistently came down on the right side of any argument.
jbrooksuk 14y ago
Damn, I just had to zoom to 150% to read this.
so898 14y ago
If we use the death of this great person to do what we want, there is no different between we and the BAD people. Justice will be served. At this moment, I think we should just wish Aaron Swartz R.I.P..
dinkumthinkum 14y ago
One sort of reform many have not discussed, or I have not seen, is in changing the way federal prosecutors pursue cases and sentencing. Very, very few federal cases ever go to trial because of obscenely long prison sentences. The defendant in federal cases is at such a disadvantage.

682 points by mxfh 14y ago

zepolud 14y ago

Extremely happy to see so strong and direct words. We owe him that much.

andrewpbrett 14y ago

> Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death. Damning

sonabinu 14y ago
Is anyone reminded of Alan Turing?
- Gorbzel 14y ago
  Without any disrepect to Aaron's memory (very sad news), no. Interested to hear what reminded you, but Turing committed suicide based on an unjust persecution of a minority by society as a whole. While Aaron's situation also involved injustice, I hadn't (and probably wouldn't) link the two.
  - sonabinu 14y ago
    Did you not feel like his death was the result of authority pushing a him into a corner? Wasn't Turing persecuted by authority as well? Two brilliant tech minds lost before their time.
    - colechristensen 14y ago
      Aaron was accomplished, but Turing far overshadowed. Turing was forced or compelled to take synthetic estrogen because he was gay as well as being convicted and stripped of his security clearance. The hormone replacement could be seen as rather more directly responsible for his suicide than the still relevant stresses of overzealous prosecution.

toyg 14y ago

Fuck yes, make them bleed. I can understand a US Attorney being reckless, but I cannot believe MIT would act so cowardly. If not even hacker-friendly institutions like MIT will side with people like Aaron, it's a sad state of affairs.

jhuni 14y ago
> If not even hacker-friendly institutions like MIT will side with people like Aaron, it's a sad state of affairs. MIT hasn't been a hacker-friendly institution since the early 1980s which is why Richard Stallman left MIT to found the free software movement.
- wololo 14y ago
  What changed?
  - genwin 14y ago
    It's always and forever the same reason: money, and the power that buys.
  - duaneb 14y ago
    He's being hyperbolic; MIT is still a very friendly hacker school. Aaron DID break the law, and I would not expect ANY school to stand behind him when he blatantly violated the law. It's pretty simple: don't break the law, much less using MIT resources to do so. That said, they could have handled it with a lot more finesse, especially when it is such horrible publicity for them. I suspect this has more to do with eager lawyers than it does MIT's culture. Keep in mind that MIT is an academic organization and is committed to, well, academics, not politics; e.g. Stallman did not belong there anyway.
    - rbanffy 14y ago
      > MIT is an academic organization and is committed to, well, academics, not politics Politics is too important to be left to politicians. If you refuse to take control over your environment, you cannot expect it to remain friendly to you, for you are no longer a force shaping it. Academics is politics.

sonabinu 14y ago

It is good to see that those who loved him the most are direct without euphemism.

jacquesm 14y ago
The apple apparently did not fall very far from the tree.

shawn-butler 14y ago

I am removing MIT as a benefactor from my will and ceasing donations to the alumni association. I will not reconsider until the institution provides a full accounting and takes responsibility for the actions of its legal counsel in deciding to refer the matter to federal authorities. If you are a current member of the student body or faculty you have a lot more power than me. Please read about this matter and learn what your institution chose to do on your behalf and take some action fully in the spirit of MIT to reclaim what it has lost.

seiji 14y ago
This is clearly out of my purview, but why in the world would you have an institution as a beneficiary unless it's one you control? Are they really that accomplished at brainwashing people?
- jlgreco 14y ago
  You aren't going to control any institution after you are dead. The best you can do is pick one that you feel you can trust.
  - seiji 14y ago
    Okay, poorly worded on my part. I was thinking more in line with Gates leaving everything to the Gates Foundation. My brain can't reconcile why someone would want to donate to something that already takes money from people in return for services. Kinda like the onion half-headline: "Man Has Alarming Level Of Pride In Institution That Left Him $50,000 In Debt."
    - danso 14y ago
      I don't know MIT's specific financial situation, but my impression was that, while tuition covers a great many things such as salaries and programs, every academic institution is dependent on generous endowments in order to pursue large capital projects and initiatives. Hence, why many stadiums are named after their donors.

stesch 14y ago

tumblr.com gets autobanned on reddit. sigh

worldsayshi 14y ago
Huh? You mean by vote?
- stesch 14y ago
  No. Every post with a tumblr.com link gets automatically banned. A week ago I posted something to a subreddit I've founded and it got banned. This spam filter isn't even allowing moderators to post these links. But I was allowed to unban it. So, I wrote to the moderators of /r/technology a few minutes ago and instead of unbanning it they said that tumblr.com is banned reddit wide. No, he hasn't unbanned the link. :-(
  - colechristensen 14y ago
    Despite the occasional high value link, the reddit ban on tumblr makes reddit better.
    - colmvp 14y ago
      Whereas quickmeme.com is edifying?
      - colechristensen 14y ago
        Fortunately or not, there are whole sections of Reddit devoted more or less to quickmeme.com. Some subreddits auto-ban quickmeme which I highly encourage, but a sitewide ban is unreasonable because of how engrained it is in the culture. Image captioning is, in our opinion, a bit worthless, but this is what we actually find objectionable not just one site of many which provides this. Blogging itself is not what is objectionable just the general quality of the content from Tumblr, so comparing quickmeme to tumblr is unfair.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

unimpressive 14y ago

Beware would be activists of the forces you put to your axe. Like the tip of an iceberg, their great heft can remain unseen. These machinations have no appreciation for hacks. Even lawful men have much to fear from their vision keen. The unlucky must contend with a 13 stringed marionette. Whose deadly snare targets all free men. Probing at the six lines in every hearts quartet. The song it plays is fell indeed. Moments of silence won't bring this man back. But we can rally as our thoughts are often not thought alone. [0] We can repel the forces who's wishes for the public domain is to sack. We can refuse to reap for us what others have sewn. Don't falter at the sight of a martyers fall. There is always work to be done with one less hand at the helm. Stand up and shout, silence strangles us all! Strangled, by this intellectual miasma that seeks to consume our world with hell. And though this life has been bought, full speed ahead! Eight knots! [0]: In the interest of honesty, I don't feel like I'm doing enough.

mrbill 14y ago

What sort of "standing up" for Aaron was MIT supposed to do? No matter his ultimate intentions, from what I understand, there wasn't much doubt that he repeatedly broke into MIT facilities to access its network without authorization, and then evaded attempts to prevent him from accessing the network. I've not seen anything that indicated he was a student or alum of the school (only that he went to Harvard). What would you expect any school or company to do when presented with an unauthorized intruder on their network, using resources to mass-download data? Just let them waltz in, break into a network closet, and leave a laptop plugged in? MIT did the right thing in this case; it's the government that blew things out of proportion and was using this as a way to get back at Aaron after the PACER incident.

ghshephard 14y ago

I've been thinking about the family today, and what might have caused Aaron to make such a terrible decision. One thing that caught my attention, was Lessig's comment in his post: " ... Aaron Swartz be labeled a “felon.” For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge." So - MIT brings in the Feds, the Government threaten him with 30+ years of Prison, somehow there is no way for him to appeal to the public for support for his lawsuit (which would have been very popular, I'm certain). Does he try and look to his family to liquidate everything they have to help support his defense? Does he plead out to something that he truly believed was not wrong? I can't even imagine how horrible this situation must have been for him, and why he couldn't see how he was going to get out of it...

genwin 14y ago
Not everyone wants to solicit support to fight their battles. I can see why Aaron chose suicide. I wish he had fled to one of the few places in the world where American depravity couldn't effectively kill him, but I can see why he didn't.
- rdl 14y ago
  Realistically, he could have just gone ~anywhere outside the US and probably wouldn't have been pursued too aggressively.
  - genwin 14y ago
    Accused of a crime thought so horrific it warrants 30 years in prison, I doubt that. The US has grabbed people on the other side of the world for lesser charges.
    - rdl 14y ago
      This was prosecutorial overreach. It was probably not in their short list of major issues, and thus I don't think they would have devoted huge resources to it. Which makes this whole thing even sadder. It's entirely possible his (great) IP law firm could have gotten him off, or at least ended up with a brief or suspended sentence. Even though worst case he was facing 50 years, it would have almost certainly been far less. But I am sure he was depressed and so involved in it that he wasn't thinking about it rationally.

lemming 14y ago

He used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place. Here's hoping his memory inspires more folk both here and elsewhere in the world to do the same.

igravious 14y ago

I don't think that I've ever seen anything like this (the sheer number of submissions related to one event) on HN before. I, like most others, follow the tussle between those who desire a world where the barrier to access information is lower and those who want to copyright, lock up and monetize all the information that we generate. Most of the time I feel that it is like a high tech soap opera but this events brings it home to me that alarmingly the stakes can be very high and that the weight of the collective system can crush any one individual. Is this naive of me but would it be possible to set up some kind of fund or foundation that could provide real monetary support to help those that are a braver than the rest of us when they confront the system and as a result get overwhelmed. Apologies if this is inappropriate in any way.

lizzard 14y ago
Very good question. And I agree with you. There are people all around us, crushed every day.
swalsh 14y ago
"Is this naive of me but would it be possible to set up some kind of fund or foundation that could provide real monetary support to help those that are a braver than the rest of us when they confront the system and as a result get overwhelmed." I think the EFF would be pretty close to this already.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  Obligatory: https://supporters.eff.org/donate https://supporters.eff.org/donate
biot 14y ago
I am only vaguely familiar with Aaron Swartz, so the magnitude of the response on this site surprised me and reminds me of the HN front page when Steve Jobs died: http://www.waybackletter.com/archive/20111005.html http://www.waybackletter.com/archive/20111005.html
- 14y ago

skorgu 14y ago

Assuming the address is findable would it be weird to leave flowers? I feel like this shouldn't stay bits on wires.

Evbn 14y ago
Seems he would have preferred you give to givewell or an endorsed organization. Cut flowers just die in a week.

rogerthis 14y ago

Being a chronic depressed and chronic pain sufferer, I wonder how much problems like these contributed to him killing himself. I think about killing myself everyday. I haven't done it yet because I am a devout Catholic and I believe I can be in a worst place (or better) after death.

colechristensen 14y ago
By all means let us know what we can do to keep life interesting!
- rogerthis 14y ago
  Don't worry. I have the support from doctors, family, friends. And the afterlife keeps this life interesting.
erpa1119 14y ago
@rogerthis, please get yourself some help, be it a priest, counsoler, therapist, anybody! Alot of us have been where you are and have come out the other side much better, please get some help.
sadfasdf 14y ago
Very sorry to hear this. I understand how being in pain all the time can drive one mad. Try to find some help or some relief. Don't give up.

xijuan 14y ago

I don't know what to say anymore. It really saddens me to see such a great person ending his life. I can imagine the amount of stress he was going through..RIP..

sonabinu 14y ago

The Washington Post calls him an American Hero ... he was one, wasn't he? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-american-hero/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/12/a...

FireBeyond 14y ago
At the risk of antagonizing an upset crowd - to me, no, he wasn't. A hero is someone admired for courage and/or other noble qualities. It's also a word greatly overused in culture today. Swartz was accomplished, certainly. Though to me "co-founded the website reddit.com, co-wrote one of many specifications for syndicating content and repeatedly hacked and trespassed to download content to which he was not authorized" does not a hero make.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  Before you make a bigger fool of yourself why don't you go and read up on what Aaron did besides the things you know about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
  - lawnchair_larry 14y ago
    I agree with GP, even after having read that. It is okay for people to have different definitions of "hero", without one of them having to be a fool. In a way it hits home even more, because it shows how any poor sap not unlike myself can be steamrolled by the justice system. I've probably done "worse", or at least comparable things. Weev is about to go to jail for something equally preposterous.
  - FireBeyond 14y ago
    I think it's the height of arrogance to tell someone they are a fool for having a different perspective of heroism from yours. I read that article and see some very worthwhile beliefs and endeavors, though beyond contributions to fighting SOPA, I'm not sure what I didn't "know about". So yes, I'll stand by my belief that I don't see anything particularly 'heroic' there. Which isn't to say he didn't make many valuable contributions to things.

sadfasdf 14y ago

This is the state of America, a kid with a laptop will go to jail for 30 + years and a banker cunt that stole billions or laundered billions for drug cartels gets nothing. How sad it all is.

Evbn 14y ago
They don't get nothing; they get millions of dollars.

OGinparadise 14y ago

"Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death...The US Attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims." It's nothing personal, just business. They use these cases to run for higher office by "being tough on crime" and other nauseating BS.

sproketboy 14y ago

Who cares? Only idiots.

larrys 14y ago

Perhaps someone could explain or confirm how anyone really knows that this is actually the "official" statement of the family and partners of Aaron. I understand that this was linked to in some major media, but I can find any way of determining that by the page itself or in any of the stories linking to it. There isn't any contact info and the domain name (which redirects there) was registered by this person: Domain name: rememberaaronsw.com Registrant Contact: Brian Guthrie () 179 Stockwell Dr Mountain View, CA 94043 US As I've mentioned in a comment elsewhere it seems odd to me that all these people got together and got this up so quickly after such a shocking event. Here is one of the stories linked to it that doesn't verify the source: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2013/01/online-activist-aaron-swartz-26-found-dead/ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2013/01/online-activi...

nwh 14y ago
Guthrie seems to be a friend. Presumably he is working as a proxy. > I've registered rememberaaronsw.com on behalf of Aaron's family, with whom we're in touch. Please do not be alarmed. https://twitter.com/bguthrie/status/290220755642359808 https://twitter.com/bguthrie/status/290220755642359808
bguthrie 14y ago
I was a colleague of Aaron's at ThoughtWorks (he joined early last year), and, I hope, a friend. We're devastated by his loss. For a history of the work he was doing over the last year, check https://github.com/victorykit/victorykit https://github.com/victorykit/victorykit. We're in close contact with Aaron's family and partner Taren. You can take my word for it or not, I guess, but the site and the statement are official.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  Thank you Brian, for all you're doing in what must be incredibly hard times. I can't begin to express how this all makes me feel, it will take weeks to sort it all out I'm still too stunned to properly react. What a terrible loss. I have a short list of people that I think I've identified that will change the world in a material way, Aaron was at the top of that list. The fact that we persecute such people rather than give them the benefit of the doubt and encourage them to right what is obviously wrong is what bothers me most, the one thing that stands out for me about Aaron at the moment is that he consistently came down on the right side of any argument.

jbrooksuk 14y ago

Damn, I just had to zoom to 150% to read this.

so898 14y ago

If we use the death of this great person to do what we want, there is no different between we and the BAD people. Justice will be served. At this moment, I think we should just wish Aaron Swartz R.I.P..

dinkumthinkum 14y ago

One sort of reform many have not discussed, or I have not seen, is in changing the way federal prosecutors pursue cases and sentencing. Very, very few federal cases ever go to trial because of obscenely long prison sentences. The defendant in federal cases is at such a disadvantage.