Aaron isn't the first person whose life and untimely death has been a fillip to a cause. Aaron's story today has 3 strands. 1) Depression and suicide, and the

Aaron isn't the first person whose life and untimely death has been a fillip to a cause. Aaron's story today has 3 strands. 1) Depression and suicide, and the improvements in mental health that can be achieved 2) Judicial over reach and lawyers being bullies vs doing their jobs by going to the limits 3) The state of affairs with copy right law and the causes which Aaron himself fought for Each strand has been taken up and defended, and of course not all of them can be done at once. As far as I can tell, this topic is being taken up and handled better than it usually would be, when it would get spun into a political talking point without reflection on the events and their triggers. I suspect that there are some sites and articles which lean to one angle or the other, but this must always be the case. Such is life. Do note - the most recent article landing up on HN (the Slate article) has been a great example of Good Journalism, and it let the readers (largely) draw their own conclusions Maybe there are other vastly biased articles, which I have missed. ---- The poster isn't quite accurate on how someone contemplating suicide thinks. > There’s an obvious connection here. If we want to stop people from killing either each other or themselves, we shouldn’t martyrize people who distribute death, whether to self or others. Despite external pressures, Aaron Swartz holds the ultimate responsibility for what he did. Someone who intends to see suicide through, is NOT looking for attention or to be made a Martyr. I am pretty sure that this has been discussed on HN. Others have taken this view, and fortunately people with an understanding of the factors behind suicide have commented how this isn't how it works. The line "Suicide is a cop out" comes to mind, and its dangerous impact on driving people away from help has been mentioned. The Human body is a vast complicated machine which is designed to do everything in its power to survive. When its pushed to a level of compromised programming to the extent that it actively plans to end itself, a comment like that utterly mis reads whats going on, and does vastly more harm than good.