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On January 12, it headlined "Farewell to Aaron Swartz, an extraordinary hacker and activist." It called him "a close friend and collaborator." Tragedy ended his life.
Vital questions remain unanswered. Supporters demand answers. So do family members.They blame prosecutors for what happened. Their statement following his death said the following:
"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts US Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death."
Swartz did as much or more than anyone to make the Internet a thriving open knowledge ecosystem. He strove to keep it that way. He challenged repressive Internet laws.
He founded Demand Progress. It "works to win progressive policy changes for ordinary people through organizing and grassroots lobbying," he said.
It prioritizes "civil liberties, civil rights, and government reform." It ran online campaigns for justice. It advocated in the public interest. It challenged policies harming it.
He mobilized over a million online activists. His other projects included RSS specification, web.py, tor2web, the Open Library, and the Chrome port of HTTPS Everywhere.
He launched Creative Commons. He co-founded Reddit. He and others made it successful. His Raw Thought blog discussed "politics and parody." He had much to say worth hearing.
In 2011, he used the MIT campus network. He downloaded millions of journal articles. He used the JSTOR database. Authorities claimed he changed his laptop's IP and Mac addresses. They said he did it to circumvent JSTOR/MIT blocks.
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