Aaron Swartz, the young techie who committed suicide on the 11th of Januaru represents a tragedy that could have been prevented if the Police had been more reasonable.
Swartz was deeply involved in the campaign against “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) which was seen as an act that would have made it easy for the US Government to shut down sites for copyright violations and in the process would have curbed some of the fundamental rights associated with the early concept of Internet as a vehicle of free information.
Swartz was being prosecuted for unauthorized downloading of material from JSTOR data base which he felt was a fight against the inappropriate use of Copyright law where publishers got more benefit than authors. See here for details
It is alleged that the US prosecutors tried to demand higher punishments by invoking Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and thereby trying to enhance the possible punishment from around 6 months to 35 years.
In the tech circles, Swartz is seen as a crusader who lost his life because of bad implementation of law.
For a long time the untimely death of Aaron Swartz will continue to disturb internet activists.
Naavi
