This post is a summary of two articles. The first with the complete title of, "Internet activist, programmer Aaron Swartz dead at 26." Published at http://www.reuters.com/, on January 12, 2013. The second with the title of, "Aaron Swartz." Published at http://en.wikipedia.org/.
Police found the body of Aaron Swartz in his apartment in the New York city, according to the medical examiner, which ruled the death as a suicide by hanging. Swartz is credited with being a co-author of the specifications for the web feed format RSS 1.0. It is a format for delivering to users content from sites that changed constantly, such as new pages and blogs. Over the years, he became an online icon for helping to make a virtual mountain of information freely available to the public. "Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it only for themselves," Swartz wrote in 2008. "The entire scientific and cultural heritage of the world is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Sharing it is not immoral. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy." He wrote. That belief, that information should be shared for the good of society, prompted Swartz to found the nonprofit group, Demand Progress. But Swartz faced trouble in July 2011, when he was indicted to allegedly stealing millions of academic articles from digital archive at the Massachusets institute of Technology ( MIT ). Swartz who pleaded not guilty to all counts, would face 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted. He was released on bond. His trial scheduled to this year. In a statement released now, the family praised his profound commitment to social justice, and struck out at what they said were decisions made at MIT and by prosecutors that contributed to his death. "The death of Aaron is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach." The statement said.
Aaron Swartz ( 1986-2013 ) was an American programmer, writer, political organizer and internet activist. Swartz became a partner in reddit after its merger with his company Infogami. His later work focused on civic awareness and activism. In 2009, wanting to learn about effective activism, he helped launch the progressive change campaign committee. In 2010, he became a researcher at Harvard University on institutional corruption. After he found a political group that organizes people online to take action by contacting congress and other leaders and spreading the word about civil liberties, government reform and other issues. At the age 13, Swartz won the Arsdigita Prize and $10,000 award, a competition for young webdesigners who create useful and educational non-commercial websites. Swartz attended Stanford University, where he started the software company Infogami. Infogami wiki platform was used to support the internet archives of the Open Library Project. It was difficult to make money from the project, but the website gained popularity, with millions of users visiting it each month. In 2008, Swartz founded the website Watchdog.net, to aggregate and visualize data about politicians. In 2011-2012, Swartz and Kevin Poulsen designed and implemented Strongbox, a system that allows anonymous informants to send electronics documents to reporters without the fear of disclosure. In 2013, Swartz was posthumously awarded the James Madison Award from American Library Association, for being an "outspoken advocate for public participation in government and unrestricted access to peer-reviewed scholarly articles." Several members of the U.S. Congress, have raised questions regarding the handling of government of the case. When was said the Aaron was a martyr, a advocacy for internet freedom and social justice. A member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the congress, announced that he would investigate the Justice Department`s actions in prosecuting Swartz, in a statement, he praised Swartz for have worked toward a open government and free access to the people.
