Written by: Taylor Berman
Aaron Swartz, a programmer and Internet activist who co-founded a company that would eventually grow into Reddit, committed suicide Friday in New York City, according to The Tech and Boing Boing. Swartz's attorney confirmed the news to The Tech early Saturday morning.
"The tragic and heartbreaking information you received is, regrettably, true," confirmed Swartz' attorney, Elliot R. Peters of Kecker and Van Nest, in an email to The Tech.
At 14, Swartz co-authored an early version of RSS. Later he started Infogami, a company that would eventually merge with Reddit. He also co-founded Demand Progress, an online activist group whose mission statement was "win progressive policy changes for ordinary people through organizing, and grassroots lobbying."
Swartz was arrested in July 2011 for allegedly downloading approximately 4 million academic journals from JSTOR with the intent to distribute them for free over P2p file-sharing sites. He was charged with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. In September 2012, Swartz appeared in court and pleaded not guilty to those charges. Just two days before Swartz's suicide, JSTOR — perhaps because of Swartz's actions — began offering free but limited access to its archives.
Complete article from Gawker HERE
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