www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/01/...mbering-aaron-swartz



JSTOR, the so-called victims of the so-called theft, didn't want to pursue the case against Swartz after he returned his copies of the documents he "stole", but the Justice Department wouldn't let it go when there's mindless, grotesquely out of proportion punishing to be done.

Threatened the guy with 35 years and literally drove him to suicide.

As a friend of mine said "Thanks a whole fucking bunch, American govt. - you really got your priorities straight on this one. Government for the property, by the property.

RIP, Aaron Swartz. "

Amen

^{tx snowball}

What a sad waste of a life. It's just screwed up. Where the hell do they come up with 35 years anyway!

"Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves," Swartz wrote in an online "manifesto" dated 2008.

"The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. ... sharing isn't immoral - it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy," he wrote.

That belief - that information should be shared and available for the good of society - prompted Swartz to found the nonprofit group DemandProgress.

The group led a successful campaign to block a bill introduced in 2011 in the U.S. House of Representatives called the Stop Online Piracy Act.

The bill, which was withdrawn amid public pressure, would have allowed court orders to curb access to certain websites deemed to be engaging in illegal sharing of intellectual property.

Swartz and other activists objected on the grounds it would give the government too many broad powers to censor and squelch legitimate Web communication.

But Swartz faced trouble in July 2011, when he was indicted by a federal grand jury of wire fraud, computer fraud and other charges related to allegedly stealing millions of academic articles and journals from a digital archive at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

According to the federal indictment, Swartz - who was a fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics - used MIT's computer networks to steal more than 4 million articles from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service.

JSTOR did not press charges against Swartz after the digitized copies of the articles were returned, according to media reports at the time.

Swartz, who pleaded not guilty to all counts, faced 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted. He was released on bond. His trial was scheduled to start later this year.

'HARSH ARRAY OF CHARGES'

In a statement released Saturday, the family and partner of Swartz praised his "brilliance" and "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.

"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach," the statement said.

"The U.S. Attorney's office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims," it added.

Here's a comment someone has posted below the article.

hugorune wrote:
Give the tory boy a medal, ffs lol :p

' The last thing we need is people who decide that they know they way things should be regardless of laws.'
Thats precisely what politicians do every day

hugorune wrote:
When laws are so skewed in favour of criminals and fat, controlling f*****s, it goes without saying that high time things were changed.

And most of us aren't even aware of the new glut of 'laws' being passed daily that are not in our best interests.

Gilly wrote:
The guy who posted that comment is obviously unaware of a lot of things
He'll carry on voting like the rest of the dumb f*cks lol :p

andyh wrote:
You've gotta vote. No point in us having a '2 party, same policies' system if we don't exercise our right to decide which bunch of public school boys are going to fuck us over. It's the British way

hugorune wrote:
Seeing as the result is the same regardless and you enter contract, why bother? :p
Personally, I'd rather not enter into contract with them.

petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove...aron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck
White House Petition to Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz:


^{tx CBQ}

Evidntly taking the piss
rt.com/usa/news/swartz-suicide-court-drops-charges-997/

mikey mikey wrote:
Seen the comments at the bottom?

The Only Good Jew Is A Dead Jew (unregistered) January 15, 2013, 04:09 0
He was probably doing some crazy sexual act as part of his religion. It's that everyone knows that jews aren't good at sports so he tripped.
All that inbreeding affects their hand eye co ordination.

Will All Organs Be Harvested? (unregistered) January 15, 2013, 04:03 0
They better charge him quickly before the rest of the tribe
of david harvest those organs.
Who knows why but they do. RT breaks out the violins for their jew
friends.

The anti-Semitic thing is definitely growing at an alarming rate again and I'm convinced it is in no small part due to deliberately touted angles in the conspiracy community designed to achieve that goal.

If you also adopt the Icke angle that Semitic = Arab peoples then the bigotry is through the roof!

That bunch will move quickly from Jew to Muslim to non-white to "race tratitor" and commie (includes all of you from their POV) and on and on.

It is very sad when somebody ends their life. I am amazed nobody is calling this a conspiracy, or are they?

i-baster wrote: It is hardly a conspiracy when the victims family are directly blaming the prosecuters for pretyy much murdering the man.

Moreover the the president of MIT, Rafael Reif, has announced that they are to conduct an investigation and publicise a report on the administration's handling of the case with Swartz,

Unless you count the tinyints of the world who can't see past his Jewish background to even consider him a loss of human life.

Yep Andy, it looks like the Nazis are indeed out in full goosestep swing. And i-baster, you were also right to anticipate a conspiracy.

As the quote over at RT goes to show:

So tere you have it. Persecution and suicide are not enough to convince the nazis.

Undoubtedly, if Assange should befall arrest and, God forbid, execution, the "theory" will be something similar to this.

i-baster wrote:
Looks like It was subtly implied on the David Icke Headlines page, going off the title wording...

www.davidicke.com/headlines/78186-obamas...ead-in-new-york-city

and a follow up story

www.davidicke.com/headlines/78225-us-jus...ead-activists-family

Thanks novum

I hope that is some indication that Mr. Icke is denouncing the prosecuters as the villains that they are.

It seems that some activists under the name Anonymous have responded also

rt.com/usa/news/swartz-suicide-court-drops-charges-997/