The US Attorney accuse Swartz of stealing from MIT's online archives New York – Arabstoday 26-year-old web prodigy and Internet activist Aaron Swartz has committed suicide by hanging himself, authorities announced on Saturday. Swartz was found on Friday at his Brooklyn apartment in New York City. He was a co-founder of Reddit, a user-centric news and entertainment site, and helped to create the Really Simple Syndication [RSS] web feed system while he was a teenager. He was also a fierce spokesman against Internet censorship, and directed the activist group Demand Progress to that end.
The non-profit organisation spearheaded a successful campaign in 2011 to block the Stop Online Piracy Act [SOPA], then being introduced into US Congress. The legislation would have enabled courts to curb access to websites thought to be engaging in unlawful intellectual property sharing. Swartz had argued that it would give government too much power over online communications.
But Swartz had also been embroiled in a serious fraud case in the months leading up to his death.
In 2011 he was charged with the theft of millions of academic journals from computer archives at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT]. He was a fellow at the Edmond J Safra Centre for Ethics at Harvard University at the time. The prosecution alleged that he intended to distribute the papers for free.
Swartz, who was due to go on trial later this year, had pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he could have faced up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million penalty.
In a statement which was made public on Saturday, Swartz's family and partner linked his prosecution to his suicide.
"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 claimed.
"The US Attorney's office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially at least 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims," it also stated.
MIT and the US Attorney’s office were unavailable for comment.
Source: DW