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LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — Government and academic officials who pushed
for the prosecution of Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz played a role in
his decision to commit suicide, the family of the Internet activist and
software programmer said Saturday.
Swartz, 26, hanged himself at his apartment in Brooklyn Friday night,
his family said. The chief medical examiner of New York City confirmed
the death as a suicide.
Technology developed by Swartz was used in the creation of Reddit, a
user-driven news and online content site. Reddit was acquired by Condé
Nast in 2006.
Swartz took his own life just weeks before the start of his federal
trial stemming from charges in 2011 that he downloaded nearly 5 million
academic articles from JSTOR, a subscription service used by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a bid to distribute them free
on file-sharing sites.
“Aaron’s death isn't simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a
criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial
overreach,” Swartz’s family and his girlfriend Taren
Stinebrickner-Kauffman said in a statement.
Reddit, a user-driven news and online content site, was developed in
part on technology developed by Swartz. Reddit was acquired by Condé
Nast in 2006.
“Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office
and at MIT contributed to his death,” the family 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.”
Swartz had pleaded not guilty to initially four, then 13, felony
charges, including wire and computer fraud. He faced up to 35 years in
prison if he were found guilty.
JSTOR reclaimed the academic articles from Swartz and didn’t press
charges. Last week, JSTOR said it would offer free access to a limited
number of journal articles in its archives.
JSTOR on its website said it was “deeply saddened,” by the news of
Swartz’s death, adding that Swartz made “important contributions” to the
development of the Internet.
At age 14, Swartz helped create the now widely used online
information-distribution tool RSS. He later founded Demand Progress, an
advocacy group focused on fighting Internet censorship.
