There’s a great documentary about him called The Internet’s Own Boy. The FBI bullied him to suicide by hanging decades in prison over his head for a minor, nonviolent, victimless offense; the horrible, horrible crime of … downloading some research papers. Yes, I’m aware that he tresspassed (ish) into a wiring closet to do it, but that hardly justified the charges. The Man wanted to make an example of him to show what happens when you have aspirations of actually people from the shackles of absolute, unchecked capitalism.
He was a brilliant, precocious mind and a champion for online freedom. Were he still around, he would be disgusted by what reddit has become. It’s everything he fought to prevent.
Documentary on him worth checking out: http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy
A truly phenomenal individual who worked on so much of what makes the modern Internet run: RSS, Markdown, Creative Commons, and of course was instrumental in the early days of Reddit.
Thanks for sharing! I completely forgot about his story and its just so tragic. It feels good to remember it again. And hopefully not forgetting it.
Do somebody wanna think in Aaron Schwartz’s open knowledge legacy and the ruin of this idea because of some greedy profit-addicts of the internet heritage?
