In the wake of the apparent suicide of Reddit and RSS co-creator Aaron Swartz Friday, tech heads and advocates for free speech have been thrown into turmoil, vocally grieving for the hacker and Internet freedom activist. Even the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who once sought to prosecute the 26-year-old, has come out offering condolences to his friends and family and has vowed to further investigate its possible role in his death.
Found dead in his Brooklyn apartment, Swartz faced 30 or more years in prison for hacking charges. While working as a fellow at Harvard's Safra Center, Swartz downloaded 4.8 million academic papers from JSTOR, an academic database. MIT and JSTOR have an arrangement allowing free access to the database on MIT's network, but Swartz's pace of downloading reportedly killed JSTOR's servers leading to MIT being blocked from accessing the database for several days, according to the indictment against him. JSTOR alleged Swartz hid a laptop in a computer utility closet at MIT and downloaded the articles before being caught by campus and local police in 2011.
Swartz and JSTOR settled their dispute over the incident, but MIT brought in the authorities to investigate further, which led to his prosecution. Ever since, MIT's cooperation with police has been controversial at the school.
"What Aaron Swartz did was a clear violation of the rules and protocols of the library and the community," MIT professor Christopher Capozzola told the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2011. "But the penalties in this case, and the sources of those penalties, are really remarkable. These penalties really go against MIT's culture of breaking down barriers."
MIT President L. Rafael Reif said Sunday in a statement he had appointed a professor to review the university's involvement in Swartz's case.
"Now is a time for everyone involved to reflect on their actions, and that includes all of us at MIT," Reif said in the letter.
Reif chose Hal Abelson, "a highly respected computer-science professor," to analyze MIT's response to Swartz's actions. The appointment should go over well with Swartz's fans. As the Christian Science Monitor notes, like Swartz, Abelson has long been involved with organizations promoting Internet rights and intellectual freedom such as Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, the Free Software Foundation, and the Center for Democracy and Technology.
"There's a battle going on right now, a battle to define everything that happens on the Internet in terms of traditional things that the law understands," Swartz said in a 2012 speech discussing the part he played in defeating the SOPA Internet copyright law. Had the law gone into effect, he said, "new technology, instead of bringing us greater freedom, would have snuffed out fundamental rights we'd always taken for granted."
"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death," said the Swartz family in a statement.
Internet reacts to Swartz's Death
The reaction to Swartz's untimely death has found the Internet stewing in existential angst, angry at the media and especially at MIT.
"@timberners_lee Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep," tweeted Sir Tim Berners Lee, Founder Of The World Wide Web.
Quinn Norton, Swartz's close friend and freelance journalist: "We used to have a fight about how much the internet would grieve if he died. I was right, but the last word you get in as the still living is a hollow thing, trailing off, as it does, into oblivion."
"@Zephoria What I feel right now is anger. I'm angry at Aaron, angry at the state, angry at MIT, angry at anti-hactivist sentiment & angry at myself," tweeted Danah Boyd, Social Media Researcher And Swartz's Friend.
"Whatever problems Aaron was facing, killing himself didn't solve them. Whatever problems Aaron was facing, they will go unsolved forever. If he was lonely, he will never again be embraced by his friends. If he was despairing of the fight, he will never again rally his comrades with brilliant strategies and leadership. If he was sorrowing, he will never again be lifted from it," wrote Cory Doctorow, Science Fiction Author And Swartz's Friend.
"The question this government needs to answer is why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a 'felon.' For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million-dollar trial in April -- his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge. And so as wrong and misguided and fucking sad as this is, I get how the prospect of this fight, defenseless, made it make sense to this brilliant but troubled boy to end it," wrote Lawrence Lessig, Director Of The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics At Harvard University.
"@AnonyBroadcast We defaced #MIT with a memorial for Aaron, its the least we could do https://t.co/4zD0MmEZ #anonymous," tweeted the Anonymous Hacktivist Collective.
"Ada [Swartz's daughter] cried, then we hugged, then Ada suggested we have a goodbye party, with ice-cream and sprinkles and a movie, and make a board where we could pin all our memories. We laughed at how funny he was. Aaron taught her so well," wrote Danny O'Brien, Journalist And Swartz's Friend.