You owe him RSS, you owe him Markdown, you owe him Creative Commons, you owe him Reddit.

He was 26, wanted to share knowledge for free and they pushed him to suicide for it.

He would be 34 by now, and I cannot imagine all the wonderful things he would have created.

    • captcha [any]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      You know that ironman/inventor fetish a lot of bourgeois have? Aaron Schwartz was what a modern actual inventor/prodigy would actually be like.

      ALSO shout out to Alexandra Elbakyan for finishing the mission! She doesn't get enough credit. Every scientist should be using libgen/scihub if they aren't already.

        • captcha [any]
          ·
          4 years ago

          One of many reasons why she doesn't get enough respect in the west. All of them unjust.

          afaik

          Withholding right to withdraw since I don't know more about her than her wiki.

    • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      It's absolutely heartbreaking. They basically told him that they were about to ruin his entire life, for the rest of his life, and he felt so trapped that he took a step he thought would get him out of that corner. Reminds me of that piece of shit cop that was going to bust that old moonshiner "Popcorn" Sutton and Popcorn killed himself to avoid going to prison for the rest of his life.

    • zeal0telite [he/him,they/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Holy fuck. 35 years?

      Jesus, the justice system is fucked. What was the reason behind that kind of sentence? Or was it just a "don't fuck with money" thing they never had to justify to the outside?

      • MichelLouise [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        4 years ago

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz

        Just learned today that Sci-Hub was created less than 5 month after his arrest.

        • zeal0telite [he/him,they/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          How does any of that justify that amount of jail time?

          Legit insane. Here's to the continued existence of sci-hub too.

          • captcha [any]
            ·
            edit-2
            4 years ago

            The actual value of what he was planning to pirate was countless and a legitimate matter of national interest. There's a difference between pirating all Disney movies and like all MIT or CalTech research papers. I can't imagine how invaluable scihub has been for scientists outside the imperial core. So it makes sense to throw the entire law book at him. But they overdid it and made him a martyr.

    • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
      ·
      4 years ago

      i'm not on twitter, can someone plz bully the reply guy linking to repugnant fascist blowhard mencius moldbug's blog post blaming leftism for Swartz's death?

      • culdrought [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        His twitter bio:

        Neoreactionary. Techno-traditionalist. Philotyrannical intellectual

        buh??????

        • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 years ago

          a "neoreactionary" is a fascist that thinks they're doing esotericism by using Tor Browser to look at CP. they're incredibly tiring people.

          • culdrought [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            lmao that sounds about right. Also I just started reading that blog post and it is causing me physical pain.

            Aaron, born one of humanity’s natural nobles, grows up in a century cleansed by military force of its own cultural heritage, in which all surviving noble ideals are leftist ideals.

            What fucking world does this dumbass live in?

            • captcha [any]
              ·
              4 years ago

              In a world where we are all constantly fighting to enslave each other to honor the virtue of competition.

            • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
              ·
              4 years ago

              "who the fuck is Mencius Moldbug?" is a deep, dark rabbit hole. I recommend Elizabeth Sandifer's Neoreaction: A Basilisk on the origins and problems of the online far right movement he helped found, analyzed through a literary/philosophical lens comparable to the writing of Mark Fisher.

              (pm me if you're a broke bitch and i can send you the ebook in MOBI format)

              • culdrought [he/him]
                ·
                4 years ago

                Thanks for the recommendation! This is the first time I've heard of neoreactionaries so I'll definitely have to read that.

                I am a broke bitch but I was able to find a torrent so it's all good. Thanks for the offer though! <3

      • Wheaties [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        How big of a dork do you have to be, linking Moldbug? What does he imagine he's accomplishing here?

        oh no, I've been subjected to the writings of a pompous nerd who cant self-reflect or proofread, my day is irredeemably ruined

      • captcha [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        mencius moldbug

        God good I thought that guy was only famous for trying to shill his darknet pyramid scheme, urbit.

        Guys, guys, what if we create another darknet but we bake a pyramid scheme into it? Won't it be liberating??? And you can call yourselves lords and dukes with your own peasants and you will all be free. Also we're going to greenfield everything without utilizing preexisting tools or referencing prior work and obfuscate how everything works while still being open source.

        Peter Thiel: yeah I'll throw some money at that.

    • culdrought [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yeah I use both of those things on a daily basis and I had no idea he was behind them :(

  • LeninsRage [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Glad I'm not a shitlib anymore like I was in 2013 and can understand his fate was an atrocity of "justice" rather than just desserts, which I was literally arguing back in the day.

    • CementEscapist [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Curious, what was behind the shitlib argument that his death was just desserts? I can barely remember 2013.

      • LeninsRage [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Effectively saying "He broke the law" as many times as necessary until the target accepts that spreading learning resources to others for free is a capital offense

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Amazing how Bezos and Elon are uber-alles oligarchs after cooperating with the state while someone with a leftist philosophy gets thrown in jail and Epstein's himself.

    • AKnightAlone [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Guy could’ve become a really influential activist and leader for left politics in tech.

      Did he... kill... himself?

  • different_eli [any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    this was the first time I actually got really sad that a "famous" individual died.

  • newmou [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I didn’t know about him. This is a real gut punch. What a beautiful human