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.

    • 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.