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Aaron Swartz, 26, Co-Founder of Reddit, Dies

Sad news today, Aaron Swartz, co-founder of Reddit, committed suicide at the age of 26.

While the full story is not fully clear, it appears the stress of charges being brought against him by the Federal Government, with a potential prison sentence length of up to 30 years, pushed him over the edge.

What's truly sad about this is that the two institutions who he 'wronged' - MIT and JSTOR - had no desire to press any charges. But the Fed, people are assuming, wanted to make an example out of Swartz (or simply further their own careers) so they pushed for prosecution.

Essentially, from what I've seen all Swartz did was take content from a database of publicly-available research papers. So what's the crime? Well, you can't 'take' the whole database of content, I guess you're suppose to access the content on an as-needed basis.

Essentially it's tantamount to stealing a copy of every book in the library - so you don't take the actual books, but you do take copies of them. Since they are free for anyone to access anyway, have you really committed a crime?

Facing 30 years for 'stealing' what is available publicly is beyond extreme, especially when those you 'stole' from don't want any type of prosecution (not even probation).

This is a PR nightmare for the Feds, who apparently have no sense of 'justice' but rather look to add a notch to their belt any chance they get.

On the flip side, the interesting thing about this situation is the element of celebrity (not that Swartz was a celebrity per se, but someone with a public profile). Sometimes the justice system goes easy on people who have a public brand out of concern for how the public will see harsh treatment.

But sometimes, as appears to be the case here, it can lead to the justice system going much harder on a celebrity. Not only does the prosecutor get a ton of media attention by doing so, but the 'justice' system gets to make an example out of them that others will notice.

This is the kind of insanity that has led the music industry to sue a soccer mom for two million dollars for downloading an mp3 illegally. It's prosecution in the name of PR... that is to send a message to the rest of society.

Anyway, I only discovered Reddit this year. I always knew it existed, but didn't really check it out. It's a quirky fun little site that I read through during my morning tea.  Basically it's a combination of news items and joke items that people find interesting and post for others to read. In essence it's a 'viral' community... if a YouTube video is posted to Reddit (and liked by the members) it's not long before it gets thousands of hits.

Capture the attention of Reddit users and you more than likely will instantly go viral.

RIP Aaron Swartz.






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