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.

Comments

Morgan Freeman Botches Reddit IAmA - Black Eye on PR

For those not familiar with Reddit it's basically a forum where people post interesting things on a wide variety of subjects. Postings gain popularity when people 'up vote' them and become more visible in their particular subreddit (a subreddit is simply a subject category, like politics or videos). One of Reddit's most popular subreddits is the IAmA subreddit - which allows reddit users to ask questions of various people. Over three million people subscribe to IAmA, which is also widely used by celebrities. An IAmA can last a couple hours during which Redditors (the term Reddit users call themselves) can ask the person doing the IAmA questions. The term "IAmA" comes from the concept of "I Am A doctor, ask me anything", "I Am A movie star, ask me anything" - you get the drift. IAmA's are not just for celebrities, lots of common folks do them as well. Recently Morgan Freeman did an IAmA and it turned into a PR mess. To make a lo...

Mainstream versus Alternate Media - Where is the news now-a-days?

It's well known that CNN has been suffering an exodus of viewers, losing over half their viewership over the past couple of years. Yet Fox News has not lost viewers, but has increased its viewership slightly. It's an odd phenomena given that Fox news is clearly biased in their coverage. Mind you, so is CNN according to many. But I'd suggest it comes down to something much more simple. While Fox may be holding its ground, the rise of alternative media is taking off where CNN left off - a focus on hard news. For those of the under 40 crowd, that's what they are looking for, NEWS. The simplest way to highlight the difference between mainstream media and alternative media is to take a look at their homepages and the stories they highlight. It becomes very clear why people are turning away from CNN and turning to alternative media. Let's look at five media sites and their homepage (click on pictures to enlarge): CNN Feature stories: CNN heroes Top t...

E-cigarettes: A PR battle Health Canada cannot win?

So I've now been using an e-cigarette (e-cig) for two months and thought I'd talk a bit about how I see the upcoming battle between Health Canada and e-cigs going. First though, let's do a quick overview of what exactly an e-cig is. Basically an e-cig vaporizes liquid that contains nicotine. The vapor is then inhaled. People who use e-cigs are called vapers (not smokers). Because the liquid is atomized (ie. vaporized), not burned the way tobacco is, vapers do not consider themselves 'smokers' in anyway. An e-cig is comprised of basically three components: The tank - this is the component that holds the juice (sometimes referred to as e-juice or e-liquid). The atomizer - this a coil and wick unit that atomizes the juice. When the coil is heated (from the battery) it atomizes the juice that has soaked into the wick. The battery - batteries for e-cigs come in various capacities (some last 8 hours, others 40+ hours, depending on their size). The ba...

Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

Search This Blog