It should be noted that Swartz faced such a stiff sentence because prosecutors charged him with multiple federal crimes arising out of his efforts to download and distribute academic papers. Similarly, a person who robbed a bank, sold a slave, and then rounded out their day by breaking Justice Scalia’s nose would also risk spending the next 50 years in prison, just like Aaron Swartz did.
Above Quote from: 10 Awful Crimes That Get You Less Prison Time Than What Aaron Swartz Faced for Freeing JSTOR Articles by Ian Millhiser alternet.org, Jan. 14,2013
When someone breaks a law not for personal gain but because he or she thinks the law is wrong, that's called civil disobedience -- the tactic used by famous people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, whom the nation pauses to honor on Monday, and by millions of people who are not famous but are very brave. They are brave because they know they may and quite likely will be punished for what they do -- but Aaron Swartz had the misfortune of taking his civil action in a nation that seems to treat crimes committed with a computer more harshly than crimes committed with a gun.
Above Quote by Will Bunch Aaron Swartz and the Questions That None Dare Ask Obama by Will Bunch at Huffinton Post, Jan. 15, 2014
Aaron Swartz committed suicide after being bullied by the U.S. government.
Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks in their tribute and eulogy for Hacker activist Aaron Swartz characterize Aaron Swartz as a dissident who was taking on the the powers that be and the elites who are intent on curbing internet freedom and finding more ways to make money for themselves while shutting down those who dare criticize the status quo . In essence Aaron Swartz is a martyr for the movement to protect and expand internet freedom.
...In fact, Aaron was acting in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson who, himself, was not too keen on the idea of heavy-handed patents on ideas and intellectual property. As he wrote in 1813, “That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.”
Jefferson then concluded, “Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.”
Quote from : Aaron Swartz, a Spark in Life and Death by Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks The Daily Take Op-ed via Truth Out.org, Jan 14,2013
More on the Aaron Swartz suicide and whether it was a direct consequence of a federal prosecutor harassing, intimidating , bullying and threatening to incarcerate him for 60 years in jail.
But we can add that the US federal government and the department of justice are the justice department representing an elite of powerful and rich individuals and corporations including the National Security Intelligence military industrial complex . And this as we have seen over the last four years are the people Obama cares about or at least cares about their welfare.
The other thing involved in this is whether the federal prosecutors saw the case against Aaron Swartz as a test case before they finish with their "show Trial of Bradley Manning and Julianne Assange and Wikileaks.
Swartz's friend blames government for suicide CNN Jan 14,2013
Aaron Swartz's friend and former attorney says federal prosecutors should share part of the blame for Swartz's suicide.
Anonymous threatens to double down on cyber attacks on those who are trying to destroy Freedom of the internet and who persecute those who dare speak out and speak 'Truth to Power'.
Unfortunately President Obama no matter how his true believer apologists claim otherwise President Obama to a large extent is on the side of the elites and making sure their interests come before the freedoms and rights of average citizens .
No one especially real liberals and Progressives should be wary of Obama who was in fact involved in this persecution of Aaron Swartz as Obama has been instrumental in the abuse and torture of Bradley Manning and was more than likely than not involved in the coordinated attacks across the U.S.A. to crush the 'Occupy Movement'.
Aaron Swartz death: Anonymous defaces MIT websites
Published on 14 Jan 2013
Hacktivist collective Anonymous has replaced two MIT websites with a statement urging reforms to US copyright law, after the death of Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz.
The message from Anonymous called the government's persecution of the 26 year old intern activist, "a gross miscarriage of justice", adding ,"We call for this tragedy to be a basis for a renewed an unwavering commitment to a free and unfettered internet, spared from censorship with equality of access and franchise for all." The sites have since been taken offline.
Mr Swartz, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment on Friday, weeks before he was due to face trial over allegations he illegally downloaded academic research papers from online resource JSTOR.
Despite JSTOR dropping the allegations, and Swartz having legal access to the publicly available material, he was facing up to 35 years in prison under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. His death came shortly after Assistant US Attorney Stephen Heymann denied further negotiation on his plea bargain.
A statement released by Swartz's family following the suicide blamed both federal prosecutors and the MIT staff for being partially responsible for events leading to his death. In response MIT president L. Rafael Reif has said the institute will launch a "thorough analysis" of their involvement with Aaron Swartz's case.
Written and presented by Alfred Joyner
What should be disturbing is that the DOJ and the full weight of the U.S. federal government had decided to use the case of Aaron Swartz as an example and a warning and a threat to anyone who follows in Aaron Swartz footsteps that they will be treated in a similar fashion as 'traitors ' and 'terrorists'.
As Thom Hartmann and Sam sacks conclude their eulogy of Aaron Swartz that the hope is that this will motivate more people to take action against the status quo and against the oppressive U.S. government including the White House who have been bought out by Big Business with no interest in defending the freedoms of the U.S. citizenry. :
"Often out of the tragedy of death comes a spark to make lives better for the living. We saw that play out in Tunisia, when a young street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire to protest the kleptocratic rule of his government and bring attention to the suffering of his generation. Within weeks, Tunisia’s oppressive government was toppled by largely nonviolent actions of average citizens. So, too, were Egypt’s and Libya’s. The Arab Spring was born.
Let’s hope that Aaron’s death will be just like his life – a spark for nonviolent revolutionary change to bring about a more just, freer, and more equal America."
We shouldn't just fall for this claim that what is lawful is the same as being justifiable or ethical. Many people determine right and wrong through the prism of what is or is not legal. There are various laws that make certain activities crimes which others don't believe should be crimes such as many of the laws restricting drug use while other laws make it legal for the CIA and other government agencies to spy on millions of citizens or to use torture techniques on POWs and dissidents or that President Obama can order assassinations of those people who are considered actual or even potential enemies of the USA and of course rather than discuss not just the legality or efficacy of using drones to murder innocent civilians but also the morality of using drones.
What is hypocritical on the part of the Obama administration is their abuse of their power to take down Aaron Swartz or those who have taken part in the legal activities of the "occupy Movement while defending the Wall Street thugs and banksters and those in the former Bush administration who committed serious crimes including the ultimate crime of a War of Aggression in Iraq and the use of indefinite detention, kidnapping ie renditions, torture and bombing civilian areas without any regard to the innocent civilians who would be inevitably killed.
So Aaron Swartz crimes like Bradley Manning's are quite minor compared to those crimes committed by the Bush Regime or the crimes being committed on a daily basis by the Obama Military Industrial Complex all under the pretense of 'National Security'
Aaron Swartz, a Spark in Life and Death by Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks The Daily Take Op-ed via Truth Out.org, Jan 14,2013
...In fact, Aaron was acting in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson who, himself, was not too keen on the idea of heavy-handed patents on ideas and intellectual property. As he wrote in 1813, “That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.”Will Bunch in his article on Aaron Swartz says that Swartz was using the tactics of Civil Disobedience similar to Martin Luther king as a protest over those in the private sector and those in government including President Obama who want to curb Internet Freedom . The issue is that the internet is another electronic means of communication similar to using the telephone or how we receive information by way of news papers and magazines and books and Television or when people gather in a public space or a Cafe and discuss various issues from the personal to the political to questioning the role of government over citizens right to communication via telephone or e-mail or social networks. The only difference is that one is using Computer technology and the World Wide Web to communicate and interact with others without fear of being censored or arrested for sharing information or one's opinions as long as the speech is not for instance hate-speech or speech meant to bully or intimidate. But seriously and openly discussing government policies should not be off-limits.
Jefferson then concluded, “Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.”
Given the activism we’ve seen on the Internet over the last few years, one could conclude that, just as Jefferson described, patent and copyright laws should be changed “according to the will and convenience of the society.” This was one of Aaron’s pursuits.
That’s not to justify Aaron’s crime, but instead to put it in some much-needed context. There are gray-haired lawmakers and corporate suits writing laws that no longer make sense, given how the vast majority of this new generation actually uses the internet. And, arguably, we’re nearing a tipping point in which this disconnect will be untenable.
This might explain why the Department of Justice reacted to Aaron’s MIT antics in the way that it did. Rather than cede ground in this upcoming struggle, the powers that be wanted to squash the struggle from the get-go by making an example out of Aaron.
Despite it being a victimless crime, and JSTOR itself settling the matter with Aaron, the Department of Justice threw the book at him. He was charged with multiple crimes and faced the possibility of serving decades in prison –a harsher punishment than most killers, bank robbers, child pornographers, and terrorist sympathizers get. The Secret Service even involved itself in the matter. And at the urging of the U.S. Attorney for the Massachusetts district, Carmen Ortiz, Aaron was looking at the very real possibility of spending much of the rest of his life in prison.
...It’s a nation where soldiers like Bradley Manning, whistleblowers like John Kiriakou, politicians like former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman who dare to take on Karl Rove, and medical marijuana growers receive the full brunt of the American Justice system and suffer dearly for their crimes or non-crimes.
But at the same time, banksters who steal billions, and corporate executives who are responsible for the deaths of their employees on oil rigs and in mine shafts never see a day in jail.
...It’s clear: if you are a right-winger defending the oligarchs of Corporate America, then the Justice Department gives you a break. But if you're trying to speak truth to America and protect the common man’s access to information and economic opportunity, then you're treated as an enemy of the state.
The Occupy movement drew attention to this two-tiered, corrupt justice system. Just as it gave attention to the threats to a free and open internet, and just as it gave attention to the broader struggle underway in an America taken over by Wall Street and corporate executives who are out to destroy what’s left of the middle class.
In Aaron’s death, all of these injustices again confront us. And, based on what we’ve seen so far on the internet in the days since Aaron’s death, it’s clear that the progressive online community will not let Aaron’s fight be forgotten.
The internet should be a resource for information free to everyone. Governments by nature are institutions of secrecy and paranoia. So anything they see as an attempt to break through their wall of secrecy they take as the actions of traitors and enemies of the state since governments believe that they have the right to keep secret even those facts which the public has a right to inorder to act as informed members of a democracy.
Aaron Swartz and the Questions That None Dare Ask Obama by Will Bunch at Huffinton Post, Jan. 15, 2014
President Obama had a press conference yesterday, billed as the last one of his first term. He was asked the predictable questions, mainly about the debt-and-spending battle with Congress, with one off-speed pitch, a query about a lack of White House diversity and also why he doesn't socialize with Congress more. No one asked the president about Aaron Swartz, the 26-year-old Internet-freedom activist who, facing controversial federal criminal charges, committed suicide last week. That's not a surprise -- honestly, what might Obama say about the specifics, to the extent he may or may not have even followed the story. But what happened to this young crusader raises much deeper questions about our government, about transparency, secrecy, people's right to know and the abuse of power. Questions that need to be answered for the American people.
Full disclosure: I'm not going to pretend that before this week that I know much about Swartz, a computer prodigy who created a website that evolved into the popular Reddit site at age 14, and then campaigned for freedom of information over the Internet, fighting against the Internet-copyright bill known as SOPA through a group called Demand Progress. He was well-known to the community of activists seeking to reduce government restrictions on the flow of information, if not to the broader public. But the broader battles that he devoted his all-too-brief life to fighting -- against a government that is way too invested in conducting its business in secret and in limiting information to the select few -- are familiar to most of us.
Outside of the activisit community, there really wasn't much publicity about the 2011 federal charges lodged against Swartz -- the case that threatened to send him to prison and which family and friends say was closely linked to his death, by hanging himself in his Brooklyn apartment on Friday. It's a complicated case, but essentially the activist had used the computers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, to download millions of documents -- academic and scholarly papers -- that were behind the wall for paying subscribers at the site JSTOR. There's no evidence that Swartz intended to enrich himself or others, but the act instead appears by all accounts to be a manifestation of his belief that knowledge -- especially research that in many cases is underwritten by our federal or state tax dollars -- is for the public.
When someone breaks a law not for personal gain but because he or she thinks the law is wrong, that's called civil disobedience -- the tactic used by famous people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, whom the nation pauses to honor on Monday, and by millions of people who are not famous but are very brave. They are brave because they know they may and quite likely will be punished for what they do -- but Aaron Swartz had the misfortune of taking his civil action in a nation that seems to treat crimes committed with a computer more harshly than crimes committed with a gun.
Swartz was arrested on 13 federal felony charges that carried the possibility of millions of dollars in fines and a prison sentence of 35 years, and the U.S. Justice Department (encouraged, reportedly by MIT) did not back away from its over-the-top prosecution of Swartz -- even though JSTOR, the supposed aggrieved party, didn't want to press charges and in fact announced just days ago that 4.5 million documents would be made available for free (with some limits).
Just last week, prosecutors offered Swartz a "deal" that still would have mandated at least six months in prison. A short time later. his body was found. Of course, it's impossible to know everything that's on a person's mind, and while family members say he had his struggles with depression, there is little doubt that the prosecution is what was weighing most on Swartz in his final hours. His family released a statement that was unambiguous: "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 M.I.T. contributed to his death."
and so it goes,
GORD.
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