Aaron Swartz dies at 26; Internet folk hero founded Reddit

[Martinus]

There is also a question of the penalty being disproportionate to the crime. He was facing 35 years in prison, which is insane. He probably would have got less if he murdered someone.

[Queequeg]

slavs put a lot of unnecessary "the"s in their English

They make this mistake during attempts at formal speech, during excited or drunken speech the opposite is the rule.  And Marty, South Slavic languages have articles like nearly all Balkan languages.

I'd be surprised if Hungarian had articles, actually, at least any moreso than Turkish.

[garbon]

There is also a question of the penalty being disproportionate to the crime. He was facing 35 years in prison, which is insane. He probably would have got less if he murdered someone.

Apparently he was offered a deal of 6 months but would have to plead guilty to 13 felony charges. He declined (understandable, of course).

I'm not sure I'm understanding the arguments of he shouldn't have been charged as he was stealing to make a point, not to financially benefit nor that he should have gotten a pass because he "had written openly and movingly about his struggle with depression."

[Eddie Teach]

I still don't know what a reddit is.

I just checked it out. Not sure what the draw is.

[CountDeMoney]

He'll be on t-shirts and coffee mugs soon enough.  I'm sure a rock band will dedicate something to him.

[Strix]

Sadly, I agree with Raz 

[CountDeMoney]

Simply because you are brilliant and useful does not put you above the law.  I guess this is a Euro thing or something, but a crime is a crime no matter who commits it.

It only matters to Euros if you're an artist or something.  Roman Polanski, yes.  Former head of state or other government official, ZOMG GO TO JAIL DR KISSINGER!

[sbr]

slavs put a lot of unnecessary "the"s in their English

I'd be surprised if Hungarian had articles, actually, at least any moreso than Turkish.

The gypsies probably stole them.

[Razgovory]

There is also a question of the penalty being disproportionate to the crime. He was facing 35 years in prison, which is insane. He probably would have got less if he murdered someone.

Crimes.  He committed 13 crimes.  If sentences are served consecutively, they kinda add up.  Wire fraud is sort of a serious crime.

[merithyn]

I thought there was a lot of confusion about why the charges were brought since the guy had student privileges at MiT through Cambridge when he took the stuff, anyway.

[Razgovory]

I thought there was a lot of confusion about why the charges were brought since the guy had student privileges at MiT through Cambridge when he took the stuff, anyway.

That's why we have juries and judges.

[Josephus]

So I went to reddit.

So, I see a bunch of links to stories. So, what is it, like a "what's trending?" website?

edit: Oh wait, i see, people just send links to reddit. it could be anything...sort of like a universal "timmay"?

[garbon]

So I went to reddit.

So, I see a bunch of links to stories. So, what is it, like a "what's trending?" website?

edit: Oh wait, i see, people just send links to reddit. it could be anything...sort of like a universal "timmay"?

And then there is something like bumping it up so trending are all articles that people like.

[garbon]

Aaron Swartz Memorial Hackathon (SF Edition)

In memory of Aaron Swartz, and in coordination with a world-wide effort, Noisebridge will be hosting a hackathon starting Friday, January 25th, and continuing through Sunday, January 27th.

Aaron was a hacktivist and friend of many in our community. He helped create RSS 1.0; contributed to Creative Commons; was an early builder of Reddit, where he's often acknowledged as a co-founder; created the web.py framework; and more recently, became a data liberator, first with PACER and then with scholarly articles from JSTOR, both of which got him into trouble with the law.
Aaron's Demand Progress project helped stop SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act in the US, which threatened to have far reaching unintended consequences.

Aaron Swartz committed suicide on Jan. 11, 2013, but his work on making the world a better place should not die with him. Join us for two days of understanding his work and contributing to keep his memory and projects alive.


When: 7pm Jan. 25 - 7pm Jan. 27
What: Come learn new skills and work together on projects that Aaron would have liked. Themes include open information access, sharing and preserving human knowledge, hacking for social/political justice, and techno-activism.
Organizers: yan, shannon, mct
Remote collab: mailing list
The event is free, but we'll have donation boxes for purchasing food and project supplies. BYO-snacks-and-energy-drinks.

[The Minsky Moment]

There is also a question of the penalty being disproportionate to the crime. He was facing 35 years in prison, which is insane. He probably would have got less if he murdered someone.

Apparently he was offered a deal of 6 months but would have to plead guilty to 13 felony charges. He declined (understandable, of course).

Assuming this is accurate - and I have no reason to believe otherwise - this does highlight a serious flaw in the US justice system.  Dracononian penalties are abused by over-zealous prosecutors to coerce pleas.  Even a defendant with very meritorious defenses is unlikely to risk the roulette spin of a jury trial against the United States attorney when the consequence of losing the rest of one's free life.  Make the tradeoff stark enough, and effectively the constitutional right to trial is vitiated.