Aaron Swartz: passionate advocate for making public documents and as much information as possible available on the Web
By pertl
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Wins ArsDigita Prize
At age 13, wins a a competition for young people who create “useful, educational, and collaborative” noncommercial websites. -
Helped write RSS 1.0
At age 14, Swartz was a member of the working group that authored the RSS 1.0 web syndication specification, a lesser-used offshoot of an earlier RSS version -
Makes Government Documents Freely Available
Swartz acquired the Library of Congress's complete bibliographic dataset: the library charged fees to access this, but as a government document, it was not copyright-protected within the USA. By posting the data on Open Library, Swartz made it freely available -
Aaron Merges with Reddit
Reddit is a social news and entertainment website where registered users submit content in the form of either a link or a text ("self") post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down", which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page. -
Founded DemandProgress.org
In 2010, he founded DemandProgress.org, a “campaign against the Internet censorship bills SOPA/PIPA.” -
Indicted
Swartz was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly downloading millions of documents from JSTOR through the MIT network — using a laptop hidden in a basement network closet in MIT’s Building 16 — with the intent to distribute them. Wire fraud and computer fraud. U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, lead prosecuter, has been sharply criticized following Swartz' suicide for her office's handling of the hacking case against him -
Pleads Not Guilty
Swartz appeared in court and pleaded not guilty to all charges. -
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Expert Testimony
Alex Stamos, a computer forensics investigator employed by the Swartz legal defense team, posted an online summary of the expert testimony he had been prepared to present in the JSTOR case, had Swartz lived to see trial. He wrote: If I had taken the stand as planned and had been asked by the prosecutor whether Aaron’s actions were “wrong”, I would probably have replied that what Aaron did would better be described as “inconsiderate”. -
Family Blames Government for Death
