SOS FACING STATE RETALIATION

2022-11-26 19:21:45

Aaron Swartz would have been 36 today.
Aaron committed suicide after being sentenced to 35 years in prison by US authorities for transferring and sharing scientific articles from JSTOR.
Enabling access to knowledge was one of his main goals in life, as confirmed by many projects he undertook:
He and his colleagues started a digital library in 2007 openlibrary.org with the goal of becoming an open catalogue of all works that have ever been published. More than 2.5 million books are freely available on it today.
He helped with the development of RSS and Markdown and Creative Commons licensing, all of which today plays a central role in the creation and distribution of content on the Internet.
Aaron is also recognized as one of the co-founders of the Reddit network and is one of the authors of the Guerilla Manifesto for free access (pc. if/gmanzof).

Swartz also fought for transparency and against corruption and censorship. In addition to coordinating protests and actions against internet censorship, he set up a platform SecureDrop securedrop.org which enables anonymous and safe communication for whistleblowers.

Federal prosecutors wanted to make an example out of his case, so despite the lack of evidence they wrote an indictment demanding 35 years in prison and 1 million dollars in fines. Days after prosecutors rejected his answering contract offer, Aaron committed suicide.

Limiting access to knowledge limits the development of the whole society. Free sharing and free access to content should be everyone's rights.