Aaron Swartz

<i>If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.</i> -- Ernest Hemingway<p>:(

Please sign the petition to oust Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann at <a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb" rel="nofollow">https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-...</a>. It needs 14K more signatures by Feb. 11, so share it.<p>Regardless what you may think of the petition's wording, no one should be allowed to continue to do what's obviously wrong with impunity. Ortiz (Heymann's boss) has indicated that she has no intention of stopping extorting plea bargains from defendants with threats of imprisonment and fines grossly disproportionate to the actual crime.

Call your Congressperson and urge them to pass Aaron's Law.<p>Aaron’s Law is in the process of being introduced and debated by members of Congress.<p>The bill would fix the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) to prevent the type of prosecutorial abuse that led to the death of Aaron Swartz.<p>Aaron’s Law is being introduced by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren and is only two pages long.<p>You can view a draft here: <a href="http://1.usa.gov/13DlJj4" rel="nofollow">http://1.usa.gov/13DlJj4</a><p>Call your Congressperson and tell him or her to support Aaron’s Law now. Then spread the word.<p>Here's one easy way to call:<p><a href="http://phonebank.org/aaronslaw" rel="nofollow">http://phonebank.org/aaronslaw</a><p>Note: My good friend from the '08 Obama campaign started this site.

Probably like a lot of people, I'm addicted to reading these articles now. I had a lot of respect for Aaron when he was still here, and even though he's gone now, it's encouraging that his actions continue to inspire so many people to make change for the better. The Economist did a really good job on this.<p>And I have to imagine Aaron would have laughed too when he heard them call Perl an "elegant langauge".

I read a bunch of Aaron Swartz obituary articles and blog posts, both professional and amateur, yet this is the first time I've encountered the actual name of the script he ran to download the JSTOR documents: keepgrabbing.py

Leave it to the economist to write the best obituary. RIP.

"theft was theft, said the prosecution."<p>No, they said "stealing is stealing" - they didn't charge him with theft because he didn't take anything physical.<p>duplicating data != depriving someone of their property.<p>EDIT: sorry, this sounds harsh. apart from this one sentence, the article is great.

"using a small, elegant language called perl" - The Economist.

Is anyone else equally excited to see what's on his hard drive? Is that already available?

Curious... Anyone have a link to the JSTOR data or PACER system that Aaron uploaded to the Web?