This is extremely tragic. The world is a horrible place when some of its best people loose all hope and choose to leave it early. It is quite crazy that that downloading scientific papers can incur sentences longer than the maximum for crimes such as rape, manslaughter, etc.
Aaron Swartz commits suicide
431–440 of 583 posts
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#432Man this so sucks. If you hit someone with enough felony counts sooner or later something can snap. This in response to those that claim the DOJ didn't have anything to do with Aaron killing himself. For some people the mere fact of being suspected of a crime they didn't commit is enough to push them over the edge. When you're placed in a holding cell the police will remove your laces from your boots so you don't han…
It really rubs me the wrong way when something like this happens and folks jump to conclusions as you have here. You didn't know this person. For all we know he could have not given two shits about the whole legal process and this is linked to family or relationship problems or long term general depression.
Some people commit suicide after breakups --the other person often times feels guilt, yet they are not really guilty in any sense. There is at times a perception, though.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#433Earlier quoted context omitted.
I beg to differ from what you are saying. I do understand your point though, but let me give you another picture. And this I say from personal experience. People around the world go through tough times. For some the path is eased by good friends, family, "miracles", etc. For others the path becomes too difficult to tackle. In the end the person chooses not to fight any longer. As much as we should respect this decisi…
Every person who has every felt disturbed and suicidal and did not take the step, probably feels good about not taking the step. Having worked as a volunteer on a counselling service for a couple of years I can say without a shadow of a doubt that you are 100% wrong there I'm afraid. Some certainly. Everybody - no.
This reminds me of an episode in Medium(Patricia Arquette) where people regretted jumping from buildings but only after they had jumped. i cant recall the exact plot(google effect?).
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#434I wonder if the DOJ will charge Google with scraping the whole Internet.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
I took these to be part of the DOJ: "The criminal investigation and today’s indictment of Mr. Swartz has been directed by the United States Attorney’s Office. It was the government’s decision whether to prosecute, not JSTOR’s. As noted previously, our interest was in securing the content. Once this was achieved, we had no interest in this becoming an ongoing legal matter." So it's not as if anybody outside the govern…
Prosecutors can usually act on their own initiative. It's because of the historical legal concept that an offence against a person is really an offence against the Crown. So the Crown takes a legal monopoly on force and logically, this means that the Crown gets to decide what to pursue. The USA inherited this concept from England. What I was trying to say above is that a prosecutor's goal is to prosecute as many case…
> an offence against a person is really an offence against the Crown
This is also common sense. If not, it would be difficult to prosecute murderers, since the victim doesn't exist anymore. It would be next to impossible to prosecute murderers of people who have no family and no friends.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
This, seriously. People need to stop excusing the federal government for the monster that it really is. Yes Aaron was depressed, do you really think the DoJ had absolutely nothing to do with that? I'd argue their constant indictments had a lot to do with it.
Let's say I'm a guy that obsesses over a girl I like. I send her creepy messages and generally make her uncomfortable. She gets a restraining order against me and I kill my self. Would you be sitting here blaming the girl and the restraining order laws in the US? I feel like many people here are trying to get their own opinions out by blaming the law that he broke (and the government).
Its not really comparable though. As far as its been written up he was facing the potential of over 50 years in prison.
That would put anyone under a massive amount of pressure, and does seem pretty unpleasant given his "crime" was so small.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#437What can we do to help carry forward, and continue Aaron's work?
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#438Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. Aaron has been depressed about his case/upcoming trial, but we had no idea what he was going through was this painful. Aaron was a terrific young man. He contributed a lot to the world in his short life and I regret the loss of all the things he had yet to accomplish. As you can imagine, we all miss him dearly. The grief is unfathomable. Aaron's mother
I'm terribly sorry for your loss. I was reading about it when I saw his speech 'How we stopped SOPA'. We all owe a lot to him for what he has done.
This man is a true hero.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Can we stop the speculations until we actually know what happened? :-( No, because: 1) we'll never know what "really happened" (even if he had left a note stating a reason one can never know if something not mentioned also weighted on him psychologically) 2) speculation is, counter to what some may think, productive. For example, it gets you questioning stuff like the legal system in the comment above.
okay. I am speculating that it's because of all of the anti-gun laws in America that led up to his suicide. Can we start questioning them now?
Go ahead.
Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You didn't know this person. That's an assumption on your part. And this was in response to people jumping to completely different conclusions, for instance that these things are not related at all. I wouldn't be so quick to make that call. Maybe you feel like arguing this line with his mom? : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5047398
"Maybe you feel like arguing this line with his mom?" How do you know the person who setup that account and posted that is actually his mom?
I don't. How do you know she isn't? Until I have evidence to the contrary I tend to believe what people say.