It was murder. He stood against the hoarders, and they got his head.
Yes, this needs to be repeated loudly and at every opportunity. Aaron Swartz was murdered. He paid the highest possible price for his principles by being murdered by the US government on behalf of Elsevier. In a just world, the people responsible for this wouldn’t just have their reputations ruined; they would be in prison.
I’m doing academic research myself, if not for scihub I don’t know how I would survive this academic world. And now every time I try to look for papers, I go for arxiv, thanks to the authors who made their paper available here, such a great impact to the academic research world.
What a tragedy
A great follow up to this article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vz06QO3UkQ
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=9vz06QO3UkQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
RIP Aaron. You were the hero we needed but lost. Fuck those prosecutors. I hope your dream comes true one day.
2013-01-13
The prosecutors involved should be deeply ashamed of themselves and have lost their jobs and had their reputations permanently scarred. Same with the MIT admin team who pushed for this.
