Examining the Case Against Aaron Swartz Have you ever had an | VOA Learning English
Examining the Case Against Aaron Swartz
Have you ever had an RSS news feed sent to your mobile phone or computer? If so, you have Aaron Swartz to thank. He helped develop that Internet publishing technology when he was 14 years old. He also helped develop what came to be known as the social news website Reddit. But sadly, the 26-year-old Internet activist was found dead in his apartment in Brooklyn, New York on January 11.His death was called a suicide. Aaron Swartz believed that information is knowledge.He believed the Internet should be used to make that knowledge available to everyone. This belief is what eventually got him in trouble with the law. Aaron Swartz was to face a federal trial in April. He was accused of using computers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to download millions of academic documents from JSTOR. He could have faced 35 years in prison and as much as $1 million in fines.Some people have called the charges extreme
