Aaron H. Swartz, a young online activists who is also a co-founder of Reddit, committed suicide in New York City, Friday, January 11. The report is according to a statement from his uncle, Michael Wolf, to online newspaper of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), The Tech.
In an email also sent to The Tech, Elliot R. Peters of Kecker and Van Nest, attorney of Swartz, confirmed the young man’s death saying “The tragic and heartbreaking information you received is, regrettably, true.”
Reports said that Swartz, 26, hanged himself in his apartment in Brooklyn weeks before his trial. Swartz is accused of stealing millions of journals in an attempt to make it available to public for free.
In July 2011, Swartz was charged with data theft for allegedly downloading numerous documents from JSTOR, an online archiving service, using the MIT network. Recently, JSTOR announced that millions of its articles stored online will be publicly available for free.
Aside from Reddit, Swartz is also known for co-authoring RSS 1.0 at the age of 14. He was also an advisory board director for Demand Progress, an organization that fights for Internet freedom.
Photo Credit: patdollard
This post was first published at KabayanTech.
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