Internet Activist, a Creator of RSS, Is Dead at 26, Apparently a Suicide

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Aaron Swartz, a wizardly programmer who as a teenager helped develop code that delivered ever-changing Web content to users and who later became a steadfast crusader to make that information freely available, was found dead on Friday in his New York apartment.

An uncle, Michael Wolf, said that Mr. Swartz, 26, had apparently hanged himself, and that a friend of Mr. Swartz’s had discovered the body.

At 14, Mr. Swartz helped create RSS, the nearly ubiquitous tool that allows users to subscribe to online information. He later became an Internet folk hero, pushing to make many Web files free and open to the public. But in July 2011, he was indicted on federal charges of gaining illegal access to JSTOR, a subscription-only service for distributing scientific and literary journals, and downloading 4.8 million articles and documents, nearly the entire library.

Charges in the case, including wire fraud and computer fraud, were pending at the time of Mr. Swartz’s death, carrying potential penalties of up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines.

“Aaron built surprising new things that changed the flow of information around the world,” said Susan Crawford, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York who served in the Obama administration as a technology adviser. She called Mr. Swartz “a complicated prodigy” and said “graybeards approached him with awe.”

Mr. Wolf said he would remember his nephew, who had written in the past about battling depression and suicidal thoughts, as a young man who “looked at the world, and had a certain logic in his brain, and the world didn’t necessarily fit in with that logic, and that was sometimes difficult.”

The Tech, a newspaper of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reported Mr. Swartz’s death early Saturday.

Mr. Swartz led an often itinerant life that included dropping out of Stanford, forming companies and organizations, and becoming a fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.

He formed a company that merged with Reddit, the popular news and information site. He also co-founded Demand Progress, a group that promotes online campaigns on social justice issues — including a successful effort, with other groups, to oppose a Hollywood-backed Internet piracy bill.

But he also found trouble when he took part in efforts to release information to the public that he felt should be freely available. In 2008, he took on PACER, or Public Access to Court Electronic Records, the repository for federal judicial documents.

The database charges 10 cents a page for documents; activists like Carl Malamud, the founder of public.resource.org, have long argued that such documents should be free because they are produced at public expense. Joining Mr. Malamud’s efforts to make the documents public by posting legally obtained files to the Internet for free access, Mr. Swartz wrote an elegant little program to download 20 million pages of documents from free library accounts, or roughly 20 percent of the enormous database.

The government shut down the free library program, and Mr. Malamud feared that legal trouble might follow even though he felt they had violated no laws. As he recalled in a newspaper account, “I immediately saw the potential for overreaction by the courts.” He recalled telling Mr. Swartz: “You need to talk to a lawyer. I need to talk to a lawyer.”

Mr. Swartz recalled in a 2009 interview, “I had this vision of the feds crashing down the door, taking everything away.” He said he locked the deadbolt on his door, lay down on the bed for a while and then called his mother.

The federal government investigated but did not prosecute.

In 2011, however, Mr. Swartz went beyond that, according to a federal indictment. In an effort to provide free public access to JSTOR, he broke into computer networks at M.I.T. by means that included gaining entry to a utility closet on campus and leaving a laptop that signed into the university network under a false account, federal officials said.

Mr. Swartz turned over his hard drives with 4.8 million documents, and JSTOR declined to pursue the case. But Carmen M. Ortiz, a United States attorney, pressed on, saying that “stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars.”

Founded in 1995, JSTOR, or Journal Storage, is nonprofit, but institutions can pay tens of thousands of dollars for a subscription that bundles scholarly publications online. JSTOR says it needs the money to collect and to distribute the material and, in some cases, subsidize institutions that cannot afford it. On Wednesday, JSTOR announced that it would open its archives for 1,200 journals to free reading by the public on a limited basis.

Mr. Malamud said that while he did not approve of Mr. Swartz’s actions at M.I.T., “access to knowledge and access to justice have become all about access to money, and Aaron tried to change that. That should never have been considered a criminal activity.”

Mr. Swartz did not talk much about his impending trial, Quinn Norton, a close friend, said on Saturday, but when he did, it was clear that “it pushed him to exhaustion. It pushed him beyond.”

Recent years had been hard for Mr. Swartz, Ms. Norton said, and she characterized him “in turns tough and delicate.” He had “struggled with chronic, painful illness as well as depression,” she said, without specifying the illness, but he was still hopeful “at least about the world.”

Cory Doctorow, a science fiction author and online activist, posted a tribute to Mr. Swartz on BoingBoing.net, a blog he co-edits. In an e-mail, he called Mr. Swartz “uncompromising, principled, smart, flawed, loving, caring, and brilliant.”

“The world was a better place with him in it,” he said.

Mr. Swartz, he noted, had a habit of turning on those closest to him: “Aaron held the world, his friends, and his mentors to an impossibly high standard — the same standard he set for himself.” Mr. Doctorow added, however, “It’s a testament to his friendship that no one ever seemed to hold it against him (except, maybe, himself).”

In a talk in 2007, Mr. Swartz described having had suicidal thoughts during a low period in his career. He also wrote about his struggle with depression, distinguishing it from sadness.

“Go outside and get some fresh air or cuddle with a loved one and you don’t feel any better, only more upset at being unable to feel the joy that everyone else seems to feel. Everything gets colored by the sadness.”

When the condition gets worse, he wrote, “you feel as if streaks of pain are running through your head, you thrash your body, you search for some escape but find none. And this is one of the more moderate forms.”

創RSS、駭MIT 電腦天才史瓦茲自殺亡

網路奇才兼資訊自由鬥士、年僅26歲的阿隆．史瓦茲（Aaron Swartz），11日被他的女友發現在紐約布魯克林區的公寓內上吊自殺身亡。家人指出史瓦茲之死是司法濫權所致，而全球網友紛紛發言悼念這位網路先行者。

史瓦茲堪稱電腦神童，14歲便共同創作出網頁內容持續分發與彙集格式「豐富網站摘要（RSS）」1.0版本，之後多次以駭客手法為爭取網路資訊自由奮鬥，卻也因此面臨刑事控訴，被求處35年徒刑及1百萬美元罰金。

史瓦茲因多達13項罪名遭聯邦法院起訴，包括不當使用通訊設備及電腦，及涉嫌竊取麻省理工學院（MIT）的資料。當史瓦茲把這些資料的數位化複本交還後，MIT並未對他提出控告。不過聯邦大陪審團仍以刑事罪將他起訴，負責此案的檢察官歐提茲曾說：「偷竊就是偷竊，不管你用的是電腦指令還是鐵撬，偷的是文件、資訊還是鈔票。」他目前處於交保狀態，案件原訂於今年稍晚時開始審訊。

史瓦茲的家人及夥伴在獲悉他自殺身亡後，於12日發表聲明，盛讚他的「睿智」，以及對社會正義的「殷切」承諾。聲明中並指出，「阿隆之死，並非單純的個人悲劇。這是司法體制恫嚇脅迫與控訴過當之結果。美國檢察署以超乎尋常的諸多嚴厲罪名，包括可能判處逾卅年之徒刑，處罰一項並無受害者的刑事罪嫌。」

針對史瓦茲家人的聲明，美國檢察署發言人表示，他們「覺得此時評論此案實非所宜」。MIT尚未對此事做出回應。

史瓦茲好友、科幻小說作家達克托洛在網站上寫道，「阿隆擁有無可比擬的政策智慧、科技技術，以及待人處事之智慧。」但他指出，由於訴訟纏身，史瓦茲「近年來一直有憂鬱的問題」。紐約時報報導，史瓦茲在2009年受訪時曾表示，他一直擔心聯邦幹員會「破門而入，拿走所有東西」。

史瓦茲的葬禮預訂於15日在伊利諾州高地公園舉行。12日各界網友紛紛對史瓦茲致辭弔唁。加州主張維護網路權利的非營利組織電子邊疆基金會指出，史瓦茲是「非凡的駭客和維護網路權利人士」。

駭政府、阻法案 史瓦茲，網路自由鬥士

一代電腦奇才、推動網路檔案自由化的英雄阿隆．史瓦茲，14歲時便共同創作出能使網頁內容持續分發與彙集的格式「豐富網站摘要（RSS）」1.0版本，為網際網路通行全球做出重大貢獻；近年來更成為倡導社會大眾能夠自由取閱公私機構數位文獻資訊的標竿人物。

史瓦茲短短26年之生涯，卻高潮迭起，包括青少年時便因共同設計RSS而聲名鵲起，就讀史丹福大學又輟學，自行成立Reddit網路公司及非營利組織，之後又成為哈佛大學研究員。

為了爭取網路自由，史瓦茲於2008年發表「宣言」指出：「資訊即是力量。然而一如其他力量，有人一心一意要據為己有。全世界所有科學與文化遺產，幾世紀來在各類書籍與刊物上發表的內容，正不斷被數位化，卻被少數私人企業鎖住；分享（資訊）並非不道德之事，反而是一項符合道德之使命。唯有遭貪婪矇蔽雙眼者，才會拒絕他人製作複本。」

他不僅為網路自由大聲疾呼，而且劍及屨及。2008年他駭入聯邦法院電子資料公眾窗口（PACER）。此一資料庫的文件雖對外開放，但每頁收取0.1美元閱覽下載費；網路運動人士一直主張，資料庫是由納稅人出錢設立，應該免費供民取閱，於是他駭入資料庫一口氣下載2千萬頁資料。

基於「資訊應由社會大眾分享並取得」之信仰，史瓦茲出資成立「要求進步（Demand Progress）」非營利組織，於2011年成功阻擋眾議院所提出之「停止線上剽竊法案」，避免網路資訊分享遭到少數私人機構壟斷。

2011年7月他又使用麻省理工學院（MIT）的電腦網路，從只有訂戶才能夠取閱的期刊儲存系統（JSTOR）中，下載480萬篇文章及文件。雖然MIT並未對他提告，但被聯邦大陪審團指控非法使用電話、電腦及涉嫌竊取MIT資料等罪名，並求處重罪。

號稱「網際網路之父」的伯納斯—李在推特上親致弔辭：「阿隆已去。網路旅者，頓失先驅。吾輩駭客，遽失戰友。如父如母，痛失幼子。吾人同聲一哭。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/technology/aaron-swartz-internet-activist-dies-at-26.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/article/science-technology/2013/01/15/c15swartz-obit/zh-hk/

2013-01-14．聯合報．A14．國際．編譯任中原