Aaron Swartz, the Internet activist, co-founded Reddit and co-author of the RSS 1.0 specifications, committed suicide in New York City at age 26.
Swartz, who was facing federal criminal charges following a controversial Web content de-coding fraud case, found hanging in his Brooklyn, New York City, apartment, pronounced death a suicide as per a spokeswoman for the city’s chief medical examiner said, source said.
Swartz famed the creator of Web feed format RSS, Rich Site Summary that allows users to subscribe to online content from sites that change constantly.
This creation had made by him at age of 14. But later, he pushed up in a controversial fraud case for stolen millions of scholarly articles and making available many Web files free as well as publically.
The Web contents stolen by him included an estimated 19 million pages of federal court documents from the PACER case-law system and 4.8 million articles and documents downloaded from JSTOR library.
Web Hero Swartz had charged with 13 felony charges, including fraud, criminal forfeiture and illegal access. All federal charges against Swartz were still pending at the time of Swartz’s death which if convicted awarded him decades in prison and $1 million in fines.
Internet Icon was struggled at times with depression as he wrote in his past statement, not in good mental health, depressed with suicidal thoughts.
Swartz family and girlfriend praised Swartz who looked at the world, and had a certain logic in his brain with “profound” commitment over social justice.
“Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach,” they said in a statement.
