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Great article, touching and very informative at the same time.

Signpost readers interested in Aaron's involvement in the Wikimedia movement might be interested in the 2006 Signpost interview with him, too. There, he also mentions his "first web application [that] "was basically the same idea as Wikipedia". As mentioned in the WMF blog post, it won him a finalist entry in a teen website competition in 2000, described in a newspaper article at the time as follows:

"an ever-growing encyclopedia-like site filled with "a vast repository of human knowledge" focused on content -- real information for people to use, as [Swartz, then 13 years old] calls it.

The site works like this: Anyone can submit information about what they know in a totally open environment, which means they can add to the information freely.

"In the style of the popular GNU/Linux operating system,"Swartz added."

Also note that he is listed as donor in the last WMF annual report.

As a minor nitpick, it's not quite true that the entire 2006 "six-part series ... was translated into Japanese, Spanish, German, and French" - only the "Who Writes Wikipedia?" part was (at least I'm pretty certain that that's the case for German, having helped a little with the German translation myself at the time).

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 14:39, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the links, Tilman. I've fixed the nitpick you identified—that was an editing error, caused by me confusing Tony. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 14:58, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This tragedy shows that many US laws are incredibly stupid, as is the philosophy of putting a large percentage of your population behind bars for reasons that are more often than not ridiculous. Threatening to put somebody in prison for 50 years for downloading files, which didn't hurt anybody either personally or financially? How stupid can you get? --Rosenzweig (talk) 15:46, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is sad, sad and stupid. It's a story about knowledge, money, power, and system failure. Aaron wanted to do what was manifestly right, in the case of public domain knowledge, and increasingly academic publishing is moving, or being pushed, to an open model. But it was not, mostly, those with vested interests in selling knowledge who are responsible for this tragedy, it is the people who set up as system which rewards the most prosecutions for the most charges for the maximum penalties. Rich Farmbrough, 19:11, 16 January 2013 (UTC).[reply]

I read somewhere that he could have accepted a plea deal (but didn't) that involved just 6 months in prison. Can someone verify that? 74.202.39.3 (talk) 20:11, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely pathetic and highly POV commentary lionizing an alleged criminal^[1] who had some interesting technological contributions before he allegedly decide that he was above the law. This does not belong here.

Wikipedia has this charade of defending copyright laws and this is yet another piece of evidence. Toddst1 (talk) 05:49, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Since when were Signpost editorials supposed to be NPOV? Abyssal (talk) 19:32, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

When they aren't labeled as editorials, maybe? Or since they are written by an editor who gave up all pretense of providing objective news coverage a long time ago. He's even said as much in responses to earlier complaints about his using the Signpost as his own private soap box. He told us all that he was just adding much-needed personal analysis to give greater depth to the news, or some such nonsense. This latest example breaks new ground in irresponsible reporting, however.

News flash, folks: prosecutorial misconduct did not kill this man. If you are part of the crowd who thinks he died as some great hero to your cause, you played a role in his death. He bought into the idea that an Internet celebrity didn't have to face the consequences of his actions. He thought he could break the law with impunity because a bunch of nattering ignoramuses online convinced him he had some special insight into the law and society at large. He figured that if some of the most popular websites in the world would shut themselves down for a day out of hysteria over some badly-needed updates to our copyright laws that he could channel that misplaced outrage to avoid going to prison.

The simple fact so many people are ignoring is that he was mentally ill. And, frankly, every person who selfishly portrays this as an act of courage by a martyr to his cause is just as sick. Not only are they are encouraging impressionable young people to engage in reckless behavior without considering even the most obvious end results of their actions, they are saying that it's OK to kill themselves whenever they run into difficulties because the world will treat them as heroes for doing so. DreamGuy (talk) 03:56, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]