Swartz

Aaron Swartz, le suicidé de l’édition scientifique commerciale [Updated 13 janv. 2013] [English translation here] [Mise à jour du 19 jan. 2013 18h59.

NB : ce billet a été repris par le Huffingtonpost, et a fait l'objet d'une émission sur France Culture (écoutez ici le podcast de Place de la Toile avec Xavier de la Porte). Entre temps les hommages en ligne se multiplient. A lire, le billet publié par Cory Doctorow sur Boing Boing, le "j'accuse" de Larry Lessig, la petite poésie de Tim Berners Lee et l'épisode spécial de l'émission Democracy Now. Dans un style complètement différent, les hommages "par le fait" d'anonymes et sympathisants du libre accès scientifique. The New Political Prisoners: Leakers, Hackers and Activists. El suicidio de Aaron Swartz y la ciencia como negocio. Aaron Swartz se suicidó el pasado 11 de enero con 26 años de edad.

Se enfrentaba a una condena máxima de 4 millones de dólares en multas y más de 50 años de prisión. El cargo más importante contra él era haber descargado cinco millones de ficheros pdf de artículos de JSTOR gracias a la red del MIT y haberlos publicado en abierto (el torrent de 35GB con los papers que Aaron publicó está disponible en la red).

Publicar en abierto ciencia es un delito si no eres el autor (que solo tiene derecho a publicar en abierto su manuscrito, no la versión final, salvo en revistas específicas). Ayer y hoy en Twitter se han publicado miles artículos en pdf usando el hashtag #PDFtribute (como buscar en Twitter es penoso, hay una página web con todos los “links scraped from Twitter hashtag #pdftribute“). Anonymous attacks MIT websites after death of internet activist Aaron Swartz. Swartz had been facing trial over allegations of breaking into MIT's computer system to access academic articles. Photograph: Noah Berger/Reuters Hacktivist group Anonymous has attacked the Massachusetts Institute of Technology websites and posted a memorial to Aaron Swartz, following accusations the college had contributed to the free information activist's suicide on Friday.

Swartz, 26, who helped create Reddit, had been facing trial over allegations of breaking into MIT's computer system to access academic articles from the JSTOR digital library with the intention of making them freely available. His family have accused prosecutors and MIT officials of being complicit in his death. On Sunday, a memorial to Swartz and a message calling for an overhaul of US computer crime laws appeared on MIT websites.

The attack on MIT's website cut off campus users from internet access for three hours on Sunday evening, according to The Tech, MIT's newspaper. Aaron Swartz y el mundo que queremos construir. Si a alguien le queda alguna duda de la pérdida que sufre nuestra generación con la muerte de Aaron Swartz hoy, sólo tiene que leer cómo vivió sus 26 años.

En una conferencia que dio en 2007 contó cómo había conseguido trabajar en lo que le gustaba, y en sus palabras conocemos su mente libre y brillante y su disposición para que hubiera un mejor acceso a la información. Aconsejaba ser libre, curioso, hacer muchas cosas, no detenerse. Aaron Swartz: howtoget. Talk, as prepared, for the Tathva 2007 computer conference at NIT Calicut.

(Additional notes.) Translations: 日本語 The American writer Kurt Vonnegut used to always title his talks "How to Get a Job Like Mine" and then proceed to talk about whatever he felt like. I'm in a bit of the opposite situation. I was told I could talk about whatever I felt like and I decided that, instead of pontificating for a while about the future of the Internet or the power of mass collaboration, the most interesting thing I could talk about was probably "How to Get a Job Like Mine". So how did I get a job like mine? But, on the other hand, when I started I was a very young kid stuck in a small town in the middle of the country. Step 1: Learn The first thing I did, which presumably all of you have already got covered, was to learn about computers, the Internet, and Internet culture.

Step 2: Try The first site I built was called get.info. The second site I built was called my.info. Aaron Swartz. The Death of Aaron Swartz by Peter Singer and Agata Sagan. Since the sad death of Internet activist Aaron Swartz, there has been a lot of discussion of the extent to which the criminal prosecution hanging over him contributed to his suicide.

Some have pointed their fingers at MIT, suggesting that, by failing to waive its complaint against him for using its network to download files, the university bears some responsibility for his suicide. MIT has now set up an internal investigation. The prospect of a felony conviction and a prison sentence would be enough to make anyone think that his or her life is effectively over.

For a young and exceptionally talented person who acted from noble motives, the idea of going to prison must have been even more shattering, and the depression from which he suffered would have magnified its impact in ways that those of us fortunate enough not to have experienced that condition cannot fully imagine.

Depression doesn’t just make life miserable. Here too, the Internet makes a difference.