Tributes have poured in for tech entrepreneur and internet activist Aaron Swartz, who died on Friday.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Swartz, who co-founded social news and entertainment website Reddit, was a member of the RSS-DEV Working Group, which co-authored the \u201cRSS 1.0\u201d specification of RSS.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He joined the Reddit team in January 2006 after a merger with his own project, software company Infogami, which had received funding from Y Combinator.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Swartz was fired by the group after Conde Nast Publications acquired Reddit in October 2006.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In a 2007 interview, Swartz said he was unhappy working in an office, which led to his firing. Reddit is now one of the largest websites in the world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Swartz turned his focus to sociology, civic awareness and activism. He co-founded online group Demand Progress, known for its campaign against the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 2011, he was charged with stealing millions of scholarly articles from a computer archive at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a bid to make them freely available.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Swartz\u2019s trial was due to begin next month. If convicted, he faced decades in prison and multiple fines. Swartz, who reportedly committed suicide, was 26 at the time of his death.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A statement from his family and partner praised Swartz for his \u201cinsatiable curiosity, creativity and brilliance\u201d, describing his commitment to social justice as \u201cprofound\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHe was instrumental to the defeat of an internet censorship bill; he fought for a more democratic, open, and accountable political system; and he helped to create, build, and preserve a dizzying range of scholarly projects,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Swartz\u2019s family has blamed prosecutors for his death, describing the charge against him as \u201cexceptionally harsh\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cAaron\u2019s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cDecisions made by officials in the Massachusetts US Attorney\u2019s office and at MIT contributed to his death.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n MIT has also released a statement, conceding it \u201cplayed a role\u201d in Swartz\u2019s legal struggles.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cNow is a time for everyone involved to reflect on their actions, and that includes all of us at MIT,\u201d MIT president Rafael Reif wrote in an open letter to the academic community.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Reif said there would be a \u201cthorough analysis\u201d of MIT\u2019s involvement in the case.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Swartz\u2019s death comes just a year after another tech entrepreneur, Ilya Zhitomirskiy, committed suicide. Zhitomirskiy had been responsible for creating the open-source social project, Diaspora.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tributes have poured in for tech entrepreneur and internet activist Aaron Swartz, who died on Friday. Swartz, who co-founded<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,20,6,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44244"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}