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- #JusticeForAaronSwartz #freemanning #OpFreeAssange #Antisec
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- In Memoriam, Aaron Swartz, November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013, Requiescat in pace.
- A brief message from Anonymous.
- Whether or not the government contributed to his suicide, the government's prosecution of Swartz
- was a grotesque miscarriage of justice, a distorted and perverse shadow of the justice that
- Aaron died fighting for — freeing the publicly-funded scientific literature from a publishing system
- that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it — enabling the collective betterment of
- the world through the facilitation of sharing — an ideal that we should all support.
- Moreover, the situation Aaron found himself in highlights the injustice of U.S. computer crime laws,
- particularly their punishment regimes, and the highly-questionable justice of pre-trial bargaining.
- Aaron's act was undoubtedly political activism; it had tragic consequences.
- Our wishes
- We call for this tragedy to be a basis for reform of computer crime laws,
- and the overzealous prosecutors who use them.
- We call for this tragedy to be a basis for reform of copyright and intellectual property law,
- returning it to the proper principles of common good to the many, rather than private gain to the few.
- We call for this tragedy to be a basis for greater recognition of the oppression and injustices heaped daily
- by certain persons and institutions of authority upon anyone who dares to stand up and be counted for their beliefs,
- and for greater solidarity and mutual aid in response.
- We call for this tragedy to be a basis for a renewed and unwavering commitment to a free and unfettered internet,
- spared from censorship with equality of access and franchise for all.
- For in the end, we will not be judged according to what we give, but according to what we keep to ourselves.
- Aaron, we will sorely miss your friendship, and your help in building a better world. May you read in peace.
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- Who was Aaron Swartz? A hero in the SOPA/PIPA campaign, Reddit cofounder, RSS, Demand Progress, Avaaz, etc...:
- Aaron Swartz's funeral is on Tuesday. Here are details:
- Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of #Aaron Swartz
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- Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
- Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves.
- The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals,
- is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations.
- Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences?
- You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
- There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure
- that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet,
- under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply
- to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost.
- That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues?
- Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles
- to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable.
- "I agree," many say, "but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights,
- they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it's perfectly legal —
- there's nothing we can do to stop them." But there is something we can, something that's already being done: we can fight back.
- Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists —
- you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out.
- But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves.
- You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.
- Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by.
- You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences,
- liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.
- But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground.
- It's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of
- plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative.
- Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.
- Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it —
- their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them,
- passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies.
- There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and,
- in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.
- We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world.
- We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web.
- We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.
- With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge —
- we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?
- Aaron Swartz
- July 2008, Eremo, Italy
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- You were the best of us; may you yet bring out the best in us.
- -Anonymous, Jan 13, 2013.
- ----
- (Postscript: We tender apologies to the administrators at MIT for this temporary use of their websites.
- We understand that it is a time of soul-searching for all those within this great institution as much —
- perhaps for some involved even more so — than it is for the greater internet community.
- We do not consign blame or responsibility upon MIT for what has happened,
- but call for all those feel heavy-hearted in their proximity to this awful loss to acknowledge instead
- the responsibility they have — that we all have — to build and safeguard a future that would make Aaron proud,
- and honour the ideals and dedication that burnt so brightly within him by embodying them in thought and word and action.
- Original frontpage)
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