Excerpt
SUMMARY: Aaron Swartz, prodigy co-developer of RSS code and the website Reddit, faced federal charges for distributing articles from a subscription-based database. Swartz committed suicide at the age of 26. Margaret Warner talks to Wired magazine's Kevin Poulsen about Schwartz's advocacy to make data available to the public online.
MARGARET WARNER (Newshour): Aaron Swartz, found dead Friday of an apparent suicide at the age of 26, was a prodigy of the digital age.
At 14, the programmer helped develop RSS, a popular system to subscribe to breaking content on the Web. He went on to help develop the social news sharing sight Reddit. And he crusaded to make data stored in databases more available to the public.
That cause led to his arrest in 2011 for hacking into a scholarly database known as JSTOR through the MIT network. JSTOR archives and distributes academic articles to subscribers. Swartz surreptitiously downloaded nearly five million of them. He was to be tried this spring on 13 federal felony accounts, which carried hefty fines and prison time.
Swartz, who had battled depression, hanged himself.
For more about him and the reaction to his death, we turn to Kevin Poulsen, a senior editor at Wired magazine. Charged with hacking himself some 25 years ago, Poulsen knew Swartz personally.
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