Swartz developed RSS at an
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Aaron Swartz, a celebrated internet
freedom activist and early developer of the website Reddit, has died at 26.
The activist and programmer took his life in his New York apartment, a
relative and the state medical examiner said. His body was found on Friday.
Mr Swartz began computer programming as a child, and at 14 co-authored an
early version of the RSS specification.
Leading internet figures and friends paid tribute to Mr
Swartz via tweets or blogs.
After leaving Reddit, Mr Swartz became an advocate of internet freedom, and
was facing hacking charges at the time of his death.
He was among the founders of the Demand Progress campaign group, which
lobbies against internet censorship.
“Start Quote
Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder”
End Quote Sir Tim Berners-Lee World wide web inventor
The hacking charges relate to the downloading of
millions of academic papers from online archive JSTOR, which prosecutors say he
intended to distribute for free.
He denied charges of computer fraud at an initial hearing last year, but his
federal trial was due to begin next month.
Mr Swartz's lawyer Elliot R. Peters confirmed the news of his client's death
in an email to the MIT university newspaper The Tech.
"The tragic and heartbreaking information you received is, regrettably,
true," he wrote.
A spokeswoman for New York's medical examiner later confirmed to Associated
Press news agency that Mr Swartz had hanged himself.
In a statement later on Saturday, Mr Swartz's family praised his "brilliance"
and "profound" commitment to social justice and also expressed bitterness toward
the prosecutors pursuing the case against him.
"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a
criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach," the
statement said.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee - the British inventor of the world wide web -
commemorated Mr Swartz in a Twitter
post: "Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for
right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us
weep."
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