Blog of Rights

Taren
Stinebrickner-Kauffman

Help Preserve the Legacy of Aaron Swartz

By Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, Political Activist at 10:15am

On January 11, 2013, facing decades in prison on trumped up charges, my partner, Aaron Swartz, made the tragic choice to take his own life. He was only 26.

Aaron's supposed crime? He was accused of checking out too many articles (4.8 million), too fast, from an online academic library called JSTOR, to which he had authorized access. He never used or distributed the articles and later returned them. For that, he faced 35 years behind bars and endured two years of relentless persecution.

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