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Anonymous hits MIT web pages in tribute to Aaron Swartz


Hacktivists broke into the website of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to post a "tribute" to Internet activist Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide last week at age 26.
 
The hacktivist group Anonymous took over cogen.mit.edu and rledev.mit.edu to display a message calling for reforms to computer crime and intellectual property laws, tech site The Next Web reported Monday (Manila time).
 
“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,” The Next Web quoted the statement as saying.
 
The Next Web noted Swartz had been prosecuted for downloading millions of papers from academic database JSTOR via MIT’s network.
 
Swartz had helped establish the RSS standard when he was 14 and also played a part in the founding of Reddit.
 
His family was quoted as saying decisions by officials in the Massachusett’s US Attorney’s Office and MIT had contributed to his death.
 
MIT’s president has committed to an investigation into the university’s role in the case, The Next Web noted.
 
On the other hand, it noted Anonymous even apologized to MIT’s administrators for the “temporary use of their websites.”
 
It also called on mourners to acknowledge a collective responsibility 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.”
 
A separate article on CNET said Anonymous outlined its list of "wishes":
 
  • for the tragedy to be a basis for reform of computer crime laws, and the overzealous prosecutors who use them.
  • for the 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.
  • for the 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.
  • for the tragedy to be a basis for a renewed commitment to a free and unfettered internet, spared from censorship with equality of access and franchise for all.
— TJD, GMA News