If you assume that ddos from a collective is similar to blocking a road by a collective during a strike or manifestation then I must say that some people won't be able to get to work that day and in general nobody would get hurt.
This sort of pacific interruption raises awareness, which by itself is very important for a functioning democracy.
Regardless of what one may think of computer laws, there is no proven link between his suicide and the criminal charges he faced, and any claims to the contrary have so far been entirely speculative and coming from people who never met the guy--one can't help but wonder if they had even heard of him before last week.
In addition, many of Swartz's accomplishments have been exaggerated specifically to fuel a frenzied mob. E.g., "co-creator of Reddit" which contradicts the public statements of other Reddit founders, and "creator of RSS" when he was one member of a group that took over Netscape's technology.
Of course, my saying this will be used as a reason to attack me for discounting contributions that he actually made, which isn't the case. I am simply pointing out that the knee-jerk righteous indignation and mad desire to blame is getting out of hand. It's becoming an angry mob, directing its violence at convenient targets to feed a primal hunger for revenge.
Again, if some people can't go to work because of a strike, even if it seemingly hurting teachers, student or general population it is in fact benefiting them and the right price for democracy. Democracy can only be with awareness and without it is just a different kind of manipulated monarchy.
And the rest of your 'additions' seems very ugly. He was part of a joint-venture or similar between companies where they all called each other cofunder, not co creator. And check at what age he did work on RSS, if that's not an accomplishment I don't know what is. Not an angry mob, nobody is being physically hurt, just slightly interrupted from what they were doing just as it happens when there's a strike or a big manifestation.
Please stop spreading lies and disinformation.
'killed by the government,' father tells mourners [1]
'depressed about his case/upcoming trial, but we had no idea what he was going through was this painful.' from his mother [2]
[1] http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-aaron-...
They clearly show that the statement from vor_ which I quoted is incorrect.
Unfortunately this is part of deeper systemic problems and bringing up his accomplishments is rather irrelevant and distasteful. If exaggerating his accomplishments helps to spread the story, I have absolutely no problem with that because it has nothing to do with the real issues.
People are just using his suicide to turn him into a martyr for a cause they believe in, and its disturbing.
You mean Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman? She was the one who found his body.
Any other speculations you'd like to share?
Blockading a key port that is shipping war supplies or preforming a DDOS attack against government websites can be legitimate form of protest, but those actions are very hard to plan and pull off.
This attack (if it is an attack) just seems like someone is going after the low-hanging fruit of MIT's network.
You're doing X, but Y would be more effective, therefore X is pointless.
In reality what happens is that someone does X and someone else does Y, and it's not uncommon for the same group to do both.
Fwiw, I don't have any view on whether this attack (if it is one) is justified. I haven't read enough on what MIT have/haven't done so I can't comment.
You state that like it is the only reason he did it. It contributed, yes, but it wasn't the sole cause.