Aaron Swartz documentary under development
aaronswartzthedocumentary.com
aaronswartzthedocumentary.com
I'll agree with other comments on here that the title is pretty bad, but I think this documentary is important. We'll see when it comes out.
Generally, I feel the same as you. But, I understand that we need the over-dramatic to balance the under-the-radar.
This wasn't a clear cut case of suicide. He was practically murdered by the state. What would you do if you were facing those charges, and anyone that tried to help you being bullied to march forward with their agenda.
An agenda that the corrupt politicians in Washington are pushing. An agenda to close and wall the internet so more free people can be brought to "justice" for their crimes against corporations.
Are you referring to the six month plea bargain he was offered?
There's a big difference between being charged with a felony for insider trading and then lying to regulators about it (Martha Stewart) and Aaron's case which was clearly an overly aggressive prosecution.
Martha Stewart also went to jail worth hundreds of millions and came out a billionaire[0]. Aaron had had his personal wealth bled dry so his prospects of life after jail were very different from Martha Stewart's. He didn't have anywhere near her resources to fight back legally. Also, for her pleading guilty only meant that she agreed that insider trading and lying are wrong, pleading guilty for Aaron Swartz would be saying that everything he fought for was wrong, essentially agreeing that who he was was wrong.
Martha Stewart's half-year in jail and felony conviction was wildly different from Aaron Swartz's and seeing them compared is very disappointing.
[0] - http://www.biography.com/people/martha-stewart-9542234
Let's not get carried away. He was allegedly offered a plea bargain to serve 6 months[1], which he did not take. Why he turned it down, who knows, but that's what he decided to do.
[1] http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013/01/14/mit-hacking-case-...
Are you asserting that suicide is the most reasonable option in a situation like this?
I've noticed this sentiment a lot lately (you hear it all the time in discussions about youths who commit suicide after having been bullied excessively); as if outside forces are overwhelmingly responsible for when a person takes their own life, and any personal culpability that that person might have had is thrown out the window.
I'm not saying that the events that contribute towards a suicide should be ignored, but it's important to remember that suicide, by definition, is always a personal choice. We should be doing more to assist, or even empower, those who feel as if they have to make that choice.
Instead of doing the easy thing and blaming a scapegoat (to say that "[Aaron] was practically murdered by the state" is ludicrous, and not at all productive), why don't we look at the root of the problem - what really caused Swartz to do what he did (i.e., a poor state of mental health, something that currently affects millions of Americans) - and work towards preventing it from happening to others?
Would you blame a diabetic who loses his foot because he was unaware that he'd contracted an infection? Would you give a lecture on personal responsibility to the mother of a child whose first asthma attack ever was fatal? If someone dies of an infection contracted because someone else threw them in a septic tank; is it their fault for swimming in sewage?
In Aaron's case, we don't know exactly what was going through his head when he killed himself; but we do know he was being put under extreme pressure by prosecutors who were less interested in justice than in punishing him for imagined slights, especially the PACER affair.
To be clear, I'm not singling out people with mental illnesses; as a person with a physical illness, I would have considered it to be one of my "character flaws".
No, I wouldn't, and that's exactly why I think that more time, money, and effort should be spent on improving America's (mental) health care system, and why effort should be made to break down the social stigma of mental illness. We should look at cases like this as an example of what can happen when people don't have access to an adequate support network.
I edited my post because after rereading it I realized that it could be taken in ways that I hadn't intended it to. What I meant to emphasize was that suicide is predominantly motivated by the individual; that's who we should be focusing on helping. Fixing the judicial system is great, but I don't believe the judicial system was the principal factor behind Aaron's death; it was only a contributing circumstance.
The comment that I replied to was framing the situation as just another example of the big, bad, authoritarian government flexing its muscle. Saying that Swartz was "murdered by the state" only obscures what, in my eyes, is the real tragedy here: that a man dealing with incredible stress, pressure, and mental/emotional strain felt as if suicide was his only option.