This tweet has some serious inaccuracies. He was offered a six month plea deal, which he turned down. The charges he faced carried a maximum time of 35 years, but that assumes they were served consecutively and to their maximum extent. Even without the plea deal, a first time non-violent offender with little chance of reoffending would have gotten a quite lenient sentence. However, he was never sentenced because he committed suicide before it went to trial.
I remember how sad I was when he died. He was a talented young man who had already made a name for himself in Internet culture. He’s also very close to me in age, so I saw some of myself in him. But it doesn’t serve his memory well to surround his death with falsehoods.
His death was caused by that very revolutionary thing he made a name about. He was against locking of big chunk of humanity’s knowledge behind paywalls making it effectively inaccessible for everyone and mostly from third world countries.
You certainly are demeaning his sacrifice by insinuating his suicide didn’t had any thing to do with going against JSTOR and hence US capitalism.
Also, the feds were involved in this from the very beginning, and hid their involvement, suggesting they had other reasons to go after swartz, possibly his correspondence with Assange. This was a time when the Obama admin was ruthlessly going after whistleblowers and open information activists.
Swartz was the second computer-person from the same prosecutor that resulted in suicide, the first being Jonathan James, and wikileaks claimed after swartz’s death that he had been in contact with Assange, and was possibly a source.
It’s because you’re incapable of acknowledging basic facts about the nature of the empire. The tweet is objectively correct. You could argue it’s not nuanced, but it’s simply a fact that Swartz committed suicide as a result of being prosecuted by the US regime.
I’m not nitpicking. It’s simply objectively incorrect to say he was sentenced (he wasn’t) or that it was 35 years (off by 70x compared to the plea deal). Could you argue that a six month plea deal was itself too much? Absolutely, and I would agree with that, especially given that MIT never asked for charges. But you can argue that plenty well with the facts and not resort to repeating lies.
Sure, he likely wouldn’t have got the maximum sentence, but that’s just distracting from the point that prosecution by the regime was what led to his suicide.
Okay, so where am I wrong? And I’ve been avoiding saying this so far because it feels disrespectful towards the dead, but his suicide was not a foreseeable consequence of being prosecuted. Most people don’t react to the prospect of time behind bars by killing themselves. So saying that his prosecution led to his suicide is a stretch at best. It would have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
This tweet has some serious inaccuracies. He was offered a six month plea deal, which he turned down. The charges he faced carried a maximum time of 35 years, but that assumes they were served consecutively and to their maximum extent. Even without the plea deal, a first time non-violent offender with little chance of reoffending would have gotten a quite lenient sentence. However, he was never sentenced because he committed suicide before it went to trial.
I remember how sad I was when he died. He was a talented young man who had already made a name for himself in Internet culture. He’s also very close to me in age, so I saw some of myself in him. But it doesn’t serve his memory well to surround his death with falsehoods.
His death was caused by that very revolutionary thing he made a name about. He was against locking of big chunk of humanity’s knowledge behind paywalls making it effectively inaccessible for everyone and mostly from third world countries.
You certainly are demeaning his sacrifice by insinuating his suicide didn’t had any thing to do with going against JSTOR and hence US capitalism.
Also, the feds were involved in this from the very beginning, and hid their involvement, suggesting they had other reasons to go after swartz, possibly his correspondence with Assange. This was a time when the Obama admin was ruthlessly going after whistleblowers and open information activists.
Swartz was the second computer-person from the same prosecutor that resulted in suicide, the first being Jonathan James, and wikileaks claimed after swartz’s death that he had been in contact with Assange, and was possibly a source.
I didn’t say anything of the sort. This tweet is simply stuffed full of oft repeated lies.
Well thanks for setting things straight I guess. Not sure what you were trying to achieve but good job.
I saw a misconception that’s been floating around for a decade. I corrected it. Simple as that.
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Someone is wrong on the Internet. :)
Why do you always feel the need to carry water for your regime?
Why do you always assume that I am either acting in bad faith or stupid? I saw something that is objectively false and corrected it. Simple. As. That.
It’s because you’re incapable of acknowledging basic facts about the nature of the empire. The tweet is objectively correct. You could argue it’s not nuanced, but it’s simply a fact that Swartz committed suicide as a result of being prosecuted by the US regime.
I’m not nitpicking. It’s simply objectively incorrect to say he was sentenced (he wasn’t) or that it was 35 years (off by 70x compared to the plea deal). Could you argue that a six month plea deal was itself too much? Absolutely, and I would agree with that, especially given that MIT never asked for charges. But you can argue that plenty well with the facts and not resort to repeating lies.
Sure, he likely wouldn’t have got the maximum sentence, but that’s just distracting from the point that prosecution by the regime was what led to his suicide.
Okay, so where am I wrong? And I’ve been avoiding saying this so far because it feels disrespectful towards the dead, but his suicide was not a foreseeable consequence of being prosecuted. Most people don’t react to the prospect of time behind bars by killing themselves. So saying that his prosecution led to his suicide is a stretch at best. It would have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.