Wow I wasn't aware that he had a part in building RSS feeds.

I'm not exactly sure that I have ever bought into this post-mortem beatification of Swartz.

“We were confronted with a situation of an unknown user accessing our network,” he said in an interview, “using it to download massive amounts of material . . . for a three-month period, and evading our efforts to try and stop it.”

Unless I'm completely incorrect here, this is a crime. Aaron was stopped, then he hooked up a laptop in a wiring closet to act as a relay so he could keep downloading all of the JSTOR data. After being caught he was offered a plea deal, which he rejected.

He had previously hacked Pacer, the federal court document system, and had announced his intention to hack other information systems in the future. He knew what he was doing violated the law, but felt he was above the law. He escalated the situation to a tipping point and ended his own life.

I guess he died doing what he loved.