Two years into his legal battle with federal government, Swartz faced a maximum penalty 35 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines.

No, he didn't. You can only arrive at that number by ignoring the way the federal sentencing system works, because it's based on taking the maximum penalty for any count of the offense charged and multiplying it by the total number of every count.

In reality, like charges group --- you are typically sentenced based on a single count, usually the most severe of the counts.

Prosecutors threatened Swartz not with 35 years but with 7. But 7 years is an equally ludicrous number for the actual offenses charged, which were non-remunerative, non-destructive, and applied to a first-time defendant. Which may be why prosecutors offered Swartz a plea deal with a custodial sentence just several months long.

Swartz's own lawyer, writing after Swartz's tragic death, believed that Swartz could have gone to trial, lost and been found guilty, and still not served a custodial sentence. Not implausible for a first-time offender who didn't try to make a cent from his offense.

Reporters parrot these numbers because the DOJ supplies them in press releases. DOJ is lying when it makes these outlandish claims, but deception on the part of prosecutors isn't an excuse for reporters not to talk to lawyers before amplifying those lies in the press.

As usual, you can count on Popehat --- a blog run by a former federal prosecutor turned civil rights attorney --- for a pretty excellent summary of how the system actually works:

http://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence...

(If you're interested, here's the sentencing guidelines for 18 USC 1030: http://books.google.com/books?id=nZu3w1y4fkYC&pg=PA299&lpg=P...)

Anyone who is interested in helping support one of the causes that Aaron was interested in--the opening of public court records to the public--should participate in Operation Asymptote. It requires a U.S. credit or debit card, but costs nothing.

http://www.plainsite.org/asymptote/

We also need help finishing an IE version of RECAP (http://www.recapthelaw.org, started by Stephen Schultze, profiled in the movie). See:

https://github.com/yinglei/recap-ie

Law firms use IE. They download tons of legal documents. If we can get RECAP working on IE, we can make a pretty big dent in PACER.

I hate to say it, but it's hard to read articles about him any more. I get so pissed off that it becomes counterproductive.

I don't want to come off as a folio hat but what is the actual evidence of the suicide? Has any of this stuff been made public?

Aaron Swartz Timeline: http://newslines.org/aaron-swartz/

Swartz, Manning and Snowden: heroes of our time. How many decades until history books mention them?

"It's speculated that what he might have been doing is downloading these articles to analyze them for corporate funding — corruption, essentially — that led to biased results in research, particularly in the area of climate change."

This is complete speculation. Why include this in the article other to sway a certain demographic to view you in a favorable light?

I know the HN community treats him like some kind if freedom of information hero, but I don't.

He illegally copied information that he didn't own..and then cracked when the authorities went after him.

He made millions of dollars from Reddit, he should have had plenty of money to take care of any mental health issues he had.