The Aaron Swartz Hacking Case Has Been Dismissed By The US District Court

The US District Court in Massachusetts has dismissed the case against Aaron Swartz. Swartz committed suicide on January 11 after an investigation into his involvement in the theft of digital documents from JSTOR, a journal archive.

US Attorney for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz noted:

In support of this dismissal, the government states that Mr. Swartz died on January 11, 2013.

Information on his memorial service is available here.

Marcia Hofmann at the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote that this case is an example of draconian informations security laws gone horribly wrong:

Over the past two years, Aaron was forced to devote much of his energy and resources to fighting a relentless and unjust felony prosecution brought by Justice Department attorneys in Massachusetts. His alleged crimes stemmed from using MIT’s computer network to download millions of academic articles from the online archive JSTOR, allegedly without “authorization.” For that, he faced 13 felony counts of hacking and wire fraud (pdf), which carried the possibility of decades in prison and crippling fines. His case would have gone to trial in April.

Please remember that there are sources of help if you’re troubled including Reddit, The Suicide Prevention Lifeline, and those close to you.