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Technological misunderstanding isn't at the root of this problem. Maybe a misunderstanding of motivations, or a zeal to prosecute people who don't follow the rules, or just a criminal system that's too punitive overall.

None of the discussions I've read offer real political or social insight. What everyone's doing, instead, is the typically American thing of trying to work out how to respond to a crisis that has already happened.

It's like you're all almost purposely going out of your way to misrepresent what Aaron was. He should be remembered as a well-meaning, curious dreamer, someone who later in his short life wanted to organize others politically for the public good. An unusually sensitive everyman. He's being portrayed instead as a technical genius or some other kind of elite. He always sought to be involved in technology, but he never really accomplished anything technological; he did not invent RSS or even work on what people think of when they hear RSS. (His involvement was with a minor offshoot of the real 'RSS.') He contributed almost nothing to Reddit. He wrote a few minor open-source libraries, like thousands of others. I do not mean any of that as a criticism; obviously most people don't achieve much new technologically. The key here isn't "genius" but "public-spirited." Not "analytical power" but "playfulness." Not Gandalf but Frodo.

Of course, his death is a horrible tragedy. It is even moreso a horrible tragedy if it actually resulted from the JSTOR incident, rather than from personal pressures he felt or from mental illness. The JSTOR stunt accomplished nothing. It would barely have helped anyone. It was purely symbolic. That is one reason the prosecution of him was so misguided, but it is also seemingly leading to a majorly misguided reaction by people who really have no idea what they're talking about.

This caricature of him after his death feels grotesque and manipulative. Lessig and others should be ashamed of themselves. You should try to remember people for what they were, not convert a very understandable grief at an interesting, sensitive, and troubled person's suicide into a simplistic political cause.

I say none of this to be harsh. The groupthink here is scary, though, and I do not recall seeing it here before. I'm cowardly posting this under a new username because I'm actually afraid of the mob mentality I'm seeing.