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January 14, 2013
11:25 • 4 months ago

lessig:

There’s no work that can be done today, save the work to talking about this story. I’m doing a bunch of interviews. Bravo to @DemocracyNow for spending an hour today on this. Here’s my bit: 

Imagine this has to be so tough for anyone to handle. Kudos to Lessig for being willing to share in such a tough time.

January 12, 2013
14:02 • 4 months ago

The tech community was quick to respond strongly to reports of Swartz’s death Saturday morning, with much written in reaction to his loss, including:

  • Tim Berners-Lee The man who created the Web mourned Swartz’s death as that of a fallen comrade in a poem on the W3C listserv. “Aaron is dead./Wanderers in this crazy world,/we have lost a mentor, a wise elder./Hackers for right, we are one down,/we have lost one of our own./Nurtures, careers, listeners, feeders,/parents all,/we have lost a child./Let us all weep.”
  • Cory Doctorow The Boing Boing co-founder, who had known Aaron since he was “14 or 15,” wishes it didn’t have to be this way. “Here’s a thing that I do wonder about this morning, and that I hope you’ll think about, too. I don’t know for sure whether Aaron understood that any of us, any of his friends, would have taken a call from him at any hour of the day or night. I don’t know if he understood that wherever he was, there were people who cared about him, who admired him, who would get on a plane or a bus or on a video-call and talk to him.”
  • Lawrence Lessig The Harvard Law professor and internet activist is quick to criticize the prosecution Swartz faced as heartless and at least partly to blame for Swartz’s death. “In that world, the question this government needs to answer is why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a ‘felon.’ For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge.”

October 2, 2010
15:00 • 2 years ago

  • $8 million made by the Facebook movie in its first day alone source

» So how real is it, anyway? Not particularly. Writer Aaron Sorkin took artistic license with the idea of the film. While many of the plot points are true (Sean Parker did leave the company after a cocaine arrest, for example), the tone of many of the characters, as well as the school itself, didn’t match those of the Harvard students who saw the film. And cyberlaw expert Lawrence Lessig, while praising the film itself, took issue with the lessons that Sorkin took from the storyline, both with its characters (“I know Parker. This is not him.”) and with its feel of what makes the Web tick (“Sorkin boasts about his ignorance of the Internet. That ignorance shows.”). The movie is very good and one of the year’s best, but don’t let the wool get pulled over your eyes. It’s fiction based on fact.

 

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