Aaron Swartz 1986-2013.

Unless your are a member of that relatively small Internet select elite group of Internet experts then the name of Aaron Swartz will mean very little. However to those in the know he was a genius of the first order who came unstuck by challenging the US. The trauma of his life was that he was too smart to take no for an answer. Where many would have given up he kept on going and thereby came a cropper. Big business didn't like what he was up to and he then came to the notice of the FBI. As a student at MIT they didn't come to his assistance but hung him out  to dry. This is a story of Shakespearean proportions. A noble ideal is brought low by the machinations of those in a position to do so. His claim was - knowledge was power. The gift of the Internet given to us by Sir Tim Berners-Lee was that all should have access and it be free at the point of delivery. Swartz challenge to the US was that he was making knowledge free and big business got angry. So the Justice Department and the FBI jumped on him. The overweening power of the state killed an innovator who thought the status quo should be held accountable in a democracy. He tragically committed suicide in his apartment in NY on 11 January 2013. All this was told in an engrossing programme on BBC Four on the 2 February in Storyville: The Internet's Own Boy