Links and Bits – January 12, 2013

Stories like this are depressing.  Prominant folks working toward openness and freedom being bullied by the government, then dying.  (I still haven’t got over Breitbart’s death)  Be sure to watch the video in the second link below (also embedded in this post):

From Amber Lyon:

Tragedy. A family member reports Internet freedom of information activist and Reddit cofounder Aaron Swartz committed suicide yesterday.

The Feds have spent nearly two years going after Aaron Swartz to ‘make an example out him’. His crime? Mass downloading pricey, taxpayer-funded academic documents to give the public free access to the information. For that, Swartz was facing a potential 35 years in prison and $1,000,000 in fines.

When reporting on his suicide, I hope the mainstream media discusses how the U.S. Government bullied Aaron Swartz, possibly to death…

‘Feds Go Overboard in Prosecuting Information Activist:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/feds-go-overboard-in-prosecuting-information-activist/

RIP, Aaron Swartz:

http://boingboing.net/2013/01/12/rip-aaron-swartz.html

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F2C2012: Aaron Swartz keynote – “How we stopped SOPA”
Interesting to me to hear Aaron speaking about SOPA/PIPA and speaking highly of progressiveism but negatively of tyrannical government actions.  I see the two as interlocked in spit-swapping love-fest.

The main forms of communication at the time the US Constitution and First Amendment were put into place were the printing press (newspapers and books) and word of mouth (mainly at church I guess).  Telegraph, telephone, radio, television all came afterward.  Think about how much regulation and government influence exists in those areas…  I hope everyone works to keep the Internet free and open.  Oppose efforts to censor or regulate.

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Tarantino doesn’t want to talk about movie violence, and avoids any responsibility for the violence he profits from:

[VIDEO] Quentin Tarantino’s Heated UK Interview — “I’m Not Your Slave”.

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Pictures

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Don’t understand why you should hate facebook?  Political problems with facebook?

Sean Tilley :