Lmst

In memory of AaronSW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

#AaronSW #ModernHeroes #SuicideAwareness

Markdown history: Nice writeup of the social history of Markdown, the functional good-enough text markup a lot of people use to write content
https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/09/how-markdown-took-over-the-world/
#markdown #history #aaronsw #gruber #text #web #+

Belgium Bans Internet Archive’s ‘Open Library’ in Sweeping Site Blocking Order

"The Business Court in Brussels, Belgium, has issued an unprecedentedly broad site-blocking order that aims to restrict access to shadow libraries including Anna's Archive, Libgen, OceanofPDF, Z-Library, and the Internet Archive's Open Library. In addition to ISP blocks, the order also directs search engines, DNS resolvers, advertisers, domain name services, CDNs and hosting companies to take action."

Ernesto Van der Sar explains at https://torrentfreak.com/belgium-bans-internet-archives-open-library-in-sweeping-site-blocking-order/

#copyright #piracy #OpenLibrary #AaronSW

And raise your hand if this all reminds you how much Aaron Swartz is missed. 😭

remembering losing #aaronsw twelve years ago today, and drawing connections with:* Lawrence Lessigâs https://lessig.tumblr.com/post/56888930628/on-the-emptiness-in-the-concept-of-neutrality* Ben WerdmÃ¼llerâs https://werd.io/2025/building-an-open-web-that-protects-us-from-harmTwo points of connection:1... tantek.com

remembering losing #aaronsw twelve years ago today, and drawing connections with:

* Lawrence Lessig’s https://lessig.tumblr.com/post/56888930628/on-the-emptiness-in-the-concept-of-neutrality
* Ben Werdmüller’s https://werd.io/2025/building-an-open-web-that-protects-us-from-harm

Two points of connection:

1. Neutrality in ethical or policy matters is insufficient, empty, and cowardly. Especially when you know better, neutrality in action is not ethical, it is negligent and wrong, like a lie of omission.

“Allyship demands more than neutrality — it demands action.” — @werd.io (@ben@werd.social)

“… there are obviously plenty of contexts in which to be ‘neutral’ is simply to be wrong. ” @lessig.org (@lessig.tumblr.com @lessig@mastodon.world @lessig)

2. Building community for collective action is required for resilient resistance

Aaron helped inspire and drive numerous acts of resistance against foes better funded and connected, many acts which succeeded to some degree or completely such as preventing the passage of SOPA.¹

Similarly he built community for collective action, such as co-founding the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and the Demand Progress political advocacy group² which remain active to this day.

One of the best ways to honor Aaron’s memory is to build on the good examples he set that succeeded and continue to succeed.

The only neutrality that Aaron supported was net neutrality, prioritizing those that use the internet over those that build & serve it, a priority of constituencies strongly aligned with the W3C’s official Ethical Web Principles.³

If you too reject neutrality and instead embrace allyship & action, some of those actions will require resisting the status quo with the intent of changing it.

If resistance with the goal of actual change is your primary objective (rather than recognition), build community to bring about that change, resist collectively not alone, both in the near term, and sustainably into the future.

Still miss you Aaron.

Previously:
* https://tantek.com/2024/013/t1/remembering-aaronsw-eleven-years (links to prior posts)

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Opposition_to_the_Stop_Online_Piracy_Act_(SOPA)
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Progressive_Change_Campaign_Committee
³ https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#noharm

Still remembering #aaronsw, eleven years, two days ago.Previously, previously, previously:* https://tantek.com/2017/011/t3/moment-remember-aaronsw* https://tantek.com/2016/011/t4/three-years-lost-aaronsw* https://tantek.com/2015/011/t1/still-missing-aaronsw* https://tantek.com/2013/059/t1/doj-prosecutors-a... tantek.com

#aaronsw was a great person, open, creative, principled, brilliant, charismatic, and funny.

Having said that, what he allegedly did with JSTOR was stupid, wrong, and stupidly and wrongly done. I wish he had talked to me about it.

I was the system admin for Menlo Innovations when it wrote the front-end software for JSTOR. I had root on everything. Had I wished, I could have backdoored the code to hell and back. But that's against the System Administrators Code.

--cont-

@vic

Aaron's death is still blood on the hands of the FBI and DOJ

#aaronswartz
#aaronsw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vz06QO3UkQ

@pandoc still missing #aaronsw #AaronSwartz...

He was legendary and his prosecution was a political show trial!

@FediFollows @securedrop

I wonder how many other #aaronsw projects are on the #fediverse

It gives me joy & hope seeing #aaronsw posts in the fediverse today. I'm thinking about Aaron's work on RSS and Markdown, which were standards that respected the web as an ecology with values as much as a technology. I think Aaron would have liked it here.