developed RSS at an early age Aaron Swartz, a celebrated internet
freedom activist and early developer of the website Reddit, has died
at 26. The activist and programmer took his life in his New York
apartment, a relative and the state medical examiner said. His body
was found on Friday.Mr Swartz began computer programming as a child,
and at 14 co-authored an early version of the RSS specification. He
later became an advocate of internet freedom, and was facing hacking
charges at the time of his death. He was among the founders of the
Demand Progress campaign group, which lobbies against internet
censorship. The hacking charges relate to the downloading of millions
of academic papers from online archive JSTOR, which prosecutors say he
intended to distribute for free. He denied charges of computer fraud
at an initial hearing last year, but his federal trial was due to
begin next month. Mr Swartz's lawyer Elliot R. Peters confirmed the
news of his client's death in an email to the MIT university newspaper
The Tech. A spokeswoman for New York's medical examiner later
confirmed to Associated Press news agency that Mr Swartz had hanged
himself. BBC
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