Informasi adalah Kekuasaan, kata Aaron Swartz
Information is Power, Said Aaron Swartz
Editor : Heru S Winarno
Translator : Parulian Manalu
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New York (B2B) - "Informasi adalah kekuasaan. Tapi seperti juga kekuasaan, ada orang yang ingin menyimpannya buat diri mereka sendiri," tulis Aaron Swartz dalam "manifesto" daring pada 2008.
"Seluruh warisan budaya dan ilmu pengetahuan dunia yang disiarkan selama berabad-abad di dalam buku dan jurnal, makin sering didigitalkan dan dikunci oleh segelintir perusahaan swasta ...Cuma mereka yang dibutakan oleh kerakusan yang menolak membolehkan orang lain untuk menyalinnya," tulis Swartz.
Keyakinan bahwa informasi mesti dibagi dan tersedia bagi semua orang memicu Swartz mendirikan kelompok nirlaba DemandProgress yang kemudian berhasil melancarkan aksi menghalangi pemberlakuan rancangan undang-undang Stop Online Piracy Act pada 2011 oleh Parlemen AS.
Rancangan yang ditarik di tengah tekanan masyarakat itu semestinya mengizinkan pengadilan memerintahkan pencegahan akses ke jejaring tertentu yang dipandang melibatkan kegiatan berbagi hak intelektual secara tidak sah.
Namun kini, aktivis internet, Aaron Swartz, yang membantu menciptakan versi teranyar sistem "web feed" RSS dan menghadapi dakwaan pidana federal dalam kasus kontroversial penipuan, telah bunuh diri dalam usia 26 tahun, Sabtu (12/1).
Polisi menemukan mayat Swartz di apartemennya di Brooklyn, New York, Jumat, kata wanita Juru Bicara kepala pemeriksa medis di kota ini. Ia memutuskan kematian Swartz adalah bunuh diri dengan menggantung diri.
Swarts mendapat banyak pujian sebagai pencipta format Web feed RSS 1.0 yang ia kerjakan dalam usia 14 tahun, demikian isi satu posting blog temannya, penulis fiksi ilmiah Cory Doctorow.
RSS, kependekan dari Rich Site Summary, adalah format bagi pengiriman kepada pengguna isi dari laman yang berubah terus, seperti blog dan laman berita.
Selama bertahun-tahun, ia menjadi buah bibir daring karena membantu membuat segunung informasi maya secara gratis bagi masyarakat umum, termasuk 19 juta halaman dokumen pengadilan federal dari sistem hukum-kasus PACER.
New York - "Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves," Swartz wrote in an online "manifesto" dated 2008.
"The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. ... sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy," he wrote.
That belief - that information should be shared and available for the good of society - prompted Swartz to found the nonprofit group DemandProgress.
The group led a successful campaign to block a bill introduced in 2011 in the U.S. House of Representatives called the Stop Online Piracy Act.
The bill, which was withdrawn amid public pressure, would have allowed court orders to curb access to certain websites deemed to be engaging in illegal sharing of intellectual property.
Now, internet activist and computer prodigy Aaron Swartz, who helped create an early version of the Web feed system RSS and was facing federal criminal charges in a controversial fraud case, has committed suicide at age 26, authorities said on Saturday.
Police found Swartz's body in his apartment in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on Friday, according to a spokeswoman for the city's chief medical examiner, which ruled the death a suicide by hanging.
Swartz is widely credited with being a co-author of the specifications for the Web feed format RSS 1.0, which he worked on at age 14, according to a blog post on Saturday from his friend, science fiction author Cory Doctorow.
RSS, which stands for Rich Site Summary, is a format for delivering to users content from sites that change constantly, such as news pages and blogs.
Over the years, he became an online icon for helping to make a virtual mountain of information freely available to the public, including an estimated 19 million pages of federal court documents from the PACER case-law system.
