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Comment by diminoten | Hacker News Reader

Do the right thing, MIT, or we'll kill ourselves!

Seriously, can we not do this every time something legally interesting happens at MIT? The two situations are, as demonstrated very aptly above, unrelated.

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"Do the right thing, MIT, or we'll kill ourselves?"

I'm surprised you have the audacity to simplify what happened to Aaron Schwartz to a contrived ultimatum. And it is wholly related, given that Aaron was a member of the MIT community.

Except he wasn't a member of the MIT community. He was a Fellow at Harvard University Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, but not a student or faculty member at MIT.

However, as the report notes, Swartz had connections to the Institute: "He was a regular visitor to the MIT campus and interacted with MIT people and groups both on campus and off. … He was a member of MIT's Free Culture Group, a regular visitor at MIT's Student Information Processing Board (SIPB), and an active participant in the annual MIT International Puzzle Mystery Hunt Competition. Aaron Swartz's father, Robert Swartz, was (and is) a consultant at the MIT Media Lab. Aaron frequently visited his father there, and his two younger brothers had been Media Lab interns."

Aaron didn't fall under the MIT support umbrella. These folks do.

Stop making unhelpful comparisons, please.

Aside from Aaron's cass, that information is an interesting bit of nepotism regarding MIT Media Lab and the Schwartz children.

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