(1) One of the three cofounders of Reddit (another cofounder Alexis Ohanian married tennis player Serena Williams), Aaton Swartz (1986-2013; age 26) hanged himself at his Brooklyn, NY apartment after MIT police arrested him for scraping JSTOR and federal indictment.
, which reads in toto: "Count Three of the 2011 indictment -- there would be a supersedeas indictment later -- was based on 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2) and (c)(2), in conformity with a First Circuit precedent. However, by the time of Swartz's 2013 suicide, circuit split on that section had emerged, which Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. _, 141 S.Ct. 164, _, n. 2 (2021) resolved by abrogating the First Circuit precedent. HiQ Labs, Inc v LinkedIn Corp, _ F.4th _ (9th Cir. 2022) followed."
Right away I emailed his then live-in girlfriend, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, who immediately deleted it (section 6.3). Perhaps Swartz's fans wanted him to be remembered as a martyr, rather than one who shrank from a court fight. (Swartz also suffered from chronic depression.)
Take notice that none of the cases in Van Buren's footnote 2 petitioned Supreme Court for review (not just Swartz's case, which was not in the footnote).
(4) Here is the link to the indictment. https://www.documentcloud.org/do ... rica-v-aaron-swartz
, thanks to Ben Welsh, Data and Graphics Editor, Los Angeles Times.
(5) In the criminal case, Swartz was represented by a San Francisco law firm but had a local attorney. About five years ago I talked to the latter about my own (civil) case, and found him timid (no guts to challenge conventional wisdom; quick to walk away from a perceived hopeless case) and lacking knowledge in law; the talk lasted seconds.