Slate suggests that Swartz’s death may lead to “the rise of a digital martyr. In death, Swartz can be a vehicle to transform the pain felt by the community into the kind of change he would have wanted. “http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/01/13/aaron_swartz_s_suicide_may_make_the_open_access_movement_mainstream.html

Slate suggests that Swartz’s death may lead to “the rise of a digital martyr. In death, Swartz can be a vehicle to transform the pain felt by the community into the kind of change he would have wanted. “http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/01/13/aaron_swartz_s_suicide_may_make_the_open_access_movement_mainstream.html

[William Gargan]

Swartz’s death is tragic but I don’t see him as a martyr. Nor do I think it is right to try to place the blame on law enforcement officers for his suicide. If indeed he had gone to jail for his act of civil disobedience, I think he would have been a more powerful (and more positive) force in the open access movement.