<br><br>Aaron Swartz, an Internet savant who at a young age shaped the online 
era by co-developing RSS and Reddit and later became a digital activist,
 has passed on.<br><br>Aaron did more than almost anyone to make the Internet a thriving 
ecosystem for open knowledge, and to keep it that way. His contributions
 were numerous, and some of them were indispensable.  When we asked him 
in late 2010 for help in stopping <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combating_Online_Infringement_and_Counterfeits_Act">COICA</a>, the predecessor to the <a href="https://www.eff.org/issues/coica-internet-censorship-and-copyright-bill">SOPA and PIPA Internet blacklist bills</a>, he founded an organization called <a href="http://demandprogress.org/">Demand Progress</a>, which mobilized over a million online activists and proved to be an invaluable ally in winning that campaign.<br>

<br>Read more about him here:<br><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/farewell-aaron-swartz">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/farewell-aaron-swartz</a><br><br><a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/12/us/new-york-reddit-founder-suicide/index.html">http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/12/us/new-york-reddit-founder-suicide/index.html</a><br>

<br>Gideon Rop,<br>DotConnectAfrica.<br>