Hundreds honor information activist-online prodigy Swartz in NYC

This Dec. 8, 2012 photo provided by ThoughtWorks shows Aaron Swartz, in New York.  Swartz, a co-founder of Reddit, hanged himself Friday, Jan. 11, 2013, in New York City.  Since his suicide, friends and admirers have eulogized the 26-year-old free-information activist as a martyred hero, hounded to his death by the government he antagonized.  AP/ThoughtWorks, Pernille Ironside

NEW YORK— Hundreds of friends and supporters of Aaron Swartz are gathered in New York City to pay tribute to the free-information activist and online prodigy who killed himself last week. 

The 26-year-old Swartz hanged himself in his apartment in Brooklyn the month before he was to go on trial in Boston. 

Federal prosecutors accused him of breaking into a computer wiring closet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010 and tapping into the university’s computer network to get millions of paid-access scholarly articles. 

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Swartz’s family has blasted prosecutors’ handling of his case, saying overreaching led to his death.