While I agree that it is suboptimal (and tragic), his death may save/extend more lives. The effect seems to be making more information (especially scientific information) freely accessible, which in turn seems likely to result in more innovation and better access to treatments as they are developed.
Indeed. That's the source of my frustration and anger/fury*.
It feels like saving lives should be what saves more lives, not the other way around. Stupid humans and stupid reality.
* (I've never noticed any personal distinction of anger and fury as two distinct qualitative feelings, other than the respective absence or presence of a "target of" referent and that 'fury' usually means more intense than angry).
Link
One of us is no more.
He deserves a eulogy more eloquent than what I am capable of writing. Here's Cory Doctorow's, one of his long time friends.
It's a sad world in which you are being arrested and grand jury'd for downloading scientific journals and papers with the intent to share them.