After Aaron Swartz's death, we're collecting commentary on internet freedom. Add to this using #smarttakes on Twitter

Aaron Swartz, the 26-year-old internet freedom activist who helped found Reddit, was found dead on Saturday of a reported suicide.

Among the many tributes left for Swartz, there are pieces being published that examine and call for the conservation of his legacy.

Here we've edited a reading guide to internet freedom and asked the Guardian's James Ball, a journalist and former WikiLeake, to help us seed this list. If you leave your suggestions for us in the comments below or by using the #SmartTakes on Twitter, then we'll add your suggestions to this post.

(See what's been added so far here.)

What's happening around the globe?

Among Ball's selections was a Slate piece about governments around the world cooperating on surveillance initiatives, and the challenges authorities will face:

It's not all plain sailing for government – national or international – in pursuit of more control, though. By design the internet is a contested terrain; for every act of surveillance or content blocking, there is a tool for circumvention. Complex encryption and anonymity software is almost by the day becoming more accessible, so unless countries hit the kill switch and shut off the internet entirely, web users will find ways to evade the prying eyes of online overlords.

On a related note, here's Ball's piece for the Washington Post on the growing demand for anti-censorship tools.

Swartz's politics 'weren't just about digital freedom'

BoingBoing has published this op-ed by Matt Stoller about what was truly at the core of Swartz's fight:

He wanted, first and foremost, to know. He learned about elections, political advertising, the data behind voting, and grassroots organizing. He began understanding policy, by learning about congressional process, its intersection with politics, and how staff and influence networks work on the Hill and through agencies. He analyzed money. He analyzed corruption.

'His life was driven by courage and passion'

Glenn Greenwald wrote this piece after Swartz's death was reported. Greenwald focused on Swartz's involvement in the stop of the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa).

"He repeatedly sacrificed his own interests, even his liberty, in order to defend these values and challenge and subvert the most powerful factions that were their enemies," Greenwald wrote.

Below, in his own words, Swartz describes the battle:

The piece drew more than 600 comments from Guardian readers. Here are two sample reactions:

Guardian commenter exkiodexian:

This scary thing about what happened to Aaron Swartz is that he was a"doer", not just a "talker". There's a lot of hot wind out there, but Swartz didn't just talk. He took action. And look what happened.Taking action to support your principles is what the government will not tolerate, not even a little bit. That's why people can talk all day long. Talk, blog, protest, etc … that's all ok, because for the most part it changes nothing. Taking action DOES change things, and the government will not tolerate that – even if it's totally legal and within your rights. This is why things as a simply as taking pictures on a factory farm (to expose animal cruelty) can land you ten years in prison and a "terrorist" label in today's world. Simply exposing the truth cannot be tolerated by power factions, the constitution be damned. The powerful couldn't care less about the law,the constitution, ethics, morals, etc … They only care about maintaining what they see as the natural order of things, at all costs. What happened to Aaron Swartz is a tragedy and I fear that what happened to him will make people scared of taking action. I hope the opposite happens, but one cannot be surprised if it doesn't.

Guardian commenter Roger Mattingly:

I was reading somewhere, if I remember correctly, that Aaron was concerned about all information eventually being digitized and then"locked away" from the general population. Can you imagine what it would be like in 20 years or so if all books were digitized and the hard copies disposed of? Imagine not being able to go into a library to read a book. Rather, you would have to pay for whatever you wanted to read IF you could even get access to it by paying! What better way to control the masses than by keeping them illiterate in everything except what you want them to know. Seems to me that's how the dark ages began.

Meet the others

Get yourself connected: a demonstrator from the hacker group Anonymous, San Francisco, August 2011. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

James Ball's compilation of '20 fighters for internet freedom' includes Swartz, but also includes John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Julian Assange and Anonymous:

The Anonymous rallying cry – "We are Anonymous. We are legion. Expect us" – is not to everyone's taste, but it's certainly well known. Unlike its sister group Lulzsec, the Anonymous collective is genuinely fragmentary and leaderless – and so has continued despite FBI arrests largely paralysing Lulzsec. The hackers recently took the Home Office and No 10 websites briefly offline in protest at proposed internet surveillance laws.

More #SmartTakes:

GuardianUS (@GuardianUS) After Aaron Swartz's death, there's renewed focus on his cause. Share good reads about internet freedom with us by using #SmartTakes.

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