A congresswoman from Silicon Valley is planning to introduce legislation to amend the law used to prosecute Aaron Swartz, the free information activist who killed himself on Friday. 
 
 Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat who represents California's 19th district, launched "Aaron's law", her draft bill to change the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, on Reddit on Tuesday night. 
 
 Swartz, a co-founder of Reddit, was charged with wire fraud, computer fraud and other crimes for allegedly accessing and downloading academic documents from the JSTOR online database through the network of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
 
 The prosecution against him has been criticised as over-zealous and disproportionate and his family have accused MIT and prosecutors of being complicit in his death. If found guilty, he faced up to 35 years in jail, and although lawyers said plea bargain negotiations were underway before his death, his request for a solution which did not involve a prison term was denied. 
 
 In a post on Reddit, Lofgren wrote that she was "deeply troubled" that the government were able to bring such charges against Aaron. 
 
 She said: "His family's statement about this speaks volumes about the inappropriate efforts undertaken by the US government. There's no way to reverse the tragedy of Aaron's death, but we can work to prevent a repeat of the abuses of power he experienced. We should prevent what happened to Aaron from happening to other Internet users." 
 
 She continued: "The government was able to bring such disproportionate charges against Aaron because of the broad scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the wire fraud statute. It looks like the government used the vague wording of those laws to claim that violating an online service's user agreement or terms of service is a violation of the CFAA and the wire fraud statute. 
 
 "Using the law in this way could criminalize many everyday activities and allow for outlandishly severe penalties." 
 
 It invited "dangerous legal interpretation", she said, which Congress had a responsibility to change. 
 
 Her amendment excludes access in violation of an agreement, such as an acceptable use policy or terms of service agreement, with an Internet service provider, in cases where such a violation is the sole reason for determining that access to a computer is unauthorised. 
 
 Lawrence Lessig, a friend of Swartz and Harvard law professor, gave the amendment his blessing. He wrote: "This is a CRITICALLY important change that would do incredible good. 
 
 "The CFAA was the hook for the government's bullying of [Aaron]. This law would remove that hook. In a single line: no longer would it be a felony to breach a contract. Let's get this done for Aaron – now." 
 
 Marcia Hofmann, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, welcomed the bill but said that, as it stood, it would not have prevented Aaron's prosecution. 
 
 In a tweet, she saidL "Kudos to Rep Lofgren for her swift response. But her bill wouldn't have prevented Aaron's prosecution under the CFAA or wire fraud law." In another message, she said the bill needed strengthening before it went before Congress. 
 
 The Justice Department's prosecution of Swartz, which has been widely criticised since his death, is to be investigated by the House Oversight Committee. 
 
 Darrell Issa, Republican representative for California, praised Swartz's work on open government and free access to information. He told the Huffington Post he thought the government's case against Swartz is problematic enough to merit investigation. 
 
 "I'm not condoning his hacking, but he's certainly someone who worked very hard," Issa said, of Swartz. "Had he been a journalist and taken that same material that he gained from MIT, he would have been praised for it. It would have been like the Pentagon Papers." 
 
 Issa said he didn't have enough information to say whether the US Attorney's Office in Massachusetts over-prosecuted Swartz. He said he had asked an investigator to gather more facts. 

 The casket of Internet activist Aaron Swartz is wheeled to a hearse outside a synagogue in Highland Park, Ill., at his funeral Tuesday. (Al Podgorski / Chicago Sun-Times / ) 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO -- Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) posted a draft bill to social news website Reddit that would change a controversial computer hacking law used to prosecute Internet activist Aaron Swartz. 
 
 Swartz, a Reddit co-founder, was found dead Friday in his New York apartment. He apparently had hanged himself. 
 
 His family blamed his death on "prosecutorial overreach." 
 
 Swartz was indicted in 2011. Federal prosecutors alleged he used MIT's computers to illegally access millions of academic articles through the JSTOR database, a subscription service for scholarly articles. He was scheduled to go to trial in April on 13 counts including computer fraud. He was distraught over the possibility of millions of dollars in fines and up to 35 years in prison, friends and family said. 
 
 "His family's statement about this speaks volumes about the inappropriate efforts undertaken by the U.S. government," Lofgren wrote in a post on Reddit. "There's no way to reverse the tragedy of Aaron's death, but we can work to prevent a repeat of the abuses of power he experienced." 
 
 Lofgren said she is seeking to limit "the broad scope" of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the wire fraud statute. 
 
 Interpreting the law the way prosecutors did "could criminalize many everyday activities and allow for outlandishly severe penalties," she wrote. 
 
 She said she is calling it "Aaron’s law." 
 
 The Electronic Frontier Foundation has called for changes to the hacking law, calling it "draconian." 
 
 "Aaron was one of our community's best and brightest, and he achieved great things in his short life. He was a coder, a political activist, an entrepreneur, a contributor to major technological developments (like RSS), and an all-around Internet freedom rock star," Marcia Hofmann, a senior staff attorney at EFF, wrote in a blog post. "The government should never have thrown the book at Aaron for accessing MIT's network and downloading scholarly research. However, some extremely problematic elements of the law made it possible." 
 
 Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School who was a friend of Swartz, applauded Lofgren's draft measure. 
 
 "Let's get this done for Aaron -- now," Lessig wrote in a comment to Lofgren's post. 
 
 ALSO: 
 
 Aaron Swartz dies at 26; Internet folk hero founded Reddit 
 
 Feds drop charges against late Internet activist Aaron Swartz 
 
 Follow me on Twitter @jguynn
– A Silicon Valley congresswoman wants to tone down the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to prevent what she sees as overzealous prosecution, reports the Guardian. Democrat Zoe Lofgren says "Aaron's Law" is in tribute to Aaron Swartz, the free-information Internet activist who killed himself last week. Swartz faced 35 years in prison and millions in fines on charges that he illegally accessed online academic documents at MIT. "His family's statement about this speaks volumes about the inappropriate efforts undertaken by the US government," Lofgren wrote on Reddit, a site that Swartz helped build. The way prosecutors interpreted the law "could criminalize many everyday activities and allow for outlandishly severe penalties," she wrote, reports the Los Angeles Times. Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig, a friend of Swartz's, praised the legislation as "critically important." Read Lofgren's post, and Lessig's take on it, here.