The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014) [video]

by tosh • 6 years ago

323 43 6 years ago

bitcharmer• 6 years ago

I highly recommend this documentary to anyone interested in the history of internet, the beginnings of reddit and most of all how a system can destroy someone who crosses the wrong people even if for altruistic reasons.

Gut wrenching to watch at times, but very important documentary.

satyanash• 6 years ago

I saw a lot of people asking about Aaron Swartz in the other thread about Reddit's co-founders. Would highly recommend watching this documentary, if you haven't already.

JdeBP2• 6 years ago

This posting, for the curious:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24677419

lukeplato2• 6 years ago

Is it weird that this on the third page now? I just read it on the front page about an hour ago and it seemed to be getting a lot of votes

bergstromm4662• 6 years ago

Aaron was scapegoated and hounded by the US government.

vonwoodson• 6 years ago

Blaming the government again... It was JSTOR. When money trumps freedom, that’s where the problem lies. And ONLY the government protects freedom. Don’t believe me? Read any EULA.

tzs• 6 years ago

All JSTOR did was try repeatedly for several months to block massive downloads that were causing service disruptions. JSTOR never involved law enforcement in this, and even tried to contact the downloader to see about arranging less disruptive access. Instead, the downloader kept evading the blocks.

It wasn't until MIT discovered that the downloader had moved from using their public guest WiFi network to going into places closed to the public to surreptitiously install hardware directly on the MIT LAN to continue the downloading that MIT called law enforcement.

Here's the timeline from JSTOR's point of view [1]. What do you see in there that they should have done differently?

Keep in mind that JSTOR is essentially a library and a non-profit. They do not own the copyright on the journals they distribute. Wherever they can, they provide cheap or free public access to most of the library.

They have probably done more than any other organization to provide ways for the public to get free or cheap access to non-open access journals. Maybe someday most research will be published in open access journals and we won't need JSTOR, but until then they are among the good guys.

[1] https://docs.jstor.org/summary.html

bergstromm4662• 6 years ago

Yeah I agree. In the movie they say that JSTOR didn’t prosecute though, and that it was some government entity that wanted to make an example out of Aaron. Sorry I don’t remember which one - I’d have to scan the subtitle file. I wrote this because I’m quite against the current Intellectual Property system (the US one, and the US-inspired global one: TRIPS).

My comment was intended more as a critique of the fact that the IP monopoly-granting system is part of American state yet it undermines democracy. I see it as a violent, anti-human and oppressive configuration (despite many claiming it’s a free-market) [Kevin Carson and Guy Standing do a fantastic job of critiquing this fact].

It was a bit careless of me to say ‘government’ because it can undermines the great work many governments entities do do.

dethos• 6 years ago

Very good documentary. An unnecessary tragedy.

Medicalidiot• 6 years ago

Downloading science articles on an "open campus". Something that should be celebrated was instead castigated.

boraoztunc• 6 years ago

Even just repeating his name gives me goosebumps, makes me sad, angry, feeling all together. I don't know, the system I hate so much, because of the ones that've always betrayed people like Aaron.

Such great documentary if you haven't watched already and know about this amazing human being.

His website (http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/) is still online if you also want to read what he was thinking and making, before they cornered him, forced him, feared him, took his hope and killed him. I'm so sorry man, rest in peace.

Edit: I sometimes remember him with Tim Berners-Lee's poem:

Aaron is dead.

Wanderers in this crazy world, we have lost a mentor, a wise elder.

Hackers for right, we are one down, we have lost one of our own.

Nurtures, careers, listeners, feeders, parents all, we have lost a child.

Let us all weep.

conception• 6 years ago

I recently discovered his website and his essays are fantastic-

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/savealife

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/productivity

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/handwritingwall

The last being very poignant for me.

mynameishere• 6 years ago

Federal prosecutors don't screw around. Just take the plea bargain.

Also, the authorities in general don't like to be scorned. If you get away with something once, keep your nose clean afterwards.

Just some practical lessons unrelated to the passion play.

falcor84• 6 years ago

But if no one is unveiling to dissent then nothing will change. I don't know what I personally would do if faced by that horrible choice, but I admire the heroism of dissidents willing to stand their ground.

"Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law." Martin Luther King Jr.

mellosouls• 6 years ago

IMDB page

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3268458/

pcdoodle• 6 years ago

Thanks for posting this. Good timing.

pmb• 6 years ago

And HN said "Yup, he basically deserved it." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2802917

gonehome4• 6 years ago

I remember seeing later that he posted here begging for help because the cost of the defense for a federal crime (even though he’d likely win) was 1.5M, and the first comment was someone being nasty to him.

I remember the emails from MIT that showed the IT department going after him, and then when caught MIT choosing to do nothing rather than help.

Even JSTOR backed down rather than move forward.

It still makes me angry and MIT’s reputation was seriously harmed in my eyes because of it.

Journals blocking access to publicly funded research by extorting desperate academics for prestige is what’s wrong. It’s a broken system due to bad incentives that’s worse for everyone except the journals that enrich themselves on the back of publicly funded research, by locking it away and charging enormous rent.

The punishment was disproportionate to a crime that, while possibly illegal, was on the morally right side of a broken incentive structure. He didn’t even get the chance to put the articles up, he downloaded them from a network he had rightful access to. His main crime was leaving a laptop running in an open closet, and downloading more than they wanted.

Luckily Sci-Hub continued his work.

The legal thing and the right thing are often not the same: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html

Maybe the worst part was after his suicide reading comments here about how you can only blame the person who committed suicide since no one else is responsible for the ultimate act.

If you choose not to see a causal link between the pressure of this prosecution and his death, I think that says more about your own motivated reasoning than it does about reality.

This was a failure of our community.

SpicyLemonZest2• 6 years ago

I absolutely have concerns with the operation of the federal justice system. As Leesig rightly pointed out, the role of a modern federal prosecutor is to terrify the accused and bully them into accepting a plea deal, and that behavior does not effectively serve the interests of justice.

But the radically anti-copyright position expressed here is much less common than you're assuming, and I just can't get on board with it. The solution to exploitative journals gatekeeping access is better journals, not stealing their articles.

gonehome4• 6 years ago

I'm not really anti-copyright, though the timeline should be dramatically reduced back to something similar to its original 14 years with registration (maybe less).

The goal of copyright was to promote the progress of science and useful arts for the benefit of the public, giving limited time monopolies to creators is a means to that end. It was meant as an incentive to create, not some way to perpetually enrich creators (or corporations that buy the rights) forever at the expense of the public.

It's been distorted to basically give creators/companies rights forever automatically (and even retroactively) by continuing to extend it each time it comes up for expiration. It now serves to do the opposite of its intended goal by limiting the ability for people to create things because they could be violating copyright.

I think the issue here is not the existence of copyright itself, but how it's being applied to publicly funded research because of an existing incentive structure where universities and academics are locked in a battle for prestige that's doled out by these journals that then control access.

If the public is funding the research then the public should have access to the research.

TooCreative2• 6 years ago

He was on Hacker News? What was his handle?

lukeplato2• 6 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=aaronsw

jacquesm• 6 years ago

This was a failure of our community.

Absolutely.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484

0_gravitas• 6 years ago

Looking through, many of those people are still posting today- makes this site feel a little more grimy.

wyck• 6 years ago

The DOJ threw the book at him in part because he wrote a manifesto called "Guerilla Open Access". It wasn't deemed a one-off offense, but possibly part of a "plan". Still complete bullshit what they did.

You can read it here: http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamju...

hoomank3• 6 years ago

Definitely a case of prosecutorial overreach. The poor kid felt so hopeless and overwhelmed that he took his own life. Very sad story.

Not commonly known. But Swartz invented JSON. Every time you use it, you can thank him.

cocoa19• 6 years ago

Wikipedia says Douglas Crockford specified and popularized JSON.

branweb• 6 years ago

yeah I've always heard it was Crockford. Do you have a substantiating source you'd mind sharing, op?

aikah• 6 years ago

Swartz participated in the creation of RSS spec, not JSON AFAIK. He was also involved in the development of reddit.

leejoramo• 6 years ago

Additionally John Gruber acknowledges Aaron’s significant contribution to the creation of Markdown.

https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/

NiceWayToDoIT• 6 years ago

It is a great tragedy, sad... Sometimes I wonder what kind of amazing things would he achieved if he stayed a bit longer... :(

oli5679• 6 years ago

http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamju...

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.

There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost.

That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable.

"I agree," many say, "but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it's perfectly legal — there's nothing we can do to stop them." But there is something we can, something that's already being done: we can fight back.

Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.

Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies.

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.

We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.

With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?

Aaron Swartz

July 2008, Eremo, Italy

jokinglysardine• 6 years ago

This could've all been avoided if the MIT IT staff hadn't been so lazy that they left port-security or 802.1x disabled on access layer chassis switches. Probably some of the reason Aaron got railroaded initially is the total incompetence of the IT staff here, a classic overreaction is always a sign of ass covering by people. Imagine if they had just physically secured their networking equipment.

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014) [video]

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