Aaron Swartz was a genius. A child prodigy involved in
developing the RSS process as a 14 year-old. This was a boy who was going
places. His suicide at the age of 26, in January 2013, remains a shock.
Coverage of his death credited him as a “co-founder of Reddit”. This underplays
his political attitudes and deeply personal ambitions to make a better world.
What is difficult to comprehend is how Swartz clearly had so much more to
accomplish. This young man looked to Tim Berners-Lee as inspiration, not Bill
Gates and Steve Jobs. As a child, pre-dating Wikipedia, Swartz created a
program that utilised contributions from multiple sources to provide
information to share across the internet. It is difficult to imagine what
would’ve happened if Berners-Lee had a patent or demanded royalties from the
use of his world wide web, but he didn’t. It’s clear from Internet’s Own Boy that there are forces working behind the scenes
that are keen to monetise every possible element of the internet. Swartz
fought these forces.
Swartz’s early brushes with the law are crucial to his
story. Law, Culture and Scientific studies are documents that many believe are
freely available to the general public. With the internet, it is a shock to
discover that in America, access to public records and law documents are
purposefully difficult to gain access to. Furthermore, it’s a multi-million
dollar industry that creams off the money of graduates and those in the
business who require regular access to these documents. Take PACER (Public
Access to Court Electronic Records), an American website that houses all the
public records digitally. Despite its ‘public’ nature, it costs (currently) 10c
per page, with a maximum of $3 per document. As these are deemed public records,
Swartz (amongst a group of other internet activists) began downloading as
many of the records as he could, and giving actual free access to the documents
via a “PACER recycling” website. PACER earned £150m in revenues in 2008
according to court reports. Even visiting the site in 2014 proves how
purposefully difficult it is navigate. Suffice to say, law documents that are
considered public record and therefore free to all, should be the type of thing
the internet can ensure is freely available, but it’s not. This is only one
example of the hypocrisy Swartz was prepared to fight. Consequently, and what
led to his depression and suicide, he was hounded by the government in an era
whereby computer hacking was considered the new threat. FBI drove outside his
house, ex-girlfriends were aggressively interviewed and Swartz’s movements
were restricted as he awaited trial. Unfortunately, he killed himself before
the trial leaving an incomplete legacy – especially as his lawyer states how
convinced he was of their win. The tactics used against Swartz was
purposefully aggressive and threatening as he was to be “made an example of” in
the face of cyber-threats to America.
As a documentary, director Brian Knappenberger is passionate
about his subject. A clear narrative, Knappenberger uses Swartz’s death to
bookend the story. His choice of interviewees is friends and family members who
openly support the liberal bias that dominates the film. Crucial representation
from the government, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and JSTOR is
awkwardly missing, with voiceovers revealing their declination to comment.
Sometimes, the absence of crucial figures is a reveal unto itself as “silence
speaks louder than words”. In this case, it seems like a gaping hole in the
story.
Inevitably perhaps, Aaron’s voice did not fall on deaf ears.
Before his death he was part of the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) movement,
which won its cause in 2012. People talk of freedom and the ample opportunity
for the internet to truly make a difference in the world, and surely it can.
But these fights require people like Tim Berners-Lee, Julian Assange, Jimmy
Wales and Aaron Swartz to lead the way. These are people, who desperately
campaign for funding and support; who are maligned in the media and by
governments but it is they who passionately defend their belief to change the
world, rather than cash-in their chips for the big bucks. Compared to “the
billionaire” Mark Zuckerberg, Aaron Swartz struggled to pay his legal fees
and this pressure came to a head. Zuckerberg regularly repeats his mantra about
“sharing” everything on the “free-of-charge” Facebook. Aaron Swartz was
trying to truly “share” the scientific and cultural heritage of the United
States, and ensure that “free” documents of law truly were for the public. The Internet’s Own Boy proves that
there are fights still to be fought and a genius and important activist has
been lost in the process. It may not be the slickest of documentaries, but it
is a story that needs to be told. Aaron Swartz was so much more than a
co-founder of Reddit, he was an activist that was making a difference for the
sake of the world.
This post was originally written for Flickering Myth
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