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Swartz became an equal partner in Reddit after its merger with his company, Infogami.{{ref label|merger|i|}} His later work focused on sociology, civic awareness and activism.<ref>{{cite web|last= Swartz |first= Aaron |url = http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/socvanthro |title= Sociology or Anthropology | work = Raw Thought | accessdate = 2013-01-16}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | last=Swartz |first=Aaron |url= http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/socfunc | title = Simplistic Sociological Functionalism | work = Raw Thought | date=May 13, 2008 |accessdate= 2013-01-16}}</ref> In 2009, wanting to learn about effective [http://boldprogressives.org/2013/01/progressive-change-campaign-committee-statement-on-the-passing-of-aaron-swartz/ activism], he helped launch the [[Progressive Change Campaign Committee]]. In 2010, he became a research fellow at [[Harvard University]]’s Edmond J. Safra Research Lab on Institutional Corruption, directed by [[Lawrence Lessig]].<ref name="Seidman">{{cite web |url=http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-need/internet-activist-charged-with-hacking-into-mit-network/ |title=Internet activist charged with hacking into MIT network |first=Bianca |last=Seidman |date=July 22, 2011 |publisher=Public Broadcasting Service |location=Arlington, Va. |quote=[Swartz] was in the middle of a fellowship at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, in its Lab on Institutional Corruption }}</ref><ref name="safra" /> He founded the online group [[Demand Progress]], known for its campaign against the [[Stop Online Piracy Act]].
Swartz became an equal partner in Reddit after its merger with his company, Infogami.{{ref label|merger|i|}} His later work focused on sociology, civic awareness and activism.<ref>{{cite web|last= Swartz |first= Aaron |url = http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/socvanthro |title= Sociology or Anthropology | work = Raw Thought | accessdate = 2013-01-16}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | last=Swartz |first=Aaron |url= http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/socfunc | title = Simplistic Sociological Functionalism | work = Raw Thought | date=May 13, 2008 |accessdate= 2013-01-16}}</ref> In 2009, wanting to learn about effective [http://boldprogressives.org/2013/01/progressive-change-campaign-committee-statement-on-the-passing-of-aaron-swartz/ activism], he helped launch the [[Progressive Change Campaign Committee]]. In 2010, he became a research fellow at [[Harvard University]]’s Edmond J. Safra Research Lab on Institutional Corruption, directed by [[Lawrence Lessig]].<ref name="Seidman">{{cite web |url=http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-need/internet-activist-charged-with-hacking-into-mit-network/ |title=Internet activist charged with hacking into MIT network |first=Bianca |last=Seidman |date=July 22, 2011 |publisher=Public Broadcasting Service |location=Arlington, Va. |quote=[Swartz] was in the middle of a fellowship at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, in its Lab on Institutional Corruption }}</ref><ref name="safra" /> He founded the online group [[Demand Progress]], known for its campaign against the [[Stop Online Piracy Act]].


On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by MIT police on state breaking-and-entering charges, after systematically downloading [[academic journal]] articles from [[JSTOR]].<ref name="gerstein">{{cite web |url=http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0711/MIT_also_pressing_charges_against_hacking_suspect.html |title=MIT also pressing charges against hacking suspect |first=Josh |last=Gerstein |date=July 22, 2011 |work=Politico |quote=[Swartz’s] alleged use of MIT facilities and Web connections to access the JSTOR database ... resulted in two state felony charges for breaking into a ‘depository’ and breaking & entering in the daytime, according to local prosecutors. }}</ref><ref name="IncidentReport">{{cite court |litigants=Commonwealth v. Swartz |opinion=11-52CR73 & 11-52CR75 |pinpoint=MIT Police Incident Report 11-351 |court=[[Massachusetts District Court|Mass. Dist. Ct.]] |date=nolle prosequi Dec. 16, 2011 |url=http://mitcrimeclub.org/SwartzFilings-state.pdf |quote=Captain [A.P.] and Special Agent Pickett were able to apprehend the suspect at 24 Lee Street.... He was arrested for two counts of Breaking and Entering in the daytime with the intent to commit a felony.... }}</ref><ref name="hak">{{cite news |last=Hak |first=Susana |coauthors=Paz, Gabriella |title=Compilation of December 15, 2010–January 20, 2011 |work=Hak–De Paz Police Log Compilations |page=6 |publisher=MIT Crime Club |date=January 26, 2011 |url=http://mitcrimeclub.org/11pologDec15Jan20.pdf |quote=Jan. 6, 2:20 p.m., Aaron Swartz, was arrested at 24 Lee Street as a suspect for breaking and entering.... }}</ref><ref name=2011-tech/> Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of [[Mail and wire fraud#Wire|wire fraud]] and 11 violations of the [[Computer Fraud and Abuse Act]],<ref name=Indictment/> carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, [[asset forfeiture]], [[restitution]] and [[United States federal probation and supervised release|supervised release]].<ref name="SwartzAaronPR" />
On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by [[Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology_Police_Department|MIT police]] on state breaking-and-entering charges, after systematically downloading [[academic journal]] articles from [[JSTOR]].<ref name="gerstein">{{cite web |url=http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0711/MIT_also_pressing_charges_against_hacking_suspect.html |title=MIT also pressing charges against hacking suspect |first=Josh |last=Gerstein |date=July 22, 2011 |work=Politico |quote=[Swartz’s] alleged use of MIT facilities and Web connections to access the JSTOR database ... resulted in two state felony charges for breaking into a ‘depository’ and breaking & entering in the daytime, according to local prosecutors. }}</ref><ref name="IncidentReport">{{cite court |litigants=Commonwealth v. Swartz |opinion=11-52CR73 & 11-52CR75 |pinpoint=MIT Police Incident Report 11-351 |court=[[Massachusetts District Court|Mass. Dist. Ct.]] |date=nolle prosequi Dec. 16, 2011 |url=http://mitcrimeclub.org/SwartzFilings-state.pdf |quote=Captain [A.P.] and Special Agent Pickett were able to apprehend the suspect at 24 Lee Street.... He was arrested for two counts of Breaking and Entering in the daytime with the intent to commit a felony.... }}</ref><ref name="hak">{{cite news |last=Hak |first=Susana |coauthors=Paz, Gabriella |title=Compilation of December 15, 2010–January 20, 2011 |work=Hak–De Paz Police Log Compilations |page=6 |publisher=MIT Crime Club |date=January 26, 2011 |url=http://mitcrimeclub.org/11pologDec15Jan20.pdf |quote=Jan. 6, 2:20 p.m., Aaron Swartz, was arrested at 24 Lee Street as a suspect for breaking and entering.... }}</ref><ref name=2011-tech/> Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of [[Mail and wire fraud#Wire|wire fraud]] and 11 violations of the [[Computer Fraud and Abuse Act]],<ref name=Indictment/> carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, [[asset forfeiture]], [[restitution]] and [[United States federal probation and supervised release|supervised release]].<ref name="SwartzAaronPR" />


On January 11, 2013, two years after his initial arrest, Swartz was found dead in his [[Crown Heights, Brooklyn]] apartment, where he had hanged <!-- PLEASE NOTE: "hanged" is correct English here; it SHOULD ''not'' BE CHANGED to "hung". Please see <nowiki>http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hang#Usage_notes</nowiki> MNEMONIC DEVICE: Pictures are hung. Both women and men are hanged (at least in this context.)-->himself.<ref name=BusinessInsider/><ref name="autogenerated1">{{cite news | url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21001452 | title=Aaron Swartz, internet freedom activist, dies aged 26 | work=BBC News | date=January 13, 2013 | accessdate=2013-01-13}}</ref><ref name="Time">{{cite web|title=Aaron Swartz, Tech Prodigy and Internet Activist, Is Dead at 26|url= http://business.time.com/2013/01/13/tech-prodigy-and-internet-activist-aaron-swartz-commits-suicide/ | work=Time|accessdate=January 13, 2013}}</ref>
On January 11, 2013, two years after his initial arrest, Swartz was found dead in his [[Crown Heights, Brooklyn]] apartment, where he had hanged <!-- PLEASE NOTE: "hanged" is correct English here; it SHOULD ''not'' BE CHANGED to "hung". Please see <nowiki>http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hang#Usage_notes</nowiki> MNEMONIC DEVICE: Pictures are hung. Both women and men are hanged (at least in this context.)-->himself.<ref name=BusinessInsider/><ref name="autogenerated1">{{cite news | url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21001452 | title=Aaron Swartz, internet freedom activist, dies aged 26 | work=BBC News | date=January 13, 2013 | accessdate=2013-01-13}}</ref><ref name="Time">{{cite web|title=Aaron Swartz, Tech Prodigy and Internet Activist, Is Dead at 26|url= http://business.time.com/2013/01/13/tech-prodigy-and-internet-activist-aaron-swartz-commits-suicide/ | work=Time|accessdate=January 13, 2013}}</ref>

Revision as of 16:12, 25 July 2013

For other people with similar names, see Aaron Swartz (actor) and Aaron Schwartz (disambiguation).
Aaron Swartz
Aaron Swartz at a Creative Commons event on December 13, 2008
Born
Aaron H. Swartz[1]

(1986-11-08)November 8, 1986
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
DiedJanuary 11, 2013(2013-01-11) (aged 26)
Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.
Cause of deathSuicide by hanging
Occupation(s)Software developer, writer, Internet activist
TitleFellow, Harvard University Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
AwardsAmerican Library Association's James Madison Award (posthumously)
Websiteaaronsw.com
rememberaaronsw.com

Aaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist. Swartz was involved in the development of the web feed format RSS,[5] the organization Creative Commons,[6] the website framework web.py[7] and the social news site Reddit. In 2013, he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame.[8]

Swartz became an equal partner in Reddit after its merger with his company, Infogami.[i] His later work focused on sociology, civic awareness and activism.[9][10] In 2009, wanting to learn about effective activism, he helped launch the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. In 2010, he became a research fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Research Lab on Institutional Corruption, directed by Lawrence Lessig.[11][12] He founded the online group Demand Progress, known for its campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act.

On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by MIT police on state breaking-and-entering charges, after systematically downloading academic journal articles from JSTOR.[13][14][15][16] Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and 11 violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,[17] carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution and supervised release.[18]

On January 11, 2013, two years after his initial arrest, Swartz was found dead in his Crown Heights, Brooklyn apartment, where he had hanged himself.[19][20][21]

Life and works

Swartz in 2002 (age 15) with Lawrence Lessig at the launch party for Creative Commons
Swartz describes the nature of the shift from centralized one-to-many systems to the decentralized many-to-many topography of network communication. San Francisco, April 2007 (9:29)

Swartz was born in Chicago, Illinois, the eldest son of Susan and Robert Swartz.[22][23] His father had founded the software firm Mark Williams Company. Swartz immersed himself in the study of computers, programming, the Internet, and Internet culture.[24] He attended North Shore Country Day School, a small private school near Chicago, until 9th grade.[25] Swartz left high school in 10th grade, and enrolled in courses at a Chicago area college.[26][27]

At age 13, Swartz won the ArsDigita Prize, a competition for young people who create “useful, educational, and collaborative” non-commercial websites. At age 14, he became a member of the working group that authored the RSS 1.0 web syndication specification.[28]

W3C

In 2001 Swartz joined the RDFCore working group at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C),[29] where he authored RFC 3870, Application/RDF+XML Media Type Registration. The document described a new media type, “RDF/XML”, designed to support the Semantic Web.[30]

Markdown

Swartz was co-creator, with John Gruber, of Markdown,[31][32] a simplified markup standard derived from HTML, and author of its html2text translator. Markdown remains in widespread use.

Infogami, Reddit, Jottit

Swartz attended Stanford University. After the summer of his freshman year, he attended Y Combinator’s first Summer Founders Program where he started the software company Infogami. Infogami’s wiki platform was used to support the Internet Archive’s Open Library project and the web.py web framework that Swartz had created,[33] but he felt he needed co-founders to proceed further. Y-Combinator organizers suggested that Infogami merge with Reddit,[34][35] which it did in November 2005.[34][36] Reddit at first found it difficult to make money from the project, but the site later gained in popularity, with millions of users visiting it each month.

In October 2006, Reddit was acquired by Condé Nast Publications, the owner of Wired magazine.[24][37] Swartz moved with his company to San Francisco to work on Wired.[24] Swartz found office life uncongenial, and he ultimately left the company.[38]

In September 2007, Swartz joined with Simon Carstensen to launch Jottit.

Activism

In 2008 Swartz founded Watchdog.net, “the good government site with teeth,” to aggregate and visualize data about politicians.[39] In the same year, he wrote a widely circulated Open Access Guerilla Manifesto.[40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]

In 2009, wanting to learn about effective activism, Swartz helped launch the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.[48] He wrote on his blog, "I spend my days experimenting with new ways to get progressive policies enacted and progressive politicians elected."[49] Swartz led the first activism event of his career with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, delivering thousands of "Honor Kennedy" petition signatures to Massachusetts legislators asking them to fulfill former Sen. Ted Kennedy's last wish by appointing a senator to vote for health care reform.[50]

In 2010,[51] Swartz co-founded Demand Progress,[52] a political advocacy group that organizes people online to “take action by contacting Congress and other leaders, funding pressure tactics, and spreading the word” about civil liberties, government reform, and other issues.[53]

During academic year 2010–11, Swartz conducted research studies on political corruption as a Lab Fellow in Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Research Lab on Institutional Corruption.[11][12][52]

Author Cory Doctorow, in his novel, Homeland, “dr[ew] on advice from Swartz in setting out how his protagonist could use the information now available about voters to create a grass-roots anti-establishment political campaign.”[54] In an afterword to the novel, Swartz wrote, "these [political hacktivist] tools can be used by anyone motivated and talented enough.... Now it’s up to you to change the system.... Let me know if I can help."[54]

Stop Online Piracy Act

Swartz in 2012 protesting against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

Swartz was instrumental in the campaign to prevent passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which sought to combat Internet copyright violations but was criticized on the basis that it would have made it easier for the U.S. government to shut down web sites accused of violating copyright and would have placed intolerable burdens on Internet providers.[55] Following the defeat of the bill, Swartz was the keynote speaker at the F2C:Freedom to Connect 2012 event in Washington, D.C., on May 21, 2012. His speech was titled “How We Stopped SOPA” and he informed the audience:

This bill ... shut down whole websites. Essentially, it stopped Americans from communicating entirely with certain groups....

I called all my friends, and we stayed up all night setting up a website for this new group, Demand Progress, with an online petition opposing this noxious bill.... We [got] ... 300,000 signers.... We met with the staff of members of Congress and pleaded with them.... And then it passed unanimously....

And then, suddenly, the process stopped. Senator Ron Wyden ... put a hold on the bill.[56][57]

He added, “We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom.”[56][57] He was referring to a series of protests against the bill by numerous websites that was described by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as the biggest in Internet history, with over 115,000 sites altering their webpages.[58] Swartz also presented on this topic at an event organized by ThoughtWorks.[59]

Wikipedia

Swartz at 2009 Boston Wikipedia Meetup

Swartz volunteered as an editor at Wikipedia, and in 2006, he ran unsuccessfully for the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Directors. Also in 2006, Swartz wrote an analysis of how Wikipedia articles are written, and concluded that the bulk of the actual content comes from tens of thousands of occasional contributors, or "outsiders", each of whom may not make many other contributions to the site, while a core group of 500 to 1,000 regular editors tend to correct spelling and other formatting errors.[60] According to Swartz: "the formatters aid the contributors, not the other way around."[60][61]

His conclusions, based on the analysis of edit histories of several randomly selected articles, contradicted the opinion of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who believed the core group of regular editors were providing most of the content while thousands of others contributed to formatting issues. Swartz came to his conclusions by counting the total number of characters added by an editor to a particular article—while Wales counted the total number of edits.[60]

Library of Congress

Around 2006, Swartz acquired the Library of Congress's complete bibliographic dataset: the library charged fees to access this, but as a government document, it was not copyright-protected within the USA. By posting the data on OpenLibrary, Swartz made it freely available.[62] The Library of Congress project was met with approval by the Copyright Office.[63]

PACER

In 2008, Swartz downloaded and released about 2.7 million federal court documents stored in the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) database managed by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.[64]

The Huffington Post characterized his actions this way: "Swartz downloaded public court documents from the PACER system in an effort to make them available outside of the expensive service. The move drew the attention of the FBI, which ultimately decided not to press charges as the documents, were, in fact, public."[65]

PACER was charging 8 cents per page for information that Carl Malamud, who founded the nonprofit group Public.Resource.Org, contended should be free, because federal documents are not covered by copyright.[66][67] The fees were "plowed back to the courts to finance technology, but the system [ran] a budget surplus of some $150 million, according to court reports," reported The New York Times.[66] PACER used technology that was “designed in the bygone days of screechy telephone modems ... put[ting] the nation’s legal system behind a wall of cash and kludge.”[66] Malamud appealed to fellow activists, urging them to visit one of 17 libraries conducting a free trial of the PACER system, download court documents, and send them to him for public distribution.[66]

After reading Malamud’s call for action,[66] Swartz used a Perl computer script running on Amazon cloud servers to download the documents, using credentials belonging to a Sacramento library.[64] From September 4 to 20, 2008, it accessed documents and uploaded them to a cloud computing service.[67] He released the documents to Malamud’s organization.[67]

On September 29, 2008,[66] the GPO suspended the free trial, "pending an evaluation" of the program.[66][67] Swartz’s actions were subsequently investigated by the FBI.[66][67] The case was closed after two months with no charges filed.[67] Swartz learned the details of the investigation as a result of filing a FOIA request with the FBI and described their response as the "usual mess of confusions that shows the FBI’s lack of sense of humor."[67] PACER still charges per page, but customers using Firefox have the option of saving the documents for free public access with a plug-in called RECAP.[68]

Writing in Ars Technica, Timothy Lee, who later made use of the documents obtained by Swartz as a co-creator of RECAP, offered some insight into discrepancies in reporting on just how much data Swartz had downloaded: "In a back-of-the-envelope calculation a few days before the offsite crawl was shut down, Swartz guessed he got around 25 percent of the documents in PACER. The New York Times similarly reported Swartz had downloaded "an estimated 20 percent of the entire database...." Based on the facts that Swartz downloaded 2.7 million documents while PACER, at the time, contained 500 million, Lee concluded that Swartz downloaded less than one percent of the database.[64]

Wikileaks

On December 27, 2010, Swartz filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to learn about the treatment of Bradley Manning, alleged source for Wikileaks.[69][70]

Strongbox

In 2011–2012, Swartz and Kevin Poulsen designed and implemented Strongbox, a system that allows anonymous informants to send electronic documents to reporters at The New Yorker without fear of disclosure.[71][72][73] It was introduced in 2013.[72]

JSTOR

Main article: United States v. Aaron Swartz

According to state and federal authorities, Swartz used JSTOR, a digital repository,[74] to download a large number[ii] of academic journal articles through MIT’s computer network over the course of a few weeks in late 2010 and early 2011. At the time, Swartz was a research fellow at Harvard University, which provided him with a JSTOR account.[75] Visitors to MIT’s "open campus" were authorized to access JSTOR through its network. The authorities said Swartz downloaded the documents through a laptop connected to a networking switch in a controlled-access wiring closet at MIT.[14][17][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83]

Arrest and prosecution

On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested near the Harvard campus by MIT police and a U.S. Secret Service agent. He was arraigned in Cambridge District Court on two state charges of breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony.[13][14][15][80][84][85]

On July 11, 2011, Swartz was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer.[16][17][86][87]

On November 17, 2011, Swartz was indicted by a Middlesex County Superior Court grand jury on state charges of breaking and entering with intent, grand larceny and unauthorized access to a computer network.[88][89] On December 16, 2011, state prosecutors filed a notice that they were dropping the two original charges;[14] the charges listed in the November 17, 2011 indictment were dropped on March 8, 2012.[90] According to a spokesperson for the Middlesex County prosecutor, the state charges were dropped in order to permit the federal prosecution to proceed unimpeded.[90]

On September 12, 2012, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment adding nine more felony counts, which increased Swartz's maximum criminal exposure to 50 years of imprisonment and $1 million in fines.[17][91][92][93]

After his death, federal prosecutors dropped the charges.[94][95]

Death, funeral and memorial gatherings

External videos
video icon Aaron Swartz Memorial at The Great Hall of Cooper Union, (transcript)
video icon Aaron Swartz Memorial at the Internet Archive, (partial transcript)
video icon DC Memorial: Darrel Issa , Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, Alan Grayson

On the evening of January 11, 2013, Swartz was found dead in his Crown Heights, Brooklyn apartment by his partner.[82][96][97] A spokeswoman for New York’s Medical Examiner reported that he had hanged himself.[96][97][98][99] No suicide note was found.[100]

Swartz’s family and his partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, created a memorial website on which they issued a statement, saying, "he used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place."[22]

Days before Swartz’s funeral, Lawrence Lessig eulogized his friend and sometime client in an essay entitled Prosecutor as bully. In it, Lessig decried the disproportionality of Swartz's prosecution and said "the question this government needs to answer is why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a 'felon'. For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept."[101]

On the same day, in another eulogy for Swartz, author Cory Doctorow wrote, "Aaron had an unbeatable combination of political insight, technical skill, and intelligence about people and issues. I think he could have revolutionized American (and worldwide) politics. His legacy may still yet do so."[102]

Swartz’s funeral services were held on January 15, 2013, at Central Avenue Synagogue in Highland Park, Illinois. Tim Berners-Lee, co-creator of the World Wide Web, delivered a eulogy at the service.[19][103][104][105] The same day, The Wall Street Journal published a story based in part on an interview with Stinebrickner-Kauffman.[106] She told the Journal that Swartz lacked the money to pay for a trial and "it was too hard for him to ... make that part of his life go public" by asking for help. He was also distressed, she said, because two of his friends had just been subpoenaed and because he no longer believed that MIT would try to stop the prosecution.[106]

On January 19, hundreds attended a memorial at the Great Hall at Cooper Union. Speakers included Ben Wikler, Open Source advocate Doc Searls, Creative Commons’ Glenn Otis Brown, journalist Quinn Norton, OK Go singer Damian Kulash, Yale Professor emeritus Edward Tufte, Givewell’s Holden Karnofsky, author Tom Chiarella (also reading for the late David Foster Wallace), Roy Singham of ThoughtWorks, David Isenberg of Freedom to Connect, David Segal of Demand Progress, and Swartz’s partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman.[107][108][109]

On January 24, there was a memorial at San Francisco’s Internet Archive with speakers including journalist Danny O’Brien, Swartz’s partner Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, Lisa Rein, EFF senior technologist Seth Schoen, Peter Eckersley, O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly, Molly Shaffer van Houweling, Alex Stamos, Internet law attorney Cindy Cohn, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle and public domain advocate Carl Malamud.[110]

On February 4, a memorial was held in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill.[111][112][113][114] Speakers included Senator Ron Wyden and Representatives Darrell Issa, Alan Grayson and Jared Polis.[113][114] Other lawmakers in attendance included Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representatives Zoe Lofgren and Jan Schakowsky.[113][114] "Stick it to the man," said Issa. "Access to information is a human right."[114] A historic photo of Warren and Issa sitting together before an image of Aaron at this memorial service was posted on Twitter.

An MIT/Boston memorial took place on March 12, 2013 at the MIT Media Lab.[115]

Swartz was the subject of a detailed profile by Larissa MacFarquhar for the New Yorker in March 2013.[82]

Aftermath

Family response and criticism

Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy, it is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death.

Statement by family and partner of Aaron Swartz[116]

On January 12, Swartz’s family and partner issued a statement, criticizing the prosecutors and MIT.[116]

Speaking at his son's funeral, Robert Swartz said, "[Aaron] was killed by the government, and MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."[117]

After Mitch Kapor posted the statement on Twitter, Carmen Ortiz's husband, Tom Dolan, replied, criticizing the Swartz family: "Truly incredible that in their own son's obit they blame others for his death and make no mention of the 6-month offer."[118] This comment triggered widespread criticism; Esquire writer Charlie Pierce replied, "the glibness with which her husband and her defenders toss off a ‘mere’ six months in federal prison, low-security or not, is a further indication that something is seriously out of whack with the way our prosecutors think these days."[119]

In the press and the arts

Aaron Swartz mural by Brooklyn graffiti artist BAMN

The Huffington Post reported that "Ortiz has faced significant backlash for pursuing the case against Swartz, including a petition to the White House to have her fired."[120] Other news outlets reported similarly.[121][122][123]

Reuters news agency called Swartz "an online icon" who "help[ed] to make a virtual mountain of information freely available to the public, including an estimated 19 million pages of federal court documents."[124] The Associated Press (AP) reported that Swartz’s case "highlights society’s uncertain, evolving view of how to treat people who break into computer systems and share data not to enrich themselves, but to make it available to others,"[55] and that JSTOR's lawyer, former U.S. Attorney for Manhattan Mary Jo White, had asked the lead prosecutor to drop the charges.[55]

David Aaronovitch noted in The Times that JSTOR was itself a "product of philanthropy" but that it had to charge access fees so that it could pay academic publishers for rights to their publications. He added, "Swartz reminds me of the early Julian Assange — uncompromising, brilliant, febrile and indulged."[125]

As discussed by editor Hrag Vartanian in Hyperactive, Brooklyn, NY muralist BAMN ("By Any Means Necessary") created a mural of Swartz.[126] "Swartz was an amazing human being who fought tirelessly for our right to a free and open Internet," the artist explained. "He was much more than just the ‘Reddit guy’."

Gawker noted the extensive coverage of Swartz’s prosecution and suicide, writing "the suicide of a 26-year-old computer genius is the kind of story magazines were made to cover: complex but instantly engaging, offering a window into an unusual world."[127]

Open Access

In 2002, Swartz had stated that when he died he wanted all the contents of his hard drives made publicly available.[128] A long-time supporter of Open Access, Swartz wrote in his Open Access Guerilla Manifesto

The world’s entire scientific ... heritage ... is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations....
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.[47]

Supporters of Swartz responded to news of his death with an effort called #PDFTribute[129] to promote Open Access.[130][131] On January 12, Eva Vivalt, a development economist at the World Bank, began posting her academic articles online using the hashtag #pdftribute as a tribute to Swartz.[131][132][133] Scholars posted links to their works.[134]

Swartz’s death prompted calls for more open access to scholarly data. Jennifer Chan wrote an opinion piece for U.S.News & World Report arguing that "bringing knowledge to the public should be the central mission of academia."[135] Similarly, Slate technology columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote that "if MIT truly wants to atone for joining the federal case against Swartz ... it should pledge to spend its money, prestige, and moral authority to launch a multiuniversity campaign to free every scholarly article from behind paywall archives like JSTOR."[136]

The Think Computer Foundation and the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton University announced scholarships awarded in memory of Aaron Swartz.[137]

In 2013, Aaron Swartz was posthumously awarded the American Library Association’s James Madison Award for being an "outspoken advocate for public participation in government and unrestricted access to peer-reviewed scholarly articles."[138][139]

In March, the editor and editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration resigned en masse, citing a dispute with the journal’s publisher.[140] One board member wrote of a "crisis of conscience about publishing in a journal that was not open access" after the death of Aaron Swartz.[141][142]

MIT and the Abelson investigation

MIT maintains an open-campus policy along with an "open network."[83][143] Two days after Swartz’s death, MIT President L. Rafael Reif commissioned professor Hal Abelson to lead an analysis of MIT’s options and decisions relating to Swartz’s "legal struggles."[144][145] To help guide the fact-finding stage of the review, MIT created a website where community members could suggest questions and issues for the review to address.[146][147]

Swartz’s attorneys have requested that all pretrial discovery documents be made public, a move which MIT opposed.[148] Swartz allies have criticized MIT for its opposition to releasing the evidence without redactions.[149]

Petition to the White House

See also: Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann

After Swartz's death, more than 50,000 people signed an online petition[150] to the White House calling for the removal of U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, "for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz."[151] A similar petition[152] was submitted calling for prosecutor Stephen Heymann's firing.[153][154]

Congress

Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives — Republican Darrell Issa and Democrats Jared Polis and Zoe Lofgren — all on the House Judiciary Committee, have raised questions regarding the government’s handling of the case. Calling the charges against him "ridiculous and trumped up," Polis said Swartz was a "martyr," whose death illustrated the need for Congress to limit the discretion of federal prosecutors.[155] Speaking at a memorial for Swartz on Capitol Hill, Issa said

Ultimately, knowledge belongs to all the people of the world.... Aaron understood that.... Our copyright laws were created for the purpose of promoting useful works, not hiding them.

Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren issued a statement saying “[Aaron’s] advocacy for Internet freedom, social justice, and Wall Street reform demonstrated ... the power of his ideas....”[156] In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder,[157] Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn asked, “On what basis did the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts conclude that her office’s conduct was ‘appropriate’?” and “Was the prosecution of Mr. Swartz in any way retaliation for his exercise of his rights as a citizen under the Freedom of Information Act?”[158][159][160]

Congressional investigations

Issa, who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, announced that he would investigate the Justice Department’s actions in prosecuting Swartz.[155] In a statement to the Huffington Post, he praised Swartz’s work toward "open government and free access to the people." Issa’s investigation has garnered some bipartisan support.[156]

On January 28, 2013, Issa and ranking committee member Elijah Cummings published a letter to U.S. Attorney General Holder, questioning why federal prosecutors had filed the superseding indictment.[92][93]

On February 20, WBUR reported that Ortiz is expected to testify at an upcoming Oversight Committee hearing about her office’s handling of the Swartz case.[161]

On February 22, Associate Deputy Attorney General Steven Reich conducted a briefing for congressional staffers involved in the investigation.[44][45] They were told that Swartz’s Guerilla Open Access Manifesto played a role in prosecutorial decision-making.[44][45][46] Some are reported to have been left with the impression that prosecutors believed Swartz had to be convicted of a felony carrying at least a short prison sentence in order to justify having filed the case against him in the first place.[44][45]

Excoriating the Department of Justice as the “Department of Vengeance”, Stinebrickner-Kaufmann told the Guardian that the DOJ had erred in relying on Swartz’s Guerilla Open Access Manifesto as an accurate indication of his beliefs by 2010. “He was no longer a single issue activist,” she said. "He was into lots of things, from healthcare, to climate change to money in politics."[46]

On March 6, Holder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the case was "a good use of prosecutorial discretion."[162] Stinebrickner-Kauffman issued a statement in reply, repeating and amplifying her claims of prosecutorial misconduct. Public documents, she wrote, reveal that prosecutor Steven Heymann "instructed the Secret Service to seize and hold evidence without a warrant... lied to the judge about that fact in written briefs... [and] withheld exculpatory evidence... for over a year," violating his legal and ethical obligations to turn it over.[163]

On March 22, Sen. Al Franken wrote Holder a letter expressing concerns. Franken said, "charging a young man like Mr. Swartz with federal offenses punishable by over 35 years of federal imprisonment seems remarkably aggressive — particularly when it appears that one of the principal aggrieved parties ... did not support a criminal prosecution."[164]

Amendment to Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

Main article: Aaron's Law

Zoe Lofgren has introduced a bill, Aaron's Law, to exclude terms of service violations from the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and from the wire fraud statute.[165]

Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig wrote of the bill, "this is a critically important change.... The CFAA was the hook for the government’s bullying.... This law would remove that hook. In a single line: no longer would it be a felony to breach a contract."[166] Professor Orin Kerr, a specialist in the nexus between computer law and criminal law, wrote that he had been arguing for precisely this sort of reform of the Act for years.[167] The ACLU, too, has called for reform of the CFAA to "remove the dangerously broad criminalization of online activity."[168] The EFF has mounted a campaign for these reforms.[169]

Lessig’s inaugural Chair lecture as Furman Professor of Law and Leadership was entitled Aaron's Laws: Law and Justice in a Digital Age; he dedicated the lecture to Swartz.[63][170][171][172]

Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act

The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) is a bill that would mandate earlier public release of taxpayer-funded research. FASTR has been described "The Other Aaron's Law."[173]

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) introduced the Senate version, while the bill was introduced to the House by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and Kevin Yoder (R-Kans.). Sen. Wyden wrote of the bill, "the FASTR act provides that access because taxpayer funded research should never be hidden behind a paywall." [174]

Publications

  • Swartz, Aaron; Hendler, James (2001), "The Semantic Web: A network of content for the digital city", Proceedings of the Second Annual Digital Cities Workshop, Kyoto, JP: Blogspace {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help).
  • Swartz, Aaron (2002). "MusicBrainz: A Semantic Web service" (PDF). IEEE Intelligent Systems. 17 (1). UMBC: 76–77. doi:10.1109/5254.988466. ISSN 1541-1672. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  • Gruber, John; Swartz, Aaron (2004), Markdown definition, Daring Fireball {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help).
  • Swartz, Aaron (July 2008). "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto".
  • Swartz, Aaron (2009). Building progammable Web sites. S.F.: Morgan & Claypool. ISBN 1-59829-920-4. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Swartz, Aaron (Interviewee) (2009?). We can change the world (Video). YouTube. {{cite AV media}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • Swartz, Aaron (Speaker) (May 21, 2012). Keynote address at Freedom To Connect 2012: How we stopped SOPA (Video). D.C.: YouTube.
  • Swartz, Aaron (February 2013) [1st drft. 2009]. Aaron Swartz’s A programmable Web: An unfinished work (PDF). S.F.: Morgan & Claypool. ISBN 978-1-62705-169-9. To Dan Connolly, who not only created the Web but found time to teach it to me. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

Notes

^ Swartz is regularly attributed as a co-founder of Reddit, but the title is the source of controversy. After the merger of Infogami and Reddit, Swartz was an equal owner of parent company Not a Bug, Inc. along with Reddit co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. Swartz was referred to as "co-founder" in the press, by investor/advisor Paul Graham (who recommended the merger), and in early comments by Ohanian.[175] By mid-2011, when Wired wrote a piece on Swartz's court case, Ohanian said he preferred to describe Swartz as a 'co-owner' rather than co-founder.[36] Wired used the latter title, commenting: "For lack of an accurate term for someone who joins a company early—but after launch—and who gets paid largely in equity, we use the term co-founder in this story."[36]
^ The MIT network administration office told MIT police that "approximately 70 gigabytes of data had been downloaded, 98% of which was from JSTOR."[14] The first federal indictment alleged "approximately 4.8 million articles", "1.7 million" of which "were made available by independent publishers for purchase through JSTOR's Publisher Sales Service."[17] The subsequent DOJ press release alleged "over four million articles". The superseding indictment removed the estimates and instead characterized the amount as "a major portion of the total archive in which JSTOR had invested."[17]

References

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