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Aaron Swartz

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For the actor, see Aaron Schwartz.

e attorney, Lawrence Lessig, who called Swartz's prosecution an abuse of proportionality, saying further

For remember, we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House—and where even those brought to 'justice' never even have to admit any wrongdoing, let alone be labeled felons. In that world, the question this government needs to answer is why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a felon.[1]

Blogger 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."[2]

Swartz's funeral services were held on January 15, 2013, at Central Avenue Synagogue in Highland Park, Illinois. Tim Berners-Lee, a co-creator of the World Wide Web and a role-model Swartz held in high esteem,[citation needed] delivered a eulogy at the service.[3][4] Memorial events were scheduled for January 18 in Cambridge, Massachusetts,[5] January 19 in New York City,[6] and January 24 in San Francisco.[7]

External videos
video icon Aaron Swartz Memorial in Full at The Great Hall of Cooper Union

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 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.[8][9][10]

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[11]

On January 12, Swartz's family and partner issued a statement, criticizing the prosecutors and MIT.[11]

Swartz's father, an intellectual property consultant to MIT's computer lab, was reportedly "outraged by the university's handling of the matter, believing that it deviated from MIT's usual procedures."[12] Speaking at his son's funeral, Robert Swartz said: "[Aaron] was killed by the government, and MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."[13]

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."[14] This comment triggered a backlash of criticisms including one from Charlie Pierce, political blogger for Esquire, “And 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.”[15]

In the press

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".[16] Other news outlets have reported similarly.[17][18][19]

Kelly Caine, a professor at Clemson University who studies people's attitudes toward technology and privacy, said Swartz "was doing this not to hurt anybody, not for personal gain, but because he believed that information should be free and open, and he felt it would help a lot of people."[12]

Chris Soghoian, a technologist and policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "Existing laws don't recognise the distinction between two types of computer crimes: malicious crimes committed for profit, such as the large-scale theft of bank data or corporate secrets; and cases where hackers break into systems to prove their skillfulness or spread information that they think should be available to the public."[12]

Technology writer Verena Dobnik said, "His 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."[12]

MSNBC contributor Chris Hayes criticized the prosecutors, saying "at the time of his death Aaron was being prosecuted by the federal government and threatened with up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines for the crime of—and I’m not exaggerating here—downloading too many free articles from the online database of scholarly work JSTOR."[20]

David Aaronovitch, writing in The Times, took a different approach. He noted that JSTOR was the product of philanthropy—a way of providing public access to academic journals while affording compensation to academic publishers for their intellectual property rights. He decried the "reckless" behavior of a generation which "cannot be persuaded—yet—that copyright matters" and was "unaware of its own power".[21]

Open Access

In 2002, Swartz stated that when he died he wanted all the contents of his hard drives made publicly available.[22]

A long-time supporter of Open Access, Swartz once wrote

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. [23]

Supporters of Swartz responded to news of his death with an effort called #pdftribute[24] to promote Open Access.[25][26] Scholars posted links to their works, accompanied by the hashtag #PDFtribute.[27]

MIT hacks

Two days after Swartz’s death, members of Anonymous hacked two websites on the MIT domain, replacing them with tributes to Swartz that called on members of the internet community to use Aaron’s death as a rallying moment for the open access movement. The banner included a list of demands for improvements in the US copyright system as well as an essay attributed to Aaron, entitled Guerilla Open Access Manifesto.[28][29] On the night of January 18–19, 2013, MIT’s e-mail system was taken out of action for ten hours.[30]

On January 22, e-mail sent to MIT was redirected by hackers Aush0k and TibitXimer to the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology. All other traffic to MIT was redirected to a computer at Harvard University that was publishing a statement headed “R.I.P Aaron Swartz”;[31] it contained text from a 2009 posting by Swartz[32] accompanied by a chiptunes version of The Star Spangled Banner. MIT regained control after about seven hours.[33]

MIT investigation

MIT maintains an "open campus" policy along with a "open computer network".[34][35] In the wake of Swartz's death, MIT appointed professor Hal Abelson to lead an internal investigation of the school's choices and role in the prosecution.[36]

Petition to the White House

See also: Carmen Ortiz

After Swartz's death, more than 45,000 people signed an online petition[37] to the White House calling for the removal of U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, "for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz."[38]

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. Representative Lofgren called it "pretty outrageous."[39] She then 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.[40] 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."[41] Polis called the charges against Swartz "ridiculous and trumped up," while referring to Swartz as a "martyr."[39] Issa, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, announced that he is investigating the Justice Department's actions in prosecuting Swartz's case.[39] In a statement to the Huffington Post, Issa praised Swartz’s work toward “open government and free access to the people.” Issa's investigation has garnered some bipartisan support.[42]

As in the House, concerns in the Senate have been raised from members of both parties. Massachusetts Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren issued a statement saying "Aaron made remarkable contributions to our world, and his advocacy for Internet freedom, social justice, and Wall Street reform demonstrated both the power of his ideas and the depth of his commitment. The world is a poorer place without Aaron."[42] Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder,[43] questioned, “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?”[44][45][46]

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 (2012). Building Progammable Web Sites (Synthesis Lectures on Web Engineering). Morgan & Claypool. ISBN 1598299204. (co-authored with Jim Hendler: please repair citation template)

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.[47] 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.[48] 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."[48]
^ The MIT network administration office told MIT police that "approximately 70 gigabytes of data had been downloaded, 98% of which was from JSTOR."[49] 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."[50] 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."[50]

References

  1. ^ Lessig, Lawrence (January 12, 2013). "Prosecutor as bully". Retrieved January 12, 2013.
  2. ^ Doctorow, Cory (January 12, 2013), "RIP, Aaron Swartz", Boing Boing
  3. ^ Gallardo, Michelle (Janurary 15, 2013). "Aaron Swartz, Reddit co-founder, remembered at funeral". ABC News. Retrieved January 15, 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ Thomas, Owen (January 12, 2013). "Family of Aaron Swartz Blames MIT, Prosecutors For His Death". Business Insider. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
  5. ^ "Aaron Swartz Memorial Ice Cream Social Hour – Free Software Foundation – working together for free software". Fsf.org. Retrieved January 18, 2013.
  6. ^ "Aaron Swartz Tribute: Hundreds Honor Information Activist". Huffingtonpost.com. January 19, 2013. Retrieved January 20, 2013.
  7. ^ "Memorial for Aaron Swartz | Internet Archive Blogs". Blog.archive.org. Retrieved January 18, 2013.
  8. ^ [1]
  9. ^ [2]
  10. ^ [3]
  11. ^ a b "Remember Aaron Swartz". Tumblr. Archived from the original on January 13, 2013. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
  12. ^ a b c d Dobnik, Verena. "Reddit co-founder dies weeks before trial". NZ: Stuff. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
  13. ^ Muskal, Michael (January 15, 2013). "Aaron Swartz was 'killed by the government,' father tells mourners". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  14. ^ Murphey, Shelly, US attorney’s husband stirs Twitter storm on Swartz case, The Boston Globe, January 16, 2013.. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
  15. ^ Pierce, Charles P. (January 17, 2013). "Still More About The Death Of Aaron Swartz", Esquire. Retrieved January 18, 2013.
  16. ^ "Tom Dolan, Husband of Aaron Swartz's Prosecutor", Huffington Post, 2013‐1‐15, retrieved January 16, 2013 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  17. ^ McCullagh, Declan, Prosecutor in Aaron Swartz 'hacking' case comes under fire, CNet, January 15, 2013.. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
  18. ^ Stout, Matt, Ortiz: We never intended full penalty for Swartz, The Boston Herald, January 17, 2013.. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
  19. ^ Barnes, James, Hacker's suicide linked to 'overzealous' prosecutors, The Global Legal Post, 15 January 2013.. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
  20. ^ "The brilliant mind, righteous heart of Aaron Swartz will be missed". MSNBC. January 13, 2013 10h19. Retrieved 2013-01-14. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  21. ^ Aaronovitch, David (January 17, 2013). "Even if everything's free, there can be a price". The Times. p. 23. Retrieved January 20, 2013.
  22. ^ "Aaron Swartz". Economist.com. January 19, 2013. Retrieved January 20, 2013.
  23. ^ "PDF Tribute to Aaron Swartz Attracts Roughly 1,500 Links To Copyright-Protected Research". TechCrunch. January 13, 2013. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  24. ^ "PDF Tribute". Retrieved January 15, 2013.
  25. ^ Cutler, Kim-Mai. "PDF Tribute to Aaron Swartz Attracts Roughly 1,500 Links To Copyright-Protected Research". TechCrunch. Retrieved January 14, 2013.
  26. ^ Musil, Steven. "Researchers honor Swartz's memory with PDF protest". CNet News. Retrieved January 14, 2013.
  27. ^ Staff, Slate V (January 14, 2013). "Aaron Swartz death: #pdftribute hashtag aggregates copyrighted articles released online in tribute to internet activist". Slate. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  28. ^ "Anonymous hacks MIT Web sites to post Aaron Swartz tribute, call to arms". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 13, 2013.
  29. ^ Joanna Kao; Ethan A. Solomon (January 16, 2013). "Anonymous hacks MIT". The Tech. Retrieved January 21, 2013.
  30. ^ Kao, Joanna (January 19, 2013). "MIT email was down for 10 hours last night, Mystery Hunt temporarily affected". Tech Blogs. MIT. A mail loop caused by a series of malformed email messages led to an exhaustion of system resources ….
  31. ^ Aush0k (January 22, 2013). "R.I.P Aaron Swartz". Harvard University. Archived from the original on January 23, 2013. hacked by aush0k and tibitximer {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  32. ^ Swartz, Aaron (August 2, 2009). "Life in a world of pervasive immorality: The ethics of being alive". Raw Thought: Aaron Swartz’s Weblog. Is there sense in following [the] rules or are they just another example of the world's pervasive immorality?
  33. ^ Kao, Joanna (January 23, 2013). "MIT DNS hacked; traffic redirected". The Tech. MIT. p. 1. From 11:58 a.m. to 1:05 p.m., MIT's DNS was redirected … to CloudFlare, where the hackers had configured servers to return a Harvard IP address …. By 7:15 p.m., CloudFlare removed the 'mail.mit.edu' record, which referred to the machine … at KAIST.
  34. ^ [4]
  35. ^ [5]
  36. ^ Smith, Gerry (January 15, 2013). "Aaron Swartz Case 'Snowballed Out of MIT's Hands,' Source Says". Huffington Post. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  37. ^ "Petition: "Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz."". Wh.gov. January 12, 2013. Retrieved January 20, 2013.
  38. ^ Smith, Gerry (January 13, 2013). "Were The Charges Against Internet Activist Aaron Swartz Too Severe?". Huffington Post.
  39. ^ a b c Sasso, Brendan. "Lawmakers slam DOJ prosecution of Swartz as 'ridiculous, absurd'". Hillicon Valley. The hill. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  40. ^ Musil, Steven (November 30, 2011). "New 'Aaron's Law' aims to alter controversial computer fraud law". Internet & Media News. CNET. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  41. ^ Greenberg, Andrew ‘Andy’ (April 18, 2012). "'Aaron's Law' Suggests Reforms To Computer Fraud Act (But Not Enough To Have Protected Aaron Swartz)". Forbes. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  42. ^ a b "Darrell Issa Probing Prosecution Of Aaron Swartz, Internet Pioneer Who Killed Himself". Huffingtonpost.com. January 15, 2013. Retrieved January 20, 2013.
  43. ^ http://www.cornyn.senate.gov/public/?a=Files.Serve&File_id=74c0afb3-1bc2-49f5-9150-0a8f004ef438 (pdf)
  44. ^ Pearce, Matt (January 18, 2013). "Aaron Swartz suicide has U.S. lawmakers scrutinizing prosecutors". latimes.com. Retrieved January 20, 2013.
  45. ^ "John Cornyn Criticizes Eric Holder Over Aaron Swartz's Death". Huffingtonpost.com. January 18, 2013. Retrieved January 20, 2013.
  46. ^ "Top senator scolds Holder over Reddit founder's suicide". Washington Times. January 18, 2013. Retrieved January 20, 2013.
  47. ^ "...there was a third cofounder of Reddit, who was...", Today I learned..., Reddit
  48. ^ a b Singel, Ryan (July 19, 2011). "Feds Charge Activist as Hacker for Downloading Millions of Academic Articles". Wired. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
  49. ^ Cite error: The named reference IncidentReport was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  50. ^ a b "USA v. Swartz, 1:11-cr-10260, No. 2 (D.Mass. Jul. 14, 2011)" (PDF). MIT. July 14, 2011. Retrieved January 23, 2013. Superseded by "USA v. Swartz, 1:11-cr-10260, No. 53 (D.Mass. Sep. 12, 2012)". Docketalarm.com. September 12, 2012. Retrieved January 23, 2013.

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