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marmar

(76,976 posts)
Thu Jan 23, 2014, 10:58 AM Jan 2014

Amy Goodman: Aaron Swartz: The Life We Lost and the Day We Fight Back


from truthdig:


Aaron Swartz: The Life We Lost and the Day We Fight Back

Posted on Jan 22, 2014
By Amy Goodman


PARK CITY, Utah—A year after Internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz’s suicide at the age of 26, a film about this remarkable young man has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film, titled “The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz,” directed by Brian Knappenberger, follows the sadly short arc of Aaron’s life. He committed suicide while under the crushing weight of unbending, zealous federal prosecutors, who had Aaron snatched off the street near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, accusing him of computer crimes.

At the age of 14, Aaron helped develop RSS, “Really Simple Syndication,” which changed how people get online content. He co-founded one of the Internet’s most popular websites, Reddit. In the year before his death, he helped defeat a notorious bill before Congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would have granted corporations sweeping powers of censorship over the Internet. Now, another fight for the freedom of the Internet has begun. This one will have to be waged without Aaron.

A coalition of Internet activists, technologists and policy experts are joining together on Feb. 11 for “The Day We Fight Back.” As they say on their website, reflecting on the victory against SOPA, “Today we face a different threat, one that undermines the Internet, and the notion that any of us live in a genuinely free society: mass surveillance. If Aaron were alive, he’d be on the front lines, fighting against a world in which governments observe, collect, and analyze our every digital action.” Before Edward Snowden made “NSA” and “mass surveillance” household terms, Aaron was speaking out against the National Security Agency’s bulk collection programs. His brother, Noah Swartz, told me, “I think Aaron’s message that we can all take with us is that ... we can see the change we want to see in the world by participating, rather than feeling helpless and useless.”

The legal case that was overwhelming Aaron was brought by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen P. Heymann and U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz. When Aaron was a fellow at Harvard University, he went to nearby MIT, which allowed members of the public to use its computer network, and to access resources on it, including the database of digitized academic research articles maintained by the nonprofit company JSTOR. He wrote a computer program that allowed a laptop to automatically download articles, and proceeded to download millions of them. JSTOR noticed and contacted MIT, and MIT in turn contacted the police. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/aaron_swartz_the_life_we_lost_and_the_day_we_fight_back_20140122



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Amy Goodman: Aaron Swartz: The Life We Lost and the Day We Fight Back (Original Post) marmar Jan 2014 OP
Sometimes you kick, sometimes you get kicked...... marmar Jan 2014 #1
deserving kick for Amy BelgianMadCow Jan 2014 #2
K&R for Aaron and 2/11/2014. TY for this thread. Melinda Jan 2014 #3
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