At its core the fundamental concepts covered in “The Internet’s Own Boy” seem no more complicated than that of “closed” versus “open”, with everything else deriving from this dichotomy. Swartz seemed unambiguous on which side of the dichotomy he would or could take right from the start, and his work on the likes of RSS, XML and creative commons demonstrates his dedication to an uncomplicated view of an “open” web. In his words, “I want to make the world a better place” (Brian Knappenberger, 2014), but who defines what is better? As exemplified in his idea of the “open library”, bringing “public access to the public domain” and rejection of the more capitalist-focused world of the tech start-up, Swartz seemed to view the world through the singular and pure prism of the open web as envisioned by the likes of Berners-Lee.
Although it exists in its own sphere, the web does not exist in a vacuum. It exists within legal and cultural realms, as noted by Lessig, a space where the law treats content as “owned” or not “owned” and where “the owned chases out the unowned” (Lessig, 2002, p. 178).
In the documentary Tim O’Reilly mentions that “laws are the operating system of democracy but you have to pay to see it”, and this feeds into the mass automated parallel downloading from the PACER legal archive system. Again this could possibly be distilled into the “open” versus “closed” dichotomy, where Swartz was merely using a genuine pilot access programme to its technical limits in an effort to ensure something that was “closed” could be made “open” with open technology as the conduit. After the PACER incident, should Swartz have realised the inherent tension between these spheres before going ahead with the likes of the progressive change committee? It has been argued that the act was “harmless” (Wu, n.d.) but if it interfered with the operating system of democracy, could it really be truly harmless? Is this interdiction of “the private theft of public culture” really the “moral imperative”?
Trying to get through the rights and wrongs of the case taken by US authorities against Swartz is most likely a fool’s errand because it is one of human versus institution, and Lessig describes the copyright laws that may well have been infringed as something akin to a “chimera” when he analyses copyright on music and specifically digital music (Lessig, 2005). It is the collision of old world and new, the “physical” and “code” layers.
The most important lesson we can take from this is the victory that the people, in their most literal sense, won against the US Congress SOPA proposal. Described in the documentary as using a sledgehammer when a scalpel was needed, it demonstrated again the tension between old world and new, closed versus open, but retrograde change was arrested through lawful yet powerful protest from the collective.
The JSTOR case was not played out in court. At one point in the documentary Eliot Peters, Swartz’s lawyer, indicates his belief that they could have won the case (Fuchs, n.d.), perhaps creating or even just contributing to legal precedent that may have affected similar cases at the time. Swartz’s death was a tragic personal loss for many but the fact his case was never tested was unfortunate collateral damage.
Bibliography
Brian Knappenberger, 2014. The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz.
Fuchs, E., n.d. Aaron Swartz’s Lawyer Explains Why He Would Have Won The Data Theft Case [WWW Document]. Business Insider. URL https://www.businessinsider.com/aaron-swartzs-lawyer-says-he-would-have-won-2013-1 (accessed 11.11.20).
Lessig, L., 2005. Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. Penguin Books, New York ; London.
Lessig, L., 2002. The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World, 1st Vintage Books ed. ed. Vintage Books, New York.
Wu, T., n.d. How the Legal System Failed Aaron Swartz—And Us [WWW Document]. The New Yorker. URL https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-legal-system-failed-aaron-swartzand-us (accessed 11.11.20).
