Fighting for Freedom

I have the great privilege to be a ThoughtWorker, working alongside some truly creative and talented people. People like Aaron Swartz.

Aaron was an amazing young man. At the age of 14 he co-authored the RSS format that so many of us use to access the information that's important to us. He was also instrumental in the development of Reddit, Jottit and the Creative Commons, and founded Demand Progress.

Aaron was also a freedom fighter. He fought not with guns and knives, but with his remarkable intellect and his many talents. He fought to make the information that's on the internet freely available to all people.

He came to the attention of the FBI in 2009 when he paid PACER for the right to download US Court Documents. The documents stored in PACER are public domain documents. PACER charges significant amounts of money to make the documents searchable and available for download by the public. Aaron downloaded massive quantities of documents and made them freely available to all. At that stage the FBI monitored Aaron but did not press charges as the documents were in the public domain.

In January 2012 Aaron helped defeat the SOPA act, a law intended to protect copyright, that would have led to unprecedented internet censorship.

The US Attorney's office received their opportunity to silence Aaron when in late 2010 he used MIT's computer network to download over 4 million articles from JSTOR. The US Attorney claims he 'stole' the articles, although as a Harvard researcher he was allowed free access to them. Aaron did no permanent damage to JSTOR or the MIT computer network. He made no money from the download, nor did he harm any person. JSTOR was not interested in pressing charges against him, yet by September 2012 the US Attorney had charged him with 13 felony counts. He was facing up to 35 years in prison, and up to $1,000,000 in fines. He was facing monumental legal fees just to defend himself.  There's an excellent summary of the whole story in the Huffington Post.

On Friday January 11, after two years of harassment by federal prosecutors, Aaron gave up the fight by taking his own life.

Even if you're not concerned about what happened to Aaron, you should be concerned about this: every time you check a box that says "terms and conditions", you are making yourself vulnerable to charges of Computer Fraud. If the US government wants to keep you quiet, they have only to find some subparagraph in one of the many terms and conditions you have signed that you may have violated. Then they can bring charges against you that may land you in prison for most of the rest of your life.

It's time for all of us to stand up and fight. Fight with your words and with your own special talents.

US citizens, fight with your votes. Fight for the values that made your country a great nation. Fight for justice, fight for democracy, but most of all, fight for freedom!