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Unjust laws exist;

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shall we be content to obey them,

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or shall we endeavor to amend them,
and obey them until we have succeeded,

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or shall we transgress them at once?

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Henry David Thoreau

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The co-founder of the social news and entertainment website "reddit" has been found dead

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He surely was a prodigy althought he never kind of thought of himself like that

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He was totally unexcited about studing businesses and making money

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There's a profound sense of loss tonight in Highland Park Aaron Swartz's hometown

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as loved ones say goodbye to one of the Internet's brightest lights

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...Open Access and computer activits are mourning his loss

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...an astonishing intellect. You talk to people who knew him

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...he was killed by the government and MIT betrayed all of its basic principles

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...they wanted to make an example out of it, ok?

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Governments have an insatiable desire to control

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...he was potentially facing 35 years in prison and 1 million dollars fine

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Raising questions of prosecutorial zeal and I would say even miscondut.

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Have you looked into that particular matter and reached any conclusions?

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Growing up, you know, I slowly had this process of realising

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that all the things around me, that people had told me

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were just the natural way things were, the way things always would be.

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They weren't natural at all. They were things that could be changed

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and they were thing that more importantly were wrong and should change.

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And once I realised that, there was really kind of no going back

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The Internet's Own Boy

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Welcome to story reading time

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The name of the book is 'Paddington at the fair'

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Well, he was born in Highland Park and grew up here

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Aaron came from a family of three brothers all extraordinarly bright

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The box is flipping over!

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So, we were all, you know, not the best behaved children

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you know, three boys running around all the time, causing trouble

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Mom: No, no, no... Aaron!?
Aaron: What?

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But, I've come to the realization: Aaron learned how to learn at a very young age

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Toc, toc!?

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Who's here?

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Aaron!

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Aaron who?

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Aaron funny man

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He knew what he wanted, he always wanted to do it.

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He always accomplished what he wanted.

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His curiosity was endless

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Here's the little picture of a [?] [?]

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One day he said to Susan:

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"Let's do three family entertainment[?] downtown in the park"

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Three family entertainment[?] downtown in the park

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He was three at the time

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She said: "What are you talking about?"

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He said: "Look it says here on on the refrigerator"

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"Three family entertainment[?] downtown in the park"

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She was flurred and astonished that he could read

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It's called: "My family seder"

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The seder night is different from all other nights

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I remember once we were are the University of Chicago library

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I pulled a book off the shelf that was like from 1900

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and showed to him, I said: "You know this is [?] an extraordinary place"

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We all were curious children but Aaron really liked learning and really liked teaching

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Today we're going to read the ABC backwards z, y, x, w, ...

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I remember he came home from his first algebra class

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he was like: "Noah, let me teach you algebra!"

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and I'm like: "What is algebra?"

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and he was always like that

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Now I press button, click button

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there, now he's got that[?], now it's a pink

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When he was at 2 or 3 three years old an Bob introduced him to computers

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then he just took off like crazy on them

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[?]

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We all had computers, but Aaron really talked to them, really talked to the Internet

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Looking at the computer?

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No, how [?]

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He started programming from a really young age.

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I remember the first program that I wrote with him was in basic

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and  was a Star Wars trivia game

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He sat down with me in the basement were the computer was

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for hours programming this game

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The problem that I kept having with him is that
there was nothing that I wanted done

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and to him there was always something to do

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always something that programming could solve

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The way that Aaron always thought is that programming is magic

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you can accomplish this things that normal humans can't

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Aaron made an ATM using like a Macintosh and like a cardboard box

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One year for Halloween I didn't know what I wanted to be

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and he thought would be really really cool if I dressed up

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like his new favourite computer which at the time was the original iMac

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and he hated dressing up for Hallowen

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but he loved convincing other people to dress like other things he wanted to see

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[?]
Guys, come on, look at the camera

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He made this website called "The Info"

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where people could just fill in information

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Like, I'm sure someone out there knows all about gold, gold leafing[?].

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Why aren't they writing about that on this website?

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And then other people can come at a later point and read that information

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and edit the information if they thought that it was bad

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Not too dissimilar from Wikipedia, all right?

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This is before Wikipedia begun

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and this is developed by a 12 year old

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in his room, by himself

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running on this tiny server using ancient technology

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One of the teacher's response like:

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"This is a terrible idea, you can't just let anyone

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author the dictionary, like author the encyclopedia"

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"For a whole reason we have scholars to write these book for us"

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"How did you ever had such a terrible idea"

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Me and my other brother would be like: "Yeah, you know"

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"Wikipedia is cool but we had that in our house, like 5 years ago"

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Aaron's website "The Info.org" wins a school competition

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hosted by the Cambridge based web design firm ArsDigita

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We all went to Cambridge when he won the ArsDigita Prize

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and, you know, we had no clue of what Aaron was doing

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it was obvious that the pirze was really important

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Aaron soon became involved with on-line programming communities

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than in the process of shaping a new tool for the Web

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He concept is like[?]: "Ben, there's a really awesome thing that I'm working on"

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"you need to hear about it"

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I'm like: "Yeah, what is it?"

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He says: "Is this thing called RSS"

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And he explains me what RSS is

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and I like: "Why is that useful? Aaron, is a site using it? Why would I want to use it?"

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There was this mailing list for people who were working on RSS

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and XML more generally and there was a person on it named Aaron Swartz

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who was combatitive but very smart and who had lots of good ideas

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and he did never come to the face to face meetings and they said:

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"You know, when are you gonna come to one of those face to face meetings?"

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He said: "You know, I don't think my mom would let me, you know I just turned 14"

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So the first reaction was, well you know,

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this person this colleague we've been working with all year

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was 13 years old when we were working with him and is only 14 now

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and their second reaction was: "Christ, we really want to meet him!"

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"You know that's extraordinary"

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Was part of the community that drafted RSS

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What he was doing was to help building the plumbing for modern hypertext

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and the piece he was working on, RSS

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was a tool that you can use to get summaries

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of things that are going on on other web pages

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Commonly you would use this for a blog

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You might have 10 or 20 people's blog you wanna read

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you use the RSS feeds, these summaries of what's going on on those other pages

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to create a unified list of all the stuff that's going on

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Aaron was really young but he understood the technology

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and he saw that was imperfect and looked for ways to help make it better

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So his mom bundles[?] him on a plane in Chicago, we pick him up in San Francisco

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we introduced him to interesting people to argue with

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and we marvelled at his horrific eating habits

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he only eat white food, only like, you know, steamed rice

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and not white rice, beacause that was not sufficiently white,

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and white bread, and so on

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and you kind of marvel at the quality of the debate

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emerging from what appeared to be a small boy's mouth

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and you think, this is a kid, is really going to go somewhere if he doesn't die of scroovy[?]

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Aaron you're up

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I think the difference is that now you can't make companies like that per-se

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you can't have companies that just like

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"let's sell dog food over the Internet, dog food over the cellphones"

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but there still lot of innovation going on,

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I think, if you don't see the innovation maybe your head is in the sand

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He takes on this alpha-male personality where he's sort of like

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"I'm smarter than you, and because I'm smarter than you

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I'm better than you, and I can tell you what to do"

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It's an extension of him being like a kind of torpe[?]

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So you aggregate all these computers together and now they're solving big problems

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like searching for aliens or trying to cure cancer

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First I met him on IRC, on Internet Relay Chat, he didn't just write code

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he also got people excited about solving problems, he was a connector

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the free culture movement, which had lot of his energy

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I think Aaron was trying to make the world work.
He was trying to fix it

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He had a very kind of strong personality,

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that definetly ruffled[?] feathers at times

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and wasn't necessarily the case that he was always confortable in the world

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and the world wasn't confortable with him

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Aaron got into high school, and was really just sick of school

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he didn't like it, he didn't like any of the classes he had been taught

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he didn't like the teachers

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Aaron really knew how to get information

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He was like, I don't need to go to these teachers to know how to do geometry

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I can just read the geometry book

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and I don't need to go to the teacher to learn their version of American history

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I have like three historical compilations here like I can just read them

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and I'm not interested in that, I'm interested in the Web

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I was very frustrated with school

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I thought, you know, the teachers didn't know what they were talking about
[position]

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they were very domineering and controlling, homework was kind of a sham[?]

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I was just like, you know, all the way are penstick[?] together

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and force them to do busy work

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and, you know, I started reading books about the history of education

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and how this educational system was developed

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and, you know, alternative ways to do it[?] people could actually learn things

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instead of just regurgitating facts that the teachers told them

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and that kind of led me down this path of questioning things

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and once I questioned the school I was in, I questioned the society that built the school

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I questioned the businesses that the schools were training people for

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I questioned the government that, you know, setup this whole structure

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One of the themes he was more passionate about was copyright,

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especially in those early days

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Copyright has always been something overburden on publishing industry and on readers

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but it wasn't an excessive burden

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it was a reasonable institution to have in place
to make sure that people got paid

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What Aaron generation experienced was the collision

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between this antique copyright system

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and this amazing new thing we were trying to build, the Internet and the Web

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These things collided and what we got was chaos

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He then met Harward law professot Lawrence Lessig

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who was then challenging copyright law in the supreme court

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A young Aaron Swartz flew to Washington to listen to the supreme court hearings

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I'm Aaron Swartz and I'm here to listen to the Eldred ...to see the Eldred argument

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Why did you fly out here from Chicago and come all this way to see the Eldred argument?

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That's a more difficult question

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I don't know, I'm very excited to see the supreme court

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especially in such a prestigious case as this one

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Lessig was also moving forward with a new way to define copyright on the Internet

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it was called Creative Commons

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So the simple idea of Creative Commons is to give people, creators

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a simple way to mark their creativity

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with the freedoms they intended to carry

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So copyright is about "all rights reserved"

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then this is a kind of "some rights reserved" bottle[?]

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It's I want a simple way to say to you "here's what you can do with my work"

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even if there are other things which you need to get my permission before you could do

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And Aaron's role was the computer part

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like how do you architect the licenses

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so that would be simple and understandable and expressed in way that machines could process it

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And people are like, why do you have this fifteen year old kid

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writing the specifications of creative commons?

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like, don't you think that's a huge mistake?

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and larry is like: "the biggest mistake that we would have is not listening to this kid"

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embarrassing[?] is not even tall enough to get over the podium

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and it wasn't one of those movable podiums

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so this embarrassing thing that once he put his screen up nobody could see his face

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When we come to our website here

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and we've got few licences

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it gives you this list of options explaining what it means

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and we thought three set of questions

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Do you want to require attribution?

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Do you want to allow commercial uses of your work?

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Do you want to allow modifications of your work?

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I was floored

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just completely fiberglassed that these adults regarded him as an adult

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Aaron stood up there in front an whole audience full of people

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and just started talking about the platform that he created for Creative Commons

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And they where all listening to him, just

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I was sitting AT the back thinking:
"he's just a kid, why're listening to him?"

241
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but they did

242
00:15:40,100 --> 00:15:42,600
well I don't think I comprehended it fully

243
00:15:42,800 --> 00:15:47,200
Though critics have said that it does little to ensure artists get payed for their work

244
00:15:47,400 --> 00:15:50,200
the success of Creative Commons has been enourmous

245
00:15:50,400 --> 00:15:56,900
Currently on the website flickr alone over 200 million people use some form of Creative Commons license

246
00:15:57,000 --> 00:16:01,600
He contributed through his technical abilities

247
00:16:01,800 --> 00:16:06,800
and yet it was not simply a technical matter to him

248
00:16:07,800 --> 00:16:10,800
Aaron Often wrote candidly in his personal blog

249
00:16:11,500 --> 00:16:15,800
I think deeply about things and I want others to do likewise.

250
00:16:16,700 --> 00:16:21,000
I work for ideas and learn from people. I don’t like excluding people.

251
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I’m a perfectionist, but I won’t let that get in the way of publication.

252
00:16:25,400 --> 00:16:31,500
Except for education and entertainment, I’m not going to waste my time on things that won’t have impact.

253
00:16:31,600 --> 00:16:36,000
I try to be friends with everyone, but I hate it when you don’t take me seriously.

254
00:16:36,700 --> 00:16:42,000
I don’t hold grudges (it’s not productive) but I learn from my experience.

255
00:16:42,400 --> 00:16:46,200
I want to make the world a better place.

256
00:16:50,900 --> 00:16:55,900
In 2004 Swartz leaves Highland Park and enrolls in Stanford University

257
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He had also diverticolite[?] which was very troubling

258
00:17:00,200 --> 00:17:02,100
and we were concerned about him taking his medications.

259
00:17:03,200 --> 00:17:06,400
He got hospitalized and he would take this cocktail pills everyday

260
00:17:06,600 --> 00:17:10,400
and one of these pills was a steroid which dauted his growth and

261
00:17:10,900 --> 00:17:13,800
made him feel different from any of the other students

262
00:17:14,200 --> 00:17:17,000
Aaron, I think, shows up at Stanford ready to scholarship

263
00:17:17,200 --> 00:17:22,800
and find himself effectively in a baby sitting program for overachieving high school-ers

264
00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:31,500
who in four years meant to become captain of industry and one percent-ers

265
00:17:31,700 --> 00:17:35,800
and I think it just made him banana

266
00:17:36,000 --> 00:17:39,100
In 2005 after only one year of college

267
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Swartz was offered a spot at a new startup incubation firm

268
00:17:42,512 --> 00:17:46,330
called Y Combinator led by Paul Graham

269
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He's like, "hey, I have this idea for a web site"

270
00:17:49,472 --> 00:17:52,076
and Paul Graham likes him enough and

271
00:17:52,141 --> 00:17:56,374
so yeah, sure, so Aaron drops out of school to this apartment

272
00:17:56,447 --> 00:17:59,100
So this used to be Aaron apartment when he lived here

273
00:17:59,152 --> 00:18:05,363
my big memories of my father telling me how difficult it was to get a lease

274
00:18:05,901 --> 00:18:08,600
cause Aaron had no credit and dropped out of college

275
00:18:08,701 --> 00:18:10,800
Aaron lived in what[?] called the living room

276
00:18:10,854 --> 00:18:14,200
and some of the posters here are left over from when Aaron lived here

277
00:18:14,556 --> 00:18:19,000
and the library, there were[?] more books then, but a lot of them are Aaron's

278
00:18:21,700 --> 00:18:27,600
Aaron YCombinator site is called "infogami" a tool to build websites

279
00:18:27,676 --> 00:18:29,974
but infogami struggles to find users

280
00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:32,178
and Swartz eventually merges his company

281
00:18:32,229 --> 00:18:34,781
with another Y Combinator project in need of help

282
00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:39,900
it was a project led by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian called "reddit"

283
00:18:39,974 --> 00:18:43,880
Now we were starting from almost nothing, no users, no money, no code

284
00:18:43,945 --> 00:18:47,000
and growing day by day into hugely popular website

285
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and it shows no sign of letting up

286
00:18:49,050 --> 00:18:53,800
first we had a thousand users, than 10.000, then 20.000 and on and on, it's just incredible

287
00:18:59,225 --> 00:18:59,407
reddit becomes huge and it's a real sort of geeky corner of the Internet

288
00:19:01,900 --> 00:19:07,300
There's a lot of humor, there's a lot of art

289
00:19:07,500 --> 00:19:11,300
and there's just people who flocked to the site

290
00:19:11,500 --> 00:19:17,700
and made that site the main site they go to every morning to get their news.

291
00:19:17,800 --> 00:19:25,700
"reddit" kind of just borders on chaos at some level, so on the one hand its a place for people to discuss

292
00:19:25,800 --> 00:19:32,000
...news of the day, technology, politics and issues and yet there is a lot of kind of not safe for work

293
00:19:32,100 --> 00:19:40,000
...material, offensive material. Some subreddits were "trolls", "find a welcome home"

294
00:19:40,100 --> 00:19:44,000
and so in that sense reddit has been home to controversies as well

295
00:19:44,100 --> 00:19:46,900
It's kind of sits on the edge of chaos.

296
00:19:47,100 --> 00:19:50,900
reddit catches the attention of the corporate magazine giant "Condé Nast"

297
00:19:50,900 --> 00:19:51,000
...who makes an offer to buy the company.
reddit catches the attention of the corporate magazine giant "Condé Nast"

298
00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:52,600
...who makes an offer to buy the company.

299
00:19:52,800 --> 00:19:53,900
Some large amount of money,

300
00:19:54,100 --> 00:19:57,000
large enough that my dad was getting bugged with questions about like

301
00:19:57,200 --> 00:20:01,500
"How do I... store this money?"

302
00:20:01,600 --> 00:20:04,000
Interviewer: Like a lot of money
Noah: Like a lot of money

303
00:20:04,100 --> 00:20:10,400
Like... probably more than a million dollars. But I don't actually know.

304
00:20:10,400 --> 00:20:12,000
And he's how old then?

305
00:20:12,300 --> 00:20:13,400
Nineteen or twenty?

306
00:20:15,300 --> 00:20:23,700
So he was in this apartment, they are like sat around on [?] couch hacking on "reddit" and...

307
00:20:23,800 --> 00:20:28,500
when they sold reddit they threw giant party and then all flew out to California

308
00:20:28,600 --> 00:20:30,500
the next day they left the keys with me.

309
00:20:33,900 --> 00:20:39,000
It was funny you know, he just sold a startup so we all kind of presumed he was the richest person around...

310
00:20:39,100 --> 00:20:44,300
but he.. ah.. he said "Oh, no. I'll take this tiny little shoe box sized room, that's all I need"

311
00:20:44,400 --> 00:20:46,403
...like he was barely larger than a closet.

312
00:20:46,403 --> 00:20:52,700
The idea of him spending his money on fancy objects just seems so implausible.
...like he was barely larger than a closet.

313
00:20:52,900 --> 00:20:55,007
He explains it like, I like living in apartments,

314
00:20:55,043 --> 00:20:58,100
so I'm not gonna spend lot of money on a new place to live, I'm not gonna buy a mansion

315
00:20:58,338 --> 00:21:00,025
... and I like wearning jeans and t-shirt,

316
00:21:00,040 --> 00:21:04,700
so I am not gonna spend any more money on clothes. So like, it's really no big deal."

317
00:21:04,800 --> 00:21:10,700
What is a big deal to Swartz is how traffic flows on the Internet and what commands our attention?

318
00:21:10,800 --> 00:21:15,000
In the old system of broadcasting you're fundamentally limited by the amount of space in the airwaves.

319
00:21:15,100 --> 00:21:19,700
You know, you could always send out 10 channels over the airwaves for televisions right away

320
00:21:19,800 --> 00:21:23,400
even with cables you have 500 channels. On the Internet everybody can have a channel.

321
00:21:23,500 --> 00:21:28,000
Everyone can get a blog or a myspace page. Everyone has a way of expressing themselves.

322
00:21:28,100 --> 00:21:30,000
And so what you see now is not a question of

323
00:21:30,100 --> 00:21:35,000
"who gets access to the airwaves?". It's the question of "who gets control over the ways you find people?"

324
00:21:35,100 --> 00:21:39,700
You know you started seeing power centralizing in sites like Google, these sort of gate keepers that tell you

325
00:21:39,700 --> 00:21:44,700
where on the Internet where you want to go. The people who provides you, your sources of news information.

326
00:21:44,800 --> 00:21:49,700
So it's not you know, only certain people have a license to speak now everyone has a license to speak

327
00:21:49,700 --> 00:21:51,500
It's a question of "who gets heard?"

328
00:21:54,600 --> 00:21:59,900
After he started working, in San Fransico at Condé Nast, he comes into the office

329
00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:05,700
and they want to give him a computer with all this crap installed on it and say that he can't

330
00:22:05,800 --> 00:22:09,600
install any new things on this computer, which to a developer is outrageous, right?

331
00:22:09,700 --> 00:22:12,000
From the first day he was complaining about all this sutff.

332
00:22:15,800 --> 00:22:21,000
Gray wall, gray desks, gray noise. The first day I showed up here, I simply couldn't take it.

333
00:22:21,100 --> 00:22:25,000
By lunch time I had literally locked myself in a bathroom stall and started crying.

334
00:22:25,100 --> 00:22:29,800
I can't imagine staying sane with someone buzzing in my ear all day, let alone getting

335
00:22:29,900 --> 00:22:34,600
any actual work done. Nobody else seems to get work done either. Everybody's

336
00:22:34,700 --> 00:22:38,000
is always coming into our room to hang out and chat or invite us to play the new

337
00:22:38,100 --> 00:22:40,700
video game system that wired is testing.

338
00:22:42,900 --> 00:22:49,800
He really had different aspirations, that were politically oriented and Silicon valley

339
00:22:49,900 --> 00:22:56,800
just doesn't really quite have that culture that orients technical activity for the purposes

340
00:22:56,900 --> 00:23:00,400
of political goals. Aaron hated working for a corporation. They all hated

341
00:23:00,500 --> 00:23:03,300
working for Condé Nast but Aaron is like the only one who is not going to take it.

342
00:23:03,500 --> 00:23:08,000
And then basically he got himself fired by not showing up to work ever.

343
00:23:11,200 --> 00:23:13,500
It was said to be a messy breakup.

344
00:23:13,700 --> 00:23:17,800
Both Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman declined to be interviewed for this film

345
00:23:19,600 --> 00:23:21,800
He rejected the business world

346
00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:26,300
One of the really important things to remember about

347
00:23:26,500 --> 00:23:30,000
that choice when Aaron decided to kind of leave the startup colture

348
00:23:30,100 --> 00:23:36,300
is that he was also leaving behind the things that made him famous

349
00:23:36,500 --> 00:23:41,600
and well love and, you know, he was at risk of letting down fans

350
00:23:41,800 --> 00:23:44,100
He got to where he was supposed to be going

351
00:23:44,300 --> 00:23:49,700
and had the self-awareness and honorariness to realise

352
00:23:49,900 --> 00:23:53,800
that he had climbed that mountain of shit to pluck a single rose

353
00:23:53,900 --> 00:23:55,700
and discover that it lost its sense of smell

354
00:23:55,900 --> 00:24:00,300
and rather than sit there and insist that it wasn't as bad as it seemed

355
00:24:00,700 --> 00:24:07,400
and he did get the rose in any event, he climbed down again, which is pretty cool!

356
00:24:07,700 --> 00:24:11,800
The way that Aaron always thought is that programming is magic, right

357
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:16,600
You can accomplish this things that normal humans can't by being able to program

358
00:24:16,900 --> 00:24:24,000
so, if you had magical power, would you use them for good, or to make you mounts of cash?

359
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:28,700
Swartz was inspired by one of the visionaries he had met as a child

360
00:24:28,900 --> 00:24:32,200
the man who had invented the World Wide Web: Tim Berners-Lee

361
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:39,200
In the 1990s Berners-Lee was arguably sitting on one of the most lucrative inventions of the 20th century

362
00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:42,800
but instead of profiting from the invention of the World Wide Web

363
00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:45,500
he gave it away for free.

364
00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:49,600
It is the only reason the World Wide Web exists today

365
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:54,800
Aaron is certainly deeply influenced by Tim.

366
00:24:54,900 --> 00:25:01,600
Tim is certainly a very prominent early Internet genious who doesn't in any sense cash out.

367
00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:06,000
Is not at all interested in how he's going figure out how to make a billion dollars

368
00:25:06,100 --> 00:25:07,800
People would have seen "oh, there are money to be made there"

369
00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:11,200
so there would have been lots of little webs, instead of one big one

370
00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:14,600
And one little web and also which doesn't work

371
00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:17,000
because you can't follow links from one to the other.

372
00:25:20,100 --> 00:25:23,700
Now you had to have the critial mass that this thing[?] was in the entire planet

373
00:25:23,900 --> 00:25:27,800
so is not gonna work unless the whole planet can get onboard.

374
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:38,700
I am, you know, feel very strongly that it's not enough to just live in the world as it is

375
00:25:38,900 --> 00:25:43,600
to just, kind of, take what you're given and, you know, follow the things that adults told you to do

376
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:47,500
and, you know, your parents told you to do and that society tells you to do

377
00:25:47,700 --> 00:25:51,300
I think you should always be questioning, you know, I take this very scientific attitude

378
00:25:51,500 --> 00:25:53,000
that everything you've learned is just provisional

379
00:25:53,100 --> 00:25:56,900
that, you know, is always open to recantation or refutation or questioning

380
00:25:57,100 --> 00:25:59,600
And I think the same applies to society

381
00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:02,400
Once I realised that there where real serious problems,

382
00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:05,100
fundamental problems that I could do something to address

383
00:26:05,300 --> 00:26:08,600
I didn't see a way to forget that, I didn't see a why not to

384
00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:16,600
We just started spending a lot of time, just kind of as friends,

385
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:21,500
We would just talk for hours in the night

386
00:26:24,500 --> 00:26:27,400
I definetly should have understood that he was flirting with me

387
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:29,500
I think just to some degree I was like

388
00:26:29,600 --> 00:26:34,500
"This is a terrible idea and impossible and therefore I will pretend it is not happening"

389
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:39,400
As my marriage was breaking down and I was really stuck without anywhere to go

390
00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:42,700
we became roommates and brough my daughter over

391
00:26:44,400 --> 00:26:49,400
We moved in [?] house, it was really peaceful, like, my life had not been peaceful for a while

392
00:26:49,500 --> 00:26:51,000
and really need [?] is

393
00:26:56,200 --> 00:27:03,800
We were extremely close, from the beginning of our romantic relationship

394
00:27:03,900 --> 00:27:07,200
we just, we were constantly in contact

395
00:27:07,700 --> 00:27:12,200
but we were both really difficult people to deal with

396
00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:17,300
In a very Ally McBeal discussion

397
00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:20,900
he confessed we had a theme song and I made him play it for me.

398
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:25,100
It was "Extraordinary Machine" by Fiona Apple

399
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:32,100
I think it was just that sense of, kind of, being a little bit embattled

400
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:38,600
that the song has umm... and it also had like this hopefulness too.

401
00:27:46,900 --> 00:27:52,650
In many ways, Aaron was tremendously optimistic about life.

402
00:27:52,650 --> 00:27:53,000
Even when he didn't feel it.
In many ways, Aaron was tremendously optimistic about life.

403
00:27:53,000 --> 00:27:54,760
Even when he didn't feel it.

404
00:27:54,800 --> 00:27:57,000
He could be tremendously optimistic about life.

405
00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:07,900
Aaron: What are you doing?
Quinn: Flickr has video now

406
00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:15,000
Swartz threw his energy into a string[?] of new projects involving access to public information

407
00:28:15,100 --> 00:28:18,800
including an accountability website called "Watchdog.net"

408
00:28:18,850 --> 00:28:21,000
and the project called the "Open Library"

409
00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:23,600
So the open library project is a website

410
00:28:23,650 --> 00:28:27,500
You can visit openlibrary.org and the idea is to be huge wiki

411
00:28:27,550 --> 00:28:30,120
a kind of website with one page per book.

412
00:28:30,262 --> 00:28:33,800
So for every book ever published you wanna have a webpage about it

413
00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:36,031
which combines all the information from publishers,

414
00:28:36,066 --> 00:28:39,284
from book sellers, from libraries, from readers

415
00:28:39,510 --> 00:28:41,355
under one site and then gives you links

416
00:28:41,391 --> 00:28:44,800
so that you can buy it, you can borrow it or you can browse it.

417
00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:47,373
I love libraries, you know, I'm the kind of person who goes

418
00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:49,800
to a new city and immediately seeks out the library.

419
00:28:49,900 --> 00:28:52,822
That's the dream of the Open library, building this website

420
00:28:52,848 --> 00:28:56,191
where both you can meet from book to book, from person to author

421
00:28:56,220 --> 00:29:00,342
from subject to idea. You go through this vastity[?] of knowledge

422
00:29:00,395 --> 00:29:02,800
that has been embedded and lost in big physical library

423
00:29:02,900 --> 00:29:05,844
that's hard to find, that's not very well accessible online

424
00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:08,786
it's really imporatant because books are our cultural legacy

425
00:29:09,186 --> 00:29:11,426
you know, books are the place where people write things down

426
00:29:12,500 --> 00:29:14,288
and to have that all swallowed up by one corporation

427
00:29:14,893 --> 00:29:16,422
it's kind of scary.

428
00:29:17,071 --> 00:29:20,937
How can you bring public access to the public domain?

429
00:29:20,980 --> 00:29:24,973
To me sound obvious, that you have to have public access to public domain

430
00:29:25,026 --> 00:29:29,610
But in fact is not true. So the public domain should be free to all.

431
00:29:29,870 --> 00:29:31,320
but it is often locked up

432
00:29:31,595 --> 00:29:35,700
there's often guard gates, it is just like having national park

433
00:29:35,800 --> 00:29:39,293
but with a moat around it and gun turrets pointed to out

434
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:43,133
in case somebody might want actually come and enjoy the public domain

435
00:29:43,222 --> 00:29:46,528
One of the things Aaron was particularly interested in was

436
00:29:46,800 --> 00:29:49,506
bringing public access to the public domain

437
00:29:49,568 --> 00:29:52,700
This is one of the things that got him into so much trouble.

438
00:29:56,306 --> 00:30:02,440
I had been trying to get access to federal court records in the United States.

439
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:09,106
what I discovered was a puzzling system called "PACER"

440
00:30:09,240 --> 00:30:13,088
which stands for "Public Access to Court Electronic Records"

441
00:30:13,248 --> 00:30:17,700
I started googling and that's when I read across Carl Malamud

442
00:30:19,035 --> 00:30:25,097
Access to legal materials in the United States is a 10 billion dollar per year business.

443
00:30:25,204 --> 00:30:30,297
PACER is just this incredible abomination of government service

444
00:30:30,300 --> 00:30:35,533
It's 10 cents a page, it's this most brain dead code you have ever seen

445
00:30:35,577 --> 00:30:39,700
you can't search it, you can't bookmark anything, you got to have a credit card

446
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:44,048
and these are public records, it's you know US district courts are very important

447
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:48,600
it's where all our seminal litigations starts, civil right cases,

448
00:30:48,635 --> 00:30:52,700
patent cases, all sort of stuff, in journalism students,

449
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:58,700
citizens and lawyers all need access to PACER and it fights in every step in the way.

450
00:30:58,751 --> 00:31:02,057
People without means can't see the law

451
00:31:02,093 --> 00:31:05,240
as readily as people that have that gold American express card.

452
00:31:05,293 --> 00:31:08,000
 It's a poll[?] tax on access to justice.

453
00:31:08,000 --> 00:31:15,000
You know the Law is the Operating system of our democracy and you have to pay to see it?

454
00:31:15,100 --> 00:31:17,364
Ah. You know that's not a much of democracy.

455
00:31:17,390 --> 00:31:22,164
They make about a 120 million dollars a year on the PACER system

456
00:31:22,182 --> 00:31:26,900
and it doesn't cost anything near that according to their own records

457
00:31:26,930 --> 00:31:28,564
in fact, it's illegal

458
00:31:29,106 --> 00:31:34,164
the "e-Government Act" of 2002 states that the court may charge

459
00:31:34,208 --> 00:31:40,900
only to the extent necessary in order to reimburse the cost of running PACER.

460
00:31:44,820 --> 00:31:47,586
As the founder of public.resource.org

461
00:31:47,666 --> 00:31:50,608
Malamud wanted to protest the PACER charges

462
00:31:50,730 --> 00:31:53,986
He started a programme called "The PACER recycling Project"

463
00:31:54,226 --> 00:31:57,640
where people could upload PACER documents they had already paid for

464
00:31:57,835 --> 00:32:00,120
to a free database so others can use them.

465
00:32:00,253 --> 00:32:03,320
The PACER people were getting a lot of flak from congress

466
00:32:03,360 --> 00:32:06,893
and others about public access and so they put together a system

467
00:32:06,911 --> 00:32:11,900
in 17 libraries accross the country that was free PACER access.

468
00:32:12,000 --> 00:32:16,075
You know, that's 1 library every 22,000 square miles I believe.

469
00:32:16,102 --> 00:32:17,900
So wasn't like really convinient...

470
00:32:18,235 --> 00:32:21,791
I encouraged volunteers to join the so called ThumbDrive corp.

471
00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:26,982
and download document from public access libraries and upload them to the PACER recycling site.

472
00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:29,471
People take a ThumbDrive as one of these libraries

473
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:32,226
and they download a bunch of documents and send them to me

474
00:32:33,222 --> 00:32:35,053
I mean, it was just a joke

475
00:32:35,088 --> 00:32:38,751
In fact when you click on ThumbDrive corps there was a "Widard of Oz"

476
00:32:38,804 --> 00:32:41,900
you know the Munchkin singing video clip came up.

477
00:32:45,488 --> 00:32:48,840
But of-course I get the phone call from Steve Schultze and Aaron

478
00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:52,900
saying [?] we would like to join the Thumbdrive corp.

479
00:32:53,640 --> 00:32:57,666
Around that time, I ran into Aaron at the conference

480
00:32:57,690 --> 00:33:01,746
This is something that really has to be a collaboration between a lot of different people

481
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:03,986
So I approached him and said

482
00:33:04,040 --> 00:33:08,310
"Hey, I am thinking about an intervention on the PACER of problem."

483
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:12,280
Schultze had already developed a program

484
00:33:12,324 --> 00:33:16,111
that could automatically download PACER documents from the trial libraries

485
00:33:16,700 --> 00:33:18,662
Swartz wanted to take a look

486
00:33:18,857 --> 00:33:23,853
So I showed him the code and I didn't know what would come next

487
00:33:23,933 --> 00:33:29,142
but as it turns out, over the course of the next few hours of that conference

488
00:33:29,177 --> 00:33:32,271
he was sitting in the corner improving my code,

489
00:33:32,297 --> 00:33:36,715
recruiting a friend of his that lived near one of these libraries,

490
00:33:36,760 --> 00:33:41,853
to go into the library and to begin to test his improved code

491
00:33:42,280 --> 00:33:48,493
at which point the folks at the courts realized something's not going quite according to plan.

492
00:33:48,537 --> 00:33:52,511
 And data started to come in... and come in... and come in...

493
00:33:52,555 --> 00:33:57,700
and soon there was 760 GigaBytes of PACER docs, about 20 million pages.

494
00:33:58,940 --> 00:34:02,155
Using informations retrieved from the trial libraries,

495
00:34:02,182 --> 00:34:07,330
Swartz was conducting massive automated parallel downloading of the PACER system.

496
00:34:07,488 --> 00:34:11,700
He was able to acquire nearly 2.7 million federal court documents

497
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:14,475
almost 20 million pages of text.

498
00:34:14,520 --> 00:34:17,684
Now, I'll guarantee you that 20 million pages had perhaps

499
00:34:17,730 --> 00:34:22,004
exceeded the expectations of the people running the pilot access project

500
00:34:22,084 --> 00:34:24,700
but surprising a beaurocrat isn't illegal.

501
00:34:25,062 --> 00:34:29,700
Aaron and Carl decided to go talk to the New York Times about what happened.

502
00:34:30,270 --> 00:34:32,937
They also caught the attention of the FBI

503
00:34:33,150 --> 00:34:36,511
who began to stake[?] at Swartz's parent's house at Illinois.

504
00:34:36,770 --> 00:34:41,204
I get a tweet from his mother saying: "Call me"

505
00:34:41,302 --> 00:34:43,720
I thought "What the hell is going on here?"

506
00:34:43,770 --> 00:34:46,760
and so I found [?] of Aaron and you know

507
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:49,764
Aaron's mother was like "Oh my god, FBI! FBI! FBI!"

508
00:34:50,351 --> 00:34:56,333
An FBI agent drives down our home's driveway trying to see if Aaron is like in this room.

509
00:34:57,700 --> 00:35:00,466
and I remember being home that day and wondering why

510
00:35:00,493 --> 00:35:03,444
this car was driving down our driveway and just driving back out,

511
00:35:03,924 --> 00:35:05,700
That's weird!

512
00:35:06,700 --> 00:35:09,737
Like 5 years later, I read this FBI file and I'm like

513
00:35:09,791 --> 00:35:11,030
Oh my goodness!

514
00:35:11,703 --> 00:35:13,353
that was the FBI agent

515
00:35:14,408 --> 00:35:15,392
in my driveway

516
00:35:15,618 --> 00:35:18,275
He was terrified, he was totally terrified

517
00:35:19,917 --> 00:35:23,823
he was way more terrified after the FBI actually

518
00:35:24,096 --> 00:35:26,840
called him up on the phone, tried to suck an amenda[?]

519
00:35:26,840 --> 00:35:28,797
coming down to a coffee shop without a lawyer

520
00:35:29,240 --> 00:35:31,992
He said he went home and laid down on the bed

521
00:35:31,992 --> 00:35:33,990
and, you know, was shaking

522
00:35:35,820 --> 00:35:37,950
The downloading also uncovered massive

523
00:35:37,992 --> 00:35:40,341
privacy violations in the court documents

524
00:35:40,590 --> 00:35:44,294
ultimately, the courts were forced to change their policies as a result

525
00:35:45,352 --> 00:35:49,075
and the FBI closed thier investigation without bringing charges

526
00:35:49,828 --> 00:35:53,268
To this day I find it remarkable, that anybody,

527
00:35:53,460 --> 00:35:57,207
even at the most remote [?]hog field office of the FBI,

528
00:35:57,517 --> 00:35:59,861
thought that a fitting use for taxpayer dollars

529
00:36:00,002 --> 00:36:03,249
was investigating people for criminal theft

530
00:36:03,324 --> 00:36:05,781
on the grounds that they had made the law public

531
00:36:05,941 --> 00:36:08,152
How can you call yourself a lawman

532
00:36:08,491 --> 00:36:11,903
and think there can possibly be anything wrong in this whole world

533
00:36:12,082 --> 00:36:13,687
with making the law public

534
00:36:13,936 --> 00:36:16,463
Aaron was willing to put himself at risk

535
00:36:16,647 --> 00:36:19,000
for the causes that he believed in

536
00:36:19,776 --> 00:36:21,536
Bothered by wealth disparity

537
00:36:21,757 --> 00:36:23,640
Swartz moves beyond technology

538
00:36:23,668 --> 00:36:26,185
in into a broader range of political causes

539
00:36:26,425 --> 00:36:28,938
I went into congress, and I invited him to

540
00:36:29,023 --> 00:36:31,625
come and hangout an intern for us for a while

541
00:36:31,912 --> 00:36:35,235
so that he could learn, you know, the political process

542
00:36:35,503 --> 00:36:38,016
he was sort of learning about a new community

543
00:36:38,025 --> 00:36:39,065
and a new set of skills

544
00:36:39,400 --> 00:36:41,320
and kind of learning to hack politics

545
00:36:41,705 --> 00:36:44,515
It's seems ridiculous that miners should have to hammer away

546
00:36:44,515 --> 00:36:46,623
until they whole bodies are dripping with sweat

547
00:36:46,901 --> 00:36:49,084
faced with the knowledge that if they dared to stop

548
00:36:49,103 --> 00:36:51,080
they won't be able to put food on the table that night

549
00:36:51,569 --> 00:36:54,115
while I get to make larger and larger amounts of money each day

550
00:36:54,129 --> 00:36:55,663
just by sitting and watching TV

551
00:36:56,792 --> 00:36:58,821
but apparently the world is ridiculous

552
00:36:59,720 --> 00:37:01,442
So, I co-founded a group called

553
00:37:01,461 --> 00:37:03,277
the "Progressive Change Campaign Committee"

554
00:37:03,329 --> 00:37:06,345
and what we're trying to do is organise people over the Internet

555
00:37:06,345 --> 00:37:08,330
who care about progressive politics

556
00:37:08,336 --> 00:37:10,300
and moving the country in a more progressive direction

557
00:37:10,496 --> 00:37:11,824
to kind of come together

558
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:13,568
join our e-mail list, join our campaign,

559
00:37:13,570 --> 00:37:16,328
help get progressive candidates selected all across the country

560
00:37:16,472 --> 00:37:19,464
The group is responsible for igniting the grassroots efforts

561
00:37:19,470 --> 00:37:22,816
behind the campaign to elect Elizabeth Warren

562
00:37:23,232 --> 00:37:25,360
He might have thought was a dumb system, but

563
00:37:25,552 --> 00:37:27,712
he came in and he said I need to learn this system

564
00:37:27,888 --> 00:37:31,192
'cause it can be manipulated, like any, you know, like any social system

565
00:37:31,688 --> 00:37:34,048
But his passion for knowledge and libraries

566
00:37:34,104 --> 00:37:35,472
didn't take a back seat

567
00:37:35,944 --> 00:37:37,470
Aaron began to take a closer look

568
00:37:37,496 --> 00:37:40,688
at institutions that publish academic journal articles

569
00:37:41,448 --> 00:37:44,144
A virtue of being a student at a major US univerity

570
00:37:44,152 --> 00:37:48,120
I assume that you have access to a wide variety of scholarly journals

571
00:37:48,584 --> 00:37:51,360
pretty much every major university in the United States

572
00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:53,008
pays these sort of licencing fees

573
00:37:53,032 --> 00:37:56,272
to organizations like JSTOR and [?]

574
00:37:56,696 --> 00:37:59,256
to get access to scholarly journals that

575
00:37:59,296 --> 00:38:00,840
the rest of the world can't read

576
00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:03,264
These scholarly journals and articles

577
00:38:03,448 --> 00:38:07,440
are essentlialy the entire wealth of human knowledge on-line

578
00:38:07,488 --> 00:38:10,248
and many had been payed for with taxpayer money

579
00:38:10,496 --> 00:38:12,240
or with government grants

580
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:15,152
but to read them you often have to pay again

581
00:38:15,330 --> 00:38:18,680
handing over steep fees to publishers like Reed Elsevier

582
00:38:19,030 --> 00:38:21,248
These licensing fees are so substantial that

583
00:38:21,352 --> 00:38:23,190
people who are studing in India,

584
00:38:23,195 --> 00:38:24,992
instead of studing in the United States,

585
00:38:25,304 --> 00:38:26,904
don't have this kind of access

586
00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:29,296
they're left out from all of these journals

587
00:38:29,672 --> 00:38:32,904
they're left out from our entire scientific legacy

588
00:38:33,192 --> 00:38:36,448
I mean, a lot of those journal articles go back to the enlightenment

589
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:39,800
everytime someone has written down a scientific paper

590
00:38:39,810 --> 00:38:42,400
it has been scanned, digitized and put in these collections

591
00:38:43,048 --> 00:38:45,768
that is a legacy that has been brought to us

592
00:38:45,968 --> 00:38:48,632
by the history of people doing interesting work

593
00:38:48,664 --> 00:38:49,872
the history of scientists

594
00:38:49,968 --> 00:38:53,336
it's legacy that should belong to us as commons, as a people

595
00:38:53,592 --> 00:38:56,104
but instead it's been locked down and put on-line

596
00:38:56,110 --> 00:38:58,648
by handful of for-profit corporations

597
00:38:58,816 --> 00:39:01,536
then trying to get the maximum profit as they can out of it

598
00:39:03,576 --> 00:39:07,488
So, a researcher by the University or the people

599
00:39:07,888 --> 00:39:11,216
publishes a paper and in the very very last step of that process

600
00:39:11,240 --> 00:39:13,680
after all the work is done, after all the original research is done,

601
00:39:13,690 --> 00:39:16,056
the thinking, the lab work, the analysis

602
00:39:16,064 --> 00:39:18,432
after everything is done, at that last stage

603
00:39:18,688 --> 00:39:21,944
then the researcher has to handover his or her copyright

604
00:39:21,960 --> 00:39:23,940
to this multi billion dollar company

605
00:39:24,584 --> 00:39:25,480
and it's sick!

606
00:39:25,600 --> 00:39:28,064
It's an entire economy built on volunteer labour

607
00:39:28,416 --> 00:39:31,208
and then the publishers sit at the very top and scrape off the cream

608
00:39:31,944 --> 00:39:33,904
Talk about a scam

609
00:39:34,176 --> 00:39:39,136
one publisher in Britain made a profit of 3 billion dollars last year

610
00:39:39,176 --> 00:39:40,384
I mean, what a racket!

611
00:39:40,672 --> 00:39:44,144
JSTOR is just a very very small player in that story

612
00:39:44,176 --> 00:39:48,744
but for some reason JSTOR is the player that Aaron decided to confront

613
00:39:51,816 --> 00:39:53,920
He gone to some conference around Open Access  and Open Publishing

614
00:39:54,584 --> 00:39:56,552
and, I don't know who the person from JSTOR was,

615
00:39:56,576 --> 00:39:59,720
but I think they, at some point Aaron asked the question, like:

616
00:40:00,296 --> 00:40:03,248
"How much would it cost to open up JSTOR in perpetuity?"

617
00:40:04,568 --> 00:40:08,264
and they gave some... I think is 200 billion dollars

618
00:40:08,270 --> 00:40:10,260
something that Aaron thought was truly ridiculous

619
00:40:11,168 --> 00:40:13,088
Working at a fellowship at Harward

620
00:40:13,160 --> 00:40:17,592
he knew users on MIT's famously open and fast network next door

621
00:40:17,752 --> 00:40:20,528
had authorized access to the riches of JSTOR

622
00:40:20,592 --> 00:40:22,520
Swartz saw an opportunity

623
00:40:22,624 --> 00:40:24,520
You have the key to those gates

624
00:40:24,600 --> 00:40:27,528
and, with a little bit of shell script magic

625
00:40:28,088 --> 00:40:30,064
you can get those journal articles

626
00:40:31,224 --> 00:40:33,776
On September 24th 2010

627
00:40:33,952 --> 00:40:37,312
Swartz registered a newly purchased Acer laptop

628
00:40:37,336 --> 00:40:40,744
on the MIT network, under the name Gary Host

629
00:40:41,288 --> 00:40:44,448
the client name was registered as "ghost_laptop"

630
00:40:45,744 --> 00:40:48,856
He doesn't hack JSTOR in the traditional sense of hacking

631
00:40:48,920 --> 00:40:50,656
the JSTOR database was organised so

632
00:40:50,664 --> 00:40:52,288
was completely trivial to figure out

633
00:40:52,290 --> 00:40:54,640
how you could download all the articles in JSTOR

634
00:40:54,664 --> 00:40:55,760
because are basically numbers

635
00:40:55,790 --> 00:40:58,560
it was basically "/"  "/"  "/"  number article...

636
00:40:58,608 --> 00:41:02,830
...444024, and ...25 ...26

637
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:05,592
He wrote a python script called “keepgrabbing.py”

638
00:41:05,616 --> 00:41:08,272
which, was keep grabbing one article after another

639
00:41:08,925 --> 00:41:12,025
The next day ghost laptop begins grabbing articles

640
00:41:12,220 --> 00:41:15,600
but soon the computers IP address is blocked

641
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:18,600
for Swartz is barely a bump in the road

642
00:41:18,620 --> 00:41:21,625
he quickly reassigns his computer IP address

643
00:41:21,625 --> 00:41:23,620
and keeps downloading

644
00:41:23,620 --> 00:41:27,825
Well JSTOR and MIT take a number of step to try interfer with this

645
00:41:27,830 --> 00:41:29,725
when they noticed that this was happening

646
00:41:29,730 --> 00:41:33,125
and when the more modest steps don't work in a certain stage they,

647
00:41:33,130 --> 00:41:37,125
JSTOR, just cuts off MIT from having access to the JSTOR database

648
00:41:37,130 --> 00:41:43,675
so this is a kind of cat mouse game around trying to get access to the JSTOR database

649
00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:46,025
Aaron ultimately obviously is the cat

650
00:41:46,030 --> 00:41:52,275
because he has more technical capabilities than the JSTOR database people defending them

651
00:41:52,875 --> 00:41:56,965
Eventually there was a lot[?] of supplies in the basement of one of the buildings

652
00:41:56,970 --> 00:41:58,715
they whent, instead of going through WiFi

653
00:41:58,720 --> 00:42:01,215
he went down there and he just plugged his computer directly into the network

654
00:42:01,220 --> 00:42:06,075
and just left it there with an external hard drive dowloading articles to the computer

655
00:42:06,825 --> 00:42:12,100
Unkown to Swartz his laptop and hard drive had been found by authorities

656
00:42:13,350 --> 00:42:18,525
they didn't stop the downloads, instead they installed a surveillance camera

657
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:24,870
They found that computer in this room in the basement of an MIT building

658
00:42:24,875 --> 00:42:28,940
they could have unplugged it, they could have waited for the guy to come back

659
00:42:28,950 --> 00:42:33,840
and say "Dude, what are you doing? You know, cut it out. Who are you?"

660
00:42:33,850 --> 00:42:35,840
and they could have done all this kind of stuff, but they didn't

661
00:42:35,850 --> 00:42:40,105
what they wanted to do was film it to gather evidences to make a case

662
00:42:40,120 --> 00:42:43,025
that's the only reason you film something like that

663
00:42:48,300 --> 00:42:51,775
At first the only person caught on the glitchy[?] surveillance camera

664
00:42:51,850 --> 00:42:55,475
was using the closet as a place to store bottles and cans

665
00:43:03,300 --> 00:43:06,225
But days later it caught Swartz

666
00:43:15,750 --> 00:43:21,415
Swartz is replacing a hard drive, he takes it out of his backpack,

667
00:43:21,420 --> 00:43:25,950
leans out of frame for about 5 minutes, and then leaves

668
00:43:47,225 --> 00:43:52,350
And then, like, organise a [?] as he was biking home from MIT

669
00:43:52,525 --> 00:43:56,600
these cops came out from, like, other side of the road, or something like that, instead of going after him

670
00:43:59,575 --> 00:44:05,200
He describes that he was pressed down and assoulted by the police

671
00:44:05,200 --> 00:44:08,000
he tells me that they... it's unclear[?] they were police

672
00:44:08,010 --> 00:44:12,300
that were after someone [?] was trying to attack him.

673
00:44:12,350 --> 00:44:14,550
He does tell me they beat him up.

674
00:44:18,350 --> 00:44:19,700
He was just devastaded.

675
00:44:19,725 --> 00:44:25,000
The notion of any kind of criminal prosecution of anyone in our family

676
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:28,375
was so foreign[?] and uncomprensible, I didn't know what to do.

677
00:44:28,450 --> 00:44:31,515
Well they executed search warrants[?] at Aaron's house,

678
00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:34,975
his apartment in Canbdridge and his office at Harward.

679
00:44:37,870 --> 00:44:43,825
Two days before the arrest the investigation had gone beyod JSTOR and the local Cambridge police

680
00:44:43,975 --> 00:44:47,350
they had been taken over by the United States secret service.

681
00:44:47,750 --> 00:44:52,600
The secret service begun investigating computer and credit card fraud in 1984

682
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:56,800
but 6 weeks after attack on 9/11 their role expanded.

683
00:44:59,075 --> 00:45:01,125
President Bush used the "Patriot Act"

684
00:45:01,275 --> 00:45:05,550
to establish a network of what they called "Electronic Crimes Task Forces".

685
00:45:06,775 --> 00:45:11,700
The bill before me takes account of the new realities and dangers posed by modern terrorists.

686
00:45:11,800 --> 00:45:17,065
According to the secret service they are primarily engaged in activities with economic impact,

687
00:45:17,070 --> 00:45:21,600
organized criminal groups or use of schemes involving new technology.

688
00:45:21,900 --> 00:45:26,400
The secret service turns Swartz's case over to the Boston US attorney office.

689
00:45:26,400 --> 00:45:28,115
There was a guy in the US attorneys office

690
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:32,375
who had the title "Head of the computer crimes division" or "task force"

691
00:45:32,500 --> 00:45:34,715
I don't know what else he had going

692
00:45:34,720 --> 00:45:37,590
but you're certainly not much of a computer crime prosecutor

693
00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:41,565
without a computer crime to prosecute, so he jumped on it

694
00:45:41,570 --> 00:45:45,345
kept it for himself, didn't assign to anyone else in the office or the unit

695
00:45:45,350 --> 00:45:47,215
and that's Stephen Heymann.

696
00:45:47,220 --> 00:45:51,850
Prosecutor Stephen Heymann has been largerly out of public view since the arrest of Aaron Swartz

697
00:45:52,200 --> 00:45:56,765
but he can be seen here in an episode of the TV show "American Greed"

698
00:45:56,770 --> 00:45:58,840
filmed around the time of Aaron's arrest

699
00:45:58,850 --> 00:46:03,625
he's describing his previous case against the notorious hacker Albert Gonzalez.

700
00:46:03,725 --> 00:46:07,240
a case that gained Heymann enourmous pretentious[?] and accolades.

701
00:46:07,250 --> 00:46:12,225
Gonzalez masterminded the theft of over a hundred million credit card and ATM numbers

702
00:46:12,275 --> 00:46:14,525
the largest such fraud in history.

703
00:46:14,675 --> 00:46:19,875
Here Heymann, decribing Gonzalez, gives his view on the hacker mindset.

704
00:46:20,400 --> 00:46:26,325
These guys are driven by a lot of the same things that we're driven by

705
00:46:26,475 --> 00:46:32,440
they have an ego, they like challege and of course they like money

706
00:46:32,450 --> 00:46:35,075
and everything you can get from money.

707
00:46:35,275 --> 00:46:37,865
One of the suspects implicated in the Gonzalez case

708
00:46:37,870 --> 00:46:40,200
was a young hacker named Jonathan James

709
00:46:40,210 --> 00:46:43,315
believing Gonzalez's crimes would be pinned on him

710
00:46:43,320 --> 00:46:46,225
James committed suicide during the investigation.

711
00:46:46,925 --> 00:46:51,300
In an early press release describing the government's position in the case of Aaron Swartz

712
00:46:51,450 --> 00:46:56,475
Heymann's boss, US attorney for the disctrict of Massachusetts, Carmen Ortiz said this:

713
00:46:56,575 --> 00:47:00,365
Stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar,

714
00:47:00,370 --> 00:47:02,950
and wether you take documents, data, or dollars

715
00:47:03,300 --> 00:47:06,300
It's not true. It's obviously not true.

716
00:47:06,600 --> 00:47:08,990
I'm not saying it's harmless

717
00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:15,675
and I'm not saying that we shouldn't criminalise stealing of information

718
00:47:16,300 --> 00:47:19,775
but you gotta be much more subtle in trying to figure out

719
00:47:19,775 --> 00:47:23,875
exactly which kind of  harms are harmful here

720
00:47:25,150 --> 00:47:26,725
so the thing about a crowbar is

721
00:47:26,748 --> 00:47:28,942
everytime I brake into a place with a crowbar

722
00:47:29,697 --> 00:47:30,908
I do damage, there's no doubt about it

723
00:47:32,188 --> 00:47:33,571
But when Aaron writes a script

724
00:47:33,580 --> 00:47:37,251
that says: "download, download, download" hundreds times per second

725
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:40,542
there's no obvious damage, to anybody

726
00:47:41,148 --> 00:47:43,662
If he does that for the purpose of gathering

727
00:47:43,777 --> 00:47:46,165
archive to do academic research on it

728
00:47:46,170 --> 00:47:48,257
there's never any damage to anybody

729
00:47:48,634 --> 00:47:52,885
He wasn't stealing, he wasn't selling what he got or giving it away

730
00:47:53,274 --> 00:47:55,834
he was making a point as for I can tell

731
00:47:55,982 --> 00:47:58,165
The arrest took its toll[?] on Swartz

732
00:47:58,508 --> 00:48:01,514
He just don't want to talk about it, and he's like very stressed

733
00:48:01,520 --> 00:48:05,445
if you thought like the FBI was like, going to come to your doorstep

734
00:48:05,480 --> 00:48:09,182
[?] any time you went down the hall, even to do your laundry

735
00:48:09,240 --> 00:48:12,588
and it would brake in to your apartment,  because you left the door unlocked

736
00:48:12,885 --> 00:48:17,377
like, I'd be preety stressed.
And it was clear,

737
00:48:17,491 --> 00:48:21,274
And so Aarorn was always sort of, like in, down on[?] mood.

738
00:48:28,620 --> 00:48:32,302
He wouldn't give up any sensitive information

739
00:48:32,310 --> 00:48:34,074
about his whereabouts during this time,

740
00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:37,582
because he was so afraid that the FBI will be waiting for him

741
00:48:41,148 --> 00:48:44,977
It was a time of unprecedent social and political activism

742
00:48:45,937 --> 00:48:50,188
Time magazine would later name as their 2011 person of the year

743
00:48:50,190 --> 00:48:51,537
"the protester"

744
00:48:52,851 --> 00:48:56,268
There was a kind of hotbed of hacker activity going on

745
00:48:59,148 --> 00:49:04,017
WikiLeaks had released a trove of diplomatic cables

746
00:49:04,177 --> 00:49:07,240
Manning had been under arrest at the time

747
00:49:07,274 --> 00:49:09,857
it was unknown whether he was the source of the leak

748
00:49:10,108 --> 00:49:14,897
Anonymous which is a kind of protest ensemble

749
00:49:14,920 --> 00:49:17,674
that has lots of hackers in its ranks

750
00:49:17,720 --> 00:49:21,640
were going on various spreeze of sorts[?]

751
00:49:21,811 --> 00:49:24,405
If you compare that to what he did

752
00:49:24,542 --> 00:49:28,291
this stuff should have been left behind for MIT and JSTOR to deal with,

753
00:49:28,428 --> 00:49:32,257
in a kind of private, professional matter.

754
00:49:32,260 --> 00:49:38,462
It should have never got to the attention of the criminal system,

755
00:49:38,920 --> 00:49:40,931
It just didn't belong there.

756
00:49:46,828 --> 00:49:50,074
Before he was indicted, Swartz was offered a plea deal,

757
00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:53,651
that involved three months in prison, time in a halfway house,

758
00:49:53,650 --> 00:49:55,457
and a year of home detention,

759
00:49:55,548 --> 00:49:57,708
all without the use of a computer.

760
00:49:58,108 --> 00:50:02,211
It was on the condition that Swartz plead guilty to a felony.

761
00:50:02,417 --> 00:50:06,680
Here we are, we have no discovery, no evidence whatsoever

762
00:50:06,760 --> 00:50:08,451
about what the government case is

763
00:50:08,450 --> 00:50:11,834
and we have to make this immense decision

764
00:50:12,005 --> 00:50:15,994
where the lawyer is pushing you do this

765
00:50:16,165 --> 00:50:19,914
the government is giving you a non-negotiable demand

766
00:50:20,017 --> 00:50:23,228
and you're told that your likelihood of prevailing is small

767
00:50:23,308 --> 00:50:27,685
So wether you're guilty or not you better of taking the deal.

768
00:50:28,668 --> 00:50:31,285
Boston has it's own computer crime division

769
00:50:31,788 --> 00:50:35,422
lots of lawyers, probably more lawyers than they need

770
00:50:35,620 --> 00:50:38,862
So, you know, you can imagine all sort of cases

771
00:50:38,874 --> 00:50:40,360
where it would be really hard to prosecute

772
00:50:40,382 --> 00:50:43,377
cause you've got some criminals in Russia

773
00:50:43,388 --> 00:50:48,460
or you've got some people inside a corporation who are gonna have $500 a hour lawyers

774
00:50:48,470 --> 00:50:51,434
or $700 a hour lawyers sitting down against you

775
00:50:51,490 --> 00:50:53,297
and then you got this case with this kid,

776
00:50:54,074 --> 00:50:57,765
which is pretty easy to prove that he did something

777
00:50:57,770 --> 00:51:02,725
and he has already marked himself as a troublemaker with the FBI

778
00:51:02,730 --> 00:51:06,702
so why not go as tough as you can in hearing[?] against that guy?

779
00:51:06,710 --> 00:51:08,005
It's good for you the prosecutor,

780
00:51:08,028 --> 00:51:12,394
it's good for the republic 'cause you're fighting all those terrorist types

781
00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:13,731
I was so scared,

782
00:51:13,777 --> 00:51:15,600
I was so scared of having my computer ceased

783
00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:17,400
I was so scared of going to jail

784
00:51:17,537 --> 00:51:20,268
because of my computer being ceased

785
00:51:20,337 --> 00:51:23,468
I had confidential material from sources

786
00:51:23,502 --> 00:51:25,460
from my previous work on my laptop,

787
00:51:25,834 --> 00:51:28,960
and that is above all of my priority

788
00:51:28,970 --> 00:51:30,611
is to keep my sources safe.

789
00:51:30,702 --> 00:51:34,897
I was so scared of what was gonna happen to Ada

790
00:51:35,708 --> 00:51:38,062
Aaron told me that they offered me a deal

791
00:51:38,531 --> 00:51:42,440
and he finally just said, that he would take it if I told him to

792
00:51:43,091 --> 00:51:46,062
and I came real close to saying him "take it".

793
00:51:48,062 --> 00:51:53,000
He had this... he had developed, like, serious political aspirations

794
00:51:53,068 --> 00:51:56,497
in the intervening time between when, you know, that moment

795
00:51:56,805 --> 00:52:01,560
when he ended that entrepreneurial startup life

796
00:52:01,560 --> 00:52:06,371
and begun this new life that had come to this political activism

797
00:52:07,365 --> 00:52:12,965
and he just didn't believe that he could continue in this life

798
00:52:13,182 --> 00:52:15,902
with a felony, you know, he said to me one day

799
00:52:16,005 --> 00:52:18,110
we were walking by the white house and he said to me

800
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:20,000
"they don't have felon work there"

801
00:52:27,952 --> 00:52:30,896
I mean, you know, he really wanted that to be his life.

802
00:52:32,312 --> 00:52:35,416
He hadn't killed anybody, he hadn't hurt anybody,

803
00:52:35,456 --> 00:52:37,968
he hadn't like stolen money

804
00:52:38,408 --> 00:52:41,030
he hadn't done anything that seemed felony worthy, right?

805
00:52:42,008 --> 00:52:47,000
and, there's this idea that, like,

806
00:52:47,160 --> 00:52:49,160
there's no reason that he should be labeled a felon

807
00:52:49,200 --> 00:52:53,000
and taken away his right to vote in many states

808
00:52:53,520 --> 00:52:54,984
for doing what he did, like,

809
00:52:55,008 --> 00:52:57,090
that's just outrageous, like, it makes sense for him to be

810
00:52:57,100 --> 00:53:00,408
you know, maybe fined a bunch of money or

811
00:53:00,760 --> 00:53:04,072
you know, asked not to come back at MIT again

812
00:53:04,400 --> 00:53:08,104
but like, to be a felon? to face jail time?

813
00:53:11,320 --> 00:53:13,640
Swartz turned down the plea deal

814
00:53:14,110 --> 00:53:17,024
Heymann were doubled his efforts,

815
00:53:17,168 --> 00:53:22,712
Heymann  continued to press us at all, at all levels.

816
00:53:22,910 --> 00:53:24,712
Even with the physical evidences

817
00:53:24,720 --> 00:53:28,300
ceased from Aaron Acer computer, hard drive and usb drive

818
00:53:28,648 --> 00:53:31,432
the prosecutors needed evidence of his motives.

819
00:53:31,576 --> 00:53:34,896
Why was Aaron Swartz downloading articles from JSTOR?

820
00:53:35,024 --> 00:53:37,360
and just what did he planned to do with them?

821
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:42,296
The government claimed that he was planning to publish these,

822
00:53:42,664 --> 00:53:46,208
we don't really know whether that was his real intention

823
00:53:46,216 --> 00:53:48,032
because Aaron also had a history  of

824
00:53:49,336 --> 00:53:52,968
doing projects where he had analyzed giant datasets of articles

825
00:53:53,120 --> 00:53:55,248
in order to learn interesting things about them

826
00:53:55,448 --> 00:53:58,336
The best evidence for that is that when he was at Stanford

827
00:53:58,850 --> 00:54:03,392
he also downloaded the whole Westlaw legal database.

828
00:54:03,816 --> 00:54:06,024
In a project with Stanford law students

829
00:54:06,064 --> 00:54:08,864
Swartz had downloaded the Westlaw legal database

830
00:54:08,912 --> 00:54:11,104
he uncovered troubling connections between

831
00:54:11,120 --> 00:54:14,408
funders of legal research and favorable results.

832
00:54:14,688 --> 00:54:17,896
He did this amazing analysis of for profit companies

833
00:54:17,900 --> 00:54:21,240
giving money to law professors who wrote law review articles

834
00:54:21,264 --> 00:54:25,272
which would then beneficial to, like, Exxon, during an oil spill

835
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:29,728
So it was a very corrupt system of funding, you know, vanity research.

836
00:54:29,968 --> 00:54:32,880
Swartz had never released the Westlaw documents.

837
00:54:33,008 --> 00:54:35,744
In theory he could have been doing the same thing about the JSTOR database

838
00:54:35,856 --> 00:54:37,740
That would have been completely OK.

839
00:54:37,768 --> 00:54:40,176
if he were on the other hand intending to

840
00:54:40,192 --> 00:54:43,240
create a competitive service to JSTOR,

841
00:54:43,384 --> 00:54:47,264
or gonna set up our own, you know, access to the Harward law review

842
00:54:47,264 --> 00:54:49,260
and charge money for it,

843
00:54:49,304 --> 00:54:52,224
then, you know, ok, now it seems like criminal violation

844
00:54:52,240 --> 00:54:55,010
because you're commercially trying to exploit this material

845
00:54:55,020 --> 00:54:57,472
but that's kind of crazy to imagine that's what he was doing.

846
00:54:58,464 --> 00:54:59,824
So, but than there's a middle case

847
00:54:59,848 --> 00:55:02,920
what if he was just trying to liberate for all of the developing world?

848
00:55:03,936 --> 00:55:05,560
But depending on what he was doing

849
00:55:05,560 --> 00:55:08,848
it creates a very different character to how the law should be thinking about it

850
00:55:09,384 --> 00:55:10,944
the government was prosecuting him

851
00:55:10,950 --> 00:55:13,736
as if this was like a commercial criminal violation

852
00:55:13,760 --> 00:55:15,808
like stealing a whole bunch of credit card records

853
00:55:15,800 --> 00:55:17,040
like it was that kind of crime.

854
00:55:17,210 --> 00:55:20,624
I don't know what he was gonna do with that database

855
00:55:20,630 --> 00:55:22,448
but I heard from a friend of his

856
00:55:22,560 --> 00:55:25,144
that Aaron had told him he was going to analyze the data

857
00:55:25,150 --> 00:55:28,576
for evidence of corporate funding of climate change research

858
00:55:28,600 --> 00:55:30,224
that led to biased results.

859
00:55:30,632 --> 00:55:32,952
And I totally believe that.

860
00:55:35,416 --> 00:55:38,048
I was just told that Steve wanted to talk to me.

861
00:55:39,352 --> 00:55:43,096
and I tought maybe this is a way I can get out of this.

862
00:55:43,336 --> 00:55:45,216
just to exit the situation.

863
00:55:45,424 --> 00:55:48,024
I didn't want to leave in fear to having my computer ceased

864
00:55:48,872 --> 00:55:51,232
I didn't want to leave in fear to having to go to jail

865
00:55:51,248 --> 00:55:53,230
on a contempt of court charge if

866
00:55:53,280 --> 00:55:56,496
they tried to compel me to decrypt my computer

867
00:55:56,816 --> 00:55:59,656
when they came to me and said: "Steve wants to talk to you"

868
00:56:00,760 --> 00:56:02,408
that seemed reasonable.

869
00:56:03,064 --> 00:56:04,960
They offered Norton what is known as

870
00:56:04,970 --> 00:56:07,496
a "Queen for a day" letter or a proffer

871
00:56:07,776 --> 00:56:10,928
it allowed prosecutors to ask questions about Aaron's case.

872
00:56:10,944 --> 00:56:14,048
Norton would be given immunity from prosecution herself

873
00:56:14,080 --> 00:56:16,440
for any information she revealed during the meeting.

874
00:56:16,552 --> 00:56:17,632
I didn't like it

875
00:56:17,830 --> 00:56:20,808
I told my lawyers repeadetly that I didn't...

876
00:56:21,120 --> 00:56:22,912
this seemed de[?], I didn't like ithis

877
00:56:22,928 --> 00:56:24,816
I didn't want immunity, I didn't need immunity

878
00:56:24,832 --> 00:56:26,312
I hadn't done anything.

879
00:56:26,448 --> 00:56:28,200
But they were really really stringent

880
00:56:28,232 --> 00:56:31,896
thay did not want me meeting the prosecutor without immunity.

881
00:56:32,000 --> 00:56:35,128
Interviewer: just to make clear, this is a queen for a day deal proffer

882
00:56:35,160 --> 00:56:36,120
Right a proffer letter

883
00:56:36,120 --> 00:56:38,424
Interviewer: In which you basically handed information over them

884
00:56:38,440 --> 00:56:40,512
in exchange for protection from prosecution.

885
00:56:40,560 --> 00:56:43,792
So, it wasn't handing information over,

886
00:56:43,824 --> 00:56:46,504
it was, at least this was how I saw, it was just

887
00:56:46,544 --> 00:56:48,432
having a discussion, having an inteview with them

888
00:56:48,456 --> 00:56:51,240
Interviewer: Well, they're asking you questions
Quinn: They're asking me questions

889
00:56:51,272 --> 00:56:52,344
Interviewer: They are asking about what they want
Quinn: Right

890
00:56:52,610 --> 00:56:54,488
Interviewer: and whatever they learned [?] prosecute for that

891
00:56:54,544 --> 00:56:59,552
Right, I really... right, and I repeadetly tried to go in naked

892
00:57:00,320 --> 00:57:03,736
I repeadetly tried to turn down the proffer letter

893
00:57:04,000 --> 00:57:06,720
I was ill, I was being pressured by my lawyers,

894
00:57:06,760 --> 00:57:07,912
I was confused.

895
00:57:08,096 --> 00:57:11,408
I was not doing well by this point

896
00:57:11,416 --> 00:57:13,192
I was depressed, and I was scared,

897
00:57:13,216 --> 00:57:15,848
and I didn't understand the situation I was in.

898
00:57:15,920 --> 00:57:19,088
I had no idea why I was in this situation

899
00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:23,512
I hadn't done anything intresting much less wrong.

900
00:57:23,784 --> 00:57:25,000
[?] over minds[?]

901
00:57:25,296 --> 00:57:27,224
Aaron was clearly very destroyed about it

902
00:57:27,430 --> 00:57:28,824
we were very destroyed about it

903
00:57:29,224 --> 00:57:31,152
Aaron attorneys were very destroyed about it

904
00:57:31,376 --> 00:57:33,632
we tried to get Quinn to change attorneys

905
00:57:33,968 --> 00:57:38,312
I was very unused to be in a room with large man, well armed,

906
00:57:38,872 --> 00:57:40,800
that are continuosly telling me I'm lying

907
00:57:41,024 --> 00:57:42,560
and I must have done something

908
00:57:43,936 --> 00:57:46,704
I told them that this thing that they were prosecuting

909
00:57:47,384 --> 00:57:50,136
wasn't a crime,

910
00:57:51,160 --> 00:57:53,424
I told them that they were on the wrong side of history

911
00:57:53,432 --> 00:57:54,728
I used that phrase, I said:

912
00:57:54,728 --> 00:57:56,720
"you're on the wrong side of history"

913
00:57:58,848 --> 00:57:59,872
And they were bored,

914
00:57:59,912 --> 00:58:01,870
they didn't look angry, they just looked bored

915
00:58:02,816 --> 00:58:05,420
and I begun... it occured to me that

916
00:58:05,430 --> 00:58:07,504
we weren't having the same conversation

917
00:58:07,544 --> 00:58:09,584
I mean, I told them plenty of things about, you know,

918
00:58:09,590 --> 00:58:12,888
why people would donwload journal articles, and eventually

919
00:58:13,320 --> 00:58:14,968
I don't remember what was around it

920
00:58:16,344 --> 00:58:18,600
I mentioned he had done this blog post

921
00:58:18,600 --> 00:58:20,208
"the guerilla open access manifesto"

922
00:58:22,936 --> 00:58:25,808
This is the guerilla open access manifesto

923
00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:29,904
supposedly written in July 2008, in Italy

924
00:58:30,496 --> 00:58:31,760
Information is power.

925
00:58:31,936 --> 00:58:33,016
But like all power,

926
00:58:33,020 --> 00:58:35,072
there are those who want to keep it for themselves.

927
00:58:35,360 --> 00:58:37,464
The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage,

928
00:58:37,528 --> 00:58:39,696
published over centuries in books and journals,

929
00:58:39,984 --> 00:58:42,264
is increasingly being digitized and locked up

930
00:58:42,280 --> 00:58:44,260
by a handful of private corporations.

931
00:58:44,520 --> 00:58:48,296
Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by.

932
00:58:48,480 --> 00:58:50,696
You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences,

933
00:58:50,704 --> 00:58:52,814
liberating the information locked up by the publishers

934
00:58:52,820 --> 00:58:54,056
and sharing them with your friends.

935
00:58:54,808 --> 00:58:57,624
But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground.

936
00:58:57,784 --> 00:58:59,416
It's called stealing or piracy,

937
00:58:59,544 --> 00:59:02,342
as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of

938
00:59:02,350 --> 00:59:04,568
plundering a ship and murdering its crew.

939
00:59:04,928 --> 00:59:07,792
But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative.

940
00:59:07,880 --> 00:59:09,288
Only those blinded by greed

941
00:59:09,312 --> 00:59:11,520
would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

942
00:59:12,368 --> 00:59:14,648
There is no justice in following unjust laws.

943
00:59:14,650 --> 00:59:16,464
It's time to come into the light and,

944
00:59:16,488 --> 00:59:18,528
in the grand tradition of civil disobedience,

945
00:59:18,528 --> 00:59:21,704
declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.

946
00:59:22,544 --> 00:59:26,592
The manifesto itself was allegedly written by four different people

947
00:59:26,928 --> 00:59:28,590
and also edited by Norton

948
00:59:28,896 --> 00:59:31,368
but it was Swartz who had signed his name to it.

949
00:59:31,824 --> 00:59:35,448
When it's over, I go immediately to Aaron

950
00:59:35,450 --> 00:59:37,816
and tell him everything I can remember about it

951
00:59:39,096 --> 00:59:40,584
and he gets very angry

952
00:59:44,896 --> 00:59:47,408
The things that I'he done shouldn't have added up that way

953
00:59:50,616 --> 00:59:53,008
I hadn't done anything wrong

954
00:59:53,472 --> 00:59:55,424
and everything had gone wrong

955
00:59:57,224 --> 00:59:58,416
but I was never...

956
01:00:07,104 --> 01:00:08,864
I'm still angry

957
01:00:10,376 --> 01:00:12,064
I'm still angry...

958
01:00:13,310 --> 01:00:15,928
...try your best with these people to do the right thing

959
01:00:16,560 --> 01:00:18,776
and they turn everything against you

960
01:00:18,800 --> 01:00:22,088
and they will hurt you with anything they can

961
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:29,016
and, in that moment, I regret that I said what I did

962
01:00:29,944 --> 01:00:33,416
but my larger regret is that we've settled for this

963
01:00:33,808 --> 01:00:35,632
that we're OK with this

964
01:00:36,040 --> 01:00:39,168
that we're ok with a justice system which [?] tries to game people

965
01:00:39,170 --> 01:00:41,768
into like traps so that they can ruin their lives

966
01:00:42,984 --> 01:00:45,232
So, yeah, I wish I hadn't said that

967
01:00:45,472 --> 01:00:51,304
but I'm much much angrier that this is where I am

968
01:00:52,752 --> 01:00:57,080
That this is what we as people think is OK

969
01:00:58,496 --> 01:01:02,432
They used every method that I think they could think of

970
01:01:02,456 --> 01:01:05,368
to get her to provide information which would be

971
01:01:05,380 --> 01:01:09,400
unhelpful to Aaron, and helpful to the prosecution of Aaron

972
01:01:10,594 --> 01:01:16,781
But, you know, I don't think she had information that was helpful to the government.

973
01:01:18,232 --> 01:01:22,200
Months go by as Swartz's friends and family await a looming indictment.

974
01:01:22,626 --> 01:01:27,576
In the meantime, Swartz was becoming a goto expert on a series of Internet issues.

975
01:01:28,130 --> 01:01:32,236
Do you think that the Intenet is something that should be considered a human right

976
01:01:32,272 --> 01:01:34,780
something that the government can not take away from you.

977
01:01:35,340 --> 01:01:37,167
Yes. Definitely.

978
01:01:37,327 --> 01:01:40,658
There is this notion that national security is an excuse to shut down the Internet.

979
01:01:40,824 --> 01:01:44,216
that's exactly what we heard in Egypt, Syria and these other countries.

980
01:01:44,490 --> 01:01:47,341
and so its true, sites like WikiLeaks are going to be putting up

981
01:01:47,378 --> 01:01:50,010
some embarassing material about what what the US govt does.

982
01:01:50,232 --> 01:01:52,706
and people are going to be organizing to protest about it

983
01:01:52,716 --> 01:01:54,000
and try and change the government.

984
01:01:54,229 --> 01:01:56,360
You know, that's a good thing.

985
01:01:56,410 --> 01:01:58,425
Thats what all these First Amendment rights of free expression,

986
01:01:58,461 --> 01:02:00,150
freedom of association are all about.

987
01:02:00,150 --> 01:02:02,541
and so the notion that we should try and shut them down

988
01:02:02,570 --> 01:02:05,261
I think, just goes against very basic American principles.

989
01:02:05,320 --> 01:02:08,300
a principle, I think, is one that our founding fathers would have understood.

990
01:02:08,338 --> 01:02:09,916
If the Internet would have been around back then

991
01:02:09,989 --> 01:02:13,545
instead of putting Post Offices in the constituion they would have put ISPs.

992
01:02:15,704 --> 01:02:20,461
Swartz meets activist Taren Steinbrickner-Kauffman and the two begin to date.

993
01:02:20,994 --> 01:02:22,637
...in a massive public outcry.

994
01:02:22,637 --> 01:02:25,816
There is no massive global public outcry. It won't create any change.

995
01:02:25,858 --> 01:02:29,130
You know, 4 people in this city should cause a massive global public outcry.

996
01:02:29,218 --> 01:02:32,340
You know, we need a petition signer.

997
01:02:32,590 --> 01:02:34,396
Without telling her specifics, he warned her

998
01:02:34,425 --> 01:02:37,890
he was involved in something he called simply "the bad thing".

999
01:02:38,000 --> 01:02:40,076
And I had, sort of, crazy theories, like

1000
01:02:40,127 --> 01:02:42,540
that he was having an affair with Elizabeth Warren or

1001
01:02:43,480 --> 01:02:45,976
I speculated both Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren.

1002
01:02:48,200 --> 01:02:51,967
So sometime in probably late July Aaron called me

1003
01:02:52,556 --> 01:02:54,680
and I happen to pick up and he said:

1004
01:02:55,465 --> 01:02:57,676
"The bad thing might be in the news tomorrow"

1005
01:02:57,734 --> 01:02:59,829
"Do you want me to tell you or do you want to read about it in the news".

1006
01:02:59,872 --> 01:03:01,720
and I said: "I want you to tell me."

1007
01:03:03,669 --> 01:03:08,854
and he said: "Well I have been arrested"

1008
01:03:08,890 --> 01:03:11,000
"for downloading too many academic journal articles"

1009
01:03:11,040 --> 01:03:13,640
"and they want to make an example out of me."

1010
01:03:14,440 --> 01:03:19,106
and I was like: "That's it! That's the big fuss! Really?"

1011
01:03:19,488 --> 01:03:21,320
"it doesn't sound like a very big deal."

1012
01:03:21,517 --> 01:03:27,832
On  July 14th, 2011, Federal prosecutors indict Swartz on 4 felony counts.

1013
01:03:27,830 --> 01:03:28,813
He gets indicted

1014
01:03:29,071 --> 01:03:34,310
On the same day 2 people in England who are part of LulzSec get arrested

1015
01:03:34,610 --> 01:03:37,195
and few other real hackers

1016
01:03:37,488 --> 01:03:40,120
and Aaron is just someone who kind of looks like a hacker

1017
01:03:40,120 --> 01:03:45,282
enough that, they can like, put his head on the stakes and put it on the gates.

1018
01:03:45,517 --> 01:03:48,994
Aaron went to surrender and they arrested him.

1019
01:03:49,378 --> 01:03:52,536
they then strip searched him.

1020
01:03:52,617 --> 01:03:55,337
took away his shoelaces, took away his belt

1021
01:03:55,524 --> 01:03:57,720
and left him in solitary confinement.

1022
01:04:00,490 --> 01:04:03,106
The District of Massachusetts, United States Attorney's Office

1023
01:04:03,151 --> 01:04:05,062
released a statement saying:

1024
01:04:05,097 --> 01:04:07,995
"Swartz faces up to 35 yrs in prison

1025
01:04:08,075 --> 01:04:10,768
to be followed by 3 yrs of supervised release

1026
01:04:10,866 --> 01:04:15,550
restitution, forefeiture and a fine of upto $1 million dollars."

1027
01:04:16,448 --> 01:04:19,330
He was released on a $100,00 bail.

1028
01:04:19,580 --> 01:04:22,617
The same day, the primary victim in the case JSTOR

1029
01:04:22,760 --> 01:04:27,417
formally drops all charges against Swartz and declines to pursue the case.

1030
01:04:28,022 --> 01:04:31,835
JSTOR, they weren't our friends. They weren't helpful or friendly to us

1031
01:04:31,871 --> 01:04:34,955
but they also were just kind of like "We are not part of this"

1032
01:04:35,480 --> 01:04:37,755
JSTOR, and their parent company Ithica

1033
01:04:37,862 --> 01:04:40,980
also sidestepped request to talk for the film.

1034
01:04:41,170 --> 01:04:43,524
aut at the time they released a statement saying

1035
01:04:43,551 --> 01:04:47,142
it was the goverment's decision weather to prosecute, not JSTOR's

1036
01:04:48,408 --> 01:04:52,504
And so it was our belief that with that the case would be over.

1037
01:04:52,875 --> 01:04:55,550
that we should be able to get Stephen Heymann to drop the case.

1038
01:04:55,595 --> 01:04:58,370
or settle in some rational way.

1039
01:04:58,989 --> 01:05:00,333
and the government refused.

1040
01:05:01,337 --> 01:05:02,250
Interviewer: Why?

1041
01:05:05,515 --> 01:05:08,217
Well, because I think, they wanted to make an example out of Aaron

1042
01:05:08,350 --> 01:05:13,400
and they said the reason why they wouldnt move on,

1043
01:05:13,435 --> 01:05:15,613
requiring a felony conviction and jail time

1044
01:05:15,684 --> 01:05:22,390
was that they wanted to use this case as a case for deterrence.

1045
01:05:22,392 --> 01:05:23,501
They told us that.

1046
01:05:23,595 --> 01:05:24,368
Interviewer: They told you that?

1047
01:05:24,422 --> 01:05:25,200
Yes.

1048
01:05:25,515 --> 01:05:27,524
Interviewer: This was gonna be an example?
Aaron's Father: Yes.

1049
01:05:27,586 --> 01:05:32,070
Interviewer: He was gonna be an example?
Aaron's Father: Yes. Stephen Heymann said that.

1050
01:05:32,155 --> 01:05:33,613
Deterring who?

1051
01:05:33,666 --> 01:05:36,697
Like is a lot of people running around and loggin onto JSTOR

1052
01:05:36,715 --> 01:05:39,880
and downloading the artcles to make a political statement, I mean, who are they deterring.

1053
01:05:39,920 --> 01:05:45,702
It would be easier to understand the Obama Administration's posture

1054
01:05:45,720 --> 01:05:51,053
of supposedly being for deterrence if this had been Adminsitration that, for instance

1055
01:05:51,080 --> 01:05:55,995
prosecuted arguably the biggest economic crime this country has seen in the last 100 yrs

1056
01:05:56,093 --> 01:05:59,570
the crimes that were committed that led to the financial crisis on Wall St.

1057
01:06:00,324 --> 01:06:08,510
When you start deploying the non-controversial idea of deterrence only selectively,

1058
01:06:08,560 --> 01:06:12,164
you stop making a dispassionate analysis of law breaking

1059
01:06:12,200 --> 01:06:16,617
and you started deciding to deploy law enforcement resources

1060
01:06:16,720 --> 01:06:20,351
specifically on the basis of political ideology

1061
01:06:20,475 --> 01:06:25,770
and thats not just un-democratic it is supposed to be un-American.

1062
01:06:30,050 --> 01:06:34,075
Prosecutor Stephen Heymann later reportedly told MIT's outside counsel

1063
01:06:34,350 --> 01:06:37,622
that the straw that broke the camel's back was a press release

1064
01:06:37,666 --> 01:06:41,440
sent out by an organization Swartz founded called "Demand Progress".

1065
01:06:41,533 --> 01:06:43,320
According to the MIT account

1066
01:06:43,391 --> 01:06:45,977
Heymann reacted to the short statement of support

1067
01:06:46,191 --> 01:06:48,386
calling it a wild Internet campaign

1068
01:06:48,502 --> 01:06:54,360
and a foolish move that moved the case from human one-on-one level to an institutional level.

1069
01:06:54,431 --> 01:06:56,822
That was a poisnous combination.

1070
01:06:56,884 --> 01:07:01,337
A prosecutor who didn't want to lose face, who had a political carrer in the offing may be

1071
01:07:01,444 --> 01:07:03,648
and didn't want to have this to come back and haunt them.

1072
01:07:03,702 --> 01:07:07,817
you spent how many tax dollars arresting someone for taking too many books out of the library

1073
01:07:08,098 --> 01:07:11,170
and got your ass handed to you in court. No way!

1074
01:07:11,170 --> 01:07:14,848
I then moved to try and put pressure on MIT in various ways

1075
01:07:14,884 --> 01:07:16,555
to get them to go to the government

1076
01:07:16,591 --> 01:07:20,271
and request the government to stop the prosecution.

1077
01:07:21,417 --> 01:07:23,560
Interviewer: What was MIT's reaction then?

1078
01:07:24,475 --> 01:07:27,720
There doesn't seem to be any reaction from MIT at that point.

1079
01:07:33,310 --> 01:07:35,924
MIT doesn't defend Aaron,

1080
01:07:36,110 --> 01:07:40,697
which to people inside of MIT community seems outrageous,

1081
01:07:40,742 --> 01:07:45,900
because MIT is a place that encourages hacking in the biggest sense of the word.

1082
01:07:46,100 --> 01:07:49,915
At MIT the idea of going and running around in routes and tunnels

1083
01:07:49,951 --> 01:07:53,657
that you weren't allowed to be in, was not only a rite of passage,

1084
01:07:53,933 --> 01:07:56,070
it was part of the MIT tour,

1085
01:07:56,077 --> 01:08:00,152
,nd lock picking was a winter course at MIT.

1086
01:08:01,190 --> 01:08:06,274
They had the moral authority to stop it in its tracks.

1087
01:08:06,386 --> 01:08:10,980
MIT never stood up and took a position of saying to the Feds:

1088
01:08:11,180 --> 01:08:14,102
"Don't do this. We dont want you to do this

1089
01:08:14,137 --> 01:08:17,480
you are over reacting, this is too strong" , that I'm aware of.

1090
01:08:19,000 --> 01:08:22,706
They acted kind of like any corporation would.

1091
01:08:22,751 --> 01:08:25,880
They helped the government and they didn't help us,

1092
01:08:25,880 --> 01:08:31,618
unless they felt that they had to and they never tried to stop it.

1093
01:08:32,642 --> 01:08:35,416
MIT declined repeated requests to comment.

1094
01:08:35,416 --> 01:08:40,408
but they later released a report saying that they attempted to maintain a position of neutrality

1095
01:08:40,408 --> 01:08:45,720
and believed Heymann and US Attorney's office did not care what MIT thought or said about the case.

1096
01:08:46,061 --> 01:08:51,672
MIT's behaviour seemed really at odds with the MIT ethos.

1097
01:08:52,269 --> 01:08:57,474
You could argue that MIT turned a blind eye and that was okay for them to do

1098
01:08:57,645 --> 01:09:02,957
but taking that stance, taking that neutral stance in itself was taking a pro-prosecutor stance.

1099
01:09:02,957 --> 01:09:09,122
If you look at Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniack, they started by selling a bluebox

1100
01:09:09,122 --> 01:09:11,810
which was a thing designed to defraud the phone company.

1101
01:09:11,910 --> 01:09:14,706
If you look at Bill Gates and Paul Allen,

1102
01:09:14,751 --> 01:09:18,928
they initially started their buisness by using computer time at Harvard

1103
01:09:19,026 --> 01:09:21,293
which was pretty clearly against the rules.

1104
01:09:21,340 --> 01:09:23,631
Difference between Aaron and people that I just mentioned

1105
01:09:23,666 --> 01:09:26,890
is that Aaron wanted to make the world a better place, he didn't want to just make money.

1106
01:09:29,444 --> 01:09:33,500
Swartz continues to be outspoken on variety of Internet Issues.

1107
01:09:33,640 --> 01:09:38,790
You know  the reason Internet works is because of the competitive marketplace of ideas.

1108
01:09:38,790 --> 01:09:42,004
and what we need to be focussing on is getting more information about our government

1109
01:09:42,048 --> 01:09:44,740
more accessability, more discussion, more debate.

1110
01:09:44,941 --> 01:09:48,461
aut instead it seems, what Congress is foccussed on is shutting the things down,

1111
01:09:48,715 --> 01:09:50,626
Aaron thought that he could change the world

1112
01:09:50,688 --> 01:09:54,271
just by explaining the world very clearly to people.

1113
01:09:54,546 --> 01:09:59,120
FLAME can literally control your computer and make it spy on you.

1114
01:09:59,160 --> 01:10:02,220
Welcome Aaron, good to have you back on the show here.

1115
01:10:02,260 --> 01:10:04,306
You know, just like spies used to, in olden days,

1116
01:10:04,570 --> 01:10:06,573
put microphones and tap what people are saying,

1117
01:10:06,573 --> 01:10:08,984
now they are using computers to do the same things.

1118
01:10:09,453 --> 01:10:11,821
Swartz's political activity continues,

1119
01:10:11,977 --> 01:10:17,040
his attention turning to a bill moving through Congress designed to curb online piracy.

1120
01:10:17,048 --> 01:10:19,096
It was called SOPA.

1121
01:10:19,400 --> 01:10:23,151
Activists like Peter Eckersley saw it as an enormous over reach,

1122
01:10:23,284 --> 01:10:26,084
threatening the technical integrity of Internet itself.

1123
01:10:26,093 --> 01:10:28,418
In one of the first things I did was to call Aaron,

1124
01:10:28,440 --> 01:10:32,100
and I said can we do a big online campaign against this,

1125
01:10:32,155 --> 01:10:34,240
This isn't a bill about copyright,

1126
01:10:35,309 --> 01:10:36,141
It's not?

1127
01:10:36,555 --> 01:10:40,130
No, he said. It's a bill about the freedom to connect.

1128
01:10:40,733 --> 01:10:41,871
Now I was listening.

1129
01:10:42,377 --> 01:10:45,808
And he thought about it for a while and then said yes,

1130
01:10:45,915 --> 01:10:48,208
and he went and founded Demand Progress.

1131
01:10:48,600 --> 01:10:50,893
Demand Progress in an online activism organization.

1132
01:10:50,920 --> 01:10:54,440
We got around a million and half member now.

1133
01:10:54,555 --> 01:10:57,382
But started in the fall on 2010.

1134
01:10:57,497 --> 01:10:59,506
Aaron was one of the most prominent people

1135
01:10:59,542 --> 01:11:02,137
in a community of people who helped lead organizing

1136
01:11:02,253 --> 01:11:05,530
around social justice issues at the federal level in this country.

1137
01:11:05,960 --> 01:11:11,640
SOPA was the bill that was intended to curtail online piracy of music and movies,

1138
01:11:11,680 --> 01:11:15,097
but what it did was basically take a sledge hammer

1139
01:11:15,124 --> 01:11:17,260
to a problem that needed a scalpel.

1140
01:11:17,426 --> 01:11:21,995
If passed the law would allow a company to cut off finances to entire websites

1141
01:11:22,128 --> 01:11:26,850
without due process or even to force Google to exclude their links

1142
01:11:27,149 --> 01:11:30,648
all they needed was a single claim of copyright infringment.

1143
01:11:31,008 --> 01:11:34,084
It pitted the titans of traditional media against the new

1144
01:11:34,128 --> 01:11:36,920
and now far more sophisticated remix culture.

1145
01:11:37,360 --> 01:11:40,422
It makes everyone who runs a website into a policeman

1146
01:11:40,582 --> 01:11:43,213
and if they don't do their job of making sure that nobody on their site

1147
01:11:43,266 --> 01:11:45,622
uses it for anything that even potentially illegal

1148
01:11:45,853 --> 01:11:48,680
the entire site could get shutdown without even so much as a trial.

1149
01:11:48,822 --> 01:11:53,700
This was over the top. I mean, this was a catostrophy.

1150
01:11:53,906 --> 01:11:59,510
This bill poses a serious threat to speech and civil liberties

1151
01:11:59,568 --> 01:12:01,770
for all who use the Internet.

1152
01:12:01,826 --> 01:12:06,048
Only handful of us who said: "Look we are not for piracy either

1153
01:12:06,493 --> 01:12:09,106
but it makes no sense to destory the architecture of the Internet,

1154
01:12:09,284 --> 01:12:13,666
the domian name system and so much that makes it free and open

1155
01:12:13,791 --> 01:12:16,280
in the name of fighting piracy

1156
01:12:16,342 --> 01:12:17,791
and Aaron got that right away.

1157
01:12:17,880 --> 01:12:19,817
The freedoms guaranteed in our constitution,

1158
01:12:19,853 --> 01:12:24,040
freedoms our country has been built on would be suddenly deleted.

1159
01:12:24,324 --> 01:12:26,928
New technology instead of bringing us greater freedom

1160
01:12:27,142 --> 01:12:30,330
would have snuffed out fundamental rights we had always taken for granted.

1161
01:12:31,622 --> 01:12:37,050
and I realized that day talking to Peter, that I couldn't let that happen.

1162
01:12:38,697 --> 01:12:43,560
When SOPA was introduced in October 2011 it was considered inevitable

1163
01:12:43,622 --> 01:12:47,550
our strategy when it first came out was to hopefully slow the bill down

1164
01:12:47,720 --> 01:12:49,773
maybe weaken it a little bit,

1165
01:12:49,800 --> 01:12:54,555
but even we didn't think that we would be able to stop this bill.

1166
01:12:56,120 --> 01:12:59,631
Having worked in Washington what you learn is that

1167
01:13:00,182 --> 01:13:03,577
typically in Washington the legislative fights

1168
01:13:03,844 --> 01:13:07,960
are fights between different sets of corporate money interests.

1169
01:13:08,200 --> 01:13:10,813
and all duking it out to pass legislations

1170
01:13:10,850 --> 01:13:15,195
and the fights that are the closest are when you have one set of corporate interest

1171
01:13:15,586 --> 01:13:18,330
against another set of corporate interests and they are financially

1172
01:13:18,368 --> 01:13:21,360
equally matched in terms of campaign contributions and lobbying.

1173
01:13:21,368 --> 01:13:22,861
Those are the closest ones.

1174
01:13:23,213 --> 01:13:25,595
The ones that aren't even fights, typically,

1175
01:13:25,728 --> 01:13:28,640
are ones where all the money is on one side

1176
01:13:28,680 --> 01:13:30,546
all the corporations are on one side,

1177
01:13:30,591 --> 01:13:33,050
and its just millions of people are on the other side.

1178
01:13:35,341 --> 01:13:40,760
I haven't seen anything like PIPA and SOPA in all my time in public service,

1179
01:13:41,613 --> 01:13:47,032
there were more than 40 United States senators on that bill as co-sponsers.

1180
01:13:47,757 --> 01:13:53,944
so there were already a long long way to getting 60 votes to clear all the procedural hoops.

1181
01:13:54,882 --> 01:13:58,210
Even I began to doubt myself. It was a rough period.

1182
01:13:58,210 --> 01:14:01,897
Swartz and Demand Progress were able to marshall enormous support

1183
01:14:02,306 --> 01:14:06,368
using traditional outrage combined with commonly used Voice over IP

1184
01:14:06,570 --> 01:14:09,382
to make it very easy for people to call Congress.

1185
01:14:10,050 --> 01:14:14,057
I've never met anybody else who was able to operate at his level,

1186
01:14:14,128 --> 01:14:18,520
both on the technological side and on the campaign strategy side.

1187
01:14:18,653 --> 01:14:22,777
Millions of people contacted Congress and signed anti-SOPA petitions.

1188
01:14:23,248 --> 01:14:25,170
Congress was caught off guard.

1189
01:14:25,860 --> 01:14:30,431
There was just something about watching those clueless member of Congress debate the bill,

1190
01:14:30,880 --> 01:14:32,991
watching them insist they could regulate the Internet

1191
01:14:33,035 --> 01:14:35,151
and a bunch of nerds couldn't possibly stop them.

1192
01:14:35,293 --> 01:14:36,271
I'm not a nerd.

1193
01:14:36,333 --> 01:14:37,840
I am just not enough of a nerd.

1194
01:14:37,888 --> 01:14:40,937
...maybe we ought to ask some nerds what this thing really does.

1195
01:14:41,069 --> 01:14:43,096
Let's have hearing, bring in the nerds.

1196
01:14:45,817 --> 01:14:46,590
Really?

1197
01:14:49,960 --> 01:14:51,231
Nerds?

1198
01:14:52,288 --> 01:14:55,746
You know, I think actually the word you are looking for is "Experts".

1199
01:14:56,898 --> 01:15:03,490
to enlighten you, so your laws won't backfire, break the Internet.

1200
01:15:03,551 --> 01:15:06,902
We used the term Geek, but we are allowed to use that because we are geeks.

1201
01:15:07,000 --> 01:15:12,080
The fact that it got as far as it did without them talking to any technical experts

1202
01:15:12,088 --> 01:15:14,904
reflects the fact that there is a problem in this town.

1203
01:15:14,937 --> 01:15:20,315
I'm looking for somebody to come before this body and testify in a hearing

1204
01:15:20,448 --> 01:15:22,280
and say this is why they are wrong.

1205
01:15:22,520 --> 01:15:25,684
There used to be an office that provided Science and Technology advice

1206
01:15:25,746 --> 01:15:29,680
and members could go to them and say "Help me understand XYZ".

1207
01:15:29,688 --> 01:15:32,269
and Gingrich killed it. He said it was waste of money.

1208
01:15:32,269 --> 01:15:35,917
Ever since then Congress has plunged into the dark ages.

1209
01:15:36,297 --> 01:15:40,050
I don't think anybody thought that SOPA could be beaten, including Aaron.

1210
01:15:40,422 --> 01:15:44,253
He knew it was worth trying but it doesn't seem winnable.

1211
01:15:44,706 --> 01:15:47,330
And I remember, maybe a few months later, I remember him

1212
01:15:47,346 --> 01:15:50,230
just turning to me and being like "I think we might win this"

1213
01:15:50,594 --> 01:15:52,450
and I was like "That would be amazing"

1214
01:15:54,700 --> 01:16:00,422
Calls to Congress contiune when Domain hosting site GoDaddy becomes a supporter of the bill.

1215
01:16:00,448 --> 01:16:05,120
tens of thousands of users transfer their Domain Names in protest.

1216
01:16:05,551 --> 01:16:09,850
Within a week, a humbled GoDaddy reverses their position on SOPA.

1217
01:16:09,850 --> 01:16:14,653
About when the Congress people that supported these

1218
01:16:14,671 --> 01:16:18,520
the record and movie industries realize that there was this backlash

1219
01:16:18,546 --> 01:16:20,564
they kind of scaled the bill back a little bit,

1220
01:16:20,630 --> 01:16:21,844
you could see the curve happening.

1221
01:16:21,888 --> 01:16:26,090
you could see that our arguments were starting to resonate.

1222
01:16:26,146 --> 01:16:29,180
It was like Aaron had been like striking a match and he was being blown out...

1223
01:16:29,186 --> 01:16:31,064
striking another one and being blown out and finally

1224
01:16:31,310 --> 01:16:34,271
he managed to catch enough kindling that the flame actually caught

1225
01:16:34,989 --> 01:16:37,073
and then they turned into this roaring blaze.

1226
01:16:37,229 --> 01:16:42,242
On January 16th, 2012, the White House issued a statement saying

1227
01:16:42,242 --> 01:16:43,906
they didn't support the bill.

1228
01:16:44,248 --> 01:16:45,976
and then this happened.

1229
01:16:46,380 --> 01:16:50,066
I'm a big believer that we should be dealing with issues of piracy

1230
01:16:50,093 --> 01:16:52,240
and we should deal with them in a serious way

1231
01:16:52,760 --> 01:16:54,537
but this bill is not the right bill.

1232
01:16:54,653 --> 01:16:59,130
When Jimmy Wales put his support towards blacking out Wikipedia

1233
01:16:59,257 --> 01:17:02,866
the number 5 most popular website in the world

1234
01:17:02,973 --> 01:17:08,880
this is a website 7% of all of the clicks on anywhere on the Internet.

1235
01:17:08,920 --> 01:17:10,310
Wikipedia went black,

1236
01:17:10,466 --> 01:17:11,780
Reddit went black,

1237
01:17:11,924 --> 01:17:13,170
Craigslist went black,

1238
01:17:13,506 --> 01:17:16,310
phonelines on Capitol Hill flat out melted,

1239
01:17:16,480 --> 01:17:19,595
members of Congress started rushing to issue statements

1240
01:17:19,622 --> 01:17:23,160
retracting their support for the bill, that they were promoting just a couple of days ago.

1241
01:17:23,800 --> 01:17:28,173
Within 24 hours the number of oponents of SOPA in Congress

1242
01:17:28,217 --> 01:17:29,675
went from this...

1243
01:17:29,746 --> 01:17:31,330
...to this.

1244
01:17:32,911 --> 01:17:37,897
To see Congressmen and Senators slowly flipside

1245
01:17:37,933 --> 01:17:41,444
throughout the day of blackout was pretty unbeliveable,

1246
01:17:41,471 --> 01:17:44,280
there was like a hundered representatives swing,

1247
01:17:44,706 --> 01:17:48,781
And that was when, as hard as it was for me to believe after all this

1248
01:17:48,781 --> 01:17:50,125
We had won!

1249
01:17:50,890 --> 01:17:52,626
The thing everyone said was impossible,

1250
01:17:52,662 --> 01:17:58,740
that some of the biggest companies in the world had written of as kind of a pipe dream had happened.

1251
01:17:58,902 --> 01:18:00,230
We did it!

1252
01:18:01,142 --> 01:18:02,475
We won!

1253
01:18:05,977 --> 01:18:08,973
This is a historic week in Internet politics, maybe American politics.

1254
01:18:09,026 --> 01:18:12,688
The thing that we heard from people in Washington D.C,

1255
01:18:12,733 --> 01:18:17,170
from staffers on Capitol Hill was, they recieved more e-mails and more phone calls

1256
01:18:17,170 --> 01:18:20,662
on SOPA blackout day than they ever recieved about anything.

1257
01:18:20,781 --> 01:18:23,128
I think that was an extremenly exciting moment,

1258
01:18:23,128 --> 01:18:27,970
this was the moment when the Internet had grown up politically.

1259
01:18:27,970 --> 01:18:31,469
It was exhilarating because its hard to believe that it actually happened.

1260
01:18:31,551 --> 01:18:35,670
It's hard to believe, a bill with so much financial power behind it

1261
01:18:36,093 --> 01:18:39,444
didn't simply sail through the Congress.

1262
01:18:39,576 --> 01:18:42,498
and not only did it not sail through, it didn't pass at all.

1263
01:18:44,260 --> 01:18:46,493
It's easy sometimes to feel like you are powerless

1264
01:18:46,511 --> 01:18:49,260
like, when you come out on the streets and you march and you yell,

1265
01:18:49,275 --> 01:18:50,635
and nobody hears you.

1266
01:18:50,662 --> 01:18:53,257
But I'm here to tell you today: You are powerfull!

1267
01:18:56,253 --> 01:18:58,750
Maybe sometimes you feel like you not being listened to,

1268
01:18:58,777 --> 01:19:02,060
but I'm here to tell you that you are, that you are being listened to,

1269
01:19:02,070 --> 01:19:06,605
You are making a difference. You can stop this bill if you dont stop fighting.

1270
01:19:10,168 --> 01:19:12,604
Stop PIPA! Stop SOPA!

1271
01:19:14,644 --> 01:19:17,570
Some of the biggest Internet companies, to put it frankly, would benefit

1272
01:19:17,800 --> 01:19:21,360
from a world in which the little competitors could get censored.

1273
01:19:22,724 --> 01:19:24,240
We can't let that happen.

1274
01:19:25,314 --> 01:19:29,325
For him it was more important to be sure that you made a small change

1275
01:19:29,782 --> 01:19:32,840
than to play a small part in a big change.

1276
01:19:33,577 --> 01:19:37,190
But SOPA was like playing a major part in a major change.

1277
01:19:37,551 --> 01:19:40,208
and so for him it was kind of like his proof of concept.

1278
01:19:41,062 --> 01:19:44,740
Okay, you know, what I want to do with my life is to change the world.

1279
01:19:45,026 --> 01:19:50,274
I think about it in this really scientific way of measuring my impact

1280
01:19:50,386 --> 01:19:52,510
and this shows that it is possible

1281
01:19:52,728 --> 01:19:55,672
right, the thing that I want to do with my life is possible.

1282
01:19:56,244 --> 01:20:01,060
I have proved that I can do it. That I, Aaron Swartz, could change the world.

1283
01:20:01,069 --> 01:20:06,552
For a guy who never really thought he had done much

1284
01:20:06,872 --> 01:20:08,088
which was Aaron.

1285
01:20:09,581 --> 01:20:12,717
it was one of the few moments where you could really see

1286
01:20:14,125 --> 01:20:17,048
that he felt like he had done something good.

1287
01:20:17,090 --> 01:20:21,592
feeling like here is his maybe one and only victory lap.

1288
01:20:23,917 --> 01:20:26,541
Everyone said that there was on way could we stop SOPA.

1289
01:20:26,556 --> 01:20:32,225
We stopped it. This are 3 outrageously good victories and the year isn't over yet.

1290
01:20:32,225 --> 01:20:35,394
I mean, if there is a time to be positive it's now.

1291
01:20:37,400 --> 01:20:40,045
He wins SOPA a year after he is arrested.

1292
01:20:40,216 --> 01:20:42,178
it's not an unambigously happy moment.

1293
01:20:42,178 --> 01:20:43,544
There is a lot going on.

1294
01:20:43,544 --> 01:20:50,349
He is so atuned towards participating in the political process, you can't stop him.

1295
01:20:50,537 --> 01:20:54,550
The list of organizations Swartz founded or co-founded is enourmous.

1296
01:20:54,552 --> 01:20:58,456
and years before Edward Snowden would expose widespread Internet surveillance

1297
01:20:58,648 --> 01:21:00,937
Swartz was already concerned.

1298
01:21:00,937 --> 01:21:01,058
It is shocking to think that accountability is so lax
Swartz was already concerned.

1299
01:21:01,058 --> 01:21:04,822
It is shocking to think that accountability is so lax

1300
01:21:05,490 --> 01:21:07,311
that they don't even have basic statistics

1301
01:21:07,337 --> 01:21:09,310
about how big this spying programme is.

1302
01:21:09,400 --> 01:21:13,794
The answer is "We are spying on so many people we can't possibly even count them."

1303
01:21:13,794 --> 01:21:15,949
then thats an awful lot of people.

1304
01:21:16,802 --> 01:21:20,258
One thing that they said was "Look, we know number of telephones we are spying on,

1305
01:21:20,258 --> 01:21:23,068
we dont know exactly how many real people that corresponds to."

1306
01:21:23,410 --> 01:21:25,549
but they came back and said we can't give you a number at all.

1307
01:21:25,586 --> 01:21:29,000
Thats pretty... I mean, that's scary is what it is.

1308
01:21:29,088 --> 01:21:35,930
And they put incredible pressure on him, took away .. all of the money he had made.

1309
01:21:37,700 --> 01:21:40,007
they threatened to take away his physical freedom.

1310
01:21:40,257 --> 01:21:44,493
Why did they do it? Why are they going after whistleblowers?

1311
01:21:44,740 --> 01:21:48,537
Why are they going after people who tell the truth

1312
01:21:48,850 --> 01:21:53,186
about all sorts of things from the banks

1313
01:21:53,266 --> 01:21:56,390
to war, to just sort of government transparency.

1314
01:21:56,647 --> 01:22:01,666
So secrecy serves those who are already in power, and we are living in an era of secrecy..

1315
01:22:01,820 --> 01:22:04,608
That coincides with an era where the government is doing

1316
01:22:04,680 --> 01:22:08,493
and also a lot of things that are probably illegal and unconstitutional.

1317
01:22:08,795 --> 01:22:11,720
So, those two things are not coincidences

1318
01:22:11,730 --> 01:22:14,475
It's very clear that this technology has been developed

1319
01:22:14,511 --> 01:22:17,551
not for small countries overseas, but right here

1320
01:22:17,640 --> 01:22:20,120
for the use in United States by the US government.

1321
01:22:20,120 --> 01:22:23,924
The problem with the spying programme is that its sort of long, slow expansion

1322
01:22:23,920 --> 01:22:26,822
you kknow, going back to the Nixon Administration.

1323
01:22:27,090 --> 01:22:30,120
Obviosly it became big after 9/11 under George W. Bush

1324
01:22:30,173 --> 01:22:31,968
and Obama has continued to expand it

1325
01:22:32,048 --> 01:22:34,066
the problems have slowly grown worse and worse

1326
01:22:34,191 --> 01:22:36,715
but there has been this moment you can point to and say

1327
01:22:36,751 --> 01:22:41,170
"Okay we need to galvanize opposition today because today is when it matters."

1328
01:22:42,430 --> 01:22:45,088
The prosecution, in my estimation, of Aaron Swartz

1329
01:22:45,177 --> 01:22:51,430
was about sending a particular laser like message to a group of people

1330
01:22:51,437 --> 01:22:55,704
that the Obama Administration sees as politically threatening

1331
01:22:57,622 --> 01:23:03,980
and that is the essentially the hacker, the information and the democracy activist community.

1332
01:23:04,230 --> 01:23:07,506
and the message that the Obama Administration wanted to send

1333
01:23:07,533 --> 01:23:11,000
to that particular community was in my estimation

1334
01:23:11,053 --> 01:23:15,008
"we know you have the ability to make trouble for the establishment

1335
01:23:17,110 --> 01:23:19,062
and so were going to try to make an example out of Aaron Swartz

1336
01:23:19,097 --> 01:23:23,800
to scare as many of you as possible into not making that trouble."

1337
01:23:23,906 --> 01:23:25,017
And the governement said

1338
01:23:25,088 --> 01:23:30,470
"oh, the legal opinions we are using to legalize the spying programme are also classified

1339
01:23:30,555 --> 01:23:33,648
so we can't even tell you which laws we are using to spy on you."

1340
01:23:33,690 --> 01:23:36,733
Everytime they can say "Oh this is another instance of cyber war"

1341
01:23:36,760 --> 01:23:38,640
"the cyber criminals are attacking us agian"

1342
01:23:38,662 --> 01:23:40,560
"we are all in danger, we are all under threat".

1343
01:23:40,635 --> 01:23:44,170
they use those as an excuse to push through more and more dangerous laws.

1344
01:23:47,520 --> 01:23:51,097
Interviewer: Personally, how do you feel the fight is going?

1345
01:23:51,204 --> 01:23:53,090
It's up to you.

1346
01:23:57,835 --> 01:24:02,395
You know, there are sort of these two polarizing prespectives

1347
01:24:02,520 --> 01:24:05,657
Everything is great, Internet has created all this freedom and liberty,

1348
01:24:05,657 --> 01:24:07,240
and everythings gonna be fantastic.

1349
01:24:07,284 --> 01:24:08,706
or everything is terrible.

1350
01:24:08,742 --> 01:24:10,671
Internet has created all these tools for cracking down

1351
01:24:10,697 --> 01:24:13,570
and spying and, you know, controlling what we say.

1352
01:24:13,684 --> 01:24:15,510
and I think these both are true.

1353
01:24:16,493 --> 01:24:20,269
the Internet has done both and both are kind of amazing and astonishing

1354
01:24:20,297 --> 01:24:23,302
and which one will win out in the long run is up to us.

1355
01:24:23,360 --> 01:24:25,835
It doesn't make sense to say "Oh one is doing better than the other"

1356
01:24:25,853 --> 01:24:27,820
you know, they are both true.

1357
01:24:27,928 --> 01:24:31,661
and its up to us which one we emphasize and which one we take advantage of

1358
01:24:31,911 --> 01:24:33,901
because they are both there and they are always gonna be there.

1359
01:24:39,384 --> 01:24:45,101
On September 12th, 2012, Federal prosecutors filed a superseeding indictment against Swartz

1360
01:24:45,165 --> 01:24:50,456
adding additional counts of wire fraud, unauthorized access to a computer and Computer Fraud.

1361
01:24:50,706 --> 01:24:55,597
Now instead of 4 felony counts Swartz was facing 13.

1362
01:24:55,960 --> 01:24:58,776
The prosecution leverage had dramatically increased

1363
01:24:59,026 --> 01:25:01,997
as did Swartz's potential jail time and fines.

1364
01:25:02,247 --> 01:25:05,688
They filed a seperate indictment to add more charges

1365
01:25:05,938 --> 01:25:11,789
and they had a theory about why this conduct constituted a number of federal crimes

1366
01:25:12,039 --> 01:25:15,949
and that a very significant sentence could attach to it under the law.

1367
01:25:17,248 --> 01:25:20,715
That theory and much of the prosecution case agianst Swartz

1368
01:25:20,840 --> 01:25:24,057
involved a law created originally in 1986.

1369
01:25:24,244 --> 01:25:26,700
it is called "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.".

1370
01:25:27,085 --> 01:25:30,114
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was inspired by the movie "War Games"

1371
01:25:30,182 --> 01:25:31,860
with Mathew Brodrick, which was a great movie,

1372
01:25:33,520 --> 01:25:38,084
In this movie, a kid get the ability through the magic of computer networks

1373
01:25:38,111 --> 01:25:40,457
to, like, launch a nuclear attack.

1374
01:25:44,120 --> 01:25:47,906
Now that's not actually possible and certainly wasn't possible in the 80s

1375
01:25:47,900 --> 01:25:50,813
but apparently this movie scared Congress enough

1376
01:25:50,902 --> 01:25:55,160
to pass the original Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

1377
01:25:55,330 --> 01:25:57,293
This is a law that is behind the times

1378
01:25:57,320 --> 01:26:03,330
for example it penalises a Terms of Service kind of arrangements

1379
01:26:03,330 --> 01:26:07,106
and something like eHarmony or match.com

1380
01:26:07,195 --> 01:26:11,600
and somebody sort of inflates their own personal characteristic

1381
01:26:11,631 --> 01:26:16,040
and all of a sudden depending on the jurisdiction and prosecutor they

1382
01:26:16,152 --> 01:26:18,306
could be in whole host of troubles.

1383
01:26:18,320 --> 01:26:20,589
We all know what Terms of Use are.

1384
01:26:20,800 --> 01:26:23,755
Most people don't read them, but not abiding by their terms

1385
01:26:23,817 --> 01:26:26,500
could mean you are committing a felony.

1386
01:26:26,626 --> 01:26:30,658
The website terms of service often say things like "Be nice to each other" or

1387
01:26:30,908 --> 01:26:32,710
"dont do anything that's improper".

1388
01:26:32,804 --> 01:26:37,800
The idea that criminal law has anything to say about these kinds of violations

1389
01:26:37,897 --> 01:26:40,040
I think strikes most people as crazy.

1390
01:26:40,786 --> 01:26:43,330
The examples even get even more crazy.

1391
01:26:43,864 --> 01:26:46,402
Untill it was changed in March, 2013.

1392
01:26:46,402 --> 01:26:52,845
the Terms of Use on the website of Seventeen magzine said you had to be 18 in order to read it.

1393
01:26:53,080 --> 01:26:56,920
I would say that the way CFAA has been interpreted by Justice Department

1394
01:26:56,964 --> 01:26:59,266
we are all probabaly breaking the law.

1395
01:26:59,800 --> 01:27:05,282
Vague and prone to misuse CFAA has become "one size, fits all" hammer

1396
01:27:05,311 --> 01:27:07,990
for a wide range of computer related disputes.

1397
01:27:08,075 --> 01:27:12,937
Though not the only factor in his case, 11 of 13 charges against Swartz

1398
01:27:13,026 --> 01:27:15,311
involved the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

1399
01:27:17,551 --> 01:27:21,960
The question "Why?" hangs over much of the story of Aaron Swartz.

1400
01:27:22,146 --> 01:27:25,826
just what was motivating the goverment and what their case would have been

1401
01:27:26,404 --> 01:27:29,640
The Dept. of Justice declined requests for answers.

1402
01:27:29,837 --> 01:27:33,485
but Prof. Orin Kerr is a former prosecutor who has studied the case.

1403
01:27:33,693 --> 01:27:38,137
I think I come about this case from a different direction than other people on a number of reasons.

1404
01:27:38,477 --> 01:27:42,637
I was a federal prosecutor at the justice department for 3 yrs before I started teaching.

1405
01:27:42,813 --> 01:27:44,840
the government came forward with an indictment

1406
01:27:44,884 --> 01:27:48,120
based on what crimes they thought were committed

1407
01:27:48,120 --> 01:27:51,337
just as a purely lawyers matter, looking at the precedents

1408
01:27:51,364 --> 01:27:53,400
lookings at the statues, looking at history,

1409
01:27:53,440 --> 01:27:55,684
looking at the cases that are out there so far

1410
01:27:55,897 --> 01:27:58,570
I think it was a fair indictment based on that.

1411
01:27:59,320 --> 01:28:01,773
You can debate whether they should have charged this case.

1412
01:28:01,773 --> 01:28:02,968
There is just a lot of disagreement.

1413
01:28:03,074 --> 01:28:07,192
Some people are on Open Access side, some people are not.

1414
01:28:07,542 --> 01:28:13,460
I think the govt took Swartz's Guerilla Open Access Manifesto very seriously

1415
01:28:13,702 --> 01:28:20,010
and I think they saw him as somebody who was committed, as a moral imperative,

1416
01:28:20,013 --> 01:28:25,688
to breaking the law to overcome the law that Swartz saw as unjust

1417
01:28:25,688 --> 01:28:31,021
and in a democracy if you think a law is unjust there are ways of changing that law

1418
01:28:31,021 --> 01:28:34,925
there is, going to congress, as Swartz did so masterfully with SOPA

1419
01:28:34,925 --> 01:28:38,658
or you can violate that law in order to nullify that law.

1420
01:28:38,658 --> 01:28:42,712
And I think what was driving the prosecution was the sense

1421
01:28:42,962 --> 01:28:49,794
that Swartz was committed not just to breaking the law but really making sure that law was nullified.

1422
01:28:49,968 --> 01:28:53,968
That everyone would have have access to the database in a way that

1423
01:28:54,004 --> 01:28:57,266
you couldn't put the toothpaste back into the tube

1424
01:28:57,400 --> 01:29:00,600
it would be done and Swartz's side would win.

1425
01:29:02,850 --> 01:29:06,093
There is a big disagreement in society as to whether that is an unjust law

1426
01:29:06,377 --> 01:29:10,330
and ultimately thats a decision for American people to make working through Congress.

1427
01:29:10,637 --> 01:29:13,880
and than the second problem is I think, we are still trying to figure out

1428
01:29:13,924 --> 01:29:17,800
what's the line between less serious offenses and more serious offenses.

1429
01:29:18,140 --> 01:29:22,342
We are now entering that different environment of computers and computer misuse

1430
01:29:23,050 --> 01:29:26,937
and we don't yet have a really strong sense of exactly what these lines are

1431
01:29:26,982 --> 01:29:28,640
because we are just woking that out.

1432
01:29:29,408 --> 01:29:32,288
This is a poor use of prosecutorial discretion.

1433
01:29:32,404 --> 01:29:38,600
The hammer that the Justice Dept has to scare people with just gets bigger and bigger and bigger

1434
01:29:38,653 --> 01:29:43,170
and so most people, you know, can't role dice with your life like that

1435
01:29:43,204 --> 01:29:45,860
Should we tap somebody's phone? Should we film them?

1436
01:29:45,888 --> 01:29:49,520
Should we turn somebody and get them to testify against these other people?

1437
01:29:49,954 --> 01:29:52,621
That's how federal agents and prosecutors think.

1438
01:29:52,621 --> 01:29:55,394
They build cases, they make cases.

1439
01:29:57,035 --> 01:30:00,164
Swartz was caught in the gears of brutal criminal justice system

1440
01:30:00,408 --> 01:30:02,029
that could not turn back.

1441
01:30:02,075 --> 01:30:07,080
A machine that has made America the country with the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

1442
01:30:07,284 --> 01:30:12,970
We have in this country allowed ourselves to be captured by the politics of fear and anger

1443
01:30:12,973 --> 01:30:18,221
and anything we are afraid of, like the future of the Internet and access

1444
01:30:18,946 --> 01:30:22,125
and anything we are angry about instinctively creates

1445
01:30:22,191 --> 01:30:23,780
a criminal justice intervention.

1446
01:30:24,020 --> 01:30:27,382
and we have used jail, prison and punishment

1447
01:30:27,462 --> 01:30:31,373
to resolve whole host of problems that historically were never seen

1448
01:30:31,408 --> 01:30:32,940
as criminal justice problem.

1449
01:30:33,106 --> 01:30:36,902
The impulse to threaten, indict, prosecute

1450
01:30:37,044 --> 01:30:42,980
which is part of what has created this debate and contorversy over online access and information on the Internet.

1451
01:30:43,202 --> 01:30:45,677
It's very consistent with what we have seen in other areas

1452
01:30:45,711 --> 01:30:50,484
one difference is people are usually targeted and victimized by

1453
01:30:50,528 --> 01:30:55,151
these kinds of criminal and carceral responses are typically poor and minority.

1454
01:30:57,640 --> 01:31:00,582
Swartz's isolation from friends and family increased.

1455
01:31:00,840 --> 01:31:03,355
He had basically stopped working on anything else.

1456
01:31:03,497 --> 01:31:06,940
and the case was in fact taking over his whole life.

1457
01:31:07,088 --> 01:31:10,253
One of Aaron's lawyers apparently told the prosecutors that

1458
01:31:10,253 --> 01:31:12,902
he was emotionally vulnerable.

1459
01:31:13,248 --> 01:31:17,030
and that was something they really needed to keep in mind, so that.. they knew that.

1460
01:31:17,106 --> 01:31:19,471
It was weighing on him very heavily

1461
01:31:19,524 --> 01:31:25,460
he did not like having his actions and movements restricted in any way

1462
01:31:25,714 --> 01:31:30,840
and threat of jail, which they pounded him with a lot

1463
01:31:32,297 --> 01:31:33,910
was terrifying to him.

1464
01:31:33,968 --> 01:31:37,071
Completley exhausted his financial resources and

1465
01:31:37,737 --> 01:31:42,230
it cost us a lot of money also and he raised a substantial amount of money.

1466
01:31:42,480 --> 01:31:45,880
So, you know, it was in millions of dollars.

1467
01:31:46,578 --> 01:31:48,397
Interviewer: The legal defence?
Aaron's Father: Yes.

1468
01:31:48,647 --> 01:31:50,488
Interviewer: Was it millions?
Aaron's Father: Yes.

1469
01:31:51,373 --> 01:31:55,150
Yea, I think he didn't want to be a burden to people. I think that was a factor

1470
01:31:55,407 --> 01:31:59,746
Like I have my normal life, and I have this shitty thing I have to deal with.

1471
01:31:59,782 --> 01:32:03,090
and I try to keep the two of them as seperate as possible.

1472
01:32:03,346 --> 01:32:07,384
But they were just begining to blur together and everything was becoming shitty.

1473
01:32:09,088 --> 01:32:12,610
Swartz faced a tough choice that was only getting tougher.

1474
01:32:12,733 --> 01:32:16,940
To admit guilt and move on with your life or do you fight a broken system.

1475
01:32:17,191 --> 01:32:22,808
with his legal case the answer was simple. He rejects the final plea deal and a trial date is set.

1476
01:32:22,928 --> 01:32:26,300
Aaron was resolute that he didn't want to knuckle under

1477
01:32:26,342 --> 01:32:29,010
and accept something that he didn't believe was fair

1478
01:32:29,266 --> 01:32:31,149
but I also think that he was scared.

1479
01:32:42,989 --> 01:32:44,525
I don't think they would have convicted Aaron.

1480
01:32:44,582 --> 01:32:48,740
I think we would have walked him out of that courthouse and I would have given him a big hug

1481
01:32:48,813 --> 01:32:53,140
and we would have walked across that little river in Boston and gone and had a couple of beers.

1482
01:32:56,244 --> 01:32:57,853
I really thought that we were right.

1483
01:32:57,951 --> 01:32:59,586
I thought we were gonna win the case.

1484
01:32:59,622 --> 01:33:01,330
I thought we could win the case.

1485
01:33:01,453 --> 01:33:06,040
He didn't talk about it very much but you could see the enourmous pain he was going through.

1486
01:33:11,362 --> 01:33:16,824
No time in his childhood did Aaron have any severe mood swings, or like depressive episodes

1487
01:33:16,824 --> 01:33:20,792
or anything that I would describe to as severe depression.

1488
01:33:21,042 --> 01:33:23,522
And it;s possible you know he was depressed, people get depressed

1489
01:33:28,902 --> 01:33:33,933
Very early in our relationship, like 3 or 4 weeks in or something,

1490
01:33:34,013 --> 01:33:40,160
I remember him saying to me that I was a lot stronger than he was.

1491
01:33:40,717 --> 01:33:46,562
you know, he was brittle in lot of ways, things were a lot harder for him than for a lot of people.

1492
01:33:46,605 --> 01:33:48,504
It was part of his brilliance too.

1493
01:33:50,970 --> 01:33:56,866
I think, he probably had something like clinical depression in his early 20s

1494
01:33:57,684 --> 01:33:59,570
I don't think he did when I was with him.

1495
01:33:59,631 --> 01:34:03,970
He wasn't a joyful person.... but that's different from being depressed.

1496
01:34:06,564 --> 01:34:11,030
He was just under such such enourmous pressure for two years straight.

1497
01:34:11,074 --> 01:34:13,016
He just didn't want to do it anymore.

1498
01:34:13,817 --> 01:34:17,490
He was just.. I think it was too much.

1499
01:34:24,413 --> 01:34:26,475
I got a phone call late at night.

1500
01:34:27,711 --> 01:34:32,620
I could tell something was wrong and then I called and I realized what had happened.

1501
01:34:33,888 --> 01:34:39,170
The cofounder of the social news and entertainment website reddit has been found dead.

1502
01:34:39,275 --> 01:34:44,220
Police say 26 year old Aaron Swartz killed himself yesterday in his Brooklyn apartment.

1503
01:34:47,070 --> 01:34:56,475
I just thought we've lost one of the most creative minds of our generation.

1504
01:34:56,644 --> 01:35:00,546
I was like the whole world fell apart at that moment.

1505
01:35:06,635 --> 01:35:09,510
It was one of the hardest nights of my life.

1506
01:35:10,182 --> 01:35:14,110
It was like I was screaming "I can't hear you.. what did you just say.. I can't hear you."

1507
01:35:17,668 --> 01:35:21,965
I can't. That's it.

1508
01:35:29,746 --> 01:35:33,910
None of it made any sense, and really still doesn't.

1509
01:35:34,742 --> 01:35:37,680
I was so frustrated and angry.

1510
01:35:48,354 --> 01:35:51,320
You know I tried to explain it to my kids.

1511
01:35:51,570 --> 01:35:56,525
My 3 yr old told me that the doctors would fix him.

1512
01:36:02,221 --> 01:36:06,360
I know lots of people who have died but I've never lost anybody like this.

1513
01:36:06,445 --> 01:36:13,250
Because everybody feels, and I do too, there is so much that we could've.. more to do.

1514
01:36:14,872 --> 01:36:20,259
I just didn't know that he was there. I didn't know this is what he was suffering.

1515
01:36:21,442 --> 01:36:23,801
He was part of me.

1516
01:36:25,453 --> 01:36:29,528
And I just wanted it to not be real.

1517
01:36:33,666 --> 01:36:38,189
And then I just looked at his Wikipedia page and I saw the end date.

1518
01:36:42,265 --> 01:36:45,144
02-02-2013

1519
01:36:53,897 --> 01:36:55,071
Aaron is dead

1520
01:36:56,173 --> 01:37:00,262
Wanderers in this crazy world,
we have lost a mentor, a wise elder.

1521
01:37:00,955 --> 01:37:04,217
Hackers for right, we are one down,

1522
01:37:04,457 --> 01:37:06,315
we have lost one of our own.

1523
01:37:07,257 --> 01:37:12,475
Nurturers, carers, listeners,
feeders, parents all,

1524
01:37:12,955 --> 01:37:15,133
we have lost a child.

1525
01:37:15,462 --> 01:37:17,586
Let us all weep.

1526
01:37:24,942 --> 01:37:28,153
My first thought was what if nobody even notices.

1527
01:37:29,005 --> 01:37:33,113
It wasn't clear to me how salient he was.

1528
01:37:34,018 --> 01:37:39,949
I had never seen anything quite like the outpouring I saw.

1529
01:37:40,056 --> 01:37:41,442
The net just lit up.

1530
01:37:41,705 --> 01:37:45,800
Everyone was trying to explain it in their own way

1531
01:37:45,836 --> 01:37:50,083
but I have never seen people grieve on Twitter before.

1532
01:37:50,168 --> 01:37:52,749
People were visibily grieving online.

1533
01:37:56,665 --> 01:38:01,453
He was the Internet's Own Boy... and the whole world killed him.

1534
01:38:05,528 --> 01:38:10,477
We are standing in the middle of a time when great injustice is not touched.

1535
01:38:12,160 --> 01:38:16,032
architects of financial meltdown have dinner with the President regularly.

1536
01:38:16,469 --> 01:38:20,192
in middle of that time the idea that this

1537
01:38:20,716 --> 01:38:22,869
was what the government had to prosecute

1538
01:38:24,728 --> 01:38:27,842
it just seems absurd, if it weren't tragic.

1539
01:38:27,870 --> 01:38:33,421
The question is can we do something, given what's happened,

1540
01:38:33,472 --> 01:38:35,420
to make the world a better place.

1541
01:38:36,589 --> 01:38:40,685
And how can we further that legacy. Thats the only question one can ask.

1542
01:38:43,261 --> 01:38:47,429
All over the world there are starting to be hackathons, gatherings

1543
01:38:47,460 --> 01:38:52,301
and Aaron Swartz has in some sense brought the best out us

1544
01:38:52,432 --> 01:38:55,230
in trying to say "how do we fix this".

1545
01:38:57,330 --> 01:39:00,541
He was in my humble opinion one of the true

1546
01:39:00,556 --> 01:39:04,680
extraordinary revolutionaries that this country has produced

1547
01:39:05,210 --> 01:39:09,450
I don't know weather Aaron was defeated or victorious, but

1548
01:39:09,480 --> 01:39:14,470
we are certainly shaped by the hand of the things

1549
01:39:14,727 --> 01:39:16,077
that he wrestled with.

1550
01:39:16,327 --> 01:39:18,892
When we turned armed agents of the law

1551
01:39:19,021 --> 01:39:22,392
on citizens trying to increase access to knowledge

1552
01:39:22,642 --> 01:39:24,333
we've broken the rule of law

1553
01:39:24,583 --> 01:39:26,978
and we've desecrated the temple of justice.

1554
01:39:27,228 --> 01:39:29,730
Aaron Swartz was not a criminal.

1555
01:39:31,200 --> 01:39:34,509
Change does not role in on the wheels..

1556
01:39:34,759 --> 01:39:35,590
.. of inevitability.

1557
01:39:35,590 --> 01:39:35,640
It comes through continous struggle.
.. of inevitability.

1558
01:39:35,640 --> 01:39:37,900
It comes through continous struggle.

1559
01:39:40,226 --> 01:39:41,890
Aaron really could do magic

1560
01:39:42,200 --> 01:39:44,100
and I am dedicated to making sure...

1561
01:39:44,295 --> 01:39:46,136
... his magic doesn't end with his death.

1562
01:39:46,386 --> 01:39:47,864
He believed that he could change the world.

1563
01:39:48,114 --> 01:39:49,698
And he was right.

1564
01:39:49,948 --> 01:39:52,749
Out of the last week, and out of today..

1565
01:39:52,999 --> 01:39:55,032
.. phoenixes are already rising.

1566
01:39:57,420 --> 01:40:01,837
Since Swartz's death Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Sen. Ron Wyden..

1567
01:40:02,087 --> 01:40:03,736
have introduced legislations that would reform

1568
01:40:03,986 --> 01:40:05,570
... the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

1569
01:40:05,820 --> 01:40:08,941
The outdated law that formed the majority of the charges..

1570
01:40:09,191 --> 01:40:10,136
against Swartz.

1571
01:40:10,386 --> 01:40:12,589
It's called "Aaron's Law."

1572
01:40:12,839 --> 01:40:16,002
Aaron believed that like you literally ought to..

1573
01:40:16,252 --> 01:40:17,624
.. be asking yourself all the time..

1574
01:40:17,874 --> 01:40:21,357
.. "what is the most thing i could be working on in the world right now?"

1575
01:40:21,607 --> 01:40:23,469
And if you are not working on that, why aren't you?

1576
01:40:43,900 --> 01:40:47,298
I wish we could change the past, but we cannot.

1577
01:40:47,548 --> 01:40:53,805
But we can change the future and we must. We must do so for Aaron. We must do so for ourselves.

1578
01:40:54,055 --> 01:40:58,669
We must do so to make our world a better place.. a more humane place.

1579
01:40:58,919 --> 01:41:00,504
A place where justice works.

1580
01:41:00,754 --> 01:41:04,472
And access to knowledge becomes a human right.

1581
01:41:04,722 --> 01:41:09,613
So there was a kid, back in feburary from Baltimore.

1582
01:41:09,863 --> 01:41:11,704
14 years old.

1583
01:41:11,954 --> 01:41:18,552
..who had access to JStor and he had been splunking through JStor after reading something.

1584
01:41:18,802 --> 01:41:23,565
And he figured out a way to do early tests for Pancreatic Cancer.

1585
01:41:25,500 --> 01:41:28,237
And Pancreatic cancer kills the shit out of you.

1586
01:41:28,487 --> 01:41:32,760
Because we detect it way to late. By the time we detect its already too late to do anything about that.

1587
01:41:33,570 --> 01:41:38,925
And, he sent e-mails off to entire Oncology department at John Hopkins..

1588
01:41:39,175 --> 01:41:41,634
you know hundereds of them.
Interviewer: A 14 year old?

1589
01:41:41,640 --> 01:41:43,810
14 year old kid yeah. And most of them ignored it.

1590
01:41:44,060 --> 01:41:45,794
But one of them, like, sent him a e-mail back

1591
01:41:46,044 --> 01:41:48,300
And said, "this is not an entirely stupid idea. Why don't you come on over."

1592
01:41:48,674 --> 01:41:53,389
This kid worked evenings and weekends with this researcher and in Feburary I heard him on the news..

1593
01:41:53,666 --> 01:41:56,994
.. just couple of weeks after Aaron died, when Aaron was in the news a lot.

1594
01:42:00,200 --> 01:42:01,400
Sorry.

1595
01:42:03,544 --> 01:42:09,197
And he said, the reason he was on the news is because they had done it.

1596
01:42:09,447 --> 01:42:13,400
They were shipping an early test for pancreatic cancer that was gonna save lives.

1597
01:42:13,826 --> 01:42:17,944
And he said, "This is why what Aaron did was so important."

1598
01:42:20,696 --> 01:42:22,424
Because you never know, right.

1599
01:42:22,445 --> 01:42:27,224
This truth of the universe is not only something that policy makers use to figure out...

1600
01:42:27,474 --> 01:42:29,229
.. you know, what the speed limit should be.

1601
01:42:29,479 --> 01:42:35,458
Its where the things thats gonna keep, your kid from dying of Pancreatic cancer comes from.

1602
01:42:36,226 --> 01:42:41,346
And, without access the person who might come up with the thing thats got your

1603
01:42:41,596 --> 01:42:45,101
number on it may never find that answer.

1604
01:42:45,200 --> 01:42:57,725
[?]

1605
01:42:58,410 --> 01:43:00,734
Very good, Aaron, very good!

1606
01:43:01,313 --> 01:43:07,090
Okay! Now it's [?] time

1607
01:43:38,200 --> 01:43:44,200
Subtitles Creative Commons CC0 license:
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

1608
01:43:48,200 --> 01:43:55,200
Contribute and help translating at:
https://github.com/iliasbartolini/the-internet-s-own-boy--aaron-swartz--subtitles