Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and I love all things tech. Today,
Speaker 1: it is time for another tech Stuff classic episode that
Speaker 1: published back in February two thirteen. It is styled tech
Speaker 1: Stuff Remembers Aaron Swartz. Aaron Swartz, very important person, tragically
Speaker 1: short life, and Lauren Vogelbaum and I sit down and
Speaker 1: talk about who he is and why he was important.
Speaker 1: So I hope you enjoy this episode. Well, today we
Speaker 1: we have a topic that's both happy and sad. It's
Speaker 1: sad and that the world lost an activist and and
Speaker 1: legitimately a genius in January fellow by the name of
Speaker 1: Aaron Schwartz. And you may have heard this name, and
Speaker 1: you you may even be fairly aware of who he
Speaker 1: was and what he did. He's been in the news
Speaker 1: a whole bunch, and you've probably been hearing about him
Speaker 1: for years because he's done some really breakthrough work in technology.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and both from a actual technological standpoint and
Speaker 1: from a political standpoint, as it turns out, So we
Speaker 1: wanted to really talk about who he was, what sort
Speaker 1: of impact he's had on technology, both from a policy
Speaker 1: side and from actual zeros in ones right physical, yeah,
Speaker 1: and to kind of talk about why his his life
Speaker 1: and death matter in the world of tech. And to
Speaker 1: do this, we we wanted to kind of take an
Speaker 1: overview of his life. So first, before I really dive in,
Speaker 1: I have to give major props to The Verge, which
Speaker 1: is if you guys have never gone to The Verge,
Speaker 1: it's a fantastic It's one of my favorite sites out
Speaker 1: there right now. It's really really well done. And a
Speaker 1: fellow by the name of Tim Carmody wrote an exhaustive
Speaker 1: article about Swartz's life and was very thorough and very respectful,
Speaker 1: and see it was a really gorgeous piece of journalism, honestly,
Speaker 1: and it was it was a very personal piece of
Speaker 1: journalism that it bled a few lines into editorial, but
Speaker 1: it was and gave you a gave you insight to
Speaker 1: what it's like being a journalist to have to cover
Speaker 1: a story that has personal implications. Because he had had
Speaker 1: met Sworts at least once, and so you know, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a kind of an inside look to what
Speaker 1: it's like being a journalist and covering a story like this.
Speaker 1: And also he's very good at breaking down the myths
Speaker 1: because they you know, Aaron Swarts was sort of a
Speaker 1: legendary mythical figure in many ways, the kind of person
Speaker 1: who's whose contributions were huge, and they got bigger depending
Speaker 1: upon who was telling the story and how how many
Speaker 1: times they told it. Sure the same way to say
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs a lot of That's a good, good example.
Speaker 1: Although we should also add Swarts was was magically very
Speaker 1: young when he when he committed suicide, only twenty six
Speaker 1: years old. Yeah. So, so going back to his childhood,
Speaker 1: he was born in Chicago. In nineteen six his father,
Speaker 1: Robert Schwartz, founded a software company which was called Mark Williams,
Speaker 1: which actually named after Aaron's grandfather and uh and Mark Williams.
Speaker 1: The company was all about creating a clone of the
Speaker 1: Unix operating system and also ce compilers, C language compilers
Speaker 1: and debuggers for IBM PCs. And that's that's a term
Speaker 1: that brings me back because I remember when when computers
Speaker 1: were either called Apple or IBM compatible or you know,
Speaker 1: eventually kind of specificity doesn't really exist anymore. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: IBM compatible became a term like I was referring to
Speaker 1: PCs a IBM compatibles long after that was appropriate because
Speaker 1: sometimes things stick with you. But anyway, Robert Swartz would
Speaker 1: eventually become an intellectual property consultant for M I T S.
Speaker 1: Media lab and intellectual property was something that Aaron became
Speaker 1: very interested in and very passionate about. And the idea
Speaker 1: of is information property. Does it belong to one person
Speaker 1: or one entity in the case of say a corporation
Speaker 1: or organization, or does it belong to the world. Should
Speaker 1: it belong to the world? And this is a philosophical
Speaker 1: debate that a lot of people have had, and I
Speaker 1: think most people fall somewhere in the spectrum of gray. Sure, well,
Speaker 1: you know it's we We all want to especially those
Speaker 1: of us who work in the media, want to be
Speaker 1: paid for our ideas because that's the only thing that
Speaker 1: we produce. But at the same time, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: if someone wants to learn something, I'm certainly not going
Speaker 1: to say, like, no, no, give me money first. If
Speaker 1: you know, if for example, if they need that money
Speaker 1: to eat, I would gather them know things and eat. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And so Aaron kind of we'll get into it. But
Speaker 1: Aaron kind of developed an idealistic philosophy that was very
Speaker 1: much in the realm of information wants to be free,
Speaker 1: that that sort of idea that that that data needs
Speaker 1: to be out there for people to make use of
Speaker 1: it and to make lives better. He called it a
Speaker 1: moral imperative. Yeah and um yes, so that that kind
Speaker 1: of gives you a quick philosophical overview, But we don't
Speaker 1: want to jump ahead too far. Tim's work in the Verge.
Speaker 1: There was one little piece of information that I thought
Speaker 1: was adorable, which is that when Aaron was eight years old.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind out this is early days, okay, so
Speaker 1: s plus eight that means in in, in and and wait.
Speaker 1: I got nineteen nineteen ninety four. Liberal arts education has
Speaker 1: paid off people. When the World Wide Web was really
Speaker 1: just two years old. Um, he was actually going on usenet,
Speaker 1: which is not the same thing as Worldwide Web, so
Speaker 1: don't write me. But he was going on usenet, which
Speaker 1: was a newsgroup database essentially kind of like a network
Speaker 1: database where you could go and have discussions about different topics.
Speaker 1: And apparently when exactly when he was eight, he went
Speaker 1: on to ustet and his first post was to a
Speaker 1: newsgroup dedicated to Beakman's World, which is kind of awesome.
Speaker 1: That's wonderful. Yeah. Uh. He was also a big fan
Speaker 1: of the Star Wars movies, which I think is phenomenal
Speaker 1: because he was born three years after the last one
Speaker 1: came out, Return of the Jedi, as we have discussed before,
Speaker 1: year old. Sorry, yeah, well I saw Return of the
Speaker 1: Jedi in the theater when it was released. And man,
Speaker 1: I sure hope that one day Lucas comes out with
Speaker 1: movies that really explain how Anakin became Darth Vader. Yeah,
Speaker 1: wouldn't that be That would be so great, that would
Speaker 1: be fantastic. I love a follow up. I really wish
Speaker 1: that those movies existed, just like I hope one day
Speaker 1: they make a sequel to Highlander, the Matrix or The Matrix.
Speaker 1: These are yeah, so many movies that I wish there
Speaker 1: were sequels to that. I'm not actively denying exist. Um.
Speaker 1: It's exhausting being Miguel, really, but anyway, he was also
Speaker 1: fans of other things like I went visited his blog
Speaker 1: uh in preparation for this podcast, and and he had
Speaker 1: a way of taking pop culture and applying various thought
Speaker 1: experiments to it that was engaging and enlightening and funny.
Speaker 1: He has a great one in the final one, sadly
Speaker 1: about the Dark Night. Uh. The most recent, the last
Speaker 1: and the Christopher Nolan series actually was the second one.
Speaker 1: Wasn't yeah because it was all about the Joker. It
Speaker 1: was because he was he was going back to looking
Speaker 1: at that one. It was written. It was written in November. Um.
Speaker 1: The blog post was uh, and it was about how
Speaker 1: the Joker applies game theory throughout the movie. And he
Speaker 1: breaks down almost scene by scene every time the Joker
Speaker 1: appears and and explains which game in game theory applies
Speaker 1: to that scene. And there's like a dozen different games
Speaker 1: that he specifically references, and he makes a case for
Speaker 1: every single one. And I looked at that and I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I I kind of had the same idea
Speaker 1: once or twice, because I I know about game theory
Speaker 1: fleetingly and things like Prisoner's dilemma, the trolley problem, things
Speaker 1: like that. Um, but he broke it down for every
Speaker 1: single scene. I said, I never saw all of those connections.
Speaker 1: So he really had that ability to to to kind
Speaker 1: of look at the world around him and art and
Speaker 1: and and entertainment. And even if you even if you
Speaker 1: don't want to call it art, if you just want
Speaker 1: to call it entertainment, He's able to see the underlying
Speaker 1: thoughts that kind of maybe not consciously but guided that work.
Speaker 1: And uh, even if even if it was completely unintentional,
Speaker 1: he could draw parallels, which was really kind of an
Speaker 1: awesome thing. I really admire that quality in people. Certainly
Speaker 1: I do not possess it, not to that extent anyway. So, uh,
Speaker 1: skipping ahead of all that, I mean, that's so bottom
Speaker 1: line geeky guy. Okay, he's a geek, and I say
Speaker 1: that with full love. I say that as a man
Speaker 1: who has a Lord of the Rings tattoo on his
Speaker 1: left arm. Okay, I love the geek. I learned things
Speaker 1: about you every day. John didn't know I had a
Speaker 1: tattoo with a Lord of the Things. I don't think
Speaker 1: I did right here. Um, I can't show you up
Speaker 1: wearing a long sleep today. Um. But anyway, skipping ahead
Speaker 1: a little bit too. When he was the ripe old
Speaker 1: age of thirteen years old, circle two thousand or so thirteen,
Speaker 1: he begins to work on the Info Network, which is
Speaker 1: his idea for the Info Network was sort of like
Speaker 1: what Wikipedia became. It's the idea of this an online encyclopedia,
Speaker 1: storage of knowledge that anyone can can add to add
Speaker 1: to an edit, so essentially the same idea as Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: It's this, you know, he saw that the Internet was
Speaker 1: that had the potential to be like the guide in
Speaker 1: the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. If you guys
Speaker 1: have not read the books, then that's okay. You go
Speaker 1: ahead and do that. Will wait, because they're worth it.
Speaker 1: Don't don't watch the movie, but you can watch the
Speaker 1: BBC television series or listen to the radio show. You
Speaker 1: can watch the movie. Alan Rickman was excellent in that film.
Speaker 1: That movie was so bad. Martin Freeman was excellent in
Speaker 1: that film where Don't Make Me. Performances were fine, the
Speaker 1: script was terrible. I am from the Internet. I will
Speaker 1: fight you about Martin Freeman. No, no, no no, no, You're
Speaker 1: not gonna get any argument on me. I mean, Freeman
Speaker 1: was the best thing about the map I took during
Speaker 1: the hobbit um. So anyway, Uh, the Info Networks he's
Speaker 1: working on this this project, and the work gets him
Speaker 1: some attention. He actually becomes a finalist in the second
Speaker 1: Our Digita Prize and as a finalist. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: keeping mind, he's thirteen years old. He's he's competing, not
Speaker 1: necessarily competing, but he's he's in the same against in
Speaker 1: the Brackett bracket with people who are big names today
Speaker 1: in technology and who were adults. Many of these people
Speaker 1: knew his work. Yeah, they knew him. They knew him
Speaker 1: on online as as it staid at the time, Aaron
Speaker 1: sw but they did not know that Aaron sw was.
Speaker 1: They're like, whoa who am I being punked? Yeah? Is
Speaker 1: that that? That's a really dated reference. That's point in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: okay around two thousand they might have been saying it. Maybe, okay,
Speaker 1: so ask your parents. So he he ended up winning
Speaker 1: as a finalist, a thousand dollars and access to a
Speaker 1: web server for life and a two day trip to
Speaker 1: m I t to meet a couple of a couple
Speaker 1: of geeks, a couple of dudes who a little, a
Speaker 1: little influential in technology. One of those two was Tim
Speaker 1: berners Lee, who most of us know as the guy
Speaker 1: who invented the World Wide Web back when he was
Speaker 1: working with a CERN. Kind of kind of a big deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's the one who kind of developed the framework
Speaker 1: that would become the World Wide Web, and yeah, big name.
Speaker 1: The other fellow that he got to meet on this
Speaker 1: two day trip was Hal Abelson, who was professor of
Speaker 1: Electrical engineering and Computer Science at M I T. He's
Speaker 1: also a fellow of the I E E E or
Speaker 1: as longtime listeners of tech stuff, know how I pronounced
Speaker 1: it the because it's cajun um not cajun And then
Speaker 1: he was also a hal Abelson's also a founding director
Speaker 1: of Creative Commons and the Free Software Foundation and Creative
Speaker 1: Commons will come in to play later in this discussion
Speaker 1: as well. Abelson himself, Um, so big deal. You know,
Speaker 1: he got to meet some people who were definitely influential
Speaker 1: in the techno technology space as well as this idea
Speaker 1: that information is powerful and it's important and it's necessary
Speaker 1: and people should have access to it. Um these are
Speaker 1: these are big ideas for a thirteen year old, and
Speaker 1: he had embraced them already. Uh. A little bit later,
Speaker 1: he became interested in something called r S s rs S,
Speaker 1: of course being m a rich site summary. I believe
Speaker 1: originally it stood for resource description framework Site summary. Wow,
Speaker 1: look at you, Yes, that's exactly right. It's a it's
Speaker 1: sometimes also called really simple syndication. And you got it.
Speaker 1: You nailed it. And yes, I can read really good.
Speaker 1: I wrote it down. You do read really good. You
Speaker 1: don't speak so well, but to read really good. That's
Speaker 1: why I'm a podcasters fair. And it's it's what it's
Speaker 1: what the Internet uses to syndicate itself. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: so I'll give you, guys a for those of you
Speaker 1: who are not aware of what RSS is or what
Speaker 1: it does. Uh, let's go back to the old days
Speaker 1: of the web now, pre RSS or pre any other
Speaker 1: syndication format, because RSS is not the only one, it's
Speaker 1: just it's sort of the one that came out on top.
Speaker 1: But pre RSS and other syndication formats, the way you
Speaker 1: would get information on the net is you would go
Speaker 1: visit a website. Yeah, you would. You would type in
Speaker 1: the URL and you would click go, and you would
Speaker 1: visit the website right, and you would look and you
Speaker 1: would actually scan the website to see if anything you
Speaker 1: had popped up. This applied for everything from website that
Speaker 1: was about specific company you were interested in or a community.
Speaker 1: Blogs were kind of not a thing yet, but but
Speaker 1: web web comics maybe, or a news site, so you
Speaker 1: would you might think, oh, you know, I hadn't checked
Speaker 1: the news in a while, let me go, And then
Speaker 1: you would go and you would actually have to start
Speaker 1: kind of scanning through stuff and look, all right, well,
Speaker 1: what's what's new? What have I not read? I know,
Speaker 1: I think I read that one. So it was it
Speaker 1: was very time consuming. The idea behind the syndication was
Speaker 1: that instead of you going to the site, the sites
Speaker 1: would send little bits of information to some sort of
Speaker 1: portal page, a reader aggregator like Google Reader is a
Speaker 1: very popular one. You might log into this reader program
Speaker 1: or reader site really is what it was, uh, and
Speaker 1: then all that information would get fed to you whenever
Speaker 1: a new piece of information came in and you could
Speaker 1: just look at a glance and see, oh, this one
Speaker 1: website I'm interested in published a new article and you
Speaker 1: can read the headline and think, oh, is that something
Speaker 1: I want to look into more, And depending upon the
Speaker 1: way they syndicated their feed, you might even be able
Speaker 1: to read the entire article within your reader without having
Speaker 1: to ever visit the site. Uh. Not a lot of
Speaker 1: websites like that, because it meant that you could read
Speaker 1: their content without visiting the site, which often meant that
Speaker 1: they were not looking at their as Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: getting ad impressions. So a lot of sites instead would
Speaker 1: allow the first paragraph and a half and then a
Speaker 1: click through. Yeah, and then you would have to click through.
Speaker 1: But the the idea was all about making sure that
Speaker 1: that you would be getting the ist information as you
Speaker 1: were as it was being generated, so that you didn't
Speaker 1: have to keep checking. Yeah. And around around two thousand one,
Speaker 1: a version of RSS called RSS one point now was
Speaker 1: being developed. Yeah. Yeah. The RSS originally was kind of
Speaker 1: being created by by essentially Netscape, So the Netscape group
Speaker 1: was working on RSS, and they came out with things
Speaker 1: like r s S zero point nine which used r
Speaker 1: DF elements, which is that resource description framework that you
Speaker 1: were mentioning, Lauren. Um that, by the way, it essentially
Speaker 1: is all about how links linked to each other and
Speaker 1: the information between the links. It's a meta data issue. Um.
Speaker 1: It's kind of complicated. So and ultimately it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: because they removed the r DF elements when they released
Speaker 1: RSS zero point nine one. Once they removed the r
Speaker 1: DF elements, they said, oops, we yes, our acronym no
Speaker 1: longer means r D F r D F. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: site syndication. We got to call it something else, and uh,
Speaker 1: that's when we became rich site syndication. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: of course eventually became really simple syndication. Um, a rich
Speaker 1: site summary, I should say, not syndication. Sorry, that's my
Speaker 1: brain is totally syndicated. So anyway, Netscape releases point nine
Speaker 1: and point nine one. Uh, it becomes rich site Summary
Speaker 1: and then Netscape ends its development with the standard. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the thing was there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: were saying this was kind of a guard Yeah, guys,
Speaker 1: why why did we just put that down? Yeah, we
Speaker 1: kind of want that. So two different uh entities, I guess,
Speaker 1: one person and one group began to work on developing
Speaker 1: RSS further. On one end you had the the r
Speaker 1: S S Dev Working Group, and on the other end
Speaker 1: you had a fellow by the name of Dave Winer
Speaker 1: and uh the they were independently working on creating and
Speaker 1: furthering the standard of r s S. UH. Weiner attempted
Speaker 1: to trademark RSS, but due to a clerical technicality, that
Speaker 1: trademark did not go through. The RSS dev Working Group
Speaker 1: ended up publishing RSS one point oh, and that was
Speaker 1: part of that working group. There were there were originally
Speaker 1: I think about twelve or fourteen people on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was basically the Hobbit Party. Yeah. One of one
Speaker 1: of those people was fourteen year old Aaron Swartz. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Aeron swarts En, he's working with people like people
Speaker 1: from the O'Reilly media group who were working on this
Speaker 1: set of standards at fourteen years old, he was one
Speaker 1: of the people helping define the standards of RSS one
Speaker 1: point oh. Specifically, he was looking at creating some semantic
Speaker 1: elements in RSS specification, uh, semantic being that it would
Speaker 1: have a more almost like a natural language recognition ability
Speaker 1: to it. It's it's really all about meta data, the
Speaker 1: data about data, and how that helps aggregate information in
Speaker 1: a way that's useful to human beings, so that you know,
Speaker 1: because computers don't understand the actual information that is that
Speaker 1: they handle, right, so you have to create information about
Speaker 1: that information so computers can start to make associations and
Speaker 1: start filing. Yeah, for humans, it's natural. For computers, it
Speaker 1: takes a lot of work. So that's kind of what
Speaker 1: he was building out, was this whole um semantic element
Speaker 1: into it that was kind of what he was specifically
Speaker 1: interested in. Meanwhile, just to kind of wrap up the
Speaker 1: RSS stuff, um Winer would go on to develop RSS
Speaker 1: two point oh, which would take the place of RSS
Speaker 1: one point oh, even though it was not based on
Speaker 1: one point oh at all, because he was developing his
Speaker 1: simultaneous Yeah, the development forked and on one branch you
Speaker 1: had one point oh and the other branch you had
Speaker 1: two point and two point oh ended up eventually taking over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so one point I wasn't really it's still really
Speaker 1: impressive that they were creating it, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the work that that sports especialated with metadet data he
Speaker 1: ended up taking other places. Yes, Yeah, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of important to bring that into perspective because I've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of reports that just says he invented RSS,
Speaker 1: which one is not accurate and too is certainly not accurate.
Speaker 1: Uh once you go forward a couple of years when
Speaker 1: RSS two point out takes over. But but his contributions
Speaker 1: were nonetheless important, and as you've just pointed out, they
Speaker 1: were applicable to other elements of technology, not just the
Speaker 1: RSS project. So yeah, that was that was his involvement
Speaker 1: in that at age fourteen. I will not tell you
Speaker 1: what I was up to when I was fourteen years old,
Speaker 1: because none of it is even remotely as impressive as
Speaker 1: that one accomplishment. I'm pretty sure I was like watching
Speaker 1: Mystery Science Theater three thousand and playing Mario Kart at fourteen,
Speaker 1: I was probably wishing there was something called Mystery Science
Speaker 1: Theater three thousand. It happens to all of us because
Speaker 1: I'm old. As Lauren has pointed out from the Star
Speaker 1: Wars discussion, I wonder episode one per episode. Um, so
Speaker 1: this is about the same time that that Aaron Sports
Speaker 1: made a made a big decision in his life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he decided to drop out of high school that year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's um that's a bold decision for someone who is
Speaker 1: uh already showing so much promise. Uh, It's not not
Speaker 1: an unusual and that I've seen a lot of prodigies.
Speaker 1: I mean, Steve Stephen Hawking I think did terribly in
Speaker 1: primary school. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both dropped out,
Speaker 1: but they dropped out of college. They completed high school,
Speaker 1: but they dropped out of college. Well, you know, it's
Speaker 1: I think that he sounds like Aaron had a lot
Speaker 1: of support from his family and that he was, you know,
Speaker 1: being encouraged to take on these crazy projects. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I have a feeling he was also one of those
Speaker 1: people who the curriculum in a school just did not
Speaker 1: match up to this to his pretty bored in high school.
Speaker 1: And I'm not that smart, you know. I was also
Speaker 1: pretty bored in high school when we weren't talking about Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: When we were talking about Shakespeare, was very much engaged.
Speaker 1: Um No, I had some great teachers in high school.
Speaker 1: Please people, if don't don't write me hate mail teachers. Um.
Speaker 1: So he also, while not in high school, taught himself
Speaker 1: how to code and Python, so that was kind of impressive.
Speaker 1: You know, he decided that he needed to learn some
Speaker 1: more coding language. Um and uh. Then he ended up
Speaker 1: meeting a couple of important people, including Abelson again, also
Speaker 1: Lawrence Lessig, who would become uh sort of a mentor
Speaker 1: and friend to him throughout his life. And um uh
Speaker 1: Eric Eldridge, Eldred Rather and they they were they had
Speaker 1: just weren't banded together to create um creative commons. Now,
Speaker 1: creative comments is a way of licensing and copyrighting software
Speaker 1: that is not as restrictive as the traditional copyright right,
Speaker 1: because traditional copyright in the United States, at least, um
Speaker 1: it's pretty much a one zero it's a yes no
Speaker 1: kind of permission thing, wherein it's it's very possessive and
Speaker 1: it lasts forever and not literally forever, but you might
Speaker 1: as well be it's and it gets it seems like
Speaker 1: every year there are more companies petitioning to lengthen the
Speaker 1: the era of copyright. Um. Often you'll hear people talk
Speaker 1: about Disney being one of the big ones that they
Speaker 1: never want Mickey Mouse to pass out of copyright, and uh,
Speaker 1: I mean from a from a business perspective, you can
Speaker 1: totally understand their point of view. From a creative perspective,
Speaker 1: and someone who wants to be able to take other
Speaker 1: creative works and do something new with them, it's a
Speaker 1: very frustrating experience because you might have a great idea
Speaker 1: that would make someone else's great idea a superlative idea,
Speaker 1: but you can't do it without the fear of being sued.
Speaker 1: And so what lessig Abelson and Eldred wanted to do
Speaker 1: was create a form of licensing that would allow people
Speaker 1: who are creating works to choose how those works could
Speaker 1: be protected, distributed and protected and remixed and exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that way, like if if Lauren were to create
Speaker 1: something really awesome. But she says, you know, I know
Speaker 1: there are people out there who are going to look
Speaker 1: at this in ways I never imagined, and I want
Speaker 1: to see what comes of it. She could choose to
Speaker 1: license it under creative Comments in such a way that
Speaker 1: other people could use that work, possibly with some restrictions
Speaker 1: some and there were a lot of different options where
Speaker 1: you could do things like say, yes, you can use
Speaker 1: this work, but not in a commercial sense, or you
Speaker 1: can use this work, but you must attribute the originational creator.
Speaker 1: So um, it gave a lot more flexibility. But they
Speaker 1: had a problem. While they were working out all the
Speaker 1: technical issues from the law side, the legal issues, the
Speaker 1: policy issues, they weren't sure how to incorporate this the
Speaker 1: actual technological side, right because at the you know, at
Speaker 1: the end of a text article you can throw in
Speaker 1: a tag that says copyright this person, or you know,
Speaker 1: you can you can use this work in these ways,
Speaker 1: But how do you do that on a music file
Speaker 1: video without without actually having it pop up as you know,
Speaker 1: someone say, y'all, this is creative Commons and it's a
Speaker 1: song about my dog. Um, yeah, you don't want to
Speaker 1: do that at the beginning of very file. And so
Speaker 1: what Aaron ended up doing was he began to work
Speaker 1: on code that would allow him to embed that information
Speaker 1: again data meta data, data about data. Uh. This code
Speaker 1: would be able to exist within a file and be
Speaker 1: readable and meaningful, so that when you were distributing this file,
Speaker 1: you would actually be able to see how it was
Speaker 1: distributed under the Creative Commons and make sure that it's
Speaker 1: following the right standards. So he played a very important
Speaker 1: part early on the Creative Commons world to make sure
Speaker 1: that it made sense for him a technical perspective, technological
Speaker 1: perspective and yeah, huge influence on that. And again talking
Speaker 1: with people like Lessig and A. Wilson and Eldred gave
Speaker 1: him an even greater appreciation for this idea that information
Speaker 1: is important and people needed so once more reinforcing his
Speaker 1: own philosophy which again he had already started to develop
Speaker 1: before he began to work on this project. Um. Then
Speaker 1: in two thousand one he co wrote a paper with
Speaker 1: James Hendler, was a professor at the University of Maryland.
Speaker 1: The paper was called the semantic web, a network of
Speaker 1: content for the digital city. So this again is that
Speaker 1: idea of a web that is almost intelligent in a
Speaker 1: way that everything is mapped to everything else in such
Speaker 1: a way that associations are made very naturally. Uh. He
Speaker 1: ended up going to co present this paper in Kyoto
Speaker 1: so in two thousand one. Yeah again, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: this is when he was still fourteen on the right
Speaker 1: around that age. Yeah, kind of crazy. And then um,
Speaker 1: just to kind of illustrate his philosophy on licensing. He
Speaker 1: he had a very um clever sense of humor, and
Speaker 1: he could he could word things in such a way
Speaker 1: where you get the meaning and you get the humor
Speaker 1: at the same time. For instance, he decided to to
Speaker 1: summarize certain organizations views on copyright in the form of haiku,
Speaker 1: and he was trying to explain what what these different
Speaker 1: approach is meant in a very simple way. So, for example,
Speaker 1: for the public domain, public domain meaning that it is
Speaker 1: not under copyright and anyone can access it without fear
Speaker 1: of any you know, legal repercussion exactly says do what
Speaker 1: you feel like, since the work is abandoned, the law
Speaker 1: doesn't care. That was hiking Number one might tease approach,
Speaker 1: take my code with you and do whatever you want,
Speaker 1: but please don't blame me. And then you have the
Speaker 1: r I double A. That's the the Recording Institutent Associate
Speaker 1: Industry Association America in this little litigious group you might
Speaker 1: have heard, famously infamously opposed to UH to digital distribution,
Speaker 1: or at least digital digital distribution without some form of
Speaker 1: really restrictive d r M. Yeah. They really wanted everything
Speaker 1: to run off of d r M. Yeah. Anyway, R
Speaker 1: double A. They're also infamously UH known for getting involved
Speaker 1: in policy decisions, advocating for policy decisions, his take on
Speaker 1: their approaches. If you touch this file, my lawyers will
Speaker 1: come kill you, so kindly refrain out. Yeah. Well, I
Speaker 1: think this is a good moment to take a quick
Speaker 1: break and hear from our sponsors. And now back to
Speaker 1: the show. So we're gonna skip ahead to when he
Speaker 1: was the right old age of seventeen, and that's when
Speaker 1: he began to work on a project called info Gummy
Speaker 1: and this was a WEEKI platform, yep, and it eventually
Speaker 1: merged with another company that has gone on to UH
Speaker 1: to some acclaim. You might have heard of it. It's
Speaker 1: called Reddit. Ye. Reddit. I know some people who think
Speaker 1: of read it as really it really is at their
Speaker 1: front page to the Internet, you know, because Reddit, of
Speaker 1: course divides things up into categories and then subcategories or
Speaker 1: reddits and subreddits if you prefer, and you can read
Speaker 1: all about these different headlines that are coming out all
Speaker 1: across the web from all sorts of different sources. You
Speaker 1: can vote up or vote down stories, so that the
Speaker 1: ones that you've think are particularly well written or pertinent
Speaker 1: are at the top, and ones that are not applicable
Speaker 1: or whatever get voted down. A free flowing sharing of information.
Speaker 1: Yeah uh. And ideally it works really well, although depending
Speaker 1: upon which reddit commentary pill bits and pieces if it
Speaker 1: can be wretched, has this common villainy right, and some
Speaker 1: some subreddit communities are fantastic, absolutely, and then some subreddit
Speaker 1: communities just are filled with flame wars um and it happens.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so he was he was technically he was
Speaker 1: a co creator, a co creator of Reddit. Yeah so
Speaker 1: so Reddit as a company existed before Aaron came on
Speaker 1: board because the company's merged. But it wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 1: what it is. It wasn't what it is today. Exactly.
Speaker 1: So he ended up creating it a special kind of
Speaker 1: web development library, uh that they ended up switching to.
Speaker 1: They had it a previous one, they switched to the
Speaker 1: one that Sworts creates, and then the site kind of
Speaker 1: took off and in fact was purchased by the Nast
Speaker 1: and uh that purchased that deal ended up making Aaron
Speaker 1: wealthy overnight, extremely wealthy. Yeah, and you know, the the
Speaker 1: entire Reddit team was moved into Wired's offices. Wired is
Speaker 1: owned by Conde Nasty. Wired's offices in San Francisco, because
Speaker 1: before that he had been working in other parts of California,
Speaker 1: which um he preferred. Uh. He was not a fan
Speaker 1: of San Francisco. He was not really a fan of
Speaker 1: the Wired offices or of the entire He didn't like
Speaker 1: the job. Like I have a feeling that anytime Swartz
Speaker 1: encountered constraints, he became frustrated, and the more constrained he was,
Speaker 1: the more frustrated he would become. And Uh, one of
Speaker 1: the other elements of Swartz's life, and it's a it's
Speaker 1: a tragic element, is that he was, uh he battled
Speaker 1: depression and that in this environment where he was coming
Speaker 1: up against all these constraints that he did not like.
Speaker 1: Depression was starting to get to him. Um he wrote
Speaker 1: a story, a fictional story, but people began to question
Speaker 1: how fictional it was that that some people began to
Speaker 1: interpret as a potential suicide note a plea for help,
Speaker 1: and people began to check on him and UM he
Speaker 1: then was essentially asked to resign and or fired, depending
Speaker 1: upon the depending on the right the terminology you really
Speaker 1: want to use. Either way, the it was it was
Speaker 1: clear that his his his happiness was not going to
Speaker 1: come into play while he's working there. He was not
Speaker 1: contributing to the company in the way that they wanted,
Speaker 1: and UH, no party in that relationship was happy. So
Speaker 1: he ended up leaving uh Reddit. But but that was
Speaker 1: probably for the best because again it was just clear
Speaker 1: that it was not a good fit. Um And in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven he ended up joininging UH the Internet
Speaker 1: Archive Project and launched a project called open Library now
Speaker 1: open Library. Essentially, it creates a web page for every
Speaker 1: book that's within the database of various libraries and research
Speaker 1: facilities and other organizations. It takes the meta data about
Speaker 1: those books and creates a web page based on the metadata.
Speaker 1: So you're not getting necessarily the content come to book.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so so it's a useful tool. And uh,
Speaker 1: it also allows anyone to add to that tool to
Speaker 1: the open library project, which again it's involving metadata, it's
Speaker 1: involving sharing information. We're starting to see a real theme
Speaker 1: developed with Aaron's life and his work. He he also
Speaker 1: at that point, um, not quite with permission, posted all
Speaker 1: of the book cataloging data kept by the Library of
Speaker 1: Congress to open library. And this is this is another
Speaker 1: theme that goes on frequently in Eron's life of of
Speaker 1: just just small I mean, okay, not even small, because
Speaker 1: that's kind of big, big activism, big peaceful informational activism. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He he would take initiative. Let's let's put it that way.
Speaker 1: That taking initiative is going to become a theme very
Speaker 1: quickly too. Absolutely. And in two thousand and eight, in fact,
Speaker 1: he he wrote what he called the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto,
Speaker 1: and this was this this really kind of kicked off
Speaker 1: his um, his public persona I think of of being
Speaker 1: that kind of activist. There's a great quote from it
Speaker 1: that I want to read real quick. Um he said,
Speaker 1: it's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth
Speaker 1: of knowledge where the moral equivalent of plundering a ship
Speaker 1: and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't moral, it's a
Speaker 1: moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to
Speaker 1: let a friend make a copy. Mm hmm. Interesting And
Speaker 1: then moving on from that, and the same year, in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, uh, he got involved in a
Speaker 1: little kerfuffle. Uh, alright, So so to explain the kerfuffle,
Speaker 1: we have to talk about the PACER system, and that's
Speaker 1: the public Access to Court electronic record system, and it's
Speaker 1: essentially a government run database and it's mostly court filing,
Speaker 1: so it's all the stuff that happens in open court.
Speaker 1: And by by definition, they are uncopyrightable. They are public access. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: because these are you know, the government cannot copyright information.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not allowed to. It's the same reason
Speaker 1: why if you go look at information that was generated
Speaker 1: by NASA, it's not protected by copyright. Um. So, same
Speaker 1: sort of thing here. But the database, what I was
Speaker 1: doing was just trying to solve a problem. You've got
Speaker 1: so much information that it's very difficult to track down
Speaker 1: specific files in a physical filing system and Also, it
Speaker 1: generates a huge amount of material that you have to
Speaker 1: create physical space for it to store it. So Pacer
Speaker 1: was the let's create an electronic system one that will
Speaker 1: cut down on the amount of space we need to
Speaker 1: store all these files. And too, it will make it
Speaker 1: way easier to find stuff. Sure. Sure in order to
Speaker 1: do that, however, I mean, because you know to to
Speaker 1: to run the servers to do all of that uploading,
Speaker 1: it was charging at the time an eight cent per
Speaker 1: page fee to access all of this information. Um and
Speaker 1: and that was I mean that was mostly for giant
Speaker 1: law firms or corporations that were downloading large amounts of
Speaker 1: that data. You were if you were an individual, you
Speaker 1: could get something for for for a couple bucks or
Speaker 1: for free sometimes free. Frequently you were limited as an
Speaker 1: individual to how many times you could get court files
Speaker 1: within a certain span of times. So for example, every
Speaker 1: three months or four months, you might be able to
Speaker 1: download five files, but then you would have to wait
Speaker 1: to download more or pay or pay right exactly and
Speaker 1: uh and Sworts philosophy was that why should you be
Speaker 1: forced to pay for something that should be publicly possible?
Speaker 1: It is, it is the public and it should be right,
Speaker 1: So so if it's you know, if it's not under copyright,
Speaker 1: then why you So Pacer kind of responded to criticisms
Speaker 1: about this database and began to create a pilot program
Speaker 1: and allowed seventeen libraries in the United States free access
Speaker 1: to the database, so anyone could download as many documents
Speaker 1: within Pacer. Yeah, so Aaron decided that he had a
Speaker 1: clever idea. He was like, well, so, well, I can
Speaker 1: get as many of these for free as possible, and
Speaker 1: then because they're not under copyright, I can upload them
Speaker 1: to a free database which anyone can access at any
Speaker 1: time for absolutely free, because and no one can come
Speaker 1: after me because there if I just uncopyrightable files, if
Speaker 1: I just write a script to do that for me,
Speaker 1: that's much faster. I don't have to sit there and
Speaker 1: set up the little uh, the little ducking birdie thing
Speaker 1: that Homer Simpson used to flick yes over and over
Speaker 1: again when he when he had that takeover for his job. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a great episode. But yeah. No, he created a
Speaker 1: script that would automatically and continuously download these files. Um.
Speaker 1: He downloaded almost twenty million pages of text, or about
Speaker 1: about one point five million dollars worth if you're going
Speaker 1: by that eight cents of right, which you know, again
Speaker 1: you can debate on what the actual value is. But way,
Speaker 1: he downloaded all of this, and once once it hit
Speaker 1: around that that much, someone over at Pacers said, WHOA,
Speaker 1: something something funky is going down. Something's wrong. Someone is
Speaker 1: just downloading all of it. Yeah, And whether or not
Speaker 1: they thought that it was an attack or maybe the
Speaker 1: system itself was just malfunctioning, they decided to to pull
Speaker 1: the plug both on the servers. Literally, they shut the
Speaker 1: servers down at first of that the they would no
Speaker 1: longer be serving up the information, and then they canceled
Speaker 1: the program. Though with the libraries, they canceled that program
Speaker 1: and then they they were not. They also had to
Speaker 1: deal with a nasty pr problem because the documents that
Speaker 1: that Sworts got showed that the Pacers system was not
Speaker 1: good at eliminating personal data out of court files. So
Speaker 1: this is data that should be the should be private
Speaker 1: and secret, It should be anonymous, should be protected. Right,
Speaker 1: So the court filings themselves are not necessarily anonymous, but
Speaker 1: the personal data about the people in them should be.
Speaker 1: So it began to raise some questions about the PACER system,
Speaker 1: and some critics said, you know, technologically, we should not
Speaker 1: have this problem. Uh, we are at a place now
Speaker 1: where this system should be way better than what it is.
Speaker 1: And so it kind of gave the government a black eye.
Speaker 1: Some people have said it perhaps this gave the United
Speaker 1: States government, or at least certain agencies within the government,
Speaker 1: the the inspiration to look more closely into Aaron Schwartz
Speaker 1: and his activities. Supposedly the FBI at that point created
Speaker 1: a profile on him, Yeah, which which Swarts said he
Speaker 1: got hold of and found uh entertaining. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it was so some would argue that this kind of
Speaker 1: created a grudge against Swarts on the on behalf of
Speaker 1: the government, and that perhaps some of the other things
Speaker 1: that unfold were part of that. I wouldn't I personally
Speaker 1: wouldn't go so far as to say that, But then
Speaker 1: I'm not intimate with all the details I know. Um,
Speaker 1: but then let's let's move ahead. In two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: he became part of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. He
Speaker 1: was one of the original members. This was a campaign committee.
Speaker 1: It was really about UH campaign financing reforms, trying to
Speaker 1: do things like eliminate corporate UH contributions during election campaigns
Speaker 1: and to just limit political contributions in general from corporations,
Speaker 1: saying that, well, one of the things they suggested was,
Speaker 1: why don't you hold it up to a vote from
Speaker 1: shareholders whether or not you contribute to a particular political candidate. Um,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. Uh. He was definitely very opinionated
Speaker 1: on that subject. Also, in case you're curious, I mean,
Speaker 1: just for full information, Uh, this committee mostly backs progressive Democrats.
Speaker 1: That's not to say that there aren't progressive Republicans. There are.
Speaker 1: There are progressive conservatives and progressive liberals, but in particular,
Speaker 1: this particularly this committee, the specific committee tends to lean democrat. Um.
Speaker 1: So just in the full, full disclosure, full disclosure information
Speaker 1: there and in two Swartz. Swartz was not afraid of
Speaker 1: of of poking the bear, as it turns out, and
Speaker 1: he was also very again, very passionate about information. And uh.
Speaker 1: He proved it again in when he filed a Freedom
Speaker 1: of Information Act request to learn about how Bradley Manning
Speaker 1: was being treated in US custody. Uh. And if you
Speaker 1: aren't familiar with the story of Bradley Manning, Bradley Manning
Speaker 1: was a U. S. Army soldier private actually who gained
Speaker 1: access to some some pretty high level security clearance information
Speaker 1: within the military and leaked it to wiki leaks. So
Speaker 1: when you heard about all those cables from a few
Speaker 1: years ago, thousands and thousands of communication cables that were
Speaker 1: leaked to wiki leaks, a lot of that was traced
Speaker 1: back to Bradley Manning, and Manning has been held in
Speaker 1: confinement awaiting trial. The trial is supposed to take place
Speaker 1: this year in June. UM, but for a long time
Speaker 1: he was being held and the Marine or brig in Quantico, Virginia,
Speaker 1: which was similar to being held in solitary confinement. His
Speaker 1: conditions were uncomfortable, to say the least. He was by
Speaker 1: many reports. Uh, he was in a cell where he
Speaker 1: was unable to see any other prisoner. Within those cells,
Speaker 1: they could hear each other, but they could not see
Speaker 1: each other. Um. Supposedly he was not allowed to sleep
Speaker 1: between the hours of five am and eight pm at
Speaker 1: all um and then uh he was only allowed out
Speaker 1: of his cell to take a walk for one hour
Speaker 1: the first time he was in a cell. Um. His
Speaker 1: his cell had I think no window. I think it
Speaker 1: had a sink, a toilet, and a bed, and the
Speaker 1: bed had a mattress that had a pillow incorporated in
Speaker 1: the mattress, and that when Manning made a comment about
Speaker 1: the only way he could hurt himself, they essentially started
Speaker 1: to take away all his clothing as well, according to
Speaker 1: the reports I read, when he made a comment saying
Speaker 1: that the only way he could possibly hurt himself at
Speaker 1: this point would be with his flip flops or underwear,
Speaker 1: those were taken away as well. Future Jonathan again, doubly future,
Speaker 1: since I'm recording this in twenty nineteen, We're gonna take
Speaker 1: another quick break. So this is the reason why uh
Speaker 1: Swarts was sitting in this Freedom of Information Act request.
Speaker 1: He felt that one that what Manning had done possibly
Speaker 1: was not as big a crime as everyone was making
Speaker 1: it out to be, and certainly he did not deserve
Speaker 1: the sort of treatment before he had even gone to trial. Certainly,
Speaker 1: um so Manning, for his part, by the way, was
Speaker 1: pleading not guilty. So to be treated this way, uh Swarts,
Speaker 1: I'm sure felt passionately was completely wrong, completely um And
Speaker 1: I should also rush to add this is all based
Speaker 1: on what I've read about how how Manning was so again,
Speaker 1: I wasn't there, and it could be that he was
Speaker 1: treated completely fairly. And this information has been fabricated for
Speaker 1: some reason. But this this was the information that was
Speaker 1: out there at the time and or that is out
Speaker 1: there now right and then um, ultimately he was manning
Speaker 1: was moved to the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, which
Speaker 1: was a relatively new facility. And from what I understand
Speaker 1: his the cell that he is in is much improved
Speaker 1: over the one he was in Quantico. Um. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: that was another thing Sports got involved in. And uh. Again,
Speaker 1: some conspiracy theorists suggests that that the government, the grudge
Speaker 1: that the government had back in the Pacers situation was
Speaker 1: up to mega grudge after this, uh this request, although
Speaker 1: Sports was not the only person in the world to
Speaker 1: ask for the suscormationum So, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: really buy into that. Uh. Skipping ahead just a little bit.
Speaker 1: We're gonna backtrack in a second. But he was also
Speaker 1: Sports was also an advocate against the SOPA campaign Stop
Speaker 1: Online Piracy Act in two thousand and eleven that was proposed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the general idea behind this act was that a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff, a lot of the computers that host
Speaker 1: the files that violate intellectual property rights of companies and
Speaker 1: people within the United States. A lot of those computers
Speaker 1: exist in countries outside the US jurisdiction, and so how
Speaker 1: do you and how do you stop those sites from
Speaker 1: distributing illegal copies of stuff within the United States. And
Speaker 1: SOPA's approach was to break links to those sites, essentially,
Speaker 1: to remove those sites from domain name servers here in
Speaker 1: the United States, so that if you were to try
Speaker 1: and navigate to one of those sites, he would get
Speaker 1: an error. Essentially, you would get redirected to the FBI
Speaker 1: while page, which would in theory scare you and to
Speaker 1: stop to stop looking for ways to do it. There
Speaker 1: were definitely work arounds to this um and a lot
Speaker 1: of people protested SOPA because they said that one it
Speaker 1: would not stop pirates from pirating because they could find
Speaker 1: ways around it, and too, it could break the Internet
Speaker 1: in unintended ways. I think Swartz was more of more
Speaker 1: of information wants to be free, not so much like
Speaker 1: it will break the Internet or we can get around this,
Speaker 1: but more like more of it's wrong to shut down
Speaker 1: information where information exists. Yeah. So, but he was definitely
Speaker 1: on the anti SOPA side, and he gave a very
Speaker 1: eloquent speech when SOPA failed to pass, and and really
Speaker 1: was passionate about telling people don't rest because this idea
Speaker 1: is not a not a new idea, it's something that's
Speaker 1: been tried multiple times and will be tried again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that that leads us to to the I guess
Speaker 1: the last part of this this saga the story about
Speaker 1: j store, which actually started back in November, So this
Speaker 1: predates the SOPA stuff, but it kind of it envelops it.
Speaker 1: J Store the company Essentially, it stands for journal storage, right,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a library of publicly funded academic articles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're talking again about scholarly information. So this is
Speaker 1: kind of similar to the the the the information that
Speaker 1: was in Pacer. Of course that was court filings, not
Speaker 1: scholar scholarship. But in this case we're talking about academic journals,
Speaker 1: books and papers that are from primary sources. These are
Speaker 1: the people who are doing the rescientific research, medical research,
Speaker 1: all kinds of really terrific stuff is in Jason. Essentially,
Speaker 1: all the blogs you read are based off of the
Speaker 1: academic papers that are stored in databases like j store,
Speaker 1: and j store has about well a little bit over
Speaker 1: four hundred journal titles and more than fifty disciplines are
Speaker 1: represented in j stores database. And it was the whole
Speaker 1: purpose of J store. Well, first it was founded by
Speaker 1: William J. G. Bowen or Bowen, who was president of
Speaker 1: Princeton University, and it was again trying to solve that
Speaker 1: same problem that Pacer was trying to solve. How do
Speaker 1: you make this vast amount of academic information searchable and
Speaker 1: feasible to store because it takes up so much space.
Speaker 1: Libraries were having trouble storing all this stuff, of course,
Speaker 1: so J store was kind of the solution. And most
Speaker 1: of the stuff, not all of it, like anything that's
Speaker 1: in the public domain is publicly accessible through j store,
Speaker 1: but anything that's currently under you know, the copyright or
Speaker 1: whatever you have to you have to pay to access
Speaker 1: behind a paywall. And uh and and again Swartz Swarts
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily think that it needed to be behind a paywall.
Speaker 1: Um or they needed or then needed to just exist
Speaker 1: uh on J store and uh and there's some arguments
Speaker 1: about exactly what he did, but essentially he got access
Speaker 1: to a computer at the Mighty, which was fine. He
Speaker 1: had he had authorization to access right he was currently
Speaker 1: a fellow at the Center for Ethics at Harvard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which some people would say is ironic, but yeah, he
Speaker 1: got access to a computer at in mighty um, and
Speaker 1: he began to use again another kind of algorithm to
Speaker 1: start downloading documents from j store. I think it was
Speaker 1: a Python script actually, which you had mentioned that he
Speaker 1: learned he had learned when he dropped out of high school.
Speaker 1: Relying on that Python knowledge, uh and not the Monty kind. Um,
Speaker 1: he managed to download around four million journals out of
Speaker 1: j Store, and Jay Store was able to identify that
Speaker 1: it was Swartz and essentially confronted him with this, and
Speaker 1: ultimately Swartz and j Store ended up settling this this
Speaker 1: dispute out of court. Uh, and Swords actually handed over
Speaker 1: the information he had downloaded from j Store, and j Store,
Speaker 1: for its part, essentially said all right, we're cool. You
Speaker 1: know what. We don't agree with what you did, but
Speaker 1: we understand why you did it, and you returned everything.
Speaker 1: So where everything's cool and it could have ended right
Speaker 1: then and there. Sure, but but um, well, people people
Speaker 1: argue a little bit about what role M I T
Speaker 1: has had in all of this, and some people say
Speaker 1: that the administration they're really cracked down unnecessarily hard on him,
Speaker 1: and a lot of I think a lot of alumni
Speaker 1: have come out saying like, well, in my day, you know,
Speaker 1: earlier in the nineteen seventies at M I T, if
Speaker 1: someone had had hacked our system and started downloading this
Speaker 1: amount of information from such a terrific databases J store,
Speaker 1: we would have we would have congratulated them, we would
Speaker 1: have given given them a certificate. And and and it's
Speaker 1: a little parade. Yeah, yeah, And and there's some who
Speaker 1: say that M I T did not actively pursue a
Speaker 1: case against Sports, but also did not discourage They did
Speaker 1: certainly call the cops on him. Yeah, so that's when
Speaker 1: the government gets involved. And uh, the government essentially charges
Speaker 1: Sports with thirteen Ultimately it was thirteen criminal court criminal counts,
Speaker 1: which included things like wire fraud, computer fraud, information, you
Speaker 1: have to information, this kind of stuff. Um and Uh.
Speaker 1: He was released on a hundred thousand dollars bail. The charges,
Speaker 1: depending upon the accounts you read, could have resulted in
Speaker 1: him serving a prison sentence of between thirty and fifty
Speaker 1: years at max. UM. Many of many of the accounts
Speaker 1: I say, CE say, thirty five several. Yeah, there's one
Speaker 1: I think CNN article that said fifty and I think
Speaker 1: I think that people are adding them up in different ways.
Speaker 1: But but um, and this is all under the Computer
Speaker 1: Fraud and Abuse Act. And uh. He also would have
Speaker 1: faced up to maybe as much as four million dollars
Speaker 1: and fines, and now it's far more likely that the
Speaker 1: government would have ended up reducing that to just six months.
Speaker 1: And some fine say that it would have been they
Speaker 1: were offering a a plea based on the fact that
Speaker 1: there was no personal gain intended from right and um.
Speaker 1: So some have said that the government was essentially using
Speaker 1: Swarts as an example to scare the heck out of
Speaker 1: any of anyone else who would want to try something similar.
Speaker 1: So you could kind of compare this to stories about
Speaker 1: cases where people who downloaded some music files ended up
Speaker 1: getting pulled into a court case where the fine would
Speaker 1: have been, you know, an astronomical billion dollars, five dollars
Speaker 1: per song or something like that, And it's a similar
Speaker 1: situation in that sense. It could have been that, you know,
Speaker 1: that the whole goal here was not so much to
Speaker 1: punish Swartz into next century, but rather to act as
Speaker 1: a deterrent for anyone else to scare people, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, government and everybody else that rarely works. More
Speaker 1: often than not, you get people more angry terrible things. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that you aren't you know, you don't
Speaker 1: have a right to act on things that are against
Speaker 1: the law. I'm just saying, think about the way you
Speaker 1: do it, because you could end up making a worse
Speaker 1: enemy for yourself. You might find a better way of
Speaker 1: working around it, is my point. So again not saying
Speaker 1: that they're in the wrong. I mean, Sports was in
Speaker 1: the wrong, but how much he was in the wrong
Speaker 1: was another question. And and in in this case, um
Speaker 1: and again, like like we said at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the podcast, and like I'm sure that you've heard on
Speaker 1: the news on January eleven, Sports was found dead in
Speaker 1: his apartment. Uh. He had he had apparently committed suicide.
Speaker 1: Uh and um uh. You know, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of people raising suggestions about what it was that specifically
Speaker 1: led to his decision to end his life. And again,
Speaker 1: because we are not Aaron, we can't we can't be
Speaker 1: sure what led to it. And his family has come
Speaker 1: out as being very very passionately saying that it was
Speaker 1: because of this persecution. Yeah, that he was feeling a
Speaker 1: huge amount of stress and that again his depression was
Speaker 1: something that was was was really plaguing him at that time.
Speaker 1: That and you can sort of imagine that if you
Speaker 1: are this person who has this idealistic view of how
Speaker 1: the world should be and then you start to encounter
Speaker 1: so much, so much persecution and resistance to to your
Speaker 1: dream where you know, you you can see in your
Speaker 1: mind you think, there's this idealistic world we could be
Speaker 1: living in and it would be so easy. But I'm
Speaker 1: I'm hitting resistance all the way and every time I
Speaker 1: try and make a change, I get ten more obstacles
Speaker 1: in my way. You can kind of see where that
Speaker 1: sort of hopelessness could creep in if if that was
Speaker 1: you know, in fact, what Aaron was thinking. And again
Speaker 1: this is just kind of it's all it's all speculation.
Speaker 1: And you know, the U. S. Attorney's Office of its
Speaker 1: Carmen Orts is in fact office, She's the U. S.
Speaker 1: Attorney of Massachusetts has said that um that that their
Speaker 1: office is contact conduct was not in fact inappropriate. They
Speaker 1: they have maintained that what everything they did was well
Speaker 1: within the limits of the law and in ethics, which
Speaker 1: because again, just because something's legal doesn't mean it's ethical,
Speaker 1: and vice versa. Yeah, there's there's been there's been a
Speaker 1: huge pushback against her office. There's a white House dot
Speaker 1: gov petition out right now as of as of late
Speaker 1: January with over forty six thousand signatures to remove her
Speaker 1: from office. Yeah, and there's been a lot of outcry
Speaker 1: on the internet on behalf of sports. There's also been
Speaker 1: some resistance, uh, some people who have criticized Swartz and
Speaker 1: his his ideals. I've seen some of that. There have
Speaker 1: been some hackers who have kind of made you know,
Speaker 1: they've defaced some memorials online. You know, it's it's a
Speaker 1: complex thing. Some sometimes you could argue that, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the hackers really do feel that Swartz was not
Speaker 1: the person that other people are making him out to be.
Speaker 1: In other cases, I think, you know, it could just
Speaker 1: be you know, making a play for attention, for attention. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a high profile instance on the flip side.
Speaker 1: M I T s website has been hacked twice since
Speaker 1: Swarts of suicide, once by anonymous who also threatened action
Speaker 1: against the Westbergo Baptist Church when they announced that they
Speaker 1: would pick at swarts as funeral, which they backed off of.
Speaker 1: They did not, They did not show up. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: again when we say that Anonymous does something, keep in
Speaker 1: mind that's you know, that's a group that has no
Speaker 1: real uh well, there's there's no real structure to it.
Speaker 1: So sometimes members of Anonymous may act. That's very true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's always hard to say that Anonymous did anything because
Speaker 1: it could just be a group of people, could be
Speaker 1: one person. But anyway, yes, uh, they did definitely send
Speaker 1: out a message saying that if if the WBC showed
Speaker 1: up at Swartz's funeral, they would block them from from
Speaker 1: view of the grieving parties. Um And probably there was
Speaker 1: a little bit more of a threat there too, because
Speaker 1: Anonymous has been known to make people's lives difficult, if
Speaker 1: difficult if they oppose the ideals that the group follows
Speaker 1: um and and slightly slightly more positive action. Representative Zoe
Speaker 1: Lofgren off California wants to propose Aaron's Law, which would
Speaker 1: be a bill to amend the cf A and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, change it so that so that these violations
Speaker 1: of terms of service and network use UM cannot be
Speaker 1: federally prosecuted unless they really should be. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a complex issue, right, I mean, this is this
Speaker 1: is That was part of the whole argument in the
Speaker 1: whole Creative Commons approach was that it's not necessarily that
Speaker 1: one party is absolutely in the wrong or absolutely in
Speaker 1: the right. It is a complex issue, and so it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where you know, you don't want
Speaker 1: to paint with a wide brush and then find out that, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, we need to take a much more precise
Speaker 1: approach to this um And also, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of luminaries technology luminaries have come out and spoken on
Speaker 1: this subject. Lawrence Lessig has said several things about He's
Speaker 1: criticized the prosecution's approach to going after swords and tim berners.
Speaker 1: Lee wrote a very poignant tweet, really gorgeous tweet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if if I can, I'm probably gonna tear up in
Speaker 1: the middle of this tweet. And if I don't, it's
Speaker 1: going to be a miracle. But he he tweeted, um
Speaker 1: Aaron dead, world wanderers, we have lost a wise elder.
Speaker 1: Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents always lost
Speaker 1: a child. Let us a weep, oh timmer nurs Lee
Speaker 1: what are you doing to me? Yeah, he's uh yeah.
Speaker 1: He definitely definitely summed it up really well for a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Um. Shortly after after the discovery that
Speaker 1: Sports had committed suicide, I appeared on an episode of
Speaker 1: Tech News Today and we discussed the the the story
Speaker 1: and uh uh yeah it was. I mean, that was
Speaker 1: a tough discussion even then, and that was fresh after
Speaker 1: finding out about it. Um, and it has not become
Speaker 1: easier as time has gone on. Also over at m
Speaker 1: I T, for m I T S part, they decided
Speaker 1: to create a review panel to look into how m
Speaker 1: I T handled the whole situation and whether or not
Speaker 1: the people at m T as a whole behaved in
Speaker 1: a way that is up to m T standards. And
Speaker 1: the man who was put in charge of this review
Speaker 1: panel is how Abelson, who again was one of those
Speaker 1: two men, the other being Tim berners Lee back when
Speaker 1: he was thirteen he got to meet and also a
Speaker 1: man who worked with him on the Creative Commons projects.
Speaker 1: So Abelson definitely has um firsthand knowledge of sports and
Speaker 1: and his contributions to the world. And so uh he
Speaker 1: wrote a very eloquent letter to M I T and said,
Speaker 1: you know, what his intentions were as part of this
Speaker 1: review process and say that he wants to take a
Speaker 1: very honest look. He does not want it to become
Speaker 1: a witch hunt. At the same time, he does not
Speaker 1: want to just cover up anything that might be an
Speaker 1: ugly source spot for m I T. He wants the
Speaker 1: truth and he says that, you know, really, that's the
Speaker 1: only thing that will serve in this situation, and it's
Speaker 1: the only thing that that is appropriate considering the circumstances. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and uh, and it's while we don't know
Speaker 1: all the details about what led sports to make this decision,
Speaker 1: we do know that he had battled depression. He had
Speaker 1: a history of it, you know, and it's a it's
Speaker 1: kind of a lifelong, lifelong issue. Um yeah, yeah without
Speaker 1: Jonathan and I wanted to stay without making this too
Speaker 1: much of an after school special. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: depression is something that both of us have dealt with
Speaker 1: in our lives. And uh, you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: rough and it's terrible. But um but to borrow a phrase,
Speaker 1: it gets better, and you know so, and and there's
Speaker 1: help out there. There is help out there if you
Speaker 1: are ever feeling overwhelmed. Please please talk to someone. There
Speaker 1: are people who care about you. We care about you.
Speaker 1: You probably shouldn't talk to us because we are not
Speaker 1: mental health professionals. Honestly, googling suicide prevention is the best
Speaker 1: way to find help in your area. But if you're
Speaker 1: in the US, you can also call one two seven, three,
Speaker 1: eight to five. It's it's free and confidential and they
Speaker 1: will absolutely hook you up with helps. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely something that you know, we want to leave
Speaker 1: you guys with, because, like Lauren said, this is not
Speaker 1: this is not an unfamil. Are your subject to us.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys got something out of this episode.
Speaker 1: It's important to remember Aaron and his contributions and who
Speaker 1: he was and what he believed in. I don't want
Speaker 1: the memory of him to just fade away. So I
Speaker 1: hope you got something from this. If you have suggestions
Speaker 1: about future episode topics for tech Stuff, feel free to
Speaker 1: get in touch with me. The email addresses tech Stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook or Twitter. Both of those handles
Speaker 1: would be text stuff h SW. You can also go
Speaker 1: to our website that's tech Stuff Podcast. Dot com. I've
Speaker 1: got a weird accent going on now. That's what happens
Speaker 1: when I record. For a very long time, tech Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast dot com is what I was trying to say people,
Speaker 1: because that's where we have the archive of every episode
Speaker 1: we've ever recorded. It's also where we have a link
Speaker 1: to our online store where you can go and buy
Speaker 1: up all the tech Stuff merchandise there is. Please, I
Speaker 1: need coffee and it's my coffee fund. Seriously, every purchasing
Speaker 1: make goes to help the show. We greatly appreciate it,
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again really soon. Y
Speaker 1: text Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
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