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Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from hof

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to tex Stuff.

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Speaker 1: My name is Jonathan Strickland. I am the host ordinaire.

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Speaker 1: My name is Lauren foc Obama and I does that

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Speaker 1: make me the host extraordinary at this time? Extra extra extraordinary? Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: today we we have a topic that's both happy and sad.

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Speaker 1: It's sad in that the world lost UH an activist

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Speaker 1: and and legitimately a genius in January fellow by the

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Speaker 1: name of Aaron Schwartz. And you may have heard this name,

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Speaker 1: and you you may even be fairly aware of who

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Speaker 1: he was and what he did. He's been in the

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Speaker 1: news a whole bunch, and you've probably been hearing about

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Speaker 1: him for years because he's done some really breakthrough work

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Speaker 1: in technology. Yeah yeah, and both from a actual technological

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Speaker 1: standpoint and from political standpoint, as it turns out, So

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Speaker 1: we wanted to really talk about who he was, what

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Speaker 1: sort of impact he's had on technology, both from a

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Speaker 1: policy side and from actual zeros in ones. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: to kind of talk about why his his life and

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Speaker 1: death matter in the world of tech. And to do this,

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Speaker 1: we we wanted to kind of take an overview of

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Speaker 1: his life. So first, before I really dive in, I

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Speaker 1: have to give major props to The Verge, which is

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Speaker 1: if you guys have never gone to The Verge, it's

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Speaker 1: a fantastic It's one of my favorite sites out there

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Speaker 1: right now. It's really really well done. And a fellow

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Speaker 1: by the name of Tim Carmody wrote an exhaustive article

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Speaker 1: about Schwartz's life and was very thorough and very respectful,

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Speaker 1: and it was a really gorgeous piece of journalism, honestly,

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Speaker 1: and it was it was a very personal piece of

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Speaker 1: journalism that it led a few lines into editorial, but

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Speaker 1: it was and gave you a gave you insight to

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Speaker 1: what it's like being a journal to have to cover

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Speaker 1: a story that has personal implications, because he had had

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Speaker 1: met Sworts at least once, and so you know, it's

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Speaker 1: a it's kind of an inside look to what it's

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Speaker 1: like being a journalist and covering a story like this.

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Speaker 1: And also he's very good at breaking down the myths

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Speaker 1: because they you know, Aaron Swarts was sort of a

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Speaker 1: legendary mythical figure in many ways, the kind of person

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Speaker 1: who's whose contributions were huge and they got bigger depending

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Speaker 1: upon who was telling the story and how how many

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Speaker 1: times they told it. Sure the same way to say

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Speaker 1: Steve Jobs. That's a good, good example, although we should

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Speaker 1: also had Swarts was was tragically very young when he

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Speaker 1: when he committed suicide, only twenty six years old. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So so going back to his childhood, he was born

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Speaker 1: in Chicago. In nineteen eighty six, his father, Robert Swartz,

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Speaker 1: founded a software company which was called Mark Williams, which

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Speaker 1: actually name after Aaron's grandfather and uh and Mark Williams.

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Speaker 1: The company was all about creating a clone of the

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Speaker 1: Unix operating system and also ce compilers, C language compilers

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Speaker 1: and debuggers for IBM PCs. And that's that's a term

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Speaker 1: that brings me back because I remember when when computers

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Speaker 1: were either called Apple or IBM compatible or you know,

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Speaker 1: eventually kind of specificity doesn't really exist anymore. Yeah, No,

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Speaker 1: IBM compatible became a term, like I was referring to

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Speaker 1: PCs as IBM compatible as long after that was appropriate

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Speaker 1: because sometimes things stick with you. But anyway, Robert Swartz

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Speaker 1: would eventually become an intellectual property consultant for M I T. S.

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Speaker 1: Media Lab, and intellectual property was something that Aaron became

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Speaker 1: very interested in and very passionate about UH and the

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Speaker 1: idea of is information property doesn't belong to one person

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Speaker 1: or one to ty in the case of say a

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Speaker 1: corporation or organization, or does it belong to the world.

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Speaker 1: Should it belong to the world. And this is a

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Speaker 1: philosophical debate that a lot of people have had, and

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Speaker 1: I think most people fall somewhere in the spectrum of gray. Sure, well,

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Speaker 1: you know it's we We all want to especially those

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Speaker 1: of us who work in the media, want to be

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Speaker 1: paid for our ideas because that's the only thing that

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Speaker 1: we produce. But at the same time, yeah, you know,

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Speaker 1: if someone wants to learn something, I'm certainly not going

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Speaker 1: to say, like, no, no, give me money first. If

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Speaker 1: you know, if, for example, if they need that money

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Speaker 1: to eat, I would rather them know things and eat. Yes. Yes,

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Speaker 1: And so Aaron kind of we'll get into it. But

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Speaker 1: Aaron kind of developed an idealistic philosophy that was very

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Speaker 1: much in the realm of information wants to be free,

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Speaker 1: that sort of idea that that that data needs to

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Speaker 1: be out there for people to make use of it

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Speaker 1: and to make lives better. Be called it a moral

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Speaker 1: imperative yeah, and um, yes, so that that kind of

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Speaker 1: gives you a quick philosophical overview, but we don't want

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Speaker 1: to jump ahead too far. Tim's work in the Verge.

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Speaker 1: There was one little piece of information that I thought

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Speaker 1: was adorable, which is that when Aaron was eight years old.

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Speaker 1: Keep in mind out this is early days. Okay, so

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Speaker 1: six plus eight that means in in, in and and wait.

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Speaker 1: I got nineteen nineteen ninety four. Liberal arts education has

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Speaker 1: paid off people. When the World Wide Web was really

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Speaker 1: just two years old. Um, he was actually going on usenet,

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Speaker 1: which is not the same thing as world Wide Web,

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Speaker 1: so don't write me. But he was going on usenet,

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Speaker 1: which was a news group database essentially kind of like

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Speaker 1: a network database where you could go and have discussions

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Speaker 1: about different topics. And apparently when exactly when he was eight,

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Speaker 1: he went on to Eustat and his first post was

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Speaker 1: to a news group dedicated to Beakman's World, which is

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Speaker 1: kind of awesome. That's wonderful. Yeah. Uh. He was also

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Speaker 1: a big fan of the Star Wars movies, which I

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Speaker 1: think is phenomenal because he was born three years after

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Speaker 1: the last one came out, Return of the Jedi. As

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Speaker 1: we have discussed before year old. Sorry, Yeah, well I

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Speaker 1: saw Return of the Jedi in the theater when it

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Speaker 1: was released, and man, I sure hope that one day

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Speaker 1: Lucas comes out with movies that really explain how Anakin

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Speaker 1: became Darth Vader. Yeah, wouldn't that be? That would be

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Speaker 1: so great, that would be fantastic. I really wish that

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Speaker 1: those movies existed, just like I hope one day they

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Speaker 1: make a sequel to Highlander, the Matrix or the Matrix.

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Speaker 1: These are, yeah, so many movies that I wish there

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Speaker 1: were sequels to that. I'm not actively denying exist. Um,

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Speaker 1: it's exhausting being me, y'all really, But anyway. He was

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Speaker 1: also fans of other things like I went visited his

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Speaker 1: blog in preparation of this podcast and and he had

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Speaker 1: a way of taking pop culture and applying various thought

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Speaker 1: experiments to it that was engaging and enlightening and funny.

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Speaker 1: He has a great one in the final one Sadly

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Speaker 1: about the Dark Night, and the most recent, the last

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Speaker 1: and the Christopher Nolan series. Actually it was the second

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Speaker 1: one was yeah, because it was all about the Joker.

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Speaker 1: It was because he was he was going back to

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Speaker 1: looking at that one it was written. It was written

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Speaker 1: in November. Um. The blog post was uh, and it

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Speaker 1: was about how the Joker applies game theory throughout the movie.

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Speaker 1: And he breaks down almost scene by scene every time

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Speaker 1: the Joker appears and and explains which game in game

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Speaker 1: theory applies to that scene. And there's like a dozen

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Speaker 1: different games that he specifically references, and he makes a

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Speaker 1: case for every single one. And I looked at that

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Speaker 1: and I thought, you know, I I kind of had

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Speaker 1: the same idea once or twice, because I I know

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Speaker 1: about games, and yeah, things like Prisoner's dilemma, the trolley problem,

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Speaker 1: things like that. Um, but he broke it down for

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Speaker 1: every single scene. I said, I never saw all of

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Speaker 1: those connections. So he really had that ability to to

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Speaker 1: to kind of look at the world around him and

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Speaker 1: art and and and entertainment even if you even if

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Speaker 1: you don't want to call it art, if you just

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Speaker 1: want to call it entertainment. He's able to see the

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Speaker 1: underlying thoughts that kind of maybe not consciously but guided

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Speaker 1: that work. And uh, even if even if it was

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Speaker 1: completely unintentional, he could draw parallels, which was really kind

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Speaker 1: of an awesome thing. I really admire that quality. In people.

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Speaker 1: Certainly I do not possess it, not to that extent anyway.

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Speaker 1: So uh, skipping ahead of all that, I mean, that's

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Speaker 1: so bottom line geeky guy. Okay, he's a geek, and

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Speaker 1: and I say that with full love. I say that

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Speaker 1: as a man who has Lord of the Rings tattoo

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Speaker 1: on his left arm. Okay, I love the geek. I

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Speaker 1: learned things about you every day. John. You didn't know

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Speaker 1: I had a tattoo with the Lord of the Things.

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Speaker 1: I don't think I did. Right here, Um, I can't

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Speaker 1: show you up wearing long sleep today. Um. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: skipping ahead a little bit too, when he was the

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Speaker 1: ripe old age of thirteen years old, circle two thousand

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Speaker 1: or so, he begins to work on the Info Network,

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Speaker 1: which is his idea for the Info Network was sort

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Speaker 1: of like what Wikipedia became. It's the idea of this

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Speaker 1: an online encyclopedia storage of knowledge that anyone can can

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Speaker 1: add to add to an edit, so essentially the same

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Speaker 1: idea as Wikipedia. It's this, you know. He saw that

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Speaker 1: the Internet was the had the potential to be like

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Speaker 1: the Guide in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

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Speaker 1: If you guys have not read the books, then that's okay,

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Speaker 1: you go ahead and do that. Will wait, because they're

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Speaker 1: worth it. Don't don't watch the movie, but you can

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Speaker 1: watch the BBC television series or listen to the radio show.

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Speaker 1: You can watch the movie. Alan Rickman was excellent in

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Speaker 1: that film. That movie was so bad. Martin Freeman was

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Speaker 1: excellent in that film where Don't Make Me. Performances were fine,

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Speaker 1: the script was terrible. I am from the Internet. I

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Speaker 1: will fight you about Martin Freeman. No, no, no no, no,

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Speaker 1: You're not gonna get any argument on me. I mean,

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Speaker 1: Freeman was the best thing about the map I took

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Speaker 1: during the hobbit. Um so anyway, uh, the Info Network.

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Speaker 1: He's he's working on this this project, and the work

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Speaker 1: gets him some attention. He actually becomes a finalist in

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Speaker 1: the second Ours Digita Prize and as a finalist, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, keeping mind, he's thirteen years old. He's he's competing,

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Speaker 1: not necessarily competing, but he's he's in the same against

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Speaker 1: the bracket bracket with people who are big names today

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Speaker 1: in technology and who were adults. Many of these people

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Speaker 1: knew his work. Yeah, they knew him. They knew him

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Speaker 1: on online as as it stood at the time Aaron

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Speaker 1: s W. But they did not know that Aaron s W.

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Speaker 1: They're like, whoa am I being punked? Yeah? Is that that?

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Speaker 1: That's a really dated reference. That's point in around two

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Speaker 1: thousand they might have been saying it. Maybe okay, so

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Speaker 1: ask your parents. So he he ended up winning as

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Speaker 1: a finalist a thousand dollars and access to a web

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Speaker 1: server for life and a two day trip to m

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Speaker 1: I T to meet a couple of a couple of geeks,

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Speaker 1: a couple of dudes who work a little, a little

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Speaker 1: influential in technology. One of those two was Tim berners Lee,

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Speaker 1: who most of us know as the guy who invented

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Speaker 1: the World Wide Web back when he was working with

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Speaker 1: a CERN kind of kind of a big deal. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so he's the one who kind of developed the framework

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Speaker 1: that would become the World Wide Web, and yeah, big name.

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Speaker 1: The other fellow that he got to meet on this

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Speaker 1: two day trip was Hal Abelson, who was professor of

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Speaker 1: electrical engineering and Computer Science at m I T. He's

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Speaker 1: also a fellow of the I E E E or

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Speaker 1: as long time listeners of tech stuff know how I

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Speaker 1: pronounced it the because it's cajun um not cajun and

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Speaker 1: then he was also a hal Abelson's also a founding

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Speaker 1: director of Creative Commons and the Free Software Foundation and

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Speaker 1: Creative Commons will come in to play later in this

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Speaker 1: discussion as well. Abelson himself, Um so big deal. You know,

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Speaker 1: he got to meet some people who were definitely influential

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Speaker 1: in the technolog technology space, as well as this idea

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Speaker 1: that information is powerful and it's important and it's necessary

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Speaker 1: and people should have access to it. Um these are

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Speaker 1: these are big ideas for a thirteen year old, and

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Speaker 1: he had embraced them already. Uh. A little bit later,

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Speaker 1: he became interested in something called r S s rs S,

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Speaker 1: of course, being m a rich site summary. I believe

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Speaker 1: originally it stood for resource description framework site summary. Oh wow,

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Speaker 1: look at you. Yes, that's exactly right. It's a it's

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Speaker 1: sometimes also called really simple syndication. And you got it.

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Speaker 1: You nailed it. And yes, I can read really good.

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Speaker 1: I wrote it down. You do read really good. You

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Speaker 1: don't speak so well, but to read really good. That's

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Speaker 1: why I'm a podcaster. And it's it's what it's what

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Speaker 1: the Internet uses to syndicate itself. Yeah. Yeah, so so

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Speaker 1: I'll give you guys. A for those of you who

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Speaker 1: are not aware of what RSS is or what it does. Uh,

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Speaker 1: let's go back to the old days of the web now,

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Speaker 1: pre r S S or pre any other syndication format,

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Speaker 1: because RSS is not the only one, it's just it's

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Speaker 1: sort of the one that came out on top. But

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Speaker 1: pre RSS and other syndication formats, the way you would

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Speaker 1: get information on the net is you would go visit

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Speaker 1: a website. Yeah, you would. You would type in the

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Speaker 1: r L and you would click go, and you would

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Speaker 1: visit the website right, and you would look and you

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Speaker 1: you would actually scan the website to see if anything

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Speaker 1: you had popped up. This applied for everything from website

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Speaker 1: that was about a specific company you were interested in,

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Speaker 1: or a community. Blogs were kind of not a thing yet,

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Speaker 1: but but we web comics maybe, or a new site.

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Speaker 1: So you would you might think, oh, you know, I

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Speaker 1: hadn't checked the news in a while, let me go,

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Speaker 1: and then you would go and you would actually have

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Speaker 1: to start kind of scanning through stuff and look, all right, well,

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Speaker 1: what's what's new? What have I not read? I know,

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Speaker 1: I think I read that one. So it was it

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Speaker 1: was very time consuming. The idea behind the syndication was

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Speaker 1: that instead of you going to these sites, the sites

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Speaker 1: would send little bits of information to some sort of

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Speaker 1: portal page a reader aggregator. Yeah, like Google Reader is

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Speaker 1: a very popular one. You might log into this reader

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Speaker 1: program or reader site really is what it was, uh,

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Speaker 1: And then all that information would get fed to you

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Speaker 1: whenever a new piece of nation came in and you

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Speaker 1: could just look at a glance and see, oh, this

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Speaker 1: one website I'm interested in published a new article and

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Speaker 1: you could read the headline and think, oh, is that

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Speaker 1: something I want to look into more? And depending upon

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Speaker 1: the way they syndicated their feet, you might even be

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Speaker 1: able to read the entire article within your reader without

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Speaker 1: having to ever visit the site. Uh. Not a lot

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Speaker 1: of websites like that, because it meant that you could

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Speaker 1: read their content without visiting the site, which often meant

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Speaker 1: that they were not looking at their ads. Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: were getting ad impressions. So a lot of sites instead

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Speaker 1: would allow the first paragraph and a half and then

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Speaker 1: a click through. Yeah, and then you would have to

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Speaker 1: click through. But the the idea was all about making

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Speaker 1: sure that that you would be getting the latest information

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Speaker 1: as you were as it was being generated so that

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Speaker 1: you didn't have to keep checking. Yeah, and around around

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Speaker 1: two thousand one, a version of RSS called RSS one

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Speaker 1: point now was being developed. Yeah. Yeah, the RSS originally

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Speaker 1: was kind of being um created by by essentially Netscape.

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Speaker 1: So the Netscape group was working on RSS, and they

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Speaker 1: came out with things like r s S zero point nine,

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Speaker 1: which used r DF elements, which is that resource description

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Speaker 1: framework that you were mentioning, Lauren. Um that by the way,

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Speaker 1: it essentially is all about how links linked to each

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Speaker 1: other and the information between the links. It's a meta

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Speaker 1: data issue. Um, it's kind of complicated. So and ultimately

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Speaker 1: it doesn't matter because they removed the r DF elements

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Speaker 1: when they released RSS zero point nine one. Once they

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Speaker 1: removed the r DF elements, they said, oops, yes, our

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Speaker 1: acronym no longer means r d F r d F. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know sites syndication. We gotta call it something else.

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Speaker 1: And uh, that's when we became rich site syndication. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then of course eventually became really simple syndication UM

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Speaker 1: or rich site summary I should say, not syndication. Sorry,

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Speaker 1: that's my brain is totally syndicated. So anyway, Netscape releases

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Speaker 1: point nine and point nine one. Uh, it becomes rich

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Speaker 1: Site Summary and then Netscape ends its development with the standard. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so the thing was there are a lot of people

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Speaker 1: were saying this was kind of a god. Yeah, guys,

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Speaker 1: why why did we just put that down? Yeah, we

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Speaker 1: kind of want that. So two different uh entities, I

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Speaker 1: guess one person and one group began to work on

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Speaker 1: developing RSS further. On one end you had the the

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Speaker 1: r S S Dev Working Group, and on the other

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Speaker 1: end you had a fellow by the name of Dave

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Speaker 1: Winer and uh the they were independently working on creating

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Speaker 1: and furthering the standard of r s S. Uh. Weiner

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Speaker 1: attempted to trademark RSS, but due to a clerical technicality

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Speaker 1: that trademark did not go through. The r S S

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Speaker 1: Dev Working Group ended up publishing RSS one point oh.

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Speaker 1: And that was part of that working group they were

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Speaker 1: they were originally I think about twelve or fourteen people

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Speaker 1: on it. Yeah, it was basically the Hobbit Party. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: One one of those people was fourteen year old Aaron Sports. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so Aaron Swart, He's working with people like people from

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Speaker 1: the O'Reilly Media group who were working on this set

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Speaker 1: of standards. At fourteen years old, he was one of

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Speaker 1: the people helping define the standards of RSS one point oh. Specifically,

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Speaker 1: he was looking at creating some semantic elements in RSS specification, Uh,

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Speaker 1: semantic being that it would have a more almost like

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Speaker 1: a natural language recognition ability to it. It's it's really

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Speaker 1: all about meta data, the data about data, and how

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Speaker 1: that helps aggregate information in a way that's useful to

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Speaker 1: human beings, so that, you know, because computers don't understand

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Speaker 1: the actual information that is that they handle, right, so

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Speaker 1: you have to create information about that information so computers

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Speaker 1: can start to make associations, can start filing. Yeah, for humans,

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Speaker 1: it's natural. For computers, it takes a lot of work.

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Speaker 1: So that's kind of what he was building out, was

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Speaker 1: this whole um that's semantic element into it. That was

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Speaker 1: kind of what he was specifically interested in. Meanwhile, just

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Speaker 1: to kind of wrap up the RSS stuff, um Winer

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Speaker 1: would go on to develop RSS two point oh, which

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Speaker 1: would take the place of RSS one point oh, even

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Speaker 1: though it was not based on one point oh at all,

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Speaker 1: because he was developing his simultaneous Yeah, the development forked

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Speaker 1: and on one branch you had one point oh and

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Speaker 1: the other branch you had two point and two point

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Speaker 1: o ended up eventually taking over. Yeah, and so one

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Speaker 1: point I wasn't really it's still really impressive that they

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Speaker 1: were creating it, and a lot of the work that

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Speaker 1: that sports especially did with metadet data he ended up

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Speaker 1: taking other places. Yes, Yeah, but it's kind of important

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Speaker 1: to bring that into perspective because I've seen a lot

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Speaker 1: of reports that just say, w R, yes he invented RSS,

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Speaker 1: which one is not accurate and two is certainly not accurate. Uh,

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Speaker 1: once you go forward a couple of years when RSS

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Speaker 1: two point out takes over. But but his contributions were

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Speaker 1: nonetheless important, and as you just pointed out, they were

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Speaker 1: applicable to other elements of technology, not just the RSS project.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, that was that was his involvement in that

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Speaker 1: at age fourteen. I will not tell you what I

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Speaker 1: was up to when I was fourteen years old, because

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Speaker 1: none of it is even remotely as impressive as that

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Speaker 1: one accomplished. I'm pretty sure I was like watching Mystery

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Speaker 1: Science Theater three thousand and playing Mario Kart at fourteen,

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Speaker 1: I was probably wishing there was something called Mystery Science

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Speaker 1: Theater three thousand. It happens to all of us because

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Speaker 1: I'm old. As Lauren has pointed out from the Star

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Speaker 1: Wars discussion one per episode, one episode. Um, so this

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Speaker 1: is about the same time that that Aaron Sports made

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Speaker 1: a made a big decision in his life. Yeah, he

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Speaker 1: decided to drop out of high school that year. Yeah

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Speaker 1: that's um, that's a bold decision for someone who is

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Speaker 1: uh already showing so much promise. Uh, It's not not unusual.

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Speaker 1: And that I've seen a lot of prodigies. I mean,

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Speaker 1: Steve Stephen Hawking I think did terribly in primary school.

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Speaker 1: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both dropped out, but they

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Speaker 1: dropped out of college. They completed high school, but they

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Speaker 1: dropped out of college. Oh, you know, it's I think

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Speaker 1: that he It sounds like Aaron had a lot of

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Speaker 1: support from his family and that he was, you know,

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Speaker 1: being encouraged to take on these crazy projects. Yeah. And

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Speaker 1: I have a feeling he was also one of those

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Speaker 1: people who the curriculum in a school just did not

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Speaker 1: match up to to his. I was pretty bored in

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Speaker 1: high school and I'm not that smart, so you know,

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Speaker 1: I was also pretty bored in high school. When we

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Speaker 1: weren't talking about Shakespeare. When we were talking about Shakespeare,

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Speaker 1: it was very much engaged. Um No, I had some

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Speaker 1: great teachers in high will please people if don't don't

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Speaker 1: write me hate mail teachers. Um. So he also, while

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Speaker 1: not in high school, taught himself how to code and Python,

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Speaker 1: so that was kind of impressive. You know, he decided

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Speaker 1: that he needed to learn some more coding language. Um

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Speaker 1: and uh. Then he ended up meeting a couple of

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Speaker 1: important people, including Abelson again, also Lawrence Lessig, who would

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Speaker 1: become uh sort of a mentor and friend to him

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Speaker 1: throughout his life and u uh Eric Eldridge Eldredge rather

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Speaker 1: and they they were they had just weren't banded together

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Speaker 1: to create um. Creative commons. Now. Creative comments is a

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Speaker 1: way of licensing and copyrighting software that is not as

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Speaker 1: restrictive as the traditional copyright because traditional copyright in the

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Speaker 1: United States, at least, um, it's pretty much a one

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Speaker 1: zero it's a yes no kind of permission thing, wherein

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Speaker 1: it's it's very possessive and it lasts forever and not

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Speaker 1: literally forever, but you might as well be it's and

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Speaker 1: it gets It seems like every year there are more

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Speaker 1: companies petitioning to lengthen the the era of copyright. Um.

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Speaker 1: Often you'll hear people talk about Disney being one of

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Speaker 1: the big ones that they never want Mickey Mouse to

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Speaker 1: pass out of copyright, and uh, I mean from a

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Speaker 1: from a business perspective, you can totally understand their point

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Speaker 1: of view. From a creative perspective, and someone who wants

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Speaker 1: to be able to take other creative works and do

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Speaker 1: something new with them, it's a very frustrating experience because

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Speaker 1: you might have a great idea that would make someone

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Speaker 1: else's great idea a superlative idea, but you can't do

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Speaker 1: it without the fear of being sued. And so what

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Speaker 1: less eg Abelson and Eldred wanted to do was create

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Speaker 1: a form of licensing that would allow people who are

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Speaker 1: creating works to choose how those works could be protected,

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Speaker 1: distributed and protected and remixed and exactly. Yeah, So that way,

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Speaker 1: like if if Lauren were to create something really awesome,

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Speaker 1: but she says, you know, I know there are people

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Speaker 1: out there who are going to look at this in

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Speaker 1: ways I never imagined, and I want to see what

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Speaker 1: comes of it, she could choose to license it under

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Speaker 1: creative comments in such a way that other people could

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Speaker 1: use that work, possibly with some restrictions some and there

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Speaker 1: were a lot of different options where you could do

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Speaker 1: things like say, yes, you can use this work, but

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Speaker 1: not in a commercial sense, or you can use this

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Speaker 1: work but you must attribute the creator. So um. It

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Speaker 1: gave a lot more flexibility. But they had a problem.

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Speaker 1: While they were working out all the technical issues from

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Speaker 1: the law side, the legal issues, the policy issues, they

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Speaker 1: weren't sure how to incorporate this on the actual technological side,

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Speaker 1: right because at the you know, at the end of

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Speaker 1: a text article, you can throw in a tag that

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Speaker 1: says copyright this person, or you know, you can you

430
00:24:50,080 --> 00:24:52,040
Speaker 1: can use this work in these ways. But how do

431
00:24:52,080 --> 00:24:55,160
Speaker 1: you do that on a music file video without without

432
00:24:55,160 --> 00:24:58,119
Speaker 1: actually having it pop up as you know, someone say

433
00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:04,800
Speaker 1: y'all of commons and it's a song about my dog. Um, yeah,

434
00:25:04,800 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 1: you don't want to do that at the beginning of

435
00:25:06,119 --> 00:25:09,399
Speaker 1: very file. And so what Aaron ended up doing was

436
00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:11,960
Speaker 1: he began to work on code that would allow him

437
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:17,520
Speaker 1: to embed that information again meta data data about data. Uh.

438
00:25:17,560 --> 00:25:20,639
Speaker 1: This code would be able to exist within a file

439
00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:25,120
Speaker 1: and be readable and meaningful, so that when you were

440
00:25:25,280 --> 00:25:27,960
Speaker 1: distributing this file, you would actually be able to see

441
00:25:28,240 --> 00:25:31,280
Speaker 1: how it was distributed under the Creative Commons and make

442
00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:35,320
Speaker 1: sure that it's following the right standards. So he played

443
00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:39,120
Speaker 1: a very important part early on the Creative Commons world

444
00:25:39,320 --> 00:25:42,680
Speaker 1: to make sure that it made sense from a technical perspective,

445
00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:47,919
Speaker 1: technological perspective, and yeah, huge influence on that. And again

446
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:51,360
Speaker 1: talking with people like Lessig and A. Wilson and Eldred

447
00:25:51,920 --> 00:25:55,320
Speaker 1: gave him an even greater appreciation for this idea that

448
00:25:55,440 --> 00:26:00,640
Speaker 1: information is important and people needed. So once more reinforcing

449
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:04,399
Speaker 1: his own philosophy which again he had already started to

450
00:26:04,440 --> 00:26:07,439
Speaker 1: develop before he began to work on this project. Um.

451
00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:13,479
Speaker 1: Then in two thousand one he co wrote a paper

452
00:26:14,080 --> 00:26:17,800
Speaker 1: with James Hendler, was a professor at the University of Maryland.

453
00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:21,320
Speaker 1: The paper was called the Semantic Web, a Network of

454
00:26:21,359 --> 00:26:24,119
Speaker 1: Content for the Digital City. So this again is that

455
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:27,919
Speaker 1: idea of a web that is almost intelligent in a

456
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:30,600
Speaker 1: way that everything is mapped to everything else in such

457
00:26:30,640 --> 00:26:34,320
Speaker 1: a way that associations are made very naturally. Uh. He

458
00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:38,160
Speaker 1: ended up going to co present this paper in Kyoto,

459
00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:40,480
Speaker 1: so in two thousand one. Yeah again, yeah, this is

460
00:26:40,560 --> 00:26:44,679
Speaker 1: this is when he was still four on the right

461
00:26:44,720 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 1: around that age, Yeah, kind of crazy. And then um,

462
00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:53,440
Speaker 1: just to kind of illustrate his philosophy on licensing. He

463
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: he had a very um clever sense of humor, and

464
00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:02,280
Speaker 1: he could he could word things in such a way

465
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:04,600
Speaker 1: where you get the meaning and you get the humor

466
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:08,919
Speaker 1: at the same time. For instance, he decided to to

467
00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:15,080
Speaker 1: summarize certain organizations views on copyright in the form of haiku,

468
00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:21,040
Speaker 1: and he was trying to explain what what these different

469
00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:25,280
Speaker 1: approach is meant in a very simple way. So, for example,

470
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:28,480
Speaker 1: for the public domain, public domain meaning that it is

471
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 1: not under copyright and anyone can access it without fear

472
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:39,120
Speaker 1: of any you know, exactly do what you feel like,

473
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:43,600
Speaker 1: since the work is abandoned, the law doesn't care. That

474
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:48,280
Speaker 1: was hik Number one might tease approach, take my code

475
00:27:48,280 --> 00:27:51,960
Speaker 1: with you and do whatever you want, but please don't

476
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:55,240
Speaker 1: blame me. And then you have the r I double A.

477
00:27:55,400 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 1: That's the the Recording Institutent Association Industry Association America in

478
00:27:59,640 --> 00:28:05,399
Speaker 1: this little litigious group UH you might have heard, famously

479
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:11,679
Speaker 1: famously infamously opposed to UH to digital distribution, or at

480
00:28:11,760 --> 00:28:15,200
Speaker 1: least digital digital distribution without some form of really restrictive

481
00:28:15,240 --> 00:28:17,480
Speaker 1: d r M. Yeah, they really wanted everything to run

482
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:20,440
Speaker 1: off of d r M. Yeah. Anyway, alright, double A.

483
00:28:20,520 --> 00:28:26,560
Speaker 1: They're also infamously uh known for getting involved in policy decisions,

484
00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:31,720
Speaker 1: advocating for policy decisions. His take on their approaches. If

485
00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 1: you touch this file, my lawyers will come kill you,

486
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:40,720
Speaker 1: so kindly refrain out. Yeah, well, I think this is

487
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:43,960
Speaker 1: a good moment to take a quick break and hear

488
00:28:44,120 --> 00:28:47,960
Speaker 1: from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So

489
00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:51,080
Speaker 1: we're gonna skip ahead to when he was the ripe

490
00:28:51,080 --> 00:28:54,120
Speaker 1: old age of seventeen, and that's when he began to

491
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 1: work on a project called info Gummy. And this was

492
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:02,120
Speaker 1: a wiki platform, yep, and it eventually merged with another

493
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:06,360
Speaker 1: company that has gone on to uh to some acclaim.

494
00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:10,080
Speaker 1: You might have heard of it. It's called Reddit. Ye. Reddit.

495
00:29:11,120 --> 00:29:13,840
Speaker 1: I know some people who think of Reddit as really

496
00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:16,400
Speaker 1: it really is at their front page to the Internet,

497
00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:19,360
Speaker 1: you know, because Reddit, of course divides things up into

498
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 1: categories and then subcategories or reddits and subreddits if you prefer,

499
00:29:23,360 --> 00:29:26,640
Speaker 1: and you can read all about these different headlines that

500
00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: are coming out all across the web from all sorts

501
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:32,200
Speaker 1: of different sources. You can vote up or vote down

502
00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:35,480
Speaker 1: stories so that the ones that you think are particularly

503
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:38,960
Speaker 1: well written or pertinent are at the top, and ones

504
00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 1: that are not applicable or whatever get voted down. A

505
00:29:42,880 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: free flowing sharing of information yeah, uh, and ideally it

506
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:51,440
Speaker 1: works really well, although depending upon which read commentary bits

507
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:53,600
Speaker 1: and pieces, if it can be retch, it has common villainy, right,

508
00:29:53,920 --> 00:29:57,280
Speaker 1: and some some subreddit communities are fantastic, absolutely, and then

509
00:29:57,360 --> 00:30:00,560
Speaker 1: some subreddit communities just are filled with flame wars um

510
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:03,120
Speaker 1: and it happens. But anyway, so he was he was

511
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:06,120
Speaker 1: technically he was a co creator, a co creator of redding. Yeah.

512
00:30:06,160 --> 00:30:09,600
Speaker 1: So so redd It as a company existed before Aaron

513
00:30:09,720 --> 00:30:12,600
Speaker 1: came on board because the company's merged. But it wasn't

514
00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:14,440
Speaker 1: it wasn't what it is. It wasn't what it is

515
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:19,560
Speaker 1: today we know, yeah, exactly. So he ended up creating

516
00:30:19,840 --> 00:30:24,000
Speaker 1: it a special kind of web development library, uh, that

517
00:30:24,040 --> 00:30:27,520
Speaker 1: they ended up switching to. They had it a previous one,

518
00:30:27,560 --> 00:30:30,920
Speaker 1: they switched to the one that Sworts creates. And then

519
00:30:31,040 --> 00:30:33,520
Speaker 1: the site kind of took off and in fact was

520
00:30:33,560 --> 00:30:38,440
Speaker 1: purchased by Condie Nast and uh that purchased that deal

521
00:30:38,680 --> 00:30:42,760
Speaker 1: ended up making Aaron wealthy overnight, extremely wealthy. Yeah, and

522
00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 1: you know the the entire Reddit team was moved into

523
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:49,360
Speaker 1: Wired's offices. Wired is owned by Conde Nasty. Wired's offices

524
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:52,480
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, because before that he had been working

525
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:56,440
Speaker 1: in other parts of California, which um he preferred. Uh.

526
00:30:56,480 --> 00:30:59,640
Speaker 1: He was not a fan of San Francisco. He was

527
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: not really a fan of the Wired offices or of

528
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:06,000
Speaker 1: the entire He didn't like the job. Like I have

529
00:31:06,040 --> 00:31:10,920
Speaker 1: a feeling that anytime Swartz encountered constraints, he became frustrated,

530
00:31:11,560 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: and the more constrained he was, the more frustrated he

531
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:19,360
Speaker 1: would become. And Uh. One of the other elements of

532
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:22,040
Speaker 1: Swartz's life, and it's a it's a tragic element, is

533
00:31:22,040 --> 00:31:26,240
Speaker 1: that he was uh, he battled depression, and that in

534
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:29,600
Speaker 1: this environment where he was coming up against all these

535
00:31:29,640 --> 00:31:33,040
Speaker 1: constraints that he did not like, depression was starting to

536
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:38,920
Speaker 1: get to him. Um. He wrote a story, a fictional story,

537
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 1: but people began to question how fictional it was. That

538
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:46,480
Speaker 1: that some people began to interpret as a potential suicide

539
00:31:46,520 --> 00:31:49,560
Speaker 1: note a police for help, and people began to check

540
00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:54,360
Speaker 1: on him and um he then was essentially asked to

541
00:31:54,440 --> 00:31:58,400
Speaker 1: resign and or fired, depending upon the report, depending on

542
00:31:58,440 --> 00:32:01,320
Speaker 1: the right the terminology you really want either way, the

543
00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:08,680
Speaker 1: it was it was clear that his his his happiness

544
00:32:09,240 --> 00:32:12,160
Speaker 1: was not going to come into play while he's working there.

545
00:32:12,800 --> 00:32:15,080
Speaker 1: He was not contributing to the company in the way

546
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:19,080
Speaker 1: that they wanted. And uh, no party in that relationship

547
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:25,719
Speaker 1: was happy. So he ended up leaving uh Reddit, but

548
00:32:25,720 --> 00:32:28,440
Speaker 1: but that was probably for the best because again it

549
00:32:28,520 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: was just clear that it was not a good fit. Um.

550
00:32:32,080 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 1: And in two thousand seven he ended up joining the

551
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:39,160
Speaker 1: Internet Archive Project and launched a project called open Library.

552
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:45,000
Speaker 1: Now open library essentially it creates a web page for

553
00:32:45,080 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 1: every book that's within the database of various libraries and

554
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:52,160
Speaker 1: research facilities and other organizations. It takes the meta data

555
00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:55,280
Speaker 1: about those books and creates a web page based on

556
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:58,200
Speaker 1: the metadata. So you're not getting necessarily the content of

557
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:02,880
Speaker 1: the book, but for mationg Yeah. So so it's a

558
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:08,320
Speaker 1: useful tool. And uh it also allows anyone to add

559
00:33:08,440 --> 00:33:11,800
Speaker 1: to that tool, to the open library project, which again

560
00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:15,520
Speaker 1: it's involving metadata, it's involving sharing information. We're starting to

561
00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:18,840
Speaker 1: see a real theme developed with Aaron's life and his work.

562
00:33:19,080 --> 00:33:23,320
Speaker 1: He he also at that point, UM not quite with permission,

563
00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:26,240
Speaker 1: posted all of the book cataloging data kept by the

564
00:33:26,280 --> 00:33:29,840
Speaker 1: Library of Congress to open library. And this is this

565
00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:32,880
Speaker 1: is another theme that goes on frequently in Aeron's life

566
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:36,160
Speaker 1: of of just just small I mean, okay, not even small,

567
00:33:36,200 --> 00:33:42,760
Speaker 1: because that's kind of big, big activism, big peaceful informational activism. Yeah. Yeah,

568
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:46,040
Speaker 1: he he would take initiative. Let's let's put it that way.

569
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:48,440
Speaker 1: That taking initiative is going to become a theme very

570
00:33:48,480 --> 00:33:51,600
Speaker 1: quickly too, absolutely. And in two thousand and eight, in fact,

571
00:33:51,720 --> 00:33:55,000
Speaker 1: he he wrote what he called the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto,

572
00:33:55,560 --> 00:34:00,080
Speaker 1: and this was this this really kind of kicked off

573
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:03,920
Speaker 1: his m his public persona I think of of being

574
00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:06,240
Speaker 1: that kind of activist. There's a great quote from it

575
00:34:06,240 --> 00:34:10,120
Speaker 1: that I want to read real quick. Um. He said,

576
00:34:10,440 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 1: it's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth

577
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:15,439
Speaker 1: of knowledge where the moral equivalent of plundering a ship

578
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:18,320
Speaker 1: and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't moral, it's a

579
00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:21,840
Speaker 1: moral imperative. Only that was blinded by greed would refuse

580
00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:26,839
Speaker 1: to let a friend make a copy mm hmm. Interesting

581
00:34:27,680 --> 00:34:30,719
Speaker 1: And then moving on from that, and the same year,

582
00:34:30,719 --> 00:34:34,000
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, uh, he got involved in

583
00:34:34,040 --> 00:34:39,320
Speaker 1: a little kerfuffle uh, alright. So so to explain the kerfuffle,

584
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:42,120
Speaker 1: we have to talk about the PACER system, and that's

585
00:34:42,160 --> 00:34:46,000
Speaker 1: the public Access to Court electronic record system and it's

586
00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:50,760
Speaker 1: essentially a government run database and it's mostly court filing,

587
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:53,920
Speaker 1: so it's all the stuff that happens in open court.

588
00:34:54,440 --> 00:35:00,440
Speaker 1: And by by definition, they are uncopyrightable. They are public access. Yes,

589
00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:04,000
Speaker 1: because these are you know, the government cannot copyright information.

590
00:35:04,239 --> 00:35:06,400
Speaker 1: You know, it's not allowed to. It's the same reason

591
00:35:06,440 --> 00:35:10,200
Speaker 1: why if you go look at information that was generated

592
00:35:10,239 --> 00:35:15,120
Speaker 1: by NASA, it's not protected by copyright. Um. So same

593
00:35:15,160 --> 00:35:18,719
Speaker 1: sort of thing here. But the database, what it was

594
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:20,600
Speaker 1: doing was is trying to solve a problem. You've got

595
00:35:20,719 --> 00:35:24,320
Speaker 1: so much information that's very difficult to track down specific

596
00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 1: files in a physical filing system. And also it generates

597
00:35:27,880 --> 00:35:30,320
Speaker 1: a huge amount of material that you have to create

598
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:34,239
Speaker 1: physical space for it to store it. So PACER was

599
00:35:34,280 --> 00:35:37,239
Speaker 1: the idea of let's create an electronic system one that

600
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:39,160
Speaker 1: will cut down on the amount of space we need

601
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:40,759
Speaker 1: to store all these files, and too it will make

602
00:35:40,760 --> 00:35:44,520
Speaker 1: it way easier to find stuff. Sure. Sure in order

603
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 1: to do that, however, I mean, because you know to

604
00:35:47,040 --> 00:35:49,200
Speaker 1: to to run the servers to do all of that uploading.

605
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:51,799
Speaker 1: It was charging at the time an eight cent per

606
00:35:51,840 --> 00:35:56,040
Speaker 1: page fee to access all of this information. Um and

607
00:35:56,239 --> 00:35:58,320
Speaker 1: and that was I mean that was mostly for giant

608
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:02,759
Speaker 1: law firms or corporations were downloading large amounts of that data.

609
00:36:03,040 --> 00:36:06,040
Speaker 1: If you were an individual, you could get something for

610
00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:09,040
Speaker 1: for for a couple bucks or for free sometimes free.

611
00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:12,799
Speaker 1: Frequently you were limited as an individual to how many

612
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:17,120
Speaker 1: times you could get court files within a certain span

613
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:21,200
Speaker 1: of times. So for example, every three months or four months,

614
00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:23,359
Speaker 1: you might be able to download five files, but then

615
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:25,839
Speaker 1: you would have to wait to download more or pay

616
00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:30,400
Speaker 1: or pay right exactly and uh and Swarts philosophy was

617
00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:33,200
Speaker 1: that why should you be forced to pay for something

618
00:36:33,200 --> 00:36:36,879
Speaker 1: that should be publicly accessible? It is, it is the

619
00:36:36,920 --> 00:36:41,600
Speaker 1: public and right so so if it's you know, if

620
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:47,799
Speaker 1: it's not under copyright, then why so PACER kind of

621
00:36:47,800 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 1: responded to criticisms about this database and began to create

622
00:36:52,239 --> 00:36:56,720
Speaker 1: a pilot program and allowed seventeen libraries in the United

623
00:36:56,719 --> 00:37:00,359
Speaker 1: States free access to the database, so any one could

624
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:07,960
Speaker 1: download as many documents within PACER. So Aaron decided that

625
00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:11,680
Speaker 1: he he had a clever idea. He was like, well, so, well,

626
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:14,600
Speaker 1: I can get as many of these for free as possible,

627
00:37:14,640 --> 00:37:17,440
Speaker 1: and then because they're not under copyright, I can upload

628
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:20,520
Speaker 1: them to a free database which anyone can access at

629
00:37:20,520 --> 00:37:23,279
Speaker 1: any time for absolutely free, because and no one can

630
00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:27,080
Speaker 1: come after me. Because if I just uncopyrightable files, if

631
00:37:27,080 --> 00:37:28,759
Speaker 1: I just write a script to do that for me,

632
00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:31,320
Speaker 1: that's much faster. I don't have to sit there and

633
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:35,680
Speaker 1: set up the little uh, the little ducking birdie thing

634
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:38,520
Speaker 1: that Homer Simpson used to click yes over and over

635
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:42,440
Speaker 1: again when he when he had that takeover for his job. Um,

636
00:37:42,480 --> 00:37:45,640
Speaker 1: it's a great episode. But yeah, No, he created a

637
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:53,400
Speaker 1: script that would automatically and continuously download these files. Um,

638
00:37:53,440 --> 00:37:59,160
Speaker 1: he downloaded almost twenty million pages of text, or about

639
00:37:59,280 --> 00:38:04,640
Speaker 1: twenty cents about one point five million dollars worth if

640
00:38:04,640 --> 00:38:07,480
Speaker 1: you're going by that eight cents right, which you know,

641
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:09,799
Speaker 1: again you can debate on what the actual value is.

642
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:13,400
Speaker 1: But the way he downloaded all of this, and once

643
00:38:13,560 --> 00:38:16,600
Speaker 1: once they hit around that that much, someone over at

644
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:20,520
Speaker 1: Pacers said, WHOA, something something funky is going down. Something's wrong.

645
00:38:20,640 --> 00:38:23,960
Speaker 1: Someone is downloading all of it. Yeah, And whether or

646
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:26,160
Speaker 1: not they thought that it was an attack or maybe

647
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:29,560
Speaker 1: the system itself was just malfunctioning, they decided to to

648
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:33,440
Speaker 1: pull the plug both on the servers. Literally they shut

649
00:38:33,440 --> 00:38:36,560
Speaker 1: the servers down at first so that the they would

650
00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:39,480
Speaker 1: no longer be serving up the information, and then they

651
00:38:39,520 --> 00:38:42,880
Speaker 1: canceled the program. Though with the libraries, they canceled that

652
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:49,279
Speaker 1: program and then they they were not They also had

653
00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:53,239
Speaker 1: to deal with a nasty pr problem because the documents

654
00:38:53,280 --> 00:38:57,200
Speaker 1: that that Sworts got showed that the PACERS system was

655
00:38:57,360 --> 00:39:02,520
Speaker 1: not good at eliminated personal data out of court files.

656
00:39:02,520 --> 00:39:04,960
Speaker 1: So this is data that should be that should be

657
00:39:05,040 --> 00:39:08,359
Speaker 1: private and secret. It should be anonymous, should be protected here, right,

658
00:39:08,520 --> 00:39:11,840
Speaker 1: So the court filings themselves are not necessarily anonymous, but

659
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:14,400
Speaker 1: the personal data about the people in them it should be.

660
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:19,200
Speaker 1: So it began to raise some questions about the PACER system,

661
00:39:19,520 --> 00:39:23,400
Speaker 1: and some critics said, you know, technologically, we should not

662
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:26,160
Speaker 1: have this problem. Uh, we are at a place now

663
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:28,800
Speaker 1: where this system should be way better than what it is.

664
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:30,960
Speaker 1: And so it kind of gave the government a black eye.

665
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:36,680
Speaker 1: Some people have said that perhaps this gave the United

666
00:39:36,680 --> 00:39:39,280
Speaker 1: States government, or at least certain agencies within the government,

667
00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:45,440
Speaker 1: the the inspiration to look more closely into Aaron Schwartz

668
00:39:45,520 --> 00:39:48,840
Speaker 1: and his activities. Supposedly the FBI at that point created

669
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:51,480
Speaker 1: a profile on him, Yeah, which which sports said he

670
00:39:51,520 --> 00:39:56,160
Speaker 1: got hold of and found uh entertaining. Um, but yeah,

671
00:39:56,280 --> 00:39:59,799
Speaker 1: it was so some would argue that this kind of

672
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:03,759
Speaker 1: created a grudge against Swarts on the on behalf of

673
00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:07,239
Speaker 1: the government, and that perhaps some of the other things

674
00:40:07,280 --> 00:40:10,880
Speaker 1: that unfold were part of that. I wouldn't I personally

675
00:40:10,920 --> 00:40:13,439
Speaker 1: wouldn't go so far as to say that, But then

676
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:18,040
Speaker 1: I'm not intimate with all the details I know. Um,

677
00:40:18,080 --> 00:40:20,799
Speaker 1: but then let's let's move ahead. In two thousand and eight,

678
00:40:20,840 --> 00:40:24,920
Speaker 1: he became part of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. He

679
00:40:24,960 --> 00:40:28,240
Speaker 1: was one of the original members. This was a campaign committee.

680
00:40:28,280 --> 00:40:33,680
Speaker 1: It was really about UH campaign financing reforms, trying to

681
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:39,480
Speaker 1: do things like eliminate corporate UH contributions during election campaigns

682
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:43,840
Speaker 1: and to just limit political contributions in general from corporation

683
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:45,960
Speaker 1: saying that, well, one of the things they suggested was

684
00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:47,839
Speaker 1: why don't you hold it up to a vote from

685
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:54,160
Speaker 1: shareholders whether or not you contribute to a particular political candidate. Um,

686
00:40:54,239 --> 00:40:59,799
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. Uh. He was definitely very opinionated

687
00:40:59,840 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 1: on that subject. Also, in case you're curious, I mean,

688
00:41:02,560 --> 00:41:08,279
Speaker 1: just for full information, Uh, this committee mostly backs progressive Democrats.

689
00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 1: That's not to say that there aren't progressive Republicans. There are,

690
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:16,759
Speaker 1: There are progressive conservatives and progressive liberals, but in particular,

691
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:20,759
Speaker 1: this particularly this specific committee, the specific committee tends to

692
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:24,760
Speaker 1: lean democrat. Um. So just in the full, full disclosure,

693
00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:31,000
Speaker 1: full disclosure information there uh and in uh Swartz Swartz

694
00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:35,160
Speaker 1: was not afraid of of of poking the bear, as

695
00:41:35,200 --> 00:41:37,839
Speaker 1: it turns out, and he was also very again, very

696
00:41:37,840 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 1: passionate about information. And uh. He proved it again in

697
00:41:43,239 --> 00:41:46,719
Speaker 1: when he filed a Freedom of Information Act request to

698
00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:52,279
Speaker 1: learn about how Bradley Manning was being treated in US custody. Uh.

699
00:41:52,320 --> 00:41:54,680
Speaker 1: And if you aren't familiar with the story of Bradley Manning,

700
00:41:55,360 --> 00:41:59,560
Speaker 1: Bradley Manning was a U. S. Army soldier private actually

701
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:03,520
Speaker 1: who gained access to some some pretty high level security

702
00:42:03,560 --> 00:42:08,880
Speaker 1: clearance information within the military and leaked it to wiki leaks.

703
00:42:09,440 --> 00:42:12,080
Speaker 1: So when you heard about all those cables from a

704
00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:16,840
Speaker 1: few years ago, thousands and thousands of of communication cables

705
00:42:16,880 --> 00:42:19,960
Speaker 1: that were leaked to wiki leaks, a lot of that

706
00:42:20,040 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 1: was traced back to Bradley Manning, and Manning has been

707
00:42:23,200 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 1: held in confinement awaiting trial. The trial is supposed to

708
00:42:27,080 --> 00:42:31,360
Speaker 1: take place this year in June. Um, but for a

709
00:42:31,400 --> 00:42:34,800
Speaker 1: long time he was being held in the Marine Corps

710
00:42:34,840 --> 00:42:41,239
Speaker 1: brig in Quantico, Virginia, which was similar to being held

711
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 1: in solitary confinement. His conditions were uncomfortable, to say the least.

712
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:50,160
Speaker 1: He was by many reports, Uh, he was in a

713
00:42:50,239 --> 00:42:53,960
Speaker 1: cell where he was unable to see any other prisoner.

714
00:42:54,080 --> 00:42:56,560
Speaker 1: Within those cells, they could hear each other, but they

715
00:42:56,560 --> 00:42:59,799
Speaker 1: could not see each other. Um. Supposedly he was not

716
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:03,239
Speaker 1: allowed to sleep between the hours of five am and

717
00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:09,040
Speaker 1: eight pm at all um and then uh he was

718
00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:12,200
Speaker 1: only allowed out of his cell to take a walk

719
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:15,879
Speaker 1: for one hour the first time he was in his cell. Um.

720
00:43:16,120 --> 00:43:20,600
Speaker 1: His his cell had I think no window. I think

721
00:43:20,600 --> 00:43:22,680
Speaker 1: it had a sink, a toilet, and a bed, and

722
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:25,319
Speaker 1: the bed had a mattress that had a pillow incorporated

723
00:43:25,360 --> 00:43:30,400
Speaker 1: in the mattress. That when Manning made a comment about

724
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:33,239
Speaker 1: the only way he could hurt himself, they essentially started

725
00:43:33,280 --> 00:43:35,440
Speaker 1: to take away all his clothing as well. According to

726
00:43:35,480 --> 00:43:38,520
Speaker 1: the reports I read, when he made a comment saying

727
00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:41,000
Speaker 1: that the only way he could possibly hurt himself at

728
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:42,920
Speaker 1: this point would be with his flip flops or underwear,

729
00:43:43,520 --> 00:43:46,759
Speaker 1: those were taken away as well. So this is the

730
00:43:46,800 --> 00:43:51,000
Speaker 1: reason why UH Sworts was sitting in this Freedom of

731
00:43:51,040 --> 00:43:54,319
Speaker 1: Information Act request. He he felt that one that what

732
00:43:54,520 --> 00:43:58,000
Speaker 1: Manning had done possibly was not as big a crime

733
00:43:58,040 --> 00:43:59,600
Speaker 1: as everyone was making it out to be, and certainly

734
00:43:59,640 --> 00:44:01,480
Speaker 1: he didn't not deserve the sort of treatment before he

735
00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:05,920
Speaker 1: had even gone to trial. Certain um so Manning, for

736
00:44:06,000 --> 00:44:08,520
Speaker 1: his part, by the way, was pleading not guilty. So

737
00:44:08,640 --> 00:44:13,240
Speaker 1: to be treated this way, uh, Sports, I'm sure felt

738
00:44:13,800 --> 00:44:19,760
Speaker 1: passionately was completely wrong, complete um. And I should also

739
00:44:20,320 --> 00:44:22,799
Speaker 1: rush to add this is all based on what I've

740
00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 1: read about how how Manning was So again I wasn't there,

741
00:44:28,360 --> 00:44:30,520
Speaker 1: and it could be that he was treated completely fairly,

742
00:44:30,640 --> 00:44:33,520
Speaker 1: and this information has been fabricated for some reason. But

743
00:44:33,560 --> 00:44:35,520
Speaker 1: this this was the information that was out there at

744
00:44:35,520 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 1: the time and or that is out there now right

745
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:41,880
Speaker 1: and then um ultimately he was Manning was moved to

746
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:46,040
Speaker 1: the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, which was a relatively

747
00:44:46,120 --> 00:44:49,839
Speaker 1: new facility, and from what I understand his the cell

748
00:44:49,880 --> 00:44:52,520
Speaker 1: that he is in is much improved over the one

749
00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:56,440
Speaker 1: he was in in Quantico. Um So, anyway, that was

750
00:44:56,560 --> 00:44:59,600
Speaker 1: another thing Sports got involved in, and UH again, some

751
00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:04,200
Speaker 1: con r theorists suggests that that the government, the grudge

752
00:45:04,239 --> 00:45:06,920
Speaker 1: that the government had back in the Pacers situation was

753
00:45:07,040 --> 00:45:11,640
Speaker 1: up to mega grudge after this uh this request, although

754
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:14,000
Speaker 1: Sports was not the only person in the world to

755
00:45:14,120 --> 00:45:17,840
Speaker 1: ask for this incation. UM, So, I don't know, I

756
00:45:17,880 --> 00:45:21,640
Speaker 1: don't really buy into that. Uh, skipping ahead just a

757
00:45:21,680 --> 00:45:23,920
Speaker 1: little bit. We're gonna backtrack in a second. But he

758
00:45:23,960 --> 00:45:29,440
Speaker 1: was also Sports was also an advocate against the SOAPA

759
00:45:29,719 --> 00:45:33,880
Speaker 1: campaign Stop Online Piracy Act in two thousand eleven that

760
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:38,960
Speaker 1: was proposed. Yeah, the general idea behind this act was

761
00:45:39,000 --> 00:45:42,120
Speaker 1: that a lot of the stuff, a lot of the

762
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 1: computers that host the files that violate intellectual property rights

763
00:45:47,440 --> 00:45:50,839
Speaker 1: of companies and people within the United States, a lot

764
00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:54,520
Speaker 1: of those computers exist in countries outside the US jurisdiction,

765
00:45:55,200 --> 00:45:58,680
Speaker 1: and so how do you and how do you stop

766
00:45:59,400 --> 00:46:03,600
Speaker 1: those sites from distributing illegal copies of stuff within the

767
00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:09,239
Speaker 1: United States? And SOPA's approach was to break links to

768
00:46:09,480 --> 00:46:12,359
Speaker 1: those sites, essentially, to remove those sites from domain name

769
00:46:12,400 --> 00:46:14,960
Speaker 1: servers here in the United States, so that if you

770
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:16,919
Speaker 1: were to try and navigate to one of those sites,

771
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:19,840
Speaker 1: you would get an error. Essentially, you would get redirected

772
00:46:19,840 --> 00:46:24,640
Speaker 1: to the FBI homepage, which would in theory, scare you

773
00:46:25,120 --> 00:46:27,520
Speaker 1: and to stop you have to stop looking for ways

774
00:46:27,560 --> 00:46:29,920
Speaker 1: to do it. There were definitely work arounds to this

775
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:34,520
Speaker 1: um and a lot of people protested SOPA because they

776
00:46:34,560 --> 00:46:38,160
Speaker 1: said that one it would not stop pirates from pirating

777
00:46:38,200 --> 00:46:40,400
Speaker 1: because they could find ways around it, and too it

778
00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:44,560
Speaker 1: could break the Internet in unintended ways. I think Swarts

779
00:46:44,680 --> 00:46:48,279
Speaker 1: was more of more of information wants to be free,

780
00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:51,200
Speaker 1: not so much like it will break the Internet or

781
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:54,520
Speaker 1: we can get around this, but more like more if

782
00:46:54,600 --> 00:46:58,719
Speaker 1: it's wrong to shut down information where information exists. Yeah so,

783
00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:02,520
Speaker 1: but he was definitely on the anti SOPA side, and

784
00:47:02,600 --> 00:47:06,680
Speaker 1: he gave a very eloquent speech when SOPA failed to pass,

785
00:47:07,280 --> 00:47:13,040
Speaker 1: and and really was passionate about telling people don't rest

786
00:47:13,600 --> 00:47:16,360
Speaker 1: because this idea is not a not a new idea.

787
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:18,600
Speaker 1: It's something that's been tried multiple times and we will

788
00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:22,520
Speaker 1: be tried again. Yeah. So, but that that leads us

789
00:47:22,560 --> 00:47:25,239
Speaker 1: to to the I guess the last part of this

790
00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:28,960
Speaker 1: the saga, the story about j Store, which actually started

791
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:32,480
Speaker 1: back in November, so this predates the SOPA stuff, but

792
00:47:32,480 --> 00:47:38,400
Speaker 1: it kind of it envelopes it J Store the company. Essentially,

793
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:40,680
Speaker 1: it stands for journal storage, right, and it's a it's

794
00:47:40,719 --> 00:47:44,359
Speaker 1: a library of publicly funded academic articles. Yeah, so we're

795
00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:48,160
Speaker 1: talking again about scholarly information. So this is kind of

796
00:47:48,160 --> 00:47:52,640
Speaker 1: similar to the the the the information that was in PACER.

797
00:47:52,840 --> 00:47:56,359
Speaker 1: Of course, that was court filings, not scholar scholarship. But

798
00:47:56,440 --> 00:48:00,680
Speaker 1: in this case we're talking about academic journals, books and

799
00:48:00,960 --> 00:48:03,439
Speaker 1: papers that are from primary sources. These are the people

800
00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:06,479
Speaker 1: who are doing the ReScience research, medical research, all kinds

801
00:48:06,480 --> 00:48:10,080
Speaker 1: of really terrific stuff, isn't Jason. Essentially, all the blogs

802
00:48:10,120 --> 00:48:14,080
Speaker 1: you read are based off of the academic papers that

803
00:48:14,120 --> 00:48:17,719
Speaker 1: are stored in databases like j store, and j store

804
00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:21,120
Speaker 1: has about well a little bit over four journal titles

805
00:48:21,160 --> 00:48:24,960
Speaker 1: and more than fifty disciplines are represented in j stores database.

806
00:48:25,640 --> 00:48:29,279
Speaker 1: And it was the whole purpose of j store. Well, first,

807
00:48:29,360 --> 00:48:32,520
Speaker 1: it was founded by William G. G. Bowen or Bowen,

808
00:48:32,600 --> 00:48:36,480
Speaker 1: who was president of Princeton University, and it was again

809
00:48:36,560 --> 00:48:38,759
Speaker 1: trying to solve that same problem that PACER was trying

810
00:48:38,800 --> 00:48:42,160
Speaker 1: to solve. How do you make this vast amount of

811
00:48:42,320 --> 00:48:46,759
Speaker 1: academic information searchable and feasible to store because it takes

812
00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:50,000
Speaker 1: up so much space. Libraries were having trouble storing all

813
00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:52,880
Speaker 1: this stuff, of course, so j store was kind of

814
00:48:52,920 --> 00:48:55,960
Speaker 1: the solution. And most of the stuff, not all of it,

815
00:48:56,080 --> 00:48:59,319
Speaker 1: like anything that's in the public domain is publicly accessible

816
00:48:59,600 --> 00:49:04,400
Speaker 1: through j store, but anything that's currently under you know,

817
00:49:04,480 --> 00:49:06,239
Speaker 1: the copyright or whatever you have to you have to

818
00:49:06,239 --> 00:49:10,400
Speaker 1: pay to access behind a paywall. And uh and and

819
00:49:10,440 --> 00:49:13,960
Speaker 1: again Swartz Uh, Sworts didn't necessarily think that it needed

820
00:49:13,960 --> 00:49:17,759
Speaker 1: to be behind a paywall or they needed or that

821
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:23,799
Speaker 1: needed to just exist uh on j store and uh.

822
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:26,520
Speaker 1: And there's some arguments about exactly what he did, but

823
00:49:26,680 --> 00:49:29,120
Speaker 1: essentially he got access to a computer at in m

824
00:49:29,200 --> 00:49:31,960
Speaker 1: T which was fine. He had he had authorization to

825
00:49:32,000 --> 00:49:35,880
Speaker 1: access right he was currently a fellow at the Center

826
00:49:35,920 --> 00:49:41,080
Speaker 1: for Ethics at Harvard. Yeah, which some people would say

827
00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:45,160
Speaker 1: is ironic, but yeah, he got access to a computer

828
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:49,160
Speaker 1: in m TY. Um, and he began to use again

829
00:49:49,200 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 1: another kind of algorithm to start downloading documents from j store.

830
00:49:52,719 --> 00:49:54,520
Speaker 1: I think it was a Python script actually, which you

831
00:49:54,719 --> 00:49:57,239
Speaker 1: had mentioned that he learned when he dropped out of

832
00:49:57,280 --> 00:50:01,279
Speaker 1: high school. Relying on that Python college uh and not

833
00:50:01,320 --> 00:50:05,400
Speaker 1: the Monty kind. Um. He managed to download around four

834
00:50:05,680 --> 00:50:10,400
Speaker 1: million journals out of jay store, and jay Store was

835
00:50:10,440 --> 00:50:15,080
Speaker 1: able to identify that it was Swartz and essentially confronted

836
00:50:15,160 --> 00:50:20,120
Speaker 1: him with this, and ultimately Swartz and J Store ended

837
00:50:20,200 --> 00:50:24,560
Speaker 1: up settling this this dispute out of court. Uh and

838
00:50:24,719 --> 00:50:28,080
Speaker 1: Swarts actually handed over the information he had downloaded from

839
00:50:28,200 --> 00:50:31,520
Speaker 1: J Store, and J Store, for its part, essentially said

840
00:50:31,760 --> 00:50:34,200
Speaker 1: all right, we're cool. You know what. We don't agree

841
00:50:34,239 --> 00:50:36,239
Speaker 1: with what you did, but we understand why you did it,

842
00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:39,239
Speaker 1: and you returned everything. So where everything's cool, and it

843
00:50:39,239 --> 00:50:42,120
Speaker 1: could have ended right then and there. Sure, but but

844
00:50:42,600 --> 00:50:45,560
Speaker 1: um well, people people argue a little bit about what

845
00:50:45,719 --> 00:50:47,600
Speaker 1: role m I T has had in all of this,

846
00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:51,400
Speaker 1: and some people say that the administration they're really cracked

847
00:50:51,400 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 1: down unnecessarily hard on him, and a lot of I

848
00:50:55,760 --> 00:50:57,879
Speaker 1: think a lot of alumni have come out saying like, well,

849
00:50:57,960 --> 00:50:59,920
Speaker 1: in my day, you know, earlier in the nineteen ste

850
00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:02,040
Speaker 1: and he's at M I T. If someone had had

851
00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:05,160
Speaker 1: hacked our system and started downloading this amount of information

852
00:51:05,200 --> 00:51:07,960
Speaker 1: from such a terrific database, Jay Store, we would have

853
00:51:08,239 --> 00:51:11,000
Speaker 1: we would have congratulated them, we would have given given

854
00:51:11,040 --> 00:51:15,640
Speaker 1: them a certificate and and and it's a little parade, yeah,

855
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:18,719
Speaker 1: um yeah. And and there's some who say that M

856
00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:23,320
Speaker 1: I T. Did not actively pursue a case against Sports,

857
00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:26,920
Speaker 1: but also did not discourage and they did certainly call

858
00:51:27,000 --> 00:51:30,120
Speaker 1: the cops on him. Yeah, so that's when the government

859
00:51:30,120 --> 00:51:34,440
Speaker 1: gets involved. And uh, the government essentially charges Sports with

860
00:51:34,560 --> 00:51:39,239
Speaker 1: thirteen Ultimately it was thirteen criminal court criminal counts, which

861
00:51:39,280 --> 00:51:43,840
Speaker 1: included things like wire fraud, computer fraud, theft of information,

862
00:51:43,920 --> 00:51:47,200
Speaker 1: theft of information, this kind of stuff. Um and uh.

863
00:51:47,239 --> 00:51:51,240
Speaker 1: He was released on a hundred thousand dollars bail. The charges,

864
00:51:51,800 --> 00:51:55,440
Speaker 1: depending upon the accounts you read, could have resulted in

865
00:51:55,560 --> 00:51:58,640
Speaker 1: him serving a prison sentence of between thirty and fifty

866
00:51:58,719 --> 00:52:02,960
Speaker 1: years at max. Um. Yeah, many of many of the accounts,

867
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:08,040
Speaker 1: I say, say thirty five several Well, yeah, there's one

868
00:52:08,080 --> 00:52:11,560
Speaker 1: I think CNN article that said fifty and I think

869
00:52:11,640 --> 00:52:14,120
Speaker 1: I think that people are adding them up in different ways.

870
00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:16,960
Speaker 1: But but um, and this is all under the Computer

871
00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:20,439
Speaker 1: Fraud and Abuse Act. And uh. He could also would

872
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:23,240
Speaker 1: have faced up to maybe as much as four million

873
00:52:23,280 --> 00:52:27,000
Speaker 1: dollars and fines. Now it's far more likely that the

874
00:52:27,000 --> 00:52:31,759
Speaker 1: government would have ended up reducing that to just six months.

875
00:52:31,600 --> 00:52:34,520
Speaker 1: And some say that, yeah, it would have been. They

876
00:52:34,560 --> 00:52:38,120
Speaker 1: were offering a a plea based on the fact that

877
00:52:38,160 --> 00:52:43,040
Speaker 1: there was no personal gain intended from actions, right and Um,

878
00:52:43,760 --> 00:52:49,320
Speaker 1: so some have said that the government was essentially using

879
00:52:49,360 --> 00:52:52,440
Speaker 1: sworts as an example to scare the heck out of

880
00:52:52,480 --> 00:52:55,040
Speaker 1: any of anyone else who would want to try something similar.

881
00:52:55,440 --> 00:52:59,800
Speaker 1: So you could kind of compare this to stories about

882
00:53:00,480 --> 00:53:03,799
Speaker 1: cases where people who downloaded some music files ended up

883
00:53:03,840 --> 00:53:07,200
Speaker 1: getting pulled into a court case where the fine would

884
00:53:07,200 --> 00:53:11,839
Speaker 1: have been, you know, an astronomicals like five dollars per

885
00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:15,640
Speaker 1: song or something like that, and it's a similar situation

886
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:18,400
Speaker 1: in that sense. It could have been that, you know

887
00:53:18,480 --> 00:53:20,480
Speaker 1: that the whole goal here was not so much to

888
00:53:20,560 --> 00:53:24,600
Speaker 1: punish sports into next century, but rather to act as

889
00:53:24,640 --> 00:53:27,719
Speaker 1: a deterrent for anyone else to scare people, which, by

890
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:32,600
Speaker 1: the way, government and everybody else, that rarely works. More

891
00:53:32,640 --> 00:53:40,040
Speaker 1: often than not, you get people more angry terrible things. UM.

892
00:53:40,080 --> 00:53:42,080
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that you aren't you know, you don't

893
00:53:42,120 --> 00:53:44,480
Speaker 1: have a right to act on things that are against

894
00:53:44,480 --> 00:53:46,640
Speaker 1: the law. I'm just saying think about the way you

895
00:53:46,719 --> 00:53:49,959
Speaker 1: do it, because you could end up making a worse

896
00:53:50,040 --> 00:53:53,040
Speaker 1: enemy for yourself. You might find a better way of

897
00:53:53,040 --> 00:53:56,359
Speaker 1: working around it, is my point. So again not saying

898
00:53:56,360 --> 00:53:58,960
Speaker 1: that they're in the wrong, I mean Sports was in

899
00:53:59,040 --> 00:54:01,640
Speaker 1: the wrong, but how much he was in the wrong

900
00:54:01,680 --> 00:54:05,360
Speaker 1: was another question. And and in in this case, Um

901
00:54:06,560 --> 00:54:08,759
Speaker 1: and again, like like we said at the beginning of

902
00:54:08,800 --> 00:54:10,400
Speaker 1: the podcast, and like I'm sure that you've heard on

903
00:54:10,440 --> 00:54:14,440
Speaker 1: the news. On January eleventh, thirteen, Sports was found dead

904
00:54:14,440 --> 00:54:19,600
Speaker 1: in his apartment. Uh. He had he had apparently committed suicide. Uh.

905
00:54:19,640 --> 00:54:22,480
Speaker 1: And Uh, you know, there's been a lot of people

906
00:54:23,719 --> 00:54:26,719
Speaker 1: raising suggestions about what it was that specifically led to

907
00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:30,080
Speaker 1: his decision to end his life. And again, because we

908
00:54:30,200 --> 00:54:34,520
Speaker 1: are not Aaron, we can't we can't know what led

909
00:54:34,560 --> 00:54:36,919
Speaker 1: to it. And his family has come out as being

910
00:54:37,239 --> 00:54:42,399
Speaker 1: very very passionately saying that it was because of this persecution. Yeah,

911
00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:45,319
Speaker 1: that he was feeling a huge amount of stress, and

912
00:54:45,360 --> 00:54:49,880
Speaker 1: that again his depression was something that was was was

913
00:54:50,680 --> 00:54:54,960
Speaker 1: really plaguing him at that time. Uh. That and you

914
00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:57,000
Speaker 1: can sort of imagine that if you are this person

915
00:54:57,080 --> 00:54:59,879
Speaker 1: who has this idealistic view of how the world should be,

916
00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:04,040
Speaker 1: and then you start to encounter so much, so much

917
00:55:04,040 --> 00:55:06,840
Speaker 1: persecution and resistance to to your dream where you know,

918
00:55:06,920 --> 00:55:10,080
Speaker 1: you you can see in your mind, you think there's

919
00:55:10,080 --> 00:55:12,680
Speaker 1: this idealistic world we could be living in and it

920
00:55:12,719 --> 00:55:16,000
Speaker 1: would be so easy. But I'm I'm hitting resistance all

921
00:55:16,040 --> 00:55:18,360
Speaker 1: the way and every time I try and make a change,

922
00:55:18,400 --> 00:55:21,399
Speaker 1: I get ten more obstacles in my way. You can

923
00:55:21,440 --> 00:55:23,680
Speaker 1: kind of see where that sort of hopelessness could creep

924
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:26,759
Speaker 1: in if if that was, you know, in fact, what

925
00:55:26,800 --> 00:55:29,160
Speaker 1: Aaron was thinking. And again this is just kind of

926
00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:32,840
Speaker 1: it's all it's all speculation. And you know, the U. S.

927
00:55:32,880 --> 00:55:36,560
Speaker 1: Attorney's Office of it's Carmen Orts is in fact office,

928
00:55:36,719 --> 00:55:41,560
Speaker 1: She's the U. S. Attorney of Massachusetts has said that, um,

929
00:55:41,600 --> 00:55:46,040
Speaker 1: that that their office is contact conduct was not in

930
00:55:46,080 --> 00:55:50,600
Speaker 1: fact inappropriate. Yeah. They they have maintained that what everything

931
00:55:50,640 --> 00:55:54,279
Speaker 1: they did was well within the limits of the law

932
00:55:54,360 --> 00:55:58,360
Speaker 1: and in ethics, which because again just because something's legal

933
00:55:58,520 --> 00:56:02,000
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's ethical, uh and vice versa. Yeah, there's

934
00:56:02,000 --> 00:56:04,360
Speaker 1: there's been there's been a huge pushback against her office.

935
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:06,919
Speaker 1: There's a White House dot gov petition out right now

936
00:56:06,960 --> 00:56:10,640
Speaker 1: as of as of late January with over forty six

937
00:56:10,640 --> 00:56:13,719
Speaker 1: thousand signatures to remove her from office. Yeah, and there's

938
00:56:13,719 --> 00:56:16,840
Speaker 1: been a lot of outcry on the internet on behalf

939
00:56:17,000 --> 00:56:21,200
Speaker 1: of Sworts. There's also been some resistance, Uh, some people

940
00:56:21,200 --> 00:56:24,919
Speaker 1: who have criticized Swartz and his his ideals. I've seen

941
00:56:24,960 --> 00:56:26,520
Speaker 1: some of that. There have been some hackers who have

942
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:32,279
Speaker 1: kind of made you know, they've defaced some memorials online.

943
00:56:32,880 --> 00:56:35,520
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's a complex thing. Some sometimes you

944
00:56:35,560 --> 00:56:37,640
Speaker 1: could argue that, you know, maybe the hackers really do

945
00:56:37,760 --> 00:56:40,880
Speaker 1: feel that Swarts was not the person that other people

946
00:56:40,880 --> 00:56:43,160
Speaker 1: are making him out to be. In other cases, I think,

947
00:56:43,320 --> 00:56:45,520
Speaker 1: you know, it could just be you know, making a

948
00:56:45,560 --> 00:56:49,960
Speaker 1: play for attention. For Yeah, this is a high profile instance.

949
00:56:50,480 --> 00:56:52,480
Speaker 1: On the flip side. M I t s website has

950
00:56:52,480 --> 00:56:55,440
Speaker 1: been hacked twice since Swarts of suicide, once by Anonymous,

951
00:56:55,440 --> 00:56:58,719
Speaker 1: who also threatened action against the Westboro Baptist Church when

952
00:56:58,719 --> 00:57:01,040
Speaker 1: they announced that they would pick its Worts funeral, which

953
00:57:01,080 --> 00:57:03,960
Speaker 1: they backed off of. They did not, they did not

954
00:57:04,440 --> 00:57:09,040
Speaker 1: show up. Yeah, and again when we say that Anonymous

955
00:57:09,080 --> 00:57:11,759
Speaker 1: does something, keep in mind that's you know, that's a

956
00:57:11,800 --> 00:57:16,720
Speaker 1: group that has no real uh well, there's there's no

957
00:57:16,760 --> 00:57:20,240
Speaker 1: real structure to it, so sometimes members of Anonymous may

958
00:57:20,320 --> 00:57:23,640
Speaker 1: act u Yeah, it's always hard to say that Anonymous

959
00:57:23,680 --> 00:57:26,560
Speaker 1: did anything because it could just be a group of people,

960
00:57:26,560 --> 00:57:30,160
Speaker 1: could be one person. But anyway, yes, uh, they did

961
00:57:30,360 --> 00:57:35,480
Speaker 1: definitely send out a message saying that if if the

962
00:57:35,600 --> 00:57:39,520
Speaker 1: WBC showed up at Swartz's funeral, they would block them

963
00:57:39,600 --> 00:57:45,200
Speaker 1: from from view of the grieving parties. UM and probably

964
00:57:45,240 --> 00:57:46,960
Speaker 1: there was a little bit more of a threat there too,

965
00:57:47,040 --> 00:57:50,440
Speaker 1: because anonymous has been known to make people's lives difficult

966
00:57:50,480 --> 00:57:54,840
Speaker 1: if they if they oppose the ideals that the group

967
00:57:55,520 --> 00:58:01,320
Speaker 1: follows UM And in slightly slightly more positive action, Representative

968
00:58:01,400 --> 00:58:04,600
Speaker 1: Zoe Lofgren of California wants to propose Aaron's Law, which

969
00:58:04,640 --> 00:58:09,200
Speaker 1: would be a bill to amend the cf A and uh,

970
00:58:10,720 --> 00:58:14,080
Speaker 1: you know, change it so that so that these violations

971
00:58:14,080 --> 00:58:17,840
Speaker 1: of terms of service and network use UM cannot be

972
00:58:17,960 --> 00:58:22,320
Speaker 1: federally prosecuted unless they really should be right. It's it's

973
00:58:22,440 --> 00:58:24,880
Speaker 1: it's it's a complex issue, right, I mean, this is

974
00:58:24,960 --> 00:58:28,400
Speaker 1: this is that was part of the whole argument in

975
00:58:28,440 --> 00:58:32,160
Speaker 1: the whole Creative Commons approach was that it's not necessarily

976
00:58:32,200 --> 00:58:35,080
Speaker 1: that one party is absolutely in the wrong or absolutely

977
00:58:35,120 --> 00:58:37,160
Speaker 1: in the right. It is a complex issue, and so

978
00:58:37,200 --> 00:58:39,280
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where you know, you don't

979
00:58:39,320 --> 00:58:42,520
Speaker 1: want to paint with a wide brush and then find

980
00:58:42,600 --> 00:58:45,080
Speaker 1: out that, oh, you know, we needed to take a

981
00:58:45,160 --> 00:58:49,360
Speaker 1: much more precise approach to this UM. And also, you know,

982
00:58:49,560 --> 00:58:53,280
Speaker 1: a lot of luminaries. Technology luminaries have come out and

983
00:58:53,640 --> 00:58:57,480
Speaker 1: spoken on this subject. Lawrence Lessig has said several things

984
00:58:58,040 --> 00:59:03,240
Speaker 1: about He's criticized the process, Accution's approach to going after

985
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:07,280
Speaker 1: Swords and tim Berners Lee wrote a very poignant tweet,

986
00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:10,240
Speaker 1: really gorgeous tweet. Yeah, if if I can, I'm I'm

987
00:59:10,280 --> 00:59:12,080
Speaker 1: probably gonna tear up in the middle of this tweet.

988
00:59:12,120 --> 00:59:13,520
Speaker 1: And if I don't, it's going to be a miracle.

989
00:59:13,560 --> 00:59:17,280
Speaker 1: But he he tweeted, um Aaron dead world wanderers, we

990
00:59:17,320 --> 00:59:20,040
Speaker 1: have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are

991
00:59:20,120 --> 00:59:22,840
Speaker 1: one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let

992
00:59:22,880 --> 00:59:25,760
Speaker 1: us weep. I'm like, oh, Timmerners Lee, what are you

993
00:59:25,800 --> 00:59:29,600
Speaker 1: doing to me? Yeah, he's uh yeah, he definitely definitely

994
00:59:29,640 --> 00:59:33,440
Speaker 1: summed it up really well for a lot of people. UM.

995
00:59:33,480 --> 00:59:38,760
Speaker 1: Shortly after after the discovery that Swarts had committed suicide,

996
00:59:39,280 --> 00:59:42,360
Speaker 1: I appeared on an episode of Tech News Today and

997
00:59:42,400 --> 00:59:48,240
Speaker 1: we discussed the the the story and uh uh yeah

998
00:59:48,320 --> 00:59:51,280
Speaker 1: it was. I mean, it was a tough discussion even then,

999
00:59:51,320 --> 00:59:55,400
Speaker 1: and that was fresh after finding out about it. Um,

1000
00:59:55,440 --> 00:59:58,000
Speaker 1: and it has not become easier as time has gone on.

1001
00:59:58,160 --> 01:00:01,440
Speaker 1: Also over at AM I he for m I T

1002
01:00:01,640 --> 01:00:05,760
Speaker 1: s part, they decided to create a review panel to

1003
01:00:05,920 --> 01:00:09,800
Speaker 1: look into how M I T handled the whole situation

1004
01:00:10,560 --> 01:00:15,080
Speaker 1: and whether or not the people at m T as

1005
01:00:15,120 --> 01:00:18,040
Speaker 1: a whole behaved in a way that is up to

1006
01:00:18,200 --> 01:00:21,360
Speaker 1: might standards. And the man who has put in charge

1007
01:00:21,520 --> 01:00:25,480
Speaker 1: of this review panel is how Abelson, who again was

1008
01:00:25,560 --> 01:00:27,760
Speaker 1: one of those two men, the other being Tim Burners

1009
01:00:27,800 --> 01:00:30,479
Speaker 1: Lee back when he was thirteen he got to meet

1010
01:00:31,000 --> 01:00:32,600
Speaker 1: and also a man who worked with him on the

1011
01:00:32,640 --> 01:00:38,400
Speaker 1: Creative Commons projects. So Abelson definitely has um firsthand knowledge

1012
01:00:38,560 --> 01:00:43,320
Speaker 1: of sports and and his contributions to the world. And

1013
01:00:43,400 --> 01:00:47,440
Speaker 1: so uh, he wrote a very eloquent letter to M

1014
01:00:47,480 --> 01:00:49,840
Speaker 1: I T and said, you know what his intentions were

1015
01:00:49,920 --> 01:00:52,320
Speaker 1: as part of this review process, and say that he

1016
01:00:52,400 --> 01:00:54,520
Speaker 1: wants to take a very honest look. He does not

1017
01:00:54,600 --> 01:00:57,120
Speaker 1: want it to become a witch hunt. At the same time,

1018
01:00:57,160 --> 01:00:59,440
Speaker 1: he does not want to just cover up anything that

1019
01:00:59,560 --> 01:01:02,360
Speaker 1: might be an ugly sore spot for M I T.

1020
01:01:02,600 --> 01:01:04,960
Speaker 1: He wants the truth and he says that you know,

1021
01:01:05,120 --> 01:01:08,000
Speaker 1: really that's the only thing that will serve in this situation,

1022
01:01:08,040 --> 01:01:11,080
Speaker 1: and it's the only thing that that is appropriate considering

1023
01:01:11,120 --> 01:01:17,920
Speaker 1: the circumstances. Um. So yeah, and uh, and it's while

1024
01:01:17,960 --> 01:01:20,800
Speaker 1: we don't know all the tales about what led sports

1025
01:01:20,840 --> 01:01:24,040
Speaker 1: to make this decision, we do know that he had

1026
01:01:24,600 --> 01:01:26,720
Speaker 1: battled depression. He had a history of it, you know,

1027
01:01:26,800 --> 01:01:30,080
Speaker 1: and it's a it's kind of a lifelong, lifelong issue.

1028
01:01:30,360 --> 01:01:33,480
Speaker 1: Um yeah, yeah without Jonathan and I wanted to stay

1029
01:01:33,520 --> 01:01:35,600
Speaker 1: without making this too much of an after school special,

1030
01:01:35,600 --> 01:01:37,600
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's depression is something that both of

1031
01:01:37,680 --> 01:01:40,240
Speaker 1: us have dealt with in our lives. And uh, you

1032
01:01:40,280 --> 01:01:44,520
Speaker 1: know it's it's it's rough and it's terrible, but um

1033
01:01:44,640 --> 01:01:47,640
Speaker 1: but to borrow a phrase, it gets better and you

1034
01:01:47,680 --> 01:01:50,080
Speaker 1: know so, and there's help out there. There is help

1035
01:01:50,080 --> 01:01:52,880
Speaker 1: out there. If you are ever feeling overwhelmed, Please please

1036
01:01:52,920 --> 01:01:54,800
Speaker 1: talk to someone. There are people who care about you.

1037
01:01:55,240 --> 01:01:57,160
Speaker 1: We care about you. You probably shouldn't talk to us

1038
01:01:57,200 --> 01:02:01,000
Speaker 1: because we are not mental health professionals. Yeah, Honestly, googling

1039
01:02:01,040 --> 01:02:03,600
Speaker 1: suicide prevention is the best way to find help in

1040
01:02:03,600 --> 01:02:05,120
Speaker 1: your area. But if you're in the US, you can

1041
01:02:05,160 --> 01:02:10,240
Speaker 1: also call on two seven, eight to five. It's it's

1042
01:02:10,280 --> 01:02:12,720
Speaker 1: free and confidential and they will absolutely hook you up

1043
01:02:12,720 --> 01:02:16,680
Speaker 1: with helps. So yeah, it's it's definitely something that you know,

1044
01:02:16,840 --> 01:02:19,720
Speaker 1: we want to leave you guys with because, like Lauren said,

1045
01:02:19,760 --> 01:02:22,400
Speaker 1: this is not this is not an unfamiliar subject to

1046
01:02:22,480 --> 01:02:25,240
Speaker 1: us and UH, and it can when you're in the

1047
01:02:25,240 --> 01:02:28,560
Speaker 1: middle of a depression, it can feel like there's nowhere

1048
01:02:28,600 --> 01:02:31,720
Speaker 1: to turn. And the truth is that's that's not the case.

1049
01:02:32,440 --> 01:02:35,640
Speaker 1: So um, yeah, let's let's wrap this up. Guys. UH,

1050
01:02:35,760 --> 01:02:39,040
Speaker 1: if you would like to hear about a particular subject,

1051
01:02:39,120 --> 01:02:42,000
Speaker 1: if there's someone that we should cover, or a particular

1052
01:02:42,000 --> 01:02:44,600
Speaker 1: technology that you really want to know more about, I

1053
01:02:44,680 --> 01:02:46,840
Speaker 1: highly recommend you get in touch with us and let

1054
01:02:46,920 --> 01:02:49,800
Speaker 1: us know. You can write us an email. Our email

1055
01:02:49,840 --> 01:02:54,640
Speaker 1: address is text stuff at Discovery dot com, or you

1056
01:02:54,640 --> 01:02:57,280
Speaker 1: can send us a message on Twitter or Facebook. Our

1057
01:02:57,360 --> 01:03:01,080
Speaker 1: handle at both those locations is text H S W

1058
01:03:01,680 --> 01:03:04,080
Speaker 1: and Lauren and I will talk to you again really

1059
01:03:04,120 --> 01:03:07,960
Speaker 1: soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.

1060
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:13,800
Speaker 1: Because it has staff works dot com