Aaron Swartz

at the launch party for Creative Commons Aaron Hillel Swartz to a Jewish family. He was the eldest child of Susan and Robert Swartz and brother to Noah and Ben Swartz. His father founded the software firm Mark Williams Company. At an early age, Swartz immersed himself in the study of computers, programming, the Internet, and Internet culture. He attended North Shore Country Day School, a small private school near Chicago, until ninth grade, when he left high school and enrolled in courses at Lake Forest College. In 1999, at age 12, he created the website The Info Network, a user-generated encyclopedia. The site won the ArsDigita Prize, given to young people who create "useful, educational, and collaborative" noncommercial websites, and led to early recognition of Swartz's nascent talent in coding. At age 14, he became a member of the working group that authored the RSS 1.0 web syndication specification. A year later, he became involved in the Creative Commons organization. In 2004, he enrolled at Stanford University but left the school after his first year. Entrepreneurship During Swartz's first year at Stanford, he applied to Y Combinator's first Summer Founders Program, proposing to work on a startup called Infogami, a flexible content management system designed to create rich and visually interesting websites or a form of wiki for structured data. After working on it with co-founder Simon Carstensen over the summer of 2005, Swartz opted not to return to Stanford, choosing instead to continue to develop and seek funding for Infogami. When Infogami failed to find further funding, Y Combinator organizers suggested Infogami merge with Reddit, which it did in November 2005, creating a new firm, Not a Bug, devoted to promoting both products. Swartz moved with his company to San Francisco to continue to work on Reddit for Wired. ==Activism==

In 2008, Swartz founded Watchdog.net, "the good government site with teeth", to aggregate and visualize data about politicians. That year, he wrote a widely circulated Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. On December 27, 2010, he filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to learn about the treatment of Chelsea Manning, alleged source for WikiLeaks. His activism has been praised by digital rights groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The Huffington Post characterized his actions this way: "Swartz downloaded public court documents from the PACER system in an effort to make them available outside of the expensive service. The move drew the attention of the FBI, which ultimately decided not to press charges as the documents were, in fact, public." PACER was charging eight cents per page for information that Carl Malamud, who founded the nonprofit group Public.Resource.Org, contended should be free, because federal documents are not covered by copyright. At a 2013 memorial for Swartz, Malamud recalled their work with PACER. They brought millions of U.S. District Court records out from behind PACER's "pay wall", he said, and found them full of privacy violations, including medical records and the names of minor children and confidential informants. A more detailed account of his collaboration with Swartz on the PACER project appears in an essay on Malamud's website. Writing in Ars Technica, Timothy Lee, who later made use of the documents obtained by Swartz as a co-creator of RECAP, offered some insight into discrepancies in reports on how much data Swartz downloaded: "In a back-of-the-envelope calculation a few days before the offsite crawl was shut down, Swartz guessed he got around 25 percent of the documents in PACER. The New York Times similarly reported Swartz had downloaded "an estimated 20 percent of the entire database". Based on the facts that Swartz downloaded 2.7million documents while PACER, at the time, contained 500 million, Lee concluded that Swartz downloaded less than one percent of the database. He wrote in his blog: "I spend my days experimenting with new ways to get progressive policies enacted and progressive politicians elected." He led the first activism event of his career with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, delivering thousands of "Honor Kennedy" petition signatures to Massachusetts legislators, asking them to fulfill former Senator Ted Kennedy's last wish by appointing a senator to vote for healthcare reform. Demand Progress In 2010, Swartz co-founded Demand Progress, During academic year 2010–11, Swartz conducted research studies on political corruption as a Lab Fellow in Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Research Lab on Institutional Corruption. In an afterword to the novel, Swartz wrote: "These political hacktivist tools can be used by anyone motivated and talented enough.... Now it's up to you to change the system. ... Let me know if I can help." Swartz also spoke on the topic at an event organized by ThoughtWorks. Wikipedia Swartz participated in Wikipedia beginning in August 2003 under the username AaronSw. In 2006, he ran unsuccessfully for the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees. In 2006, Swartz wrote an analysis of how Wikipedia articles are written, and concluded that the bulk of its content came from tens of thousands of occasional contributors, or "outsiders", each of whom made few other contributions to the site, while a core group of 500 to 1,000 regular editors tended to correct spelling and other formatting errors. He said: "The formatters aid the contributors, not the other way around." His conclusions, based on the analysis of edit histories of several randomly selected articles, contradicted the opinion of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who believed the core group of regular editors provided most of the content while thousands of others contributed to formatting issues. Swartz came to his conclusions by counting the number of characters editors added to particular articles, while Wales counted the total number of edits. == United States v. Aaron Swartz==

According to state and federal authorities, Swartz used JSTOR, a digital repository, to download a large number of academic journal articles through MIT's computer network over the course of a few weeks in late 2010 and early 2011. Visitors to MIT's "open campus" were authorized to access JSTOR through its network; This prompted a block of the IP address. In the morning, another IP address, also from within the MIT network, began sending more PDF download requests, resulting in a temporary block on the firewall level of all MIT computers in the entire 18.0.0.0/8 range. A JSTOR employee emailed MIT on September 29, 2010: According to authorities, Swartz downloaded the documents through a laptop connected to a networking switch in a controlled-access wiring closet at MIT. The closet's door was kept unlocked, according to press reports. When it was discovered, a video camera was placed in the room to record Swartz; his computer was left untouched. The recording was stopped once Swartz was identified, but rather than pursue a civil lawsuit against him, JSTOR settled with him in June 2011; under the terms of the settlement, he surrendered the downloaded data. On July 30, 2013, JSTOR released 300 partially redacted documents used as incriminating evidence against Swartz, originally sent to the United States Attorney's Office in response to subpoenas in the case United States v. Aaron Swartz. File:Swartz-jstor-evidence-pdf-page-3142.png|"Root Cause Analysis" Report (side 1), showing a descriptive timeline of events from September 25, 2010, until December 26, 2010 File:Swartz-jstor-evidence-pdf-page-3143.png|"Root Cause Analysis" Report (side 2), showing JSTOR response and incident resolution procedures File:Swartz-jstor-evidence-pdf-page-3127.png|Email sent from JSTOR to Stephen Heymann (USAMA), estimating 3.5 million PDF files had been downloaded File:Swartz-jstor-evidence-pdf-page-3128.png|Email describing PDF download activity snapshots File:Swartz-jstor-evidence-pdf-page-3129.png|PDF download activity, from JSTOR's databases to MIT computers, between November 1 and December 27 File:Swartz-jstor-evidence-pdf-page-3136.png|PDF activity, from JSTOR to MIT, between January 1 to 15 Arrest and prosecution On the night of January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested near the Harvard campus by MIT Police and a Secret Service agent, and arraigned in Cambridge District Court on two state charges of breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony. On July 11, 2011, he was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. On November 17, 2011, Swartz was indicted by a Middlesex County Superior Court grand jury on state charges of breaking and entering with intent, grand larceny, and unauthorized access to a computer network. On December 16, 2011, state prosecutors filed a notice that they were dropping the two original charges, According to a spokesperson for the Middlesex County prosecutor, this was done to avoid impeding a federal prosecution headed by Stephen P. Heymann, supported by evidence provided by Secret Service agent Michael S. Pickett. The federal prosecution involved what was characterized by numerous critics (such as former Nixon White House counsel John Dean) as an "overcharging" 13-count indictment and "overzealous", "Nixonian" prosecution for alleged computer crimes, brought by then U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz. Swartz died by suicide on January 11, 2013. After his death, federal prosecutors dropped the charges. On December 4, 2013, due to a Freedom of Information Act suit by the investigations editor of Wired magazine, several documents related to the case were released by the Secret Service, including a video of Swartz entering the MIT network closet. ==Personal life==

Swartz was in an open relationship with Quinn Norton between 2007 and 2011 and dated Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman from 2011 until his death in 2013, contemplating marriage with her. He also reportedly had same-sex relationships, and was skeptical of the idea of sexual identity. Aside from his work, he posted frequently on Twitter, Reddit and his personal website. He was an atheist. ==Death==

On the evening of January 11, 2013, Swartz's girlfriend, Stinebrickner-Kauffman, found him dead in his Brooklyn apartment. A spokesperson for New York's Medical Examiner reported that he had hanged himself. No suicide note was found. Swartz's family and girlfriend created a memorial website on which they wrote: "He used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place." Cory Doctorow wrote, "Aaron had an unbeatable combination of political insight, technical skill, and intelligence about people and issues. I think he could have revolutionized American (and worldwide) politics. His legacy may still yet do so." Funeral and memorial gatherings Swartz's funeral services were held on January 15, 2013, at Central Avenue Synagogue in Highland Park, Illinois. Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, delivered a eulogy. He is buried at Shalom Memorial Park in Arlington Heights. The same day, The Wall Street Journal published a story based in part on an interview with Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. She told the Journal that Swartz lacked the money to pay for a trial and "it was too hard for him to ... make that part of his life go public" by asking for help. He was also distressed, she said, because two of his friends had just been subpoenaed and because he no longer believed that MIT would try to stop the prosecution. On January 24, there was a memorial at the Internet Archive headquarters in San Francisco (video) at which Stinebrickner-Kauffman, Alex Stamos, Brewster Kahle, Peter Eckersley, and Carl Malamud spoke. On February 4, a memorial was held in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill; speakers included Senator Ron Wyden and Representatives Darrell Issa, Alan Grayson, and Jared Polis. A memorial also took place on March 12 at the MIT Media Lab. On February 2, 2025, a statue of Swartz was unveiled at the Internet Archive building in San Francisco. This was organized by Pablo Peniche and Lisa Rein. The statue stands in the building's lobby. For donations in his memory, Swartz's family recommended GiveWell, an organization Swartz admired, had collaborated with, and made his sole beneficiary in his will. ==Response==

U.S. Department of Justice Carmen M. Ortiz, then U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said in a statement: "As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, [...] I must, however, make clear that this office's conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case." Family response On January 12, 2013, Swartz's family and partner issued a statement criticizing the prosecutors and MIT. Ortiz's husband, Tom Dolan, responded: "Truly incredible that in their own son's obit they blame others for his death and make no mention of the 6-month offer." This comment triggered some criticism; in Esquire, Charlie Pierce wrote, "the glibness with which her husband and her defenders toss off a 'mere' six months in federal prison, low-security or not, is a further indication that something is seriously out of whack with the way our prosecutors think these days." MIT At the time, MIT maintained an open-campus policy along with an "open network". Two days after Swartz's death, MIT President L. Rafael Reif commissioned professor Hal Abelson to lead an analysis of MIT's options and decisions relating to Swartz's "legal struggles". To help guide the fact-finding stage of the review, MIT created a website where community members could suggest questions and issues for the review to address. Swartz's attorneys requested that all pretrial discovery documents be made public, a move MIT opposed. Swartz allies have criticized MIT's opposition to releasing the evidence. On July 26, 2013, the Abelson panel submitted a report to Reif, who authorized its public release on July 30. The panel reported that MIT had not supported charges against Swartz and cleared the institution of wrongdoing, but also noted that despite MIT's advocacy for open access culture at the institutional level and beyond, the university never extended that support to Swartz. The report revealed, for example, that while MIT considered issuing a public statement about its position on the case, it never did so. Press The Huffington Post reported, "Ortiz has faced significant backlash for pursuing the case against Swartz, including a petition to the White House to have her fired." Other news outlets reported similarly. Reuters news agency called Swartz "an online icon" who "help[ed] to make a virtual mountain of information freely available to the public, including an estimated 19 million pages of federal court documents." The Associated Press (AP) reported that Swartz's case "highlights society's uncertain, evolving view of how to treat people who break into computer systems and share data not to enrich themselves, but to make it available to others," and that JSTOR's lawyer, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Mary Jo White, had asked the lead prosecutor to drop the charges. "Swartz was an amazing human being who fought tirelessly for our right to a free and open Internet", BAMN said. "He was much more than just the 'Reddit guy'." On April 17, 2013, Yuval Noah Harari called Swartz "the first martyr of the Freedom of Information movement". But according to Harari, Swartz's stance did not illustrate belief in the freedom of persons or speech but stemmed from his generation's conviction that above all else, information should be free. Swartz's legacy has reportedly strengthened the open access to scholarship movement. In Illinois, his home state, Swartz's influence led state university faculties to adopt policies in favor of open access. Internet Hacks On January 13, 2013, members of Anonymous hacked two websites on the MIT domain, replacing them with tributes to Swartz that called on members of the Internet community to use his death as a rallying point for the open access movement. The banner included a list of demands for improvements in the U.S. copyright system, along with Swartz's Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. On the night of January 18, MIT's email system was taken offline for ten hours. On January 22, email sent to MIT was redirected by hackers Aush0k and TibitXimer to the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology. All other traffic to MIT was redirected to a computer at Harvard University that was publishing a statement headed "R.I.P Aaron Swartz", with text from a 2009 post by Swartz accompanied by a chiptune version of "The Star-Spangled Banner". MIT regained full control after about seven hours. In the early hours of January 26, Anonymous hacked the U.S. Sentencing Commission website, USSC.gov. The homepage was replaced by an embedded YouTube video, Anonymous Operation Last Resort. The video statement said Swartz "faced an impossible choice". A hacker downloaded "hundreds of thousands" of scientific-journal articles from a Swiss publisher's website and republished them on the open Web in Swartz's honor a week before the first anniversary of his death. White House petition After Swartz's death, more than 50,000 people signed an online petition to the White House calling for Ortiz's removal "for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz". A similar petition was submitted calling for prosecutor Stephen Heymann's firing. In January 2015, the White House declined both petitions. Commemorations On August 3, 2013, Swartz was posthumously inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame. On the weekend of November 8–10, 2013, inspired by Swartz's work and life, a second annual hackathon was held in at least 16 cities around the world. Preliminary topics worked on at the 2013 Aaron Swartz Hackathon were privacy and software tools, transparency, activism, access, legal fixes, and a low-cost book scanner. In January 2014, Lawrence Lessig led a walk across New Hampshire in honor of Swartz, rallying for campaign finance reform. In 2017, the Turkish-Dutch artist Ahmet Öğüt commemorated Swartz in a work titled "Information Power to The People", which depicted his bust. == Legacy ==

Open Access A long-time supporter of open access, Swartz wrote in his Guerilla Open Access Manifesto: Swartz's supporters responded to news of his death with an effort called #PDFTribute to promote Open Access. On January 12, Eva Vivalt, a development economist at the World Bank, began posting her academic articles online using the hashtag #pdftribute as a tribute to Swartz. Scholars posted links to their works. Swartz's story has exposed the topic of open access to scientific publications to wider audiences. Many institutions and personalities have since campaigned for open access to scientific knowledge. Swartz's death prompted calls for more open access to scholarly data (e.g., open science data). The Think Computer Foundation and the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton University announced scholarships awarded in memory of Swartz. In 2013, Swartz was posthumously awarded the American Library Association's James Madison Award for being an "outspoken advocate for public participation in government and unrestricted access to peer-reviewed scholarly articles". In March, the editor and editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration resigned en masse, citing a dispute with the journal's publisher, Routledge. One board member wrote of a "crisis of conscience about publishing in a journal that was not open access" after Swartz died. In 2002, Swartz had said that when he died, he wanted the contents of his hard drives made publicly available. Congress Three members of the U.S. House of Representatives—Republican Darrell Issa and Democrats Zoe Lofgren and Jared Polis—all on the House Judiciary Committee, raised questions about the government's handling of the case. Calling the charges against him "ridiculous and trumped up", Polis called Swartz a "martyr" whose death illustrated the need for Congress to limit the discretion of federal prosecutors. Senator John Cornyn asked, "On what basis did the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts conclude that her office's conduct was 'appropriate'?" and "Was the prosecution of Mr. Swartz in any way retaliation for his exercise of his rights as a citizen under the Freedom of Information Act?" Congressional investigations Issa, who chaired the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, announced that he would investigate the Justice Department's actions in prosecuting Swartz. In a statement to The Huffington Post, he praised Swartz's work on "open government and free access to the people". Issa's investigation garnered some bipartisan support. On January 28, 2013, Issa and ranking committee member Elijah Cummings published a letter to Holder asking why federal prosecutors had filed the superseding indictment. On February 20, WBUR reported that Ortiz was expected to testify at an upcoming Oversight Committee hearing about her office's handling of Swartz's case. On February 22, Associate Deputy Attorney General Steven Reich conducted a briefing for congressional staffers involved in the investigation. Congressional staffers left this briefing believing that prosecutors thought Swartz had to be convicted of a felony carrying at least a short prison sentence in order to justify having filed charges against him. In response, Stinebrickner-Kauffman issued a statement repeating and amplifying her claims of prosecutorial misconduct. Public documents, she wrote, reveal that Heymann "instructed the Secret Service to seize and hold evidence without a warrant... lied to the judge about that fact in written briefs... [and] withheld exculpatory evidence... for over a year", violating his legal and ethical obligations to turn such evidence over to the defense. On March 22, Senator Al Franken wrote in a letter to Holder that "charging a young man like Mr. Swartz with federal offenses punishable by over 35 years of federal imprisonment seems remarkably aggressive—particularly when it appears that one of the principal aggrieved parties ... did not support a criminal prosecution." Amendment to Computer Fraud and Abuse Act In 2013, Lofgren introduced a bill, ''Aaron's Law'' (, ) to exclude terms of service violations from the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and from the wire fraud statute. Lessig wrote of the bill, "this is a critically important change.... The CFAA was the hook for the government's bullying.... This law would remove that hook. In a single line: no longer would it be a felony to breach a contract." Professor Orin Kerr, a specialist in the nexus between computer law and criminal law, wrote that he had been arguing for precisely this sort of reform of the Act for years. The ACLU also called for reform of the CFAA to "remove the dangerously broad criminalization of online activity". The EFF mounted a campaign for these reforms. Lessig's inaugural Chair lecture as Furman Professor of Law and Leadership was titled ''Aaron's Laws: Law and Justice in a Digital Age''; he dedicated the lecture to Swartz. The Aaron's Law bill stalled in committee. Brian Knappenberger alleges this was due to Oracle Corporation's financial interest in maintaining the status quo. Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) is a bill that would mandate earlier public release of taxpayer-funded research. FASTR has been described as "The Other Aaron's Law". Senators Wyden and Cornyn introduced the Senate version in 2013, 2015 and 2017, while the bill was introduced to the House of Representatives by Lofgren, Mike Doyle, and Kevin Yoder. Wyden wrote of the bill, "the FASTR act provides that access to taxpayer funded research should never be hidden behind a paywall." The legislation did not pass, but it prompted more open access on the part of the US government. Shortly after the bill's introduction in 2013, the Office of Science and Technology Policy directed "each Federal agency with over $100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the Federal Government". Aaron Swartz Day Since 2013, Aaron Swartz Day has been celebrated on his birthday, November 8, with hackathons and livestreamed talks related to the many issues Swartz was passionate about, such as open access and progressive politics and economics. Past speakers include Chelsea Manning, Barrett Brown, Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Cory Doctorow, Cindy Cohn, Jason Leopold, and Brewster Kahle. ==Media==

Swartz has been featured in various works of art and has posthumously received dedications from numerous artists. He appeared in a few documentaries, including ''Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks'' in 2005. After leaving Reddit he appeared in Steal This Film II (2007). Swartz's first posthumous work was in 2013, when Kenneth Goldsmith dedicated his "Printing out the Internet" exhibition to Swartz. There are also biographical films about Swartz: ''The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz'' On January 11, 2014, marking the first anniversary of his death, a preview was released of ''The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz, a documentary about Swartz, the NSA and SOPA. The film was officially released at the January 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Democracy Now!'' covered the release of the documentary, as well as Swartz's life and legal case, in a sprawling interview with director Brian Knappenberger, Swartz's father, brother, and his attorney. The documentary is released under a Creative Commons License; it debuted in theaters and on-demand in June 2014. Mashable called the documentary "a powerful homage to Aaron Swartz". Its debut at Sundance received a standing ovation. Mashable wrote, "With the help of experts, ''The Internet's Own Boy makes a clear argument: Swartz unjustly became a victim of the rights and freedoms for which he stood." The Hollywood Reporter'' called it a "heartbreaking" story of a "tech wunderkind persecuted by the U.S. government" and a must-see "for anyone who knows enough to care about the way laws govern information transfer in the digital age". Killswitch In October 2014, Killswitch, a documentary film featuring Swartz, Lessig, Tim Wu, and Edward Snowden, premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Editing. The film focuses on Swartz's role in advocating for internet freedoms. In February 2015, Congressman Alan Grayson invited Killswitch to screen at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C. The event was held on the eve of the Federal Communications Commission's historic decision on net neutrality. At the event, Grayson, Lessig, and Free Press CEO Craig Aaron spoke about Swartz and his fight for a free and open Internet. Grayson called Killswitch "one of the most honest accounts of the battle to control the Internet—and access to information itself." Other films He appeared in the unreleased film War for the Web where he had been interviewed a year prior to his death.{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OhyBJxg9RA|title=Aaron's excerpt in War for the Web == Works ==

Specifications • Markdown: In collaboration with John Gruber, Swartz co-created Markdown – a lightweight markup language for generating HTML – and was the author of its html2text translator. The syntax for Markdown was influenced by Swartz's earlier '''' language (2002), which today is primarily remembered for its syntax for specifying headers, known as atx-style headers:'' Markdown itself remains in widespread use, with websites including Reddit, GitHub and Discord using it. • RDF/XML at W3C: In 2001, Swartz joined the RDFCore working group at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), where he authored RFC 3870, Application/RDF+XML Media Type Registration. The document described a new media type, "RDF/XML", designed to support the Semantic Web. Software • DeadDrop: In 2011–2012, Swartz, Kevin Poulsen, and James Dolan designed and implemented DeadDrop, a system that allows anonymous informants to send electronic documents without fear of disclosure. In May 2013, the first instance of the software was launched by The New Yorker under the name Strongbox. The Freedom of the Press Foundation has since taken over development of the software, which has been renamed SecureDrop. • Tor2web: In 2008, Swartz worked with Virgil Griffith to design and implement Tor2web, an HTTP proxy for Tor-hidden services. The proxy was designed to provide easy access to Tor from a basic web browser. The software is now maintained by Giovanni Pellerano within the GlobaLeaks project. Publications • • • • • • • • • • == See also ==