Misplaced Pages

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Aaron Swartz
Swartz in 2008
Born	(1986-11-08)November 8, 1986 Chicago, Illinois
Died	January 11, 2013(2013-01-11) (aged 26) Brooklyn, New York
Cause of death	Suicide by hanging
Occupation(s)	Software developer, writer, Internet activist
Website	aaronsw.com

Aaron H. Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, writer, archivist, political organizer, and Internet activist. Swartz co-authored the "RSS 1.0" specification of RSS, and built the website framework web.py and the architecture for the Open Library. Although frequently attributed as a co-founder of Reddit, the claim is disputed by Reddit's original founders.

Swartz also focused on sociology, civic awareness and activism. In 2010 he was a member of the Harvard University Center for Ethics. He cofounded the online group Demand Progress (which recently voiced its support for Richard O'Dwyer) and later worked with US and international activist groups Rootstrikers and Avaaz.

On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested in connection with systematic downloading of academic journal articles from JSTOR, which became the subject of a federal investigation.

On January 11, 2013, Swartz was found dead in his Brooklyn, New York apartment; it is reported that he had hanged himself.

Life and works

Swartz's family lived in Highland Park, Illinois. His father founded a software company, and from a young age Swartz was interested in computing, frequently studying computers, the Internet and Internet culture. When he was 13, Swartz was a winner of the ArsDigita Prize, a competition for young people who created "useful, educational, and collaborative" non-commercial Web sites. The prize included a trip to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and meetings with Internet notables. At the age of 14 Swartz was collaborating with experts in networking standards as a member of the working group that authored the RSS 1.0 Specification.

Infogami and Reddit

He later attended Stanford University, but left after one year Instead he founded the software company Infogami, a startup that was funded by Y Combinator's first Summer Founders Program.

Through the Y Combinator program, Swartz started the wiki platform Infogami (later used to support the web.py and Open Library sites), but felt he needed co-founders to proceed. Y-Combinator organizers suggested that Infogami merge with Reddit, which was finalized in January 2006. While Reddit initially found it difficult to make money from the project, the site later gained in popularity, with millions of users visiting it each month. In late 2006, after months of negotiations, Reddit was sold to CondéNet, owners of Wired magazine. Swartz moved with his company to San Francisco to work on Wired, but grew unhappy with the set-up and in January, 2007, he was asked to resign from his position. Swartz described himself as being ill and suffering from a constant depressed mood throughout 2007. In September, 2007, Swartz joined with Simon Carstensen and launched Jottit. In 2010–2011 he was a fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.

Swartz was also the creator of the web.py Web application framework, and co-founded Demand Progress, a progressive advocacy group that organizes people via email and other media for "contacting Congress and other leaders, funding pressure tactics, and spreading the word" about targeted issues.

Misplaced Pages

Swartz volunteered as an editor at Misplaced Pages, and in 2006 ran for the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Directors, but lost. Also in 2006 Swartz wrote an analysis of how Misplaced Pages articles are written concluding that the bulk of the actual content is coming from a large group of relatively inactive editors while a core group of volunteers helps to format and arrange contributions. The analysis was prompted by Jimmy Wales's view that a small community of volunteers writes the encyclopedia while many others contribute minor typo fixes, spelling error corrections, etc. Swartz analyzed Misplaced Pages edits and sought to apply a metric which counted the total number of characters added during an edit to measure the amount of content that was added (the details of Swartz's implementation are described briefly in a footnote linked to from the blog post).

Controversies

PACER

In 2009, he downloaded and publicly released approximately 20% of the PACER database of United States federal court documents managed by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. He had accessed the system as part of a free trial of PACER at 17 libraries around the country, which was suspended "pending an evaluation" as a result of Swartz's actions. Those actions brought him under investigation by the FBI, but the case was closed two months later with no charges being filed.

JSTOR

On July 19, 2011, Swartz was charged by U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer, in relation to downloading roughly 4 million academic journal articles from JSTOR. According to the indictment against him, Swartz surreptitiously attached a laptop to MIT's computer network, which allowed him to "rapidly download an extraordinary volume of articles from JSTOR." Prosecutors in the case claim Swartz acted with the intention of making the papers available on P2P file-sharing sites.

Swartz surrendered to authorities, pleading not guilty on all accounts, and was released on US$100,000 unsecured bail. Prosecution of the case continued, with charges of wire fraud and computer fraud, carrying a potential prison term of up to 35 years and a fine of up to $1 million. After Swartz's arrest, JSTOR put out a statement saying it would not pursue civil litigation against him.

On September 7, 2011, JSTOR announced it had released the public-domain content of its archives for public viewing and downloading. According to JSTOR, it had been working on making those archives public for some time, but the controversy had some effect on its planning "largely out of concern that people might draw incorrect conclusions about our motivations." In the end, JSTOR claimed that such concerns did not stop it from continuing with the initiative.

The case tested the reach of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which was passed in 1984 to enhance the government’s ability to prosecute hackers who accessed computers to steal information or to disrupt or destroy computer functionality.

The government, however, has interpreted the anti-hacking provisions to include activities such as violating a website’s terms of service or a company's computer usage policy, a position a federal appeals court in April said means "millions of unsuspecting individuals would find that they are engaging in criminal conduct." The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, in limiting reach of the CFAA, said that violations of employee contract agreements and websites’ terms of service were better left to civil lawsuits.

The rulings by the 9th Circuit cover the West, and not Massachusetts, meaning they are not binding in Swartz's prosecution. The Obama administration declined to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

Death

He was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment on January 11, 2013. A spokeswoman for New York's Medical Examiner reported that he had hanged himself.

At the time of his death, Swartz, if convicted, faced a maximum of $4 million in fines and more than 50 years in prison after the government increased the number of felony counts against him from 4 to 13.

The family and partner of Swartz created a memorial website on which they issued a statement, saying "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." Swartz was eulogized by his friend and sometime attorney, Lawrence Lessig, calling his prosecution an abuse of proportionality and noting, ‘the question this government needs to answer is why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a “felon.”’

Publications

• Swartz, Aaron (2002). "MusicBrainz: A Semantic Web Service". Intelligent Systems. 17 (1). IEEE: 76–77. doi:10.1109/5254.988466. ISSN 1541-1672. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Swartz, Aaron; Hendler, James (2001), "The Semantic Web: A Network of Content for the Digital City", Proceedings of the Second Annual Digital Cities Workshop, Kyoto, JP: Blogspace {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help).
• Gruber, John; Swartz, Aaron (2004), Markdown definition, Daring fireball {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help).

References

1. Ohanian, Alexis, Twitter.
2. "…there was a third cofounder of Reddit, who was…", Today I learned…, Reddit
3. Ohanian, Alexis, +, Google.
4. Kirschbaum, Connor (August 3, 2011). "Swartz indicted for JSTOR theft". The Tech. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
5. "Police Log". The Tech. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. February 18, 2011. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
6. "World", News, UK: The BBC {{citation}}: |contribution= ignored (help).
7. "Statement from the family of Aaron Swartz", Business insider, 2013 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help).
8. ^ Aaron, Swartz. "How to get a job like mine". Jottit. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
9. Singel, Ryan (September 13, 2005). "Stars Rise at Startup Summer Camp". Wired.com. Condé Nast. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
10. ^ "Introduction", Infogami, archived from the original on 2007‐12‐24 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |archivedate= (help)
11. Passion for your users will come back: Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of Reddit, Startup stories, 2006‐11‐29, archived from the original on 2007‐8‐23 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= and |archivedate= (help).
12. Lenssen, Philipp (2007). "A Chat with Aaron Swartz". Google Blogoscoped. Google Inc. Archived from the original on April 27, 2010. Retrieved May 11, 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
13. Aaron, Swartz. "Sick" (weblog). Retrieved January 12, 2013.
14. ^ Matthews, Laura (July 19, 2011). "Who is Aaron Swartz, the JSTOR MIT Hacker?". International Business Times. International Business Times. Retrieved January 13, 2013.
15. Grehan, Rick (August 10, 2011). "Pillars of Python: Web.py Web framework". InfoWorld. IDG. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
16. ^ Aaron Swartz (September 4, 2006). "Who Writes Misplaced Pages? (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)". Retrieved January 12, 2013.
17. Blodget, Henry (January 3, 2009). "Who The Hell Writes Misplaced Pages, Anyway?". Business Insider. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
18. Schwartz, John (February 12, 2009). "An Effort to Upgrade a Court Archive System to Free and Easy". The New York Times. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
19. ^ Singel, Ryan (October 5, 2009). "FBI Investigated Coder for Liberating Paywalled Court Records". Wired. Condé Nast. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
20. Bilton, Nick (July 19, 2011). "Internet Activist Charged in Data Theft". Boston: Bits Blog, The New York Times Company. Retrieved July 19, 2011.
21. Lundin, Leigh (July 31, 2011). "The Thief Who Stole Knowledge". Computer Crimes. Criminal Brief.
22. Lindsay, Jay (July 19, 2011). "Feds: Harvard fellow hacked millions of papers". Associated Press. Retrieved July 20, 2011.
23. ^ Schwartz, John (July 19, 2011). "Open-Access Advocate Arrested for Huge Download". The New York Times. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
24. District of Massachusetts. "United States v. Aaron Swartz". The Internet Archive/RECAP. 1:11-cr-10260. {{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); |archive-url= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |archivedate= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
25. Sims, Nancy (October 2011). "Library licensing and criminal law: The Aaron Swartz case". College & Research Libraries News. 72 (9). Association of College and Research Libraries: 534–537. ISSN 0099-0086. Retrieved January 13, 2013.
26. "US Government Ups Felony Count In JSTOR/Aaron Swartz Case From Four To Thirteen". Tech dirt. 2012‐9‐17. Retrieved January 12, 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
27. "JSTOR Statement: Misuse Incident and Criminal Case". JSTOR. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
28. Brown, Laura (September 7, 2011). "JSTOR–Free Access to Early Journal Content and Serving "Unaffiliated" Users". JSTOR. ITHAKA. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
29. Kravets, David (09.18.2012). "Feds Charge Activist with 13 Felonies for Rogue Downloading of Academic Articles". Wired. Retrieved January 12, 2013. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
30. Kravets, David (August 10, 2012). "DOJ Won't Ask Supreme Court to Review Hacking Case". Wired. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
31. "Co-founder of Reddit Aaron Swartz found dead". News. CBS. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
32. Lessig, Lawrence (January 12, 2013). "Prosecutor as bully". Retrieved January 12, 2013.
33. "Internet activist Aaron Swartz commits suicide". CNET News. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
34. Kravets, David (01.12.2013). "Internet activist Aaron Swartz commits suicide". Wired. Retrieved January 13, 2013. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
35. "Remember Aaron Swartz". Tumblr. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
36. Lessig, Lawrence (January 12, 2013). "Prosecutor as Bully". Retrieved January 12, 2013.

External links

• Official website
• "Official Statement from the family and partner of Aaron Swartz", Remember Aaron Swartz, Tumblr.
• Aaron Swartz on Twitter
• Aaron Swartz at IMDb

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• Recent deaths
• 1986 births
• 2013 deaths
• Activists who committed suicide
• American computer programmers
• American writers
• Businesspeople in information technology
• Internet activists
• People from Chicago, Illinois
• Programmers who committed suicide
• Suicides by hanging in New York
• Writers who committed suicide