Just saw Aaron Swartz documentary at sundance festival

So a few weeks back I just heard of this guy, I read an article on MSM about his father claiming the government directly assassinated his son. Being somewhat in the conspiracy realm this got my attention and I researched this guy. He was on the forefront of the anti SOPA/PIPA movement and was facing 35 years for making privatized knowledge held by MIT's servers available to the public, or something drastic like that. He was very outspoken and passionate in political activism.

Anyway, while at work my roommate out of nowhere comes and tells me she has six tickets to some movie at the festival and I was tired and said # it I don't want to go, but as soon as I found out it was about him I was stoked and we drove to park city.. It was about an hour and a half long and blew me away how passionate and genius this guy was. He fought to the bitter end and didn't give in to a plea deal and continued his activism through his case. He never gave up and the government made an example of him.

After the showing his family came out and answered questions from the audience, it seems there are a lot of 1% types at sundance and some of the questions were somewhat trivial ticked me off. His father looked very uninterested in the whole charade and his brothers did most of the talking. I didn't find it in me to approach his brother after the Q and A, they were talking to a lot of people, but I wish I could have connected with them on a real level just to tell him how awesome and inspiring his bro was to me and thanks for coming.. Kinda beat myself up about that after leaving.

Anyway- Just wanted to check in with you guys at ATS to let you know this doc was GREAT and see it when you get a chance. We need more people like this kid. Here's a trailer-



"Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations."

"There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture. We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.
With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?"

Aaron Swartz 1986-2013

Rest in Peace Aaron

A profound individual for certain. His message was simple but startling to those already asking questions, and often even managed to get some of the cool-aid drinkers to at least wonder.

We need more people like him. I need to be more like him. We all need to be more like him.

reply to post by SecTownKid


What Aaron was attempting is so bloody important. Currently, countless scholarly papers are held behind paywalls and even more never even get put in any accessible form outside of university library access. Some of the stuff that I've looked at behind the paywall is pretty fascinating and disturbing. In a lot of ways, I can see why they responded to Aaron so harshly but really, Aaron was doing something both great and important in my book. It's all about information control really whether it's somebody making money off of someone else reading an article or just not wanting some things freely accessible.

Worst thing I ever read behind the paywall was an experiment that involved basically testing the placental barrier against radiation in human women and their fetuses. The women had abortions after the tests but it was still really disturbing to read.