The suicide of famed programmer and free access advocate Aaron Swartz shocked the world. However, the underlying story of the how the Obama Administration prosecuted — and, in the eyes of many, persecuted — Swartz for seeking to publish academic papers which were later released by MIT without charge. Nevertheless, United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz and the Obama Administration relentlessly pursued Swartz and sought an absurd 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines before he took his own life. His family blames the Justice Department and Ortiz for his suicide. Swartz opposed the Administration’s fight against public access and particularly President Obama’s “Kill List.” The Swartz prosecution was widely criticized for months but the Obama Administration and Justice Department remained committed to putting him in jail.
Swartz was one of this country’s most extraordinary individuals. At age 14, he helped create RSS, the tool allowing people to subscribe to online information. He later was a founder of a company that merged with Reddit where we get many of our daily stories.
Swartz, 26, hanged himself and appears to have suffered from depression. Thus, the prosecution cannot be entirely attributed with his death. However, the Obama Administration hammered Swartz for months over his downloading of academic articles. Swartz has long been an advocate for public access to information. Like many of us, Swartz was critical of increasingly stringent laws balkanizing information in our society from works to words to even common images. He however took that crusade to extraordinary lengths.
In 2008, he took on PACER, or Public Access to Court Electronic Records, for its charging of 10 cents a page for documents. I agreed with Swartz about this charge as being a barrier to public access to our courts and important cases. He argued correctly that there should be free access. He co-founded Demand Progress to seek online access and fought for social reforms. The federal government, at the behest of industry groups, shutdown his free library program.
In 2011, Swartz took on JSTOR, the academic repository of papers and research. It is a subscription based service. He broke into the computer system at MIT through a utility closet using a laptop and a false identity. He downloaded 4.8 million documents. Notably, however, MIT chose not to pursue charges — to its credit. For many years, academics argued that such material should be free to the public as a matter of principle. Two days before Swartz’s death, MIT releases all documents publicly free of charge.
However, despite MIT’s position that it did not want to bring charges, Carmen M. Ortiz saw her chance. 
Ortiz is the United States Attorney for Massachusetts and a graduate of our law school who spoke recently at our commencement. Industry groups and lobbyists have long gotten what they wanted from Obama on criminalizing trademark and copyright violations. States have shown the same capture by industry groups. Swartz was a prime target as an advocate of public access and the Obama Administration threw everything that they had at him.
There is no question that Swartz crossed the line and broke into the system. However, given MIT’s position against charging Swartz, it would seem a case for prosecutorial discretion or a deal with Swartz. After all, students commit such acts regularly (though certainly not to the size of this download) without charges. Ortiz, however, sought decades in jail and ruinous fines to the great pleasure of the copyright hawks that run throughout the Administration. To the Administration, Swartz was just another felon who needed to be jailed for decades for his crime.
It is doubtful that the Administration will take any action to reduce the stranglehold on creativity and discussion by these laws. The Administration has brought in copyright hawks into the Administration and appointed them to the courts in a windfall for industry.
MIT has started an investigation into any role the school may have played in the prosecution by the Obama Administration. What is notable is that Swartz’s treatment at the hands of the Justice Department has caused outrage. However, thousands of average citizens have been ravaged by the Administration or industry law firms like the U.S. Copyright Group under these laws without attention or concern.
The abuse of Swartz speaks of industry capture of our government that has now claimed the life of one of the brightest of our country. He is the ultimate personification of how our copyright and trademark laws have been flipped on their head. Rather than protect creativity, they now stifle such creativity. We now have prosecutors and lawyers pursuing people like Swartz to prevent public access to information. His tragic image hanging in his apartment speaks to the dismal state of information control in this country. His was truly a beautiful mind and his death should galvanize his cause to empower citizens in their demand to breakdown the rising barriers to information in this country.
Source: NY Times
I think it’s important to remember that Obama is a “B er”, not a DO er, i.e.,
he’s much more driven by the desire to BE president than to try to press an agenda, and THAT is an opening for liberals to press HIM. Otherwise, he’s content to protect and extend the interests of the wealthy — such as his own family. He likes the perks of being president and isn’t about to “fight” for much of anything that his rich supporters oppose.
You say “There is no question that Swartz crossed the line and broke into the system. ” On what alleged acts are you basing this statement? Swartz had not been convicted of anything related to the MIT incident, had he?
Is anyone questioning the ‘suicide’ part of his death?
http://www.dailycensored.com/aaron-swartzs-suspicious-death/?utm_source=projectcensored&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=projectcensored
Bron, I do not feel entitled to a single thing in this universe or in any other. I am instead profoundly grateful for each draw of breath, and any work I perform is of my own choice. that work is best when it is based on service to those around me. Nor am I so arrogant to believe that if I hadn’t come with it, someone else would not have. Rather, COULD not have.
If you feel entitled, I suggest that is where the rough patch lies. IP, patents, copyrights… no one is entitled to these and they will not last the century. They may not last even 30 more years. Meshnets are going to change it all, and IP, etc., will simply devolve back into the otherwise homogenous info-soup from which they arose. They were a really bad ideas.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/14/an_incredible_soul_lawrence_lessig_remembers
What a shame to loose a person like this. What have we lost? We will never know what a great mind like this might have come up with. How many others will we destroy, thus destroying whatever wonderful thing they may have come up with.
What a shame.
RIP Aaron, you are and will be missed.
Swartz was ahead of his time
A victim cut-down in his prime
His criminal deed
To help those in need?
I no longer understand “crime”
The Limerick King
R.I.P. Aaron Swartz…
Thank you so much for speaking out on this terrible tragedy for our nation, Jonathan. It is truly saddening that so few in the legal community seem to care about the harm that is being caused by the rapid erosion of our constitutional rights and rule of law in this country.
Mike S.,
You nailed the salient point: the criminalization of copyright. Part of the burden of IP and copyright is self-enforcement. It’s a price the IP holder pays for the protections afforded by civil remedy.
Aaron Swartz was no doubt a great human being and his death is very sad. His prosecution was an absurdity. The criminalization of copyright enforcement is a terrible thing. This is and should have remained a civil issue. This is part of the over-criminalization trend overwhelming this country with the support of both political parties.
http://demandprogress.org/
“We are working with Aaron’s friends, family, and colleagues to determine how best to pay tribute to him — it will surely entail engaging in political activism in service of making this world a more just one. We will be in touch with our members and the general public in the near future to offer suggestions about ways to move forward. Tragically, we’ll have to continue to stifle the visceral impulse to run our half-formed ideas by Aaron, to help us make them better ones.”
(Blouise, I had intended to direct my earlier comment directly to you, but in haste… How many errors in this world are d/t haste? Too many… )
ap + shano,
Thanks … done
James in LA 1, January 14, 2013 at 2:03 pm
”Bron, “intellectual property” is a made-up term in the fine spirit of P.T. Barnum, an excuse to keep throwing your money away because someone is “smarter.” The internet makes a mockery of such claims. Meshnets will see it stays that way. Not every human endeavor can be monetized, and making sacred “intellectual property” means we must first decide who the intellectuals are, and why do we care what they say?
Intellectual property, copyrights and patents have no future. If people wish to pay for what you create so be it, No one should be compelled to purchase “intellectual property” from first-fit software posing as homo sapiens.”
arent people entitled to their work? it takes work/effort to create something. if their is no right to intellectual property then there is no right to a paycheck for the workers. All work is the result of mind and body. The mind cannot function without the brain.
I wonder if there is any link between this kind of treatment of those who leak academic papers and how strongly President Obama had his academic papers sealed from public review.
IMO, O’s fear goes to his concern that the truth might come out about the fake killing of Osama – who probably died in December 2001, and if that becomes widely known, then the dominoes start falling fast — conspiracy to kill JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, RFK, JFK jr., Senator Wellstone, Anthrax, 9/11,
Apollo Moon Hoax ( Astronot Aldrin even claimed a UFO followed them “all the way to the Moon”… even though they never went out of low Earth orbit,
the absurd official 9/11 conspiracy theory, Sandy Hook etc.
Public can’t handle it. Even fairly intelligent JT followers swallow all the lies, so if THEY can’t handle the truth and are uninterested in learning it, the
public would panic and who knows what might happen that would be used to justify the military bringing out the “long knives”.
Many thanks ap. Now everyone go sign. She should be publicly humiliated at the very least.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck
A very sad case that did not have to happen. He is already missed.
The petition appears to be intact, shano:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck
( I found it via Dan Kennedy’s article about Aaron:
Aaron Swartz, Carmen Ortiz and the American System of Justice
-Dan Kennedy, Assistant Professor, School of Journalism, Northeastern University
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kennedy/aaron-swartz-carmen-ortiz_b_2469050.html )
Aaron didn’t break into anything. He has access to the files via his Harvard connection. Harvard and MIT share access to JSTOR. Aaron’s “crime” was to over use that access.
AP, 😉