Aaron Swartz is dead at 26 years of age. I am seething at the news of his suicide. For our loss and his.
We lost him; and he lost the world
Some people contain universes of potential inside them – Aaron almost certainly.
Aaron’s death snuffs out an immense pool of potential he brought to the world.
Yes it was a suicide, but dammit if the U.S. Department of Justice and the ‘intellectual property greed industry’ doesn’t have the stain of his death on their hands.
The persecution of our best and brightest cannot be allowed to continue.
Our governments are literally killing those who represent the best chance of political, economic and social reform.
Our governments are driving the rare gems of genius and those with the skill to act as leaders within our generation into hiding, into exile, and to suicide.
For generations, America was the country of choice for immigrants. Everyone wanted a Green Card. And now, so many of my American friends are desperately seeking work visas in Europe. They want out. The crème de la crème are fleeing the failing U.S.
The U.S. is burning – and the D.O.J is fiddling, chasing kids who share academic articles – as infrastructure and society fails and flounders.
And as pompous arseholes entertain fanciful ideas of minting a one trillion dollar coin in the face of the ever-encroaching fiscal cliff, they remain hell-bent on destroying their best hope at change.
The most talented, creative, skilled individuals are hounded, made destitute, trialled and jailed for their attempts to make the world just a little bit better – for the rest of us. Around the world there is a growing pool of people who face prosecution and decades in jail for doing nothing more than sharing information.
Young people putting their rare skills to use, to try to make the world just a little bit better for the rest of us – are driven into the ground, persecuted on the whims of over-funded law-enforcement agencies.
And meanwhile the U.S. is so blinded by fear of having it’s rotten core exposed by transparency and information initiatives it is literally cutting off it’s own future human talent pool, slashing the crop further and further each day.
The U.S. is banishing a goldmine of potential future employees from public policy and government research positions with their insanely over-extended national security clearance program – which so many individuals fail to pass.
Hell-bent on destroying dissent – they are destroying those who choose to stand up and choose to be counted. And what the regime is left with are the yes-men – banal bureaucrats who will faithfully follow orders, no matter how destructive the consequences.
Breathe out for a moment, and take a stroll down humanity’s collective memory:
Somewhere so many, many generations ago, someone shared the art of making fire. With the spark of a flint, one of our species first shared technology, taught throughout the tribes. Humanity survived and evolved as a result.
Imagine if the “copymafia” had existed when our ancestors first created fire. They most likely would have copyrighted – and locked up this vital tool – and thrown in jail those who liberated the technology and shared it with others.
It is no overstatement to say the survival of our species depends on our ability to share information freely. The corporations and their cronies in government who attempt to crush the ability to share information are a threat to the survival of humanity.
And they must be fought.
The U.S. Department of Justice and the ‘I.P. greed lobby’ has a call to answer, and goddammit, there will be retribution.
Aaron’s death must not be in vain.
Link to everything. Post all the articles. Laugh in the face of those who try to lock up information.
Share everything.
Share, copy, remix.
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?
The U.S. is banishing a goldmine of potential future employees from public policy and government research positions with their insanely over-extended national security clearance program – which so many individuals fail to pass.
Why do they fail to pass? Given that there are supposedly a million people with different levels of clearance. Soldiers aren’t supposed to be a threat. People don’t get them because they are deemed to be a threat, for what ever reason. They don’t want people who are against corporate hegemony and domination.
Very good tribute.
I have persued mathematics in time of economic inactivity, and sometimes journals and books are protected by paywall, especially in the gap between beginners texts and as yet to be worked out research. Sometimes it’s been useful to access University Libraries for books, but in a more commercialised world universities often have to sign contracts to stop citizens from the local community accessing these books except at exorbitant cost. In Sheffield UK these costs have gone up about 1400% in ten years.
Many people are unaware of the complexities involved in different types of data storage. Some archives could be wiped out overnight as the unexpected consequence of mere patent litigation. If someone had the time and money to set up parallel mirror sites they should have been given a job.
Salute to a hero: Aaron Schwartz
on one side, a prosecutor wanting to win for the sake of career … on the other side, a sensitive and luminous soul working to manifest the future for all
a travesty
Remember SOPA?
Remember what happened to the net?
Let’s turn it Black on Tuesday!
Dear ASHER WOLF
I get burn out over this fight too, I do too take breaks when i see no end. I do hope you know that there are a lot of us who wait on your tweets to get new info on where to focus our attention. If you find your way to america in minnesota you have a place to stay. if you find your way back to twitter you have a place saved in my tweetdeck, waiting for your return. Stay safe and my prayers are with you always. your a true HERO in my eyes and I em hopeful that you’ll return to twitter when you feel the time is right “FOR YOU” .
Never forget that Ric Veda loves you and so do I
John Tiessen
“thrown in jail those who liberated the technology and shared it with others.”
Well, that actually happened (if you give any credence to Greek myths) – the Titan Prometheus brought fire to humanity, and was punished for eternity by Zeus for his trouble.
Highly apposite commentary. It often seems that the only thing important any more is making money – by the few people who have most of it already. Vale Aaron Swartz.
OMG! Reading this article, it’s as if you were in the room speaking. Your words came alive. I heard your voice echoing in the room. What governments and corporations do with information is so destructive to mankind’s survival. You hit the nail on the head. And it gets even worse when they sanction nations and ban their scientists from exchanging information with other scientists as the EU, Canada and the US have done to the Iranian people. The greed must stop. It is strangulating us all.
Thank you for the well written comment. Aaron was driven to suicide and I’m not convinced he wasn’t deliberately nudged in that direction.
When Western governments perceive a threat to their opaque ambiguous cesspool of lies and coverups they take action. When the targeted individual holds evidence as a first party witness to a government crime then their tactics become obnoxious and deadly.
There was no legal need for the prosecutor to throw their weight on top of Aaron, MIT never laid any charges, they have never made it difficult to download like Aaron did because there is nothing wrong with doing it. Or so I am told.
Suicide is a highly charged topic, suicided is difficult to prove but the pressure from the American government on Aaron is testimony in itself. There lies the evidence that Aaron was ‘murdered by proxy’, which is exactly the result that this bully wanted. And there are others who are targets, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, other Anon’s in and out of prison. I understand the situation to be wider and more complicated than the enormous loss, the tragic waste and the need to vent my contempt and anger. Any dissenter could end up like Aaron, including those in military confinement.
I could go on, but I need a cigarette.