Aaron H. Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, writer, archivist, political organizer, and Internet activist. Swartz was a member of the RSS-DEV Working Group co-authored the "RSS 1.0" specification of RSS, and built the Web site framework web.py and the architecture for the Open Library. He also built Infogami, a company that merged with Reddit in its early days, through which he became an equal owner of the merged company.

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 (known for its campaign against SOPA) 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. JSTOR offended Swartz mainly for two reasons: it charged large fees for access to these articles but did not compensate the authors and it ensured that huge numbers of people are denied access to the scholarship produced by America's colleges and universities. On January 11, 2013, Swartz was found dead in his Crown Heights, Brooklyn, apartment, where he had hanged himself.

Swartz was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Susan and Robert Swartz. Swartz's family lived in Highland Park, Illinois. His father founded a software company, and from a young age Swartz was interested in computing, ardently 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. Writing in Yahoo! News,Virginia Heffernan said about Swartz, "he agitated without cease—or compensation—for the free-culture movement."

Infogami and Reddit

He later attended Stanford University, but left after just 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 it did in November 2005. 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.

Swartz was significantly involved with a campaign to prevent the passing of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill that sought to monitor the Internet for copyright violations. Following the defeat of the bill, Swartz was the keynote speaker at the F2C:Freedom to Connect 2012 event in Washington DC, US on May 21, 2012—Swartz's speech was entitled "How we stopped SOPA"[21] and he informed the audience:

It was really stopped by the people; the people themselves—they killed the bill dead. So dead, that when members of Congress propose something now that even touches the Internet, they have to give a long speech beforehand about how it is definitely not like SOPA. So dead, that when you ask Congressional staffers about it, they groan and shake their heads, like it's all a bad dream they're trying really hard to forget. So dead, that it's kind of hard to believe this story; hard to remember how close it all came to actually passing. Hard to remember how this could have gone any other way.

But it wasn't a dream or a nightmare—it was all very real. And it will happen again; sure, it will have another name, and maybe a different excuse, and probably do its damage in a different way, but make no mistake, the enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared. The fire in those politician's eyes has not been put out. There are a lot of people, a lot of powerful people, who wanna clamp down on the Internet. And to be honest, there aren't a whole lot who have a vested interest in protecting it from all of that ... We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom ... the senators were right—the Internet really is out of control!

Swartz also presented on this topic at an event organized by ThoughtWorks.

Wikipedia

Swartz volunteered as an editor at Wikipedia, and in 2006 ran for the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Directors, but lost. Also in 2006 Swartz wrote an analysis of how Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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).

[edit]Legal problems

PACER

Swartz with designer Nicholas Felton in 2009

In 2009, he downloaded and publicly released approximately 20% of the PACER database of United States federal court documents managed by theAdministrative Office of the United States Courts.[25][26] 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.

Swartz in 2012 protesting against SOPA

Despite JSTOR having dropped all civil charges, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stephen P. Heymann and Scott L. Garland pursued the criminal case against Swartz under U.S. attorney Carmen M. Ortiz, who justified the charges by stating "stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars."

 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 Web site'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 Web sites' 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

Swartz was found dead in his Crown Heights, 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 $1 million in fines and more than 35 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 Web site 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." In reflecting on the conditions that brought about his suicide, Swartz's family argues that his suicide was "not simply a personal tragedy", but "the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach", with "decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT [contributing] to his death." 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.'"

Alex Stamos, CEO of Artemis Internet, is a computer forensics investigator employed by the Swartz legal defense as an expert witness. On January 12, 2013, he posted a summary of the expert testimony he was prepared to present in the JSTOR case, concluding, "I know a criminal hack when I see it, and Aaron’s downloading of journal articles from an unlocked closet is not an offense worth 35 years in jail."

Swartz's funeral services will be held on January 15, 2013, at Central Avenue Synagogue in Highland Park, Illinois.

JSTOR announced the same week as Swartz's death it would make "more than 4.5 million articles" available to the public for free.