Aaron's Army fights the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In light of the death of internet activist Aaron Swartz, there is a need to reconsider intellectual property enforcement standards in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The 16th round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations are taking place in Singapore until March 13. There have been concerns that the Intellectual Property Chapter would “ratchet up IP enforcement at the expense of digital rights”. Maira Sutton of the Electronic Frontier Foundation fears that “the Trans-Pacific Partnership could turn Internet Service Providers into copyright cops, prompt ever-higher criminal and civil penalties for sharing content, and expand protections for Digital Rights Management”.
The case of Aaron Swartz highlights the need for a reconsideration of punitive and excessive intellectual property enforcement provisions in trade agreements. An Elegy for Aaron Swartz There has been also discussion of Aaron Swartz in the context of social disobedience. Aaron’s Army Liberates Bob the Builder. Editor's Note to Quinn Norton's Account of the Aaron Swartz Investigation - Alexis C. Madrigal. We have just published Quinn Norton's account of her life inside the Federal investigation of Aaron Swartz for the alleged crime of downloading too many JSTOR articles too quickly. The story fills in a key time in the investigation, from Swartz's arrest on January 6 until about June of that year. Norton's narrative is deeply personal -- she was romantically involved with Swartz back then -- and it felt correct to let her tell the story her way. This post is intended to provide context for people who have not been following the Swartz case closely.
Here is the basic set of facts. This drew the attention of various IT authorities at JSTOR and MIT, and they played a cat-and-mouse game with Swartz over the next few months. Larry Lessig, a friend of Swartz, has suggested that there were several possibilities for the documents. And it's on this topic that Norton's account should prove the most enlightening. Norton's direct involvement in the case ended long before Swartz's life did. Swartz’s Girlfriend Shares Intimate Details Of His Last Days, Explains ‘Why Aaron Died’ In a heartfelt tumblr, the girlfriend of fallen Internet activist, Aaron Swartz, explained why she thinks he committed suicide. After revealing intimate details of his seemingly chipper, curious lifestyle, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman argues that “I believe Aaron’s death was caused by exhaustion, by fear, and by uncertainty.
I believe that Aaron’s death was caused by a persecution and a prosecution that had already wound on for 2 years.” Stinebrickner-Kauffman, who found Swartz hanging by his own belt on January 11, devotes the lion’s share of her post to dispelling the myth of Swartz’s depression. “Over the last 20 months of his life, Aaron spent more time with me than with anyone else in the world. For much of the last 8 months of his life, we lived together, commuted together, and worked in the same office,” she writes. “The Aaron I knew was sociable and excited to spend time with his favorite people, right up to the very end. .
First NZ file-share award: too little, or too much? #13 Aaron Swartz et le copyright madness | Comme chaque semaine, nous mettons en ligne sur ce blog tout le déroulé de l’émission avec les liens, contenus multimédias, textes et informations dont nous avons parlé. Michel Boyon, qui va bientôt quitter la présidence du CSA, le Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel, vient de juger qu’ « une régulation des contenus audiovisuels privés sur internet » était inévitable. Il s’agirait en effet de légiférer quant aux contenus vidéo PRIVÉ postés par les vrais gens, sur Youtube par exemple. Quelqu’un va donc décider de ce qui est publiable ou non sur Internet… Dans le même temps, en Syrie, un habitant de Damas a posté une vidéo PRIVÉE dans laquelle il a filmé deux chars en train de lui tirer dessus .
La question est posée, au CSA et à son futur Président, Olivier Schrameck. Débusquée sur le site Arte.tv , des vidéos d’éducation sexuelle à destination des petits et des grands. Les vidéos sont disponibles en Français et en Allemand. Ils ne sont pas sur le web. Florilège. Commenting on Aaron Swartz's Death. There has been an enormous amount written about the suicide of Aaron Swartz. This is primarily a collection of links, starting with those that use his death to talk about the broader issues at play: Orin Kerr, Larry Lessig, Jennifer Granick, Glenn Greenwald, Henry Farrell, danah boyd, Cory Doctorow, James Fallows, Brewster Kahle, Carl Malamud, and Mark Bernstein. Here are obituaries from the New York Times and Economist. Here are articles and essays from CNN.com, The Huffington Post, Larry Lessig, TechDirt, CNet, and Forbes, mostly about the prosecutor's statement after the death and the problems with plea bargaining in general.
Representative Zoe Lofgren is introducing a bill to prevent this from happening again. I don't have anything to add, but enough people have sent me their thoughts via e-mail that I thought it would be good to have a thread on this blog for conversation. EDITED TO ADD (1/23): Groklaw's legal analysis. EDITED TO ADD (1/29): Another. Wikileaks Says Aaron Swartz Was a Possible Source. In a series of tweets, Wikileaks claimed Saturday that late Internet activist and hacker Aaron Swartz was an ally and possible source for the organization.
It also disclosed that Swartz, who committed suicide last week, was "in communication" with founder Julian Assange during 2010 and 2011. Wikileaks, which exposes classified information provided by anonymous sources, said it decided to reveal these details in light of the U.S. Secret Service's involvement in Swartz's case. At the time of his death, Swartz was awaiting trial for allegedly harvesting millions of scholarly articles over the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's network. He was charged with computer fraud and other crimes in July 2011, and faced up to 35 years in prison. The Secret Service took over Swartz's case two days prior to his arrest, according The Verge. Although Wikileaks doesn't elaborate on its decision, the organization has a policy of maintaining anonymity for its sources. [via ] Aaron Swartz NYC Memorial Service. A public memorial service to remember Aaron Swartz, open to all.
Speakers include Edward Tufte, Stinebrickner-Kauffman, David Segal, Quinn Norton, Ben Wikler, Glenn Otis Brown, Roy Singham, Doc Searls, David Isenberg and other friends. Please spread the word! Tickets/registration not necessary--just helpful to gauge crowd size. About the venue The Great Hall of The Cooper Union has stood for more than a century as a bastion of free speech and a witness to the flow of American History and ideas. When the hall opened in 1858, more than a year in advance of the completion of the institution, it quickly became a mecca for all interested in serious discussion and debate of the vital issues of the day.
The Great Hall was the platform for some of the earliest workers' rights campaigns and for the birth of the NAACP, the women's suffrage movement and the American Red Cross. "Aaron Was Killed By The Govt": Aaron Swartz Father Blasts US Government For Aaron's 'Suicide' | Science and Technology. (Before It's News) The death of another activist is being laid at the hands of the United States govt. Is Aaron Swart, the co-founder of Reddit, no longer with us due to the US government gone mad? His own father thinks so. From RT. The father of information activist Aaron Swartz blames US prosecutors for his son’s death, RT’s Andrew Blake reports from an emotional Tuesday morning funeral outside of Chicago. Aaron Swartz, 26, was found dead on Friday of a reported suicide. “Aaron did not commit suicide but was killed by the government,” Robert Swartz said during Tuesday’s service at the Central Avenue Synagogue in Highland Park, Illinois. After Aaron Swartz: The Tech World Must Talk About Depression.
As with so many others, Aaron Swartz had an indelible impact on my life. I didn't know Aaron well; we exchanged a dozen emails in early 2008. Still, if you followed the geekier aspects of Mac and web standards culture in the early 2000s, it was hard not to run across Aaron's work. You probably know the basic outline by now. He co-wrote the spec for RSS at 14. The guy was a genius, in the purest sense of the word. When I first emailed Aaron, we were at different phases in our life. Though younger than me, Aaron was far more accomplished. I first emailed Aaron about Jottit, one of those post-Reddit side projects.
We were also both depressed. Depression came up in our second email exchange. Aaron too seemed to be coming out of his depression. There's an odd paradox with depression and all mental illnesses: It's one of the few diseases where the patient blames herself and feels like a failure for having to accept help or take medication. We stopped emailing each other after a few weeks. Aaron Swartz: husband of prosecutor criticises internet activist's family | Technology. The husband of the US district attorney involved in the Aaron Swartz prosecution has publicly criticised the activist's family for accusing his wife of complicity in the suicide, amid claims the aggressive litigation was driven by their desire for a test case. Tom Dolan, an IBM executive married to Carmen Ortiz, used his Twitter account to attack the family of Swartz, who died on Friday. One tweet, posted on his @TomJDolan feed, said: "Truly incredible that in their own son's obit they blame others for his death and make no mention of the 6 month offer.
" His comments, made three days after Swartz's death, attracted outrage on social media. The account has since been deleted. When asked about Dolan's tweet and whether it was appropriate, Christina Sterling, a spokeswoman for Ortiz, told the Guardian she had "no comment" to make at this time. Condemnation of prosecutors over the litigation against Swartz continued on Tuesday. The Aaron Swartz Collection : Free Texts. Postscript: Aaron Swartz (1986-2013) As a teen-ager, Aaron helped shape R.S.S., the protocol that sends the content of Web sites out as feeds, and he worked on the team that launched Reddit , a site where users share and sort links.
Programming was only one of his gifts, though. I became aware of him in January, 2006 , not long after he resurrected the Web site of Lingua Franca , a magazine about intellectual life where I had worked as a writer and editor at the turn of the century. The Web site had gone dark not long after the magazine’s bankruptcy and closure in 2001. Technically Aaron violated my copyright and that of many of my friends when he brought the Lingua Franca website back to life, but as Aaron understood, context matters enormously in questions of copyright.
I started to keep up with him by reading his blog. We got in touch online in 2009, for reasons I don’t remember now, and though I can’t say I ever got to know him well, we started corresponding. I come by my ambivalence about JSTOR honestly. Chris Dodd’s paid SOPA crusading. Chris Dodd’s emphatic 2010 pledge not to lobby once he finally left the Senate was prompted by widespread speculation that he spent the last two years in office blatantly shilling for corporate interests in order to ensure a prosperous post-Congress career. Particularly during the 2010 financial reform debate — when it became increasingly apparent that allegations of improper benefits from Countrywide Financial would make his re-election close to impossible — Dodd served on multiple occasions as chief spokesman for , and defender of , the interests of Wall Street and corporate America . Though sleazy and grotesque, it was therefore entirely unsurprising when it was announced last March that Dodd would “be Hollywood’s leading man in Washington, taking the most prestigious job on K Street”: Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), “whose perks include a $1.2 million-a-year salary and getting to attend the Academy Awards ceremony.”
The inspiring heroism of Aaron Swartz | Glenn Greenwald. (updated below)Aaron Swartz, the computer programmer and internet freedom activist, committed suicide on Friday in New York at the age of 26. As the incredibly moving remembrances from his friends such as Cory Doctorow and Larry Lessig attest, he was unquestionably brilliant but also - like most everyone - a complex human being plagued by demons and flaws. For many reasons, I don't believe in whitewashing someone's life or beatifying them upon death. But, to me, much of Swartz's tragically short life was filled with acts that are genuinely and, in the most literal and noble sense, heroic.
I think that's really worth thinking about today. At the age of 14, Swartz played a key role in developing the RSS software that is still widely used to enable people to manage what they read on the internet. But rather obviously, Swartz had little interest in devoting his life to his own material enrichment, despite how easy it would have been for him. Suicide is an incredibly complicated phenomenon. In quotes: Tributes to Aaron Swartz.
13 January 2013Last updated at 06:37 ET Swartz developed RSS at an early age Friends and admirers have been paying tribute to Aaron Swartz, a prominent US internet activist who has died at the age of 26. Below is a selection of some of the many quotes posted online after Mr Swartz's death on Saturday, in what authorities say was a suicide. tweets: "Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Writes: "Aaron did more than almost anyone to make the Internet a thriving ecosystem for open knowledge, and to keep it that way. While his methods were provocative, the goal that Aaron died fighting for - freeing the publicly-funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it - is one that we should all support.
Moreover, the situation Aaron found himself in highlights the injustice of US computer crime laws, and particularly their punishment regimes. " Aaron Swartz commits suicide. A previous version of this article identified Aaron Swartz as a co-owner of reddit. Swartz was initially the founder of Infogami, which later merged with reddit into Not A Bug. Web Update Aaron Swartz commits suicide Editor’s Note: See our blog for a summary of The Tech’s coverage on Aaron Swartz. Computer activist Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide in New York City yesterday, Jan. 11, according to his uncle, Michael Wolf, in a comment to The Tech. Swartz was 26. “The tragic and heartbreaking information you received is, regrettably, true,” confirmed Swartz’ attorney, Elliot R.
Swartz was indicted in July 2011 by a federal grand jury for allegedly downloading millions of documents from JSTOR through the MIT network — using a laptop hidden in a basement network closet in MIT’s Building 16 — with the intent to distribute them. Aaron Swartz, Internet Activist, Dies at 26.