Who is Aaron Swartz? The Inexhaustible Legacy of the Internet's Conscience
Aaron Swartz:
The Fight for the
Freedom of Information
Twenty-six years lived in the shadow of a manifesto and a prosecution
"Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves."
— AARON SWARTZ · GUERRILLA OPEN ACCESS MANIFESTO · JULY 2008- Seeds — The Birth of a Prodigy (1986–2004)
- The Internet's Conscience Awakens (2004–2007)
- Open Library and the First Major Strike: PACER (2007–2008)
- The Manifesto — From Eremo to the World (July 2008)
- SOPA: The Day the Internet Went Dark (2010–2012)
- Raw Nerve — The Storm Within
- JSTOR: The Price of the Manifesto (2010–2011)
- The Final Dance with the State (2011–2013)
- January 11, 2013
- Legacy — The Manifesto Lives On
Seeds — The Birth of a Prodigy (1986–2004)
Aaron Hillel Swartz was born on November 8, 1986, in Highland Park, Illinois — and he was not an ordinary child. His family learned this when he was exactly three years old. That day, little Aaron pointed at a flyer stuck to the refrigerator and called out to his mother: "Look, it says right here: Free family entertainment in downtown Highland Park." His mother froze. Nobody had taught Aaron to read. He had taught himself.
His father, Robert Swartz, owned a small software company called Mark Williams Company — named after the middle name of Aaron's grandfather, William Mark Swartz. William Swartz was no ordinary businessman: he was the founder of the Albert Einstein Peace Prize Foundation and an active participant in the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, dedicated to nuclear disarmament. Running through Aaron's veins was a dual inheritance — technology and a conscience.
When internet access arrived at home around age six or seven, Aaron taught himself to program. At 12, he built a website called The Info Network — an open, free encyclopedia where anyone could contribute knowledge. The idea predated Wikipedia. The site won the ArsDigita Prize, awarded to young people who create useful, educational, and collaborative non-commercial websites. Aaron received the prize at age 13.
At 14, he joined the W3C working group and became one of the co-authors of the RSS 1.0 specification. One of the people who laid the foundation for the RSS format — used today everywhere from news sites to podcast platforms — was a middle school student.
At 15, he sent an email to Lawrence Lessig. The subject: how Creative Commons licenses could be better designed. That email was the beginning of a long mentorship. Aaron contributed to designing the technical architecture of Creative Commons. He later co-developed the Markdownsyntax with John Gruber — a format now used by writers and developers all over the world.
In 2004, he was admitted to Stanford University without a high school diploma. His future looked bright. But Stanford did not turn out the way he expected.
The Internet's Conscience Awakens (2004–2007)
On his very first day at Stanford, Aaron looked around and felt a deep sense of disappointment. He described the university as "a libertarian nightmare"and said he understood what it was within his first four days. Yet he stayed for a year — because that year, something happened that changed everything.
He joined Paul Graham's Y Combinator program and founded a startup called Infogami. Finding the available Python tools inadequate for Infogami, he wrote his own web framework from scratch: web.py. Minimalist, elegant, functional. Reddit even used web.py when it rewrote itself from Lisp to Python.
In November 2005, when Infogami failed to raise funding, Aaron merged with Reddit at Y Combinator's suggestion. In October 2006, Reddit was acquired by Condé Nast Publications for approximately $20 million. Aaron Swartz was a millionaire at 19. But the money did not make him happy.
"I was miserable. I couldn't stand San Francisco. I couldn't stand the office life. I couldn't stand Wired. I went on a long Christmas vacation. I got sick. I thought about killing myself. I ran from the police. And when I came back Monday morning, I was asked to resign."
— AARON SWARTZ, IN HIS OWN WORDS
During this period, a book shook his worldview to its core: Noam Chomsky's Understanding Power. Aaron described the experience on his blog:
"Reading the book, I felt as if my mind was rocked by explosions. At times the ideas were too much that I literally had to lie down. I remember vividly clutching at the door to my room, trying to hold on to something while the world spun around."
— AARON SWARTZ, "THE BOOK THAT CHANGED MY LIFE", 2006
And from that day on, he understood: "Ever since then, I've realized that I need to spend my life working to fix the shocking brokenness I'd discovered." He now knew what he had to do.
Open Library and the First Major Strike: PACER (2007–2008)
Open Library
Right after leaving Reddit, Aaron received an unexpected phone call. Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, was thinking of pursuing a project Aaron had been dreaming of for years. Aaron described the moment on his blog: "I thought I could look forward to months of lounging around San Francisco, reading books on the beach. Then I got a phone call. And I realized I couldn't pass this opportunity up."
The project: Open Library — to build the world's greatest library and put it on the internet free for all. One page for every book, open to everyone, free, editable. Aaron wrote at the time: "Our goal is to build the world's greatest library, then put it up on the Internet free for all to use and edit. Books are the place you go when you have something you want to share with the world — our planet's cultural legacy." The project is still alive today.
PACER and the FBI
In 2008, information freedom activist Carl Malamud invited Aaron to another project. The target: PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records). This system — which contained every ruling from US federal courts — charged eight cents per page for public-domain documents that belonged to the public. The government charging its own citizens to read their own documents was, to Aaron, intolerable.
Using publicly accessible library terminals — entirely legally — he connected to PACER and began downloading. Within a few weeks he had downloaded 19,856,160 pages of federal court documents and donated all of them to public.resource.org — free, open to all, no barriers.
The Manifesto — From Eremo to the World (July 2008)
July 2008. Aaron Swartz wrote a few pages of text in the small Italian town of Eremo. It carried no grand claim — not a book, not a thesis. Just thoughts. But those thoughts became the sacred text of academic freedom fighters around the world.
Its name: The Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto.
"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."
The manifesto is a genuine document of accusation. It declares that scientific articles are locked away by major publishers and opened only to those who pay — leaving researchers in the Global South, independent scientists, and curious minds unable to access this heritage.
"Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable."
"Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world."
"It's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy."
"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 fight for Guerrilla Open Access."
When it was published in 2008, the manifesto did not make much noise. But a few years later, during the JSTOR trial, prosecutors used this text as a weapon against Aaron. The hand that wrote his thoughts was turned against him in court.
SOPA: The Day the Internet Went Dark (2010–2012)
In September 2010, Aaron's phone rang. It was his friend Peter: "Aaron, there's an amazing bill that you have to take a look at." Aaron told this story at the Freedom to Connect conference in Washington D.C. on May 21, 2012 — his last major public speech, eight months before his death.
The bill was called SOPA: the Stop Online Piracy Act. On paper it aimed to stop copyright infringement. In reality it was a censorship tool that could shut down entire websites, place crushing burdens on internet service providers, and expose even libraries to prosecution.
"There's a battle going on right now, a battle to define everything that happens on the Internet in terms of traditional things that the law understands. New technology, instead of bringing us greater freedom, would have snuffed out fundamental rights we had always taken for granted."
— AARON SWARTZ, FREEDOM TO CONNECT, MAY 2012
Aaron mobilized through the organization he had founded, Demand Progress. And on January 18, 2012, the largest digital protest in internet history took place:
"The enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared. The fire in those politicians' eyes hasn't been put out. And it will happen again. Sure, it will have yet 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. Let's not let that happen."
— AARON SWARTZ, CLOSING WORDS OF HIS FREEDOM TO CONNECT SPEECH, MAY 2012
This was the last major speech Aaron gave in public. Eight months later, he would be gone.
Raw Nerve — The Storm Within
From the outside, Aaron Swartz looked like one of the winners. A millionaire, an activist, an internet legend. But from the inside, the picture was very different. He had been struggling with physical and mental illness for years — and he almost never talked about it.
His blog post from November 2007, titled "Sick," was one of the rare moments that silence was broken:
"I have a lot of illnesses. I don't talk about it much, for a variety of reasons. I feel ashamed to have an illness. I don't want to use being ill as an excuse. Although I sometimes wonder how much more productive I'd be if I wasn't so sick."
— AARON SWARTZ, "SICK", NOVEMBER 2007
And he described depression not with clinical detachment, but with the heartbreaking honesty of someone who lived it:
"Depressed mood is like that, only it doesn't come for any reason and it doesn't go for any either. Go outside and get some fresh air or cuddle with a loved one and you don't feel any better, only more upset at being unable to feel the joy that everyone else seems to feel. Everything gets colored by the sadness. At best, you tell yourself that your thinking is irrational, that it is simply a mood disorder... But sometimes that is worse. You feel as if streaks of pain are running through your head, you thrash your body, you search for some escape but find none."
— AARON SWARTZ, "SICK", NOVEMBER 2007
Exactly five months before his death, in August 2012, he published a series of essays called Raw Nerve. He described it as "a series of pieces on getting better at life" — seven parts in total:
- 01Take a Step Back
- 02Believe You Can Change
- 03Look at Yourself Objectively
- 04Lean into the Pain
- 05Confront Reality
- 06Cherish Mistakes
- 07Fix the Machine, Not the Person
In "Lean into the Pain" he used the exercise metaphor: muscle soreness makes you stronger because you learn to endure it — mental pain works the same way. In "Fix the Machine, Not the Person" he argued that it is not the people who are broken, but the structures surrounding them. Someone who wrote these words five months before his death was trying to teach others how to live with pain. For those who read it afterward, the irony is shattering.
JSTOR: The Price of the Manifesto (2010–2011)
In September 2010, Aaron entered an unlocked utility closet on the MIT campus — something MIT's open campus policy permitted. Inside, he connected his laptop directly to a network switch and began downloading. The target: the JSTOR academic article database.
JSTOR held over a century's worth of academic research. The vast majority of that research had been conducted with public funding — financed by taxpayers. Yet publishers had locked it away. Aaron downloaded 4.8 million academic articles — roughly eighty percent of the entire JSTOR database. On January 6, 2011, he was arrested by MIT police.
Federal prosecutors — led by Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann — took over the case and filed an indictment with 13 felony charges. The initial sentence sought: 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines. A superseding indictment in September 2012 raised the maximum exposure to 50 years.
Carmen Ortiz's position was unambiguous: "Stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar."
The Final Dance with the State (2011–2013)
Prosecutors offered Aaron a deal: plead guilty to 13 federal charges, serve 6 months in federal prison. Aaron refused. His reasoning was clear: "I won't accept being labeled a felon."
His attorney Dan Purcell summarized the defense: "Aaron was only doing what MIT permitted. He had not gained unauthorized access. He had accessed JSTOR through MIT's open network with full authorization." But this argument could not match the prosecutors' determination.
There was a tragic irony at the heart of this case. Aaron's former partner, journalist Quinn Norton, mentioned the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto during FBI questioning — a publicly available blog post she assumed the prosecutors had never seen. Aaron later told her: "You just made everything worse." The manifesto entered the case file as evidence of Aaron's intent.
MIT's conduct was also notable. Despite JSTOR requesting that no prosecution take place, MIT stayed silent and did nothing to pressure the government to drop the case. For two years Aaron was trapped between courtrooms and nights filled with uncertainty. He told his friends almost nothing, not wanting to drag them into the swamp of his case.
"Aaron had an unbeatable combination of political insight, technical skill, and intelligence about people and issues. His legacy can still do this."
— CORY DOCTOROW
January 11, 2013
The evening of January 11, 2013. Brooklyn, Sullivan Place, seventh floor. Aaron Swartz's partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, found him dead. He was 26 years old. The New York City medical examiner ruled the death a suicide. There was no note.
His family released a statement the next day. There was no grief in their words — there was rage:
"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death."
— THE FAMILY OF AARON SWARTZ, JANUARY 12, 2013
At the funeral, his father Robert Swartz spoke even more sharply: "Aaron was killed by the government, and MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
"The question this government needs to answer is why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a felon."
— LAWRENCE LESSIG
After his death, federal prosecutors dropped all charges. MIT's president launched an internal review. Congress investigated how the prosecution had handled the case. A blog post Aaron had written years earlier now carried an entirely different weight. It was titled: "If I Get Hit by a Truck." He had asked that the contents of all his hard drives be made publicly available. The last line read: "Oh, and BTW, I'll miss you all."
Legacy — The Manifesto Lives On
When Aaron Swartz died, a bill was introduced in Congress called Aaron's Law. Drafted by Representative Zoe Lofgren and Senator Ron Wyden, it was designed to end the dangerously broad interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The law did not pass. But the debate continues.
In 2013 he was posthumously inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame. He was awarded the James Madison Award by the American Library Association. Every year on November 8th — his birthday — and January 11th — the anniversary of his death — memorial events are held around the world.
But the true legacy is far larger than any ceremony. What Aaron dreamed of in his manifesto has, in part, come true. Platforms like Sci-Hub and Library Genesis offer millions of academic articles for free. The open access movement is forcing major publishers to retreat. This is how Aaron's dream survives: through actions deemed illegal but morally necessary.
"What is the most important thing you could be working on in the world right now? And if you're not working on that, why aren't you?"
— AARON SWARTZ
This was the question Aaron asked himself. And he never stopped asking it. In his 26 short years he built RSS, shaped Creative Commons, founded Open Library, liberated PACER, stopped SOPA, wrote a manifesto, and fought the state. He paid for it with his life.
The manifesto is still here. Still being read. Still moving people to act. And every time it is read, Aaron Swartz lives a little longer.
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