Review: The Internet’s Own Boy: Aaron Swartz

The story of Aaron Swartz, a child prodigy and Reddit co-founder, who faced legal trouble with the FBI in his attempts at liberating public academic journals that the powers that be were actually profiting from via a costly subscription-only service. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t consider guys like Julian Assange to be heroic crusaders of the information age. There’s a recklessness in releasing such sensitive government information that I just have reservations about.

 

This 2014 documentary from Brian Knappenberger isn’t about an Assange-type. Aaron Swartz was a very different kinda guy. I may have serious misgivings about WikiLeaks, but the FBI intrusion into this kid’s life is ridiculous, embarrassing for them, and in hindsight fucking cruel to Swartz. He wasn’t interested in hacking into government documents/secrets. All Swartz was concerned with was equal access of free information that was supposed to be public domain anyway. Yes, he had sympathy for WikiLeaks’ cause, but please don’t confuse this bright young man for Julian Assange. This guy was supposedly only interested in knowledge for all, for free. He wasn’t just a hacker. He wasn’t trying to expose government secrets. He was a free information activist who actually wanted to make the world a better place. Here’s a rare case where I’m on the side of the computer genius against the government. This film made me angry towards the FBI, the government, even MIT. A bright young man’s life was lost at just 26 years of age. He wasn’t stealing sensitive information, and at worst he should’ve been kicked out of school. Maybe. Even if you don’t believe that Swartz’s actions were an attempt at liberating information, he clearly was not motivated by profit or criminality. Yes he hacked into JSTOR (which hosts a whole lot of academic journals for students) from an MIT server, but not for profit purposes at all. He simply wanted to liberate (admittedly a shitload of) information that he, as a Harvard research student at the time, actually had an account for. Aaron simply wanted to make the information available to people who weren’t able to access it from that one specialised location, and for free. The wrong thing obviously, but give me a break. It’s absurd and shameful for the FBI to waste their time on such a trivial activity (JSTOR dropped their own charges against Swartz, for cryin’ out loud). I absolutely get why the government freak out about stuff like this in general, but on this occasion they chose a miniscule-sized fish to make an example of, at the very most.

 

Aaron’s a pretty interesting guy, and knowing going in what happened to him, I must admit I was probably paying close attention to see if I could see any signs of depression etc. There does seem to be a sadness and social awkwardness to him (and looks like he rarely slept much). It’s true that not every computer nerd is thin-skinned, but Swartz was not a hardened crim, and not equipped to deal with the shitstorm that he was hit with here. Moving away from the tragic stuff for a second, he was a bright young guy who picked up computers at a very early age and was programming not long after. At 12 he came up with something very similar to Wikipedia. This kid was talented. Really talented. He does come across as someone who has a lot of ambition and seemingly little time to spend doing things that don’t serve what he considered a higher purpose. For the most part, though I was just sad that such a talented, bright young kid is no longer around. And for what?

 

This isn’t a great documentary. In fact, it’s a very stock-standard one. It’s the subject that ultimately matters, though. It’s a fascinating story and it’ll make you fucking angry. Also, the crackdown on hackers might’ve started in a post-9/11 under the Bush administration, but sadly the Obama administration has blood on its hands here, too. This kid should still be alive, and whatever you may think of suicide, I don’t think it’s fair to put the entirety of that on Swartz himself. He got bullied, to be honest, and the bullies won. This isn’t great, but it’s absolutely important to see.  

 

Rating: B