Aaron, the Hero Who Fought to Free Knowledge.
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Aaron Swartz was born here in the United States, in Chicago, in 1986. He wasn’t a normal kid. At 14, he helped create RSS, the standard that still today makes it possible to read news and updates online. I still use it myself to stay informed, because it lets me gather content from many sites with great ease. Aaron understood early that the internet was not just technology. It was power, it was freedom.
The conflict came quickly. He saw that scientific knowledge, often paid for with public money, was locked behind paywalls and expensive subscriptions. It wasn’t just a technical barrier. It was an injustice. Aaron couldn’t accept that.
In 2010 he took his most radical step. At MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he connected to the servers and, using an automated script, downloaded millions of papers from JSTOR, one of the world’s largest academic archives. He never published them, never sold them. His goal was only to show that knowledge should not be imprisoned. But the act was illegal. JSTOR forgave him, but the federal government did not. They indicted him.
Here came the fall. Aaron was facing up to 35 years in prison and more than one million dollars in fines. Accused of computer fraud and unauthorized access, a young man who wanted to free knowledge was treated like a criminal. The pressure became unbearable. In January 2013, at just 26, Aaron took his own life.
The return with the gift came after. His death sparked a global movement. Here in the United States and around the world, the demand for open access, for free knowledge, grew stronger. Universities began releasing more and more scientific work for free. The debate over the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act exploded, showing how it had been used as a weapon.
Aaron is a hero, the central figure of a tragedy that left us with a final lesson. The digital world must not close doors. It must open them.
#ArtificialDecisions #MCC
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