Aaron Swartz and Internet Freedom

Aaron Swartz was a firm believer in free information.  He felt that people had a right to access information whenever they wanted without having to pay a dime.  He was fighting a legal system that he felt was outdated and unfair.  He was a member of a movement that wanted to push more information into the public domain and to an extent he was successful.  Aaron Swartz committed suicide earlier this year.  He was a midst a battle with the legal system that was trying to prosecute him for publishing court documents that were not supposed to be free.  Swartz was accused of breaking into MIT and downloading academic articles from JSTOR, a digital library.

It is a human right to access information.  The fact that Swartz was labeled a felon by the legal system is ridiculous and inaccurate.  By labeling him a felon, they are placing him in the same group as murderers and rapists.  Swartz was not interested in obtaining the information for himself.  Instead he wanted to spread the information around because he felt people should have access to information at no cost.  Now I do not think that people should be able to just break the law because they have good intentions, but in this particular case his actions were blown out of proportion and I think the legal system was overreacting quite a bit. In fact, I agree with Swartz and I don't think you should have to pay for that information to begin with.   I also agree that the system has not progressed along with the information age.  It is outdated and needs to be seriously restructured.  Swartz was a talented young man who died way too soon and will be remembered not as a criminal, but an influential computer programmer who wanted to strengthen the public domain with free information.