Aaron Swartz
Encyclopedia
Aaron Swartz is an American programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist
. He is best known in programming circles for co-authoring the RSS
1.0 specification. He received mainstream media attention after his federal indictment and arrest on 19 July 2011, for allegedly harvesting academic journal
articles from JSTOR
.
Swartz is the co-founder of Demand Progress and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee
. He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts
.
by the time he was 14. Since then he has been a member of the W3C
's RDF
Core Working Group, co-designed the formatting language Markdown
with John Gruber
, and worked on many other projects.
Swartz attended Stanford University
for a year, leaving to start the software company Infogami, a startup
that was funded by Y Combinator
's first Summer Founders Program. Infogami was built around a wiki
backend, a subject of interest for Swartz since his early effort to develop theinfo, a wiki-based encyclopedia
, in 2000.
to form not a bug, though the latter group failed to take off. In late 2006, Reddit was sold to CondéNet (the online arm of Condé Nast Publications
and the owners of Wired
) and Swartz moved with his company to San Francisco. In January 2007, Swartz was asked to resign from his position at Wired Digital.
In September 2007, Swartz, together with Simon Carstensen, launched Jottit, a website service quite similar to Infogami. Jottit was launched from bitbots.net, a project by Swartz and Carstensen. Swartz is also the creator of the web.py web application framework
, based on the Python programming language, which is used by Jottit (and previously reddit).
Swartz then went to work for the Internet Archive, serving as the software architect for the new Open Library
project, building on work from infogami.
. Two of his most well-known pieces are "Who Writes Wikipedia
", an article examining the contributions to Wikipedia articles written during his candidacy for the Wikimedia Foundation
board election in 2006, and "HOWTO: Be More Productive", an article on personal productivity.
In recent years, Swartz has worked primarily on social analysis and political activism. He worked on watchdog.net, and serves on the board of Change Congress
. In 2010 he became a fellow at Harvard University
's Safra Center for Ethics.
Swartz co-founded Demand Progress, a progressive advocacy group that organizes people via email and other media for "contacting Congress and other leaders, funding pressure tactics, and spreading the word" about targeted issues.
database of United States federal court
documents managed by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts
. He had accessed the system as part of a free trial of PACER at 17 libraries around the country, which was suspended "pending an evaluation" as a result of Swartz's actions. Those actions also brought him under investigation by the FBI
, but the case was closed two months later with no charges being filed.
articles from JSTOR
. According to the indictment against him, Swartz surreptitiously attached a laptop to MIT
's computer network, which allowed him to "rapidly download an extraordinary volume of articles from JSTOR." Prosecutors in the case claim Swartz acted with the intention of making the papers available on P2P file-sharing sites
.
Swartz surrendered to authorities, pleading not guilty on all accounts, and was released on $100,000 bail
. Prosecution of the case continues, with charges of wire fraud and computer fraud, resulting in a potential prison term of up to 35 years and a fine of up to $1 million USD. JSTOR put out a statement saying they would not pursue civil litigation against Swartz.
Jerry Cohen of Burns & Levinson said the government's choice to pursue criminal charges when JSTOR and MIT had resolved their civil concerns with Swartz reflected a trend of increasingly-zealous prosecution in federal courts.
On September 7, 2011, JSTOR announced that they released the public domain content of their archives for public viewing and limited use. According to JSTOR, they have been working on making those archives public for some time, and the recent controversy, involving, according to a press release, "an individual who was indicted for downloading a substantial portion of content from JSTOR, allegedly for the purpose of posting it to file sharing sites", made them "press ahead" with the initiative.
Hacktivism
Hacktivism is the use of computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political ends. The term was first coined in 1994 by a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective named Omega...
. He is best known in programming circles for co-authoring the RSS
RSS (file format)
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format...
1.0 specification. He received mainstream media attention after his federal indictment and arrest on 19 July 2011, for allegedly harvesting academic journal
Academic journal
An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...
articles from JSTOR
JSTOR
JSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...
.
Swartz is the co-founder of Demand Progress and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee
Progressive Change Campaign Committee
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is a U.S. political action committee which focuses on electing progressive Democrats in Congressional elections and advocating on progressive policy issues.-Past campaigns:...
. He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
.
Early life and work
Swartz was active in discussions of Internet standards from an early age, and co-authored the specification for RSSRSS (file format)
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format...
by the time he was 14. Since then he has been a member of the W3C
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...
's RDF
Resource Description Framework
The Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifications originally designed as a metadata data model...
Core Working Group, co-designed the formatting language Markdown
Markdown
Markdown is a lightweight markup language, originally created by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz allowing people "to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML "...
with John Gruber
John Gruber
John Gruber is a writer from the greater Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area of the USA. Gruber received his Bachelor of Science in computer science from Drexel University. He worked for Bare Bones Software from 2000 to 2002 and Joyent from 2005 to 2006...
, and worked on many other projects.
Swartz attended Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
for a year, leaving to start the software company Infogami, a startup
Startup company
A startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets...
that was funded by Y Combinator
Y Combinator
Y Combinator is an American seed-stage startup funding firm, started in March 2005. Y Combinator provides seed money, advice, and connections at two 3-month programs per year...
's first Summer Founders Program. Infogami was built around a wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
backend, a subject of interest for Swartz since his early effort to develop theinfo, a wiki-based encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
, in 2000.
Reddit and Open Library
Within a year, Infogami merged with RedditReddit
reddit is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of either a link or a text "self" post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down," which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page.Reddit was originally...
to form not a bug, though the latter group failed to take off. In late 2006, Reddit was sold to CondéNet (the online arm of Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...
and the owners of Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
) and Swartz moved with his company to San Francisco. In January 2007, Swartz was asked to resign from his position at Wired Digital.
In September 2007, Swartz, together with Simon Carstensen, launched Jottit, a website service quite similar to Infogami. Jottit was launched from bitbots.net, a project by Swartz and Carstensen. Swartz is also the creator of the web.py web application framework
Web application framework
A web application framework is a software framework that is designed to support the development of dynamic websites, web applications and web services. The framework aims to alleviate the overhead associated with common activities performed in Web development...
, based on the Python programming language, which is used by Jottit (and previously reddit).
Swartz then went to work for the Internet Archive, serving as the software architect for the new Open Library
Open Library
Open Library is an online project intended to create “one web page for every book ever published”. Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive and has been funded in part by a grant from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation.-Books for the blind and...
project, building on work from infogami.
Politics and sociology
Swartz is an active blogger and has written a number of widely read essays on his blogBlog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
. Two of his most well-known pieces are "Who Writes Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
", an article examining the contributions to Wikipedia articles written during his candidacy for the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
board election in 2006, and "HOWTO: Be More Productive", an article on personal productivity.
In recent years, Swartz has worked primarily on social analysis and political activism. He worked on watchdog.net, and serves on the board of Change Congress
Change Congress
Change Congress is an American organization that aims to end perceived corruption in the United States Congress by reducing what it considers the distorted influence of money in that legislative body...
. In 2010 he became a fellow at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
's Safra Center for Ethics.
Swartz co-founded Demand Progress, a progressive advocacy group that organizes people via email and other media for "contacting Congress and other leaders, funding pressure tactics, and spreading the word" about targeted issues.
PACER
In 2009, Swartz downloaded and publicly released approximately 20% of the PACERPACER (law)
PACER is an electronic public access service of United States federal court documents. The system is managed by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts...
database of United States federal court
United States federal courts
The United States federal courts make up the judiciary branch of federal government of the United States organized under the United States Constitution and laws of the federal government.-Categories:...
documents managed by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts
Administrative Office of the United States Courts
The Administrative Office of the United States Courts is the administrative agency of the United States federal court system. It was established in 1939.The AO is the central support entity for the federal judicial branch...
. He had accessed the system as part of a free trial of PACER at 17 libraries around the country, which was suspended "pending an evaluation" as a result of Swartz's actions. Those actions also brought him under investigation by the FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
, but the case was closed two months later with no charges being filed.
JSTOR
On Tuesday, 19 July 2011, Swartz was charged by U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer, in relation to downloading roughly 4 million academic journalAcademic journal
An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...
articles from JSTOR
JSTOR
JSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...
. According to the indictment against him, Swartz surreptitiously attached a laptop to MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
's computer network, which allowed him to "rapidly download an extraordinary volume of articles from JSTOR." Prosecutors in the case claim Swartz acted with the intention of making the papers available on P2P file-sharing sites
Peer-to-peer file sharing
P2P or Peer-to-peer file sharing allows users to download files such as music, movies, and games using a P2P software client that searches for other connected computers. The "peers" are computer systems connected to each other through internet. Thus, the only requirements for a computer to join...
.
Swartz surrendered to authorities, pleading not guilty on all accounts, and was released on $100,000 bail
Bail
Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail...
. Prosecution of the case continues, with charges of wire fraud and computer fraud, resulting in a potential prison term of up to 35 years and a fine of up to $1 million USD. JSTOR put out a statement saying they would not pursue civil litigation against Swartz.
Jerry Cohen of Burns & Levinson said the government's choice to pursue criminal charges when JSTOR and MIT had resolved their civil concerns with Swartz reflected a trend of increasingly-zealous prosecution in federal courts.
On September 7, 2011, JSTOR announced that they released the public domain content of their archives for public viewing and limited use. According to JSTOR, they have been working on making those archives public for some time, and the recent controversy, involving, according to a press release, "an individual who was indicted for downloading a substantial portion of content from JSTOR, allegedly for the purpose of posting it to file sharing sites", made them "press ahead" with the initiative.
Publications
- Swartz, Aaron and Hendler, James “The Semantic Web: A Network of Content for the Digital City”, Proceedings of the Second Annual Digital Cities Workshop, Kyoto, Japan, October 2001.
- Gruber, John and Swartz, Aaron. Markdown definintion, December 2004.