Aaron Swartz Movie Charts Rise And Demise Of 'The Internet's Own Boy'

Where to begin with the saga of Aaron Swartz? His life, cut short by suicide at age 26, continues to resonate strongly online and off because it was devoted in equal measure to technological innovation, social justice and free thought. While so many Silicon Valley billionaires blithely state their desire to change the world, Swartz truly meant it and truly did. His accomplishments include co-founding Reddit, crafting key elements of the RSS feed and Creative Commons, and helping lead the successful protest against federal copyright law PIPA/SOPA in 2012. He killed himself in January 2013, just before he was to have faced trial for several counts of computer hacking stemming from his theft of a trove of license-protected academic research documents controlled by the digital library JSTOR. No one disputes that Swartz broke the law in nabbing the documents, an act likely related to his passionate, stated belief in de-commercializing research and reforming copyright law, but several forces elevated it from a pedestrian hacking case to a national story. The Dept. of Justice, stung by Wikileaks and empowered by the Patriot Act and an outdated 1986 statute criminalizing computer misdeeds, threw the book at Swartz. As reported in the film, they spoke freely of making an example out of him for would-be anarchists, hack-tivists or cyber-terrorists. Relentless prosecutors spent two years making sure Swartz would do years of hard time for a crime whose victims appeared more than willing to look past.