The first Tweet attempts to coopt the memory of him to legitimize an unsubstantive jab in an ideological battle that is adjacent to academic literature. That's sickening.
Yes, this bothers me so much about whenever people bring him up. He seemed like a brilliant, kind, and unique person, not just a totem of “our side vs your side”
His actions in the JSTOR situation were ultimately deemed lawful.
But, without passing judgement one way or the other, Aaron's beliefs about free speech and information freedom which informed his activism cannot be reasonably described as moderate.
I would agree with this. I knew Aaron, at least in terms of our mutual involvement in the intellectual freedom movement, and worked with him on various things (though not well, I was a pretty shitty python coder back then).
His positions, like mine, were definitely in the "extreme", in the sense that 99% of people either 1) don't agree that we should abolish copyright and patents OR don't have an opinion on it.
But there can be a negative connotation to the word "extreme" that I don't think applies here. Our stance is extreme in the sense that the Internet was extreme in the 1970's, or the Web extreme in the 1990's, or civil rights extreme in the 1950's, or women's right to vote extreme in the 1920's.
Another way to put it: he was far ahead of our time on issues of justice.
I meant more moderate than burning a Target store or starting a revolution as in the tweet.
And if we stick to objectivism, then they definitely are more moderate than even the status quo - semi-obsolete middlemen holding a rent-seeking/regulatory capture over some of the most important information available to mankind.
Are you aware that you’re claiming not to pass judgement, and then do so in the very same sentence?
I think it seems immoderate to you because, like many others on this website (including me), we were all on the inside of the knowledge-monopoly walled-garden that Aaron talked about, where most research isn’t accessible to you unless you join the capitalist academia-industrial-complex (that last part is my own description, not Aaron’s), such as attending a university with a huge endowment (Harvard and other Ivy League schools), or living in a tech-cluster that the government has invested in for many years (Stanford&Silicon Valley) - why else does the most ‘exciting’ research happen at private institutions like these?:
“The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.” [1]
What makes it so one person is allowed to privatize knowledge and charge another a rent to access it? Why have governments allowed this enclosure of the scientific commons (amongst others), which is really an inheritance that belongs to all?
Privatization of knowledge is artificial scarcity that does not have to be there. It keeps the majority of society locked out, especially the working class, as well as people who live in the Global South.
This beautiful story from a few days ago is just one of many that shows the incredible power of Sci-hub:
I think that most intellectual laborers who themselves have conditional access to trade secrets and patents due to their employment with the capitalist/propertied classes (who are the so called 'owners' of this privatized knowledge), underestimate how difficult it is for others to follow in their footsteps, to try to copy what they did (myself included). In other words, we fail to see and acknowledge how much contrived scarcity is created by the US-‘led’ global Intellectual Property system and agreements, which allows capitalist firms to claim ownership of knowledge through trade secrets, patents and copyrights - which are then used to control where scientific research is done and where it is not. It ultimately holds back innovation, and the sharing of all kinds of emancipatory and empowering technologies locked up by capitalists under capitalism.
The most violent and advanced form of this capitalist enclosure of knowledge is the criminal enforcement of ‘trade secrets‘. The use of this mechanism, and the state institution that allows it, is the biggest capitalist perversion of science and technological development humanity has ever seen. [2]
Instead of contributing to firms and institutions that privatize knowledge, I hope we will continue joining in efforts to liberate science and technology from capitalism, creating an unconditionally available shared commons library that is accessible to all around the globe.
As we are currently part of the small group of people who are privileged recipients of this inheritance, I believe we have no excuse to not contribute to this battle for universal access, on all fronts, especially considering the fact that digital technologies have brought with them the possibility for a zero marginal cost of reproduction of knowledge. Sci-hub and similar efforts are a fantastic start to this.
For another strategy that helps reclaim technology from capitalism (and which really blew my hair back), check out the work of Bob Haugen, Lynn Foster and Pospi (Mikorizal) on Valueflo.ws / hREA. [3]
To be clear, I was actively involved in a lot of this and would not describe myself or my beliefs as 'moderate' either.
I'm more of an [information freedom] absolutist / code is law / bits are not a big / etc.
So if I were to "pass judgement" I would say Aaron was a freedom fighter who tragically fell on his sword when the going got (quite) tough. I don't have a single negative thing to say about him or his beliefs.
Yeah, it's pretty weird how he uses him to further left-libertarianism. How do you know Aaron Swartz stood for anarchism? He seems like anti-intellectual property to me, but you know right-libertarians oppose intellectual property too. I find it despicable to use someone to further an ideology without giving them the chance to actually state their own political beliefs.
It's ironic that the author is using the tragic and abusive results of authoritarianism as a means of advocating FOR the very authoritarianism that Aaron Schwartz opposed.