Congress enacted the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 1984, before there was a World Wide Web. And yet, it took Internet wunderkind Aaron Swartz’s apparent suicide for efforts to reform it to get traction. Sometimes to make a law, it takes a martyr.
Swartz died in the midst of a controversial trial. In 2010, he downloaded millions of academic papers from the JSTOR database. For him, this was likely a political act. He believed all journal information should be free. Federal prosecutors in Boston thought otherwise.
"Aaron didn't go download those articles, knowing that it could cost him his life." —Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman
Even though JSTOR didn't pursue legal action against Swartz, the text of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) allowed for criminal charges. Swartz's allies argued that the criminal proceedings didn't fit the crime, saying federal prosecutors were trying to make an example of him. The word "persecution" — not "prosecution" — often appears in discussions of what happened. He was facing up to 35 years in prison. However, it was more likely that he would serve less than a year in a minimum-security setting. His allies argue that this is what led Swartz to take his own life.
Now, in death, his accomplishments, coupled with his connections in Washington, are galvanizing to establish a law—“Aaron’s Law”— that would exonerate him.
It's hard to talk about Swartz without painting him as a mythical figure. He taught himself to read at the age of three. He invented the RSS protocol during his teenage years. He was a big thinker, and penned manifestos on information freedom. He read economics textbooks for fun. And he cofounded Reddit. He died at 26 years old, leaving many to wonder what potential was lost with him.
There's an emotional weight, a narrative that gets tied to this piece of legislation, which became clear Monday night at a memorial for Swartz on Capitol Hill.
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