Remembering Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz was found dead at his Brooklyn apartment yesterday in an apparent suicide. At only 26, Swartz has a long list of achievements. A Wired article outlines his chief accomplishments:

When he was 14 years old, Aaron helped develop the RSS standard; he went on to found Infogami, which became part of Reddit. But more than anything Aaron was a coder with a conscience: a tireless and talented hacker who poured his energy into issues like network neutrality, copyright reform and information freedom.  Among countless causes, he worked with Larry Lessig at the launch of the Creative Commons, architected the Internet Archive’s free public catalog of books, OpenLibrary.org, and in 2010 founded Demand Progress, a non-profit group that helped drive successful grassroots opposition to SOPA last year.

A section of the Official Statement from his partner and family reminds us of his profound impact on promoting social justice and intellectual freedom:

Aaron’s commitment to social justice was profound, and defined his life. He was instrumental to the defeat of an Internet censorship bill; he fought for a more democratic, open, and accountable political system; and he helped to create, build, and preserve a dizzying range of scholarly projects that extended the scope and accessibility of human knowledge. He used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place. His deeply humane writing touched minds and hearts across generations and continents. He earned the friendship of thousands and the respect and support of millions more.

Swartz was facing a federal jury trial to begin on April 1, 2013 for 13 felony charges. The charges stemmed from his alleged actions related to downloading four million JSTOR articles from MIT. The prosecutors called these actions stealing and believe that he intended to share the articles on file-sharing sites and peer-to-peer networks. If convicted of the charges, Swartz could have been fined up to $1 million and faced up to 35 years in prison.

To learn more about Aaron Swartz, see the recent CBC News and New York Times articles. Information about the Internet activism he was involved in can be found at the Demand Progress website.

File-sharing promotes music sales

As the recording industry continues to pursue file-sharing individuals in the US, a new study commissioned by Industry Canada/Industrie Canada reveals that file-sharing in this country may actually be promoting music sales, rather than hurting them. Despite the continued arguments by the RIAA and other groups, the study shows that Canadians who download music via peer-to-peer (P2P) software are more likely to purchase music on new CDs than individuals who do not use P2P programs.
Questions regarding copyright and the legitimacy of P2P file-sharing, electronic distribution (iTunes, Amazon), and the like continue to fly. Meanwhile, recent experiments by bands such as Radiohead and comments such as those made by Trent Reznor suggest that artists are exploring new music distribution models because the industry itself won't adapt to the new reality.

Illegal Art

Illegal art, a digital exhibit/intersection between issues of intellectual property, creativity, and access.

The Illegal Art Exhibit will celebrate what is rapidly becoming the "degenerate art" of a corporate age: art and ideas on the legal fringes of intellectual property. Some of the pieces in the show have eluded lawyers; others have had to appear in court.

Loaded with gray areas, intellectual property law inevitably has a silencing effect, discouraging the creation of new works.

Should artists be allowed to use copyrighted materials? Where do the First Amendment and "intellectual property" law collide? What is art's future if the current laws are allowed to stand? Stay Free! considers these questions and others in our multimedia program. -- Carrie McLaren