Just saw this film last night. It's a very good documentary, and like everything that Arron worked for and valued, is free on the Internet. It's available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58
Arron was a child prodigy, and most definitely in his short life, showed that he was a genius. At 3 years old, Arron taught himself to read. When he was only 14 years old, Aaron co-authored RSS, the specification used for updating news and blogs on the Web. While still a teenager, he helped create the Creative Commons. Before he was 20 he founded a company that would become Reddit. When he was 20 he created the Open Library for the Internet Archive. I found out about this film after looking at Howard Besser's website (my former advisor at UCLA). Howard writes that:
"Most of Aaron's work was driven by his passionate belief that society would be a better place if people had access to original material that shaped their lives and environment. He sometimes employed direct action tactics to shame governmental and non-profit organizations into releasing works that they kept behind economic walls. And he was one of the major architects of the campaign to defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the co-founder of Demand Progress, an activist organization fighting against Internet censorship.
In 2009 he downloaded millions of documents from a pay-per-view database of Federal Court decisions (PACER) and made these publicly available on a website dedicated to making government information freely available to the public. (we all know that government information can't be copyrighted, right?)
The troubles that likely led to his death began about 18 months ago, when he brought a laptop to MIT and downloaded a massive number of journal articles from the library journal archive service JSTOR. The US Department of Justice prosecuted him for this even though the alleged "victim", JSTOR, declined to press charges. And recently, JSTOR announced that it would make more than 4.5 million of its articles freely available, likely a result of Aaron's action. But the US Attorney continued to vindictively prosecute him on charges that might have resulted in 35 years jail time and $1 million fine."
I love the fact that Arron loved libraries, so much so that he advocated for them and for what they stood my previous post on Oranges and Peaches. I also like it when people I've met get interviewed for documentaries. Brewster Kahle speaks about Arron. Of course listening to his parents and siblings and the people who know him is very moving. Although the film is about his life and death, it's hopeful and fascinating and very much worth watching.
