WEBVTT 00:00:08.696 --> 00:00:25.969 00:00:25.969 --> 00:00:28.556 00:00:28.556 --> 00:00:33.849 00:00:33.849 --> 00:00:37.975 NOTE Paragraph 00:00:39.646 --> 00:00:41.015 00:00:50.278 --> 00:00:56.794 A cofounder of the social, news and entertainment website reddit has been found dead. 00:00:57.404 --> 00:01:02.276 He certainly was a prodigy, although he never kind of thought of himself like that. 00:01:02.276 --> 00:01:04.920 He was totally unexcited 00:01:04.920 --> 00:01:08.444 about starting businesses and making money. 00:01:09.904 --> 00:01:13.269 There's a profound sense of lost in Highland Park, 00:01:13.269 --> 00:01:15.197 Aaron Swartz's hometown, 00:01:15.197 --> 00:01:18.391 as loved ones say good-bye to one of the Internet's brightest lights. 00:01:18.391 --> 00:01:21.841 Freedom, open access and computer activists are mourning his loss. 00:01:21.841 --> 00:01:25.699 "An astonishing intellect", if you talk to people who knew him. 00:01:25.699 --> 00:01:27.029 He was killed by the government 00:01:27.029 --> 00:01:29.996 and MIT betrayed all of its basic principles. 00:01:29.996 --> 00:01:32.976 They wanted to make an example out of him. 00:01:35.176 --> 00:01:39.053 Governments have insatiable desire to control. 00:01:39.053 --> 00:01:43.477 He was potentially facing 35 years in prison and a one million dollar fine. 00:01:43.477 --> 00:01:50.042 Raising questions of prosecutorial zeal, and I would say even misconduct. 00:01:50.389 --> 00:01:55.437 Have you looked into that particular matter and reached any conclusions? 00:01:57.399 --> 00:02:00.915 Growing up, you know, I slowly had this process of realizing 00:02:00.915 --> 00:02:03.562 that all the things around me, that people had told me 00:02:03.562 --> 00:02:06.713 were just the natural way things were, the way things always would be 00:02:06.713 --> 00:02:09.420 They weren't natural at all, there were things that could be changed 00:02:09.420 --> 00:02:11.824 and there were things that more importantly were wrong and should change. 00:02:11.824 --> 00:02:14.364 And once I realized that, there was really kind of no going back. 00:02:15.324 --> 00:02:21.093 The Internet's Own Boy. 00:02:24.274 --> 00:02:27.881 Welcome to story reading time. 00:02:28.048 --> 00:02:33.084 The name of the book is "Paddington at the fair". 00:02:33.573 --> 00:02:37.043 Well, he was born in Highland Park and grew up here. 00:02:37.434 --> 00:02:40.778 Aaron came from a family of three brothers, all extraordinarily bright. 00:02:40.778 --> 00:02:43.792 Oh, the box is tipping over... 00:02:44.532 --> 00:02:48.714 So we were all, you know, not the best behaved children. 00:02:48.714 --> 00:02:51.752 You know, three boys running around all the time, causing trouble. 00:02:51.752 --> 00:02:54.005 Hey, no, no no! 00:02:54.005 --> 00:02:56.234 - Aaron! - What? 00:02:56.234 --> 00:03:01.134 But I've come to the realization that Aaron learned how to learn at a very young age. 00:03:01.711 --> 00:03:05.711 "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,seven, eight, nine, ten" 00:03:06.462 --> 00:03:09.552 - Knock, knock! - Who's there? 00:03:09.552 --> 00:03:11.427 - Aaron. - Aaron who? 00:03:11.427 --> 00:03:12.773 - Aaron Funnyman. 00:03:12.773 --> 00:03:15.449 He knew what he wanted, and he always wanted to do it. 00:03:15.468 --> 00:03:17.269 He always accomplished what he wanted. 00:03:18.609 --> 00:03:21.288 His curiosity was endless. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:21.888 --> 00:03:25.117 "Here's a little picture of what the planets are." 00:03:25.117 --> 00:03:32.929 "And each planet has a symbol. Mercury symbol, Venus symbol, Earth symbol, Mars symbol, Jupiter symbol." 00:03:33.114 --> 00:03:37.089 One day he said to Susan: what's this free family entertainment downtown Highland Park? 00:03:37.089 --> 00:03:39.964 "Free family entertainment at the downtown [less] park" 00:03:39.964 --> 00:03:41.571 He was three at the time. 00:03:42.432 --> 00:03:44.642 She said: what are you talking about? 00:03:44.642 --> 00:03:50.242 He said: Look, it says here on the refrigerator, "Free family entertainment downtown Highland Park". 00:03:50.272 --> 00:03:54.513 She was floored and astonished that he could read. 00:03:55.010 --> 00:03:59.010 It's called "My Family Seder". 00:03:59.755 --> 00:04:04.881 That Seder night is different from all other nights. 00:04:05.130 --> 00:04:08.772 I remember once, we were at the University of Chicago Library. 00:04:08.847 --> 00:04:12.318 I pulled a book off the shelf that was from like 1900. 00:04:12.318 --> 00:04:16.540 And showed to him, and said: you know, this is an extraordinary place. 00:04:16.540 --> 00:04:22.719 We all were curious children, but Aaron really liked learning and really liked teaching. 00:04:22.999 --> 00:04:27.509 And what we're going to learn is ABC backwards. 00:04:27.945 --> 00:04:31.385 Z, Y, X, W, V, U, T... 00:04:32.063 --> 00:04:35.620 I remember he came home from his first Algebra class. 00:04:35.620 --> 00:04:38.828 He was like: Noah, let me teach you Algebra! 00:04:38.828 --> 00:04:41.274 and I'm like: what is Algebra? 00:04:41.274 --> 00:04:43.287 And he was always like that. 00:04:43.287 --> 00:04:48.516 Now let's press click button, there! Now it's got that! 00:04:48.898 --> 00:04:51.858 Now it's in pink! 00:04:51.858 --> 00:04:56.318 When he was about two or three years old, and Bob introduced him to computers, 00:04:56.318 --> 00:04:59.608 then he just took off, like crazy on them. 00:04:59.820 --> 00:05:03.687 (baby talk) 00:05:03.687 --> 00:05:08.717 We all had computers, but Aaron really took to them, really took to the Internet. 00:05:09.698 --> 00:05:12.965 - Working at the computer? - Naah.. 00:05:12.965 --> 00:05:16.008 - How c... mommy, why is nothing working? 00:05:16.008 --> 00:05:18.667 He started programming from a really young age. 00:05:18.667 --> 00:05:25.533 I remember the first program that I wrote with him was in Basic, and it was a Star Wars trivia game. 00:05:25.533 --> 00:05:30.356 He sat down with me in the basement, where the computer was, 00:05:30.356 --> 00:05:33.337 for hours, programming this game. 00:05:34.817 --> 00:05:38.661 The problem that I kept having with him is that there was nothing that I wanted done. 00:05:38.661 --> 00:05:44.057 And to him, there was always something to do, always something that programming could solve. 00:05:47.018 --> 00:05:50.548 The way Aaron always saw it, is that programming is magic. 00:05:50.901 --> 00:05:54.222 You can accomplish these things that normal humans can't. 00:05:54.222 --> 00:05:58.892 Aaron made an ATM, using, like, a MacIntosh and, like, a cardboard box. 00:05:59.055 --> 00:06:02.368 One year for Halloween, I didn't know what I wanted to be, 00:06:02.368 --> 00:06:06.848 and he thought it would be really really cool if I dressed up like his new favorite computer, 00:06:06.848 --> 00:06:09.108 which at the time was the original iMac. 00:06:09.108 --> 00:06:13.434 I mean, he hated dressing up for Halloween but he loved convincing other people 00:06:13.434 --> 00:06:16.280 to dress up in these things that he wanted to see. 00:06:16.280 --> 00:06:20.395 Host Aaron, stop! Guys, come on, look at the camera! 00:06:20.395 --> 00:06:22.720 Spider-man looks at the camera 00:06:24.010 --> 00:06:30.725 He made this website called The Info, where people could just fill in information. 00:06:30.725 --> 00:06:34.987 I'm sure someone out there knows everything about gold, gold leafing. 00:06:34.987 --> 00:06:38.722 Why they don't write about that on this website? And then other people can come at a later point 00:06:38.722 --> 00:06:43.347 and read that information, and edit the information if they thought it was bad. 00:06:43.347 --> 00:06:46.226 Not too dissimilar from Wikipedia, right? 00:06:46.226 --> 00:06:50.474 And this was before Wikipedia begun, and this is developed by a 12 year old, 00:06:50.474 --> 00:06:58.452 in his room, by himself, running on this tiny server, using ancient technology. 00:06:58.452 --> 00:07:06.977 One of the teachers response was, like: This is a terrible idea, you cant' just let anyone author the encyclopedia. 00:07:06.977 --> 00:07:12.464 The whole reason we have scholars is to write these books for us. How did you have such a terrible idea? 00:07:12.484 --> 00:07:20.155 Me and my other brother will go, like: Oh, you know, Wikipedia is cool, but we had that in our house, like, five years ago. 00:07:20.776 --> 00:07:25.597 Aaron's website, theinfo.org, wins a school competition 00:07:25.597 --> 00:07:30.348 hosted by the Cambridge-based web design firm ArsDigita. 00:07:33.758 --> 00:07:38.090 We all went to the Cambridge for the... when he won the art centro prize 00:07:38.090 --> 00:07:40.506 and we had no clue what Aaron was doing. 00:07:40.506 --> 00:07:43.358 It was obvious that the prize was really important. 00:07:43.778 --> 00:07:48.171 Aaron soon became involved with online programming communities, 00:07:48.171 --> 00:07:51.437 then in the process of shaping a new tool for the web. 00:07:51.437 --> 00:07:55.545 He comes up saying to me, like: Ben, there's this really awesome thing that I'm working on. 00:07:55.545 --> 00:07:57.713 You need to hear about it! 00:07:57.713 --> 00:07:59.742 "Yeah, what is it?" 00:07:59.742 --> 00:08:01.769 "It's a thing called RSS." 00:08:02.259 --> 00:08:07.171 And he explains me what RSS is.like... like why is that useful,Aaron? 00:08:07.171 --> 00:08:11.268 Is any site using it, like why would I want to use it? 00:08:11.268 --> 00:08:16.664 There is this mailing list for people who are working on RSS, and XML more generally. 00:08:16.893 --> 00:08:21.134 And there was a person on it named Arron Swartz who was really competitive but very smart, 00:08:21.134 --> 00:08:24.675 and who has lots of ideas and he didn't ever come to the face to face meetings 00:08:24.675 --> 00:08:28.566 and he'd never come to face-to-face meetings, and they said, 00:08:28.632 --> 00:08:32.302 you know, when are you gonna come to any of these face-to-face meetings? 00:08:32.322 --> 00:08:36.942 And he said: you know, I don't think my mom would let me. I'm.. I've just turned 14. 00:08:37.222 --> 00:08:42.674 And so their first reaction was, well, you know, this person, this colleague we'we been working with all year is... 00:08:42.674 --> 00:08:46.694 was 13 years old while we were working with him, and he's only 14 now. 00:08:46.694 --> 00:08:51.335 And their second reaction was: Christ, we really want to meet him, you know. That's extraordinary! 00:08:51.335 --> 00:08:53.785 He was part of the committee that drafted RSS. 00:08:53.785 --> 00:08:59.151 What he was doing was to help build the plumming for modern hypertext. 00:08:59.151 --> 00:09:06.056 The piece that he was working on, RSS, was a tool that you can use to get summaries 00:09:06.056 --> 00:09:08.675 of things that are going on on other web pages. 00:09:08.675 --> 00:09:13.295 Most commonly, you would use this for a blog. You might have 10 or 20 people's blogs you wanna read. 00:09:13.359 --> 00:09:18.329 You use their RSS feeds, these summaries of what's going on on those other pages 00:09:18.378 --> 00:09:22.609 to create a unified list of all the stuff that's going on. 00:09:22.609 --> 00:09:27.778 Aaron was really young, but he understood the technology and he saw that it was imperfect 00:09:27.778 --> 00:09:30.418 and looked for ways to help make it better. 00:09:35.645 --> 00:09:39.965 So his mom started bundling him on planes in Chicago, we'd pick him up in San Francicso. 00:09:39.965 --> 00:09:45.363 We'd introduce him to interesting people to argue with, and we'd marvle at his horriffic eating habits. 00:09:45.363 --> 00:09:51.072 He only ate white food, only like steamed rice and not fried rice 'cause that wasn't sufficiently white 00:09:51.072 --> 00:09:53.700 and white bread, and so on... 00:09:53.700 --> 00:09:59.250 And you kind of marvled at the quality of the debate emerging from this, 00:09:59.263 --> 00:10:01.744 what appeared to be a small boy's mouth. 00:10:01.744 --> 00:10:05.063 And you'd think, this is a kid that's really going to get somewhere if he doesn't die of scurvy. 00:10:05.063 --> 00:10:06.693 Aaron, you're up! 00:10:06.693 --> 00:10:10.002 I think the difference is that now you can't make companies like dotcoms. 00:10:10.002 --> 00:10:15.720 You can't have companies that just sell dog food over the Internet, or sell dog food over cell phones. 00:10:15.720 --> 00:10:18.186 But there's still a lot of innovation going on. 00:10:18.186 --> 00:10:21.425 Think that maybe if you don't see the innovation, maybe your head is in the sand! 00:10:21.425 --> 00:10:24.696 He takes on this, like an alpha nerd personality, where he's 00:10:24.696 --> 00:10:28.612 sort of like: "I'm smarter than you, and because I'm smarter than you I'm better than you, 00:10:28.612 --> 00:10:30.884 and I can tell you what to do". 00:10:30.884 --> 00:10:35.202 It's an extension of, like, him being kind of like a twerp. 00:10:35.310 --> 00:10:39.010 So you aggregate all these computers together and now they're solving big problems 00:10:39.010 --> 00:10:42.040 like searching for aliens and trying to cure cancer. 00:10:45.110 --> 00:10:48.470 I first met him on IRC, or Internet Relay Chat. 00:10:48.470 --> 00:10:53.490 He didn't just write code, he also got people excited about solving problems he got. 00:10:53.490 --> 00:10:55.617 He was a connector. 00:10:55.617 --> 00:10:58.417 The free culture movement, he had a lot of this energy. 00:10:58.751 --> 00:11:03.872 I think Aaron was trying to make the world work. He was trying to fix it. 00:11:03.872 --> 00:11:08.640 He had a very kind of strong personality, that definitely ruffled feathers at times. 00:11:08.640 --> 00:11:13.395 It wasn't necesarily the case that he was always comfortable in the world 00:11:13.395 --> 00:11:16.265 and the world wasn't always comfortable with him. 00:11:18.994 --> 00:11:22.994 Aaron got into high school and he was really just sick of school. 00:11:22.999 --> 00:11:27.939 He didn't like it, he didn't like any of the classes that were being thaught, he didn't like the teachers. 00:11:27.939 --> 00:11:30.496 Aaron really knew how to get information. 00:11:30.496 --> 00:11:34.819 He was like: "I don't need to go to this teacher to learn how to do geometry. 00:11:34.819 --> 00:11:37.012 I can just read the geometry book. 00:11:37.032 --> 00:11:41.178 And I don't need to go to this teacher to learn their version of American history, 00:11:41.178 --> 00:11:45.400 like I have like three historical compilations here, I could just read them. 00:11:45.400 --> 00:11:49.091 And I'm not interested in that, I'm interested in the web". 00:11:49.091 --> 00:11:53.368 I was very frustrated with school, I thought the teachers didn't know what they were talking about. 00:11:53.368 --> 00:11:57.021 They were domineering and controlling, the homework was kind of a shame 00:11:57.021 --> 00:12:01.103 and it was all just like all about a way to pen students all together and force them to do busy work. 00:12:01.103 --> 00:12:05.305 And, you know, I started reading books about the history of education 00:12:05.305 --> 00:12:07.847 and how this educational system was developed. 00:12:07.847 --> 00:12:11.221 Then, you know, alternatives to it and ways that people could actually learn things 00:12:11.221 --> 00:12:15.021 as opposed to just regurgitating facts that teachers told them. 00:12:15.240 --> 00:12:19.428 And that kind of led me down this path of questioning things, once I questioned the school I was in, 00:12:19.428 --> 00:12:24.361 I questioned the society that built the school, I questioned the businesses that the schools were training people for, 00:12:24.361 --> 00:12:28.089 I questioned the government that set up this whole structure. 00:12:28.089 --> 00:12:32.022 One of the thing he was most passionate about was copyright, especially in those early days. 00:12:32.192 --> 00:12:37.600 Copyright has always been something kind of a burden on the publishing industry and on readers, 00:12:38.120 --> 00:12:43.460 but it wasn't an eccessive burden, it was a reasonable institution to have in place, 00:12:44.477 --> 00:12:46.913 to make sure that people got paid. 00:12:47.045 --> 00:12:53.083 What Aaron's generation experienced was the collision between this antique copyright system 00:12:53.083 --> 00:12:57.120 and this amazing new thing we were trying to build, the Internet and the Web. 00:12:57.120 --> 00:13:00.260 These things collided, and what we got was chaos. 00:13:02.454 --> 00:13:06.061 He then met Harvard's Law professor Lawrence Lessig, 00:13:06.061 --> 00:13:09.328 who was then challenging copyright law in the Supreme Court. 00:13:09.328 --> 00:13:13.269 The young Aaron Swartz flew to Washington to listen to the Supreme Court hearings. 00:13:13.279 --> 00:13:17.759 I am Aaron Swartz and I'm here to listen to the LD, to see the LD document. 00:13:17.894 --> 00:13:23.144 Why did you fly out here from Chicago and come all this way to see the LD argument? 00:13:23.493 --> 00:13:25.743 That's a more difficult question... 00:13:29.231 --> 00:13:33.974 I don't know. It's very exciting to see the Supreme Court, 00:13:33.974 --> 00:13:36.704 especially in such a prestigious case as this one. 00:13:42.669 --> 00:13:47.039 Lessig was also moving forward with a new way to define copyright on the Internet. 00:13:47.039 --> 00:13:49.356 It was called Creative Commons. 00:13:49.356 --> 00:13:53.560 So the simple idea of Creative Commons is to give people, creators, 00:13:53.560 --> 00:13:58.694 a simple way to mark their creativity with the freedoms they intended to carry. 00:13:58.694 --> 00:14:04.583 So if copyright is all about "All rights reserved", then this is a kind of a "Some rights reserved" model. 00:14:04.583 --> 00:14:08.789 I want a simple way to say to you: here is what you can do with my work, 00:14:08.979 --> 00:14:13.715 even if there are other things which you need to get my permission before you could do. 00:14:13.715 --> 00:14:16.501 And Aaron's role was the computer part. 00:14:16.501 --> 00:14:20.802 Like how do you architect the licenses so they'll be simple and understandable 00:14:20.802 --> 00:14:24.127 and expressed in a way so that machines can process it. 00:14:24.207 --> 00:14:29.994 And people were like: why do you have this 15 years old kid writing the specifications for Creative Commons? 00:14:29.994 --> 00:14:32.159 Don't you think that's a huge mistake? 00:14:32.159 --> 00:14:35.679 And they're like: the biggest mistake we would have is not listening to this kid. 00:14:36.031 --> 00:14:39.668 He barely is not even tall enough to even get over the podium. 00:14:39.711 --> 00:14:43.100 And it was this movable podium so it was this embarrassing thing, 00:14:43.102 --> 00:14:45.968 where once he put his screen up nobody could see his face. 00:14:46.874 --> 00:14:51.257 When you come to our website here, and you go to "Choose license", 00:14:51.257 --> 00:14:56.957 it gives you this list of options, it explains what it means, and you got three simple questions: 00:14:57.740 --> 00:15:00.055 "Do you want to require attribution?" 00:15:00.225 --> 00:15:03.287 "Do you want to allow commercial uses of your work?" 00:15:03.507 --> 00:15:06.413 "Do you want to allow modifications of your work?" 00:15:06.413 --> 00:15:12.246 I was floored, just completely flabbergasted that these adults regarded him as an adult. 00:15:12.246 --> 00:15:16.428 And Aaron stood up there in fromt of a whole audience full of people and just started talking 00:15:16.428 --> 00:15:20.421 about the platform that he'd created for Creative Commons. 00:15:20.421 --> 00:15:23.372 And they were all listening to him. Just... 00:15:23.372 --> 00:15:28.742 I was sitting at the back, thinking: he's just a kid, why are they listening to him? 00:15:28.892 --> 00:15:29.978 But they did... 00:15:30.168 --> 00:15:32.784 Well, I don't think I comprehended it fully. 00:15:32.784 --> 00:15:37.171 Though critics have said it does little to ensure artists get paid for their work, 00:15:37.216 --> 00:15:40.572 the success of Creative Commons has been enormous. 00:15:40.572 --> 00:15:46.776 Currently on the website Flickr alone, over 200 million people use some form of Creative Commons license. 00:15:46.992 --> 00:15:56.638 He contributed through his technical abilities, and yet it was not simply a technical matter to him. 00:15:57.651 --> 00:16:00.551 Aaron often wrote candidly in his personal blog: 00:16:01.101 --> 00:16:05.812 I think deeply about things, and I want others to do likewise. 00:16:06.722 --> 00:16:11.049 I work for ideas and learn from people. I don't like excluding people. 00:16:11.429 --> 00:16:15.556 I'm a perfectionist, but I won't let that get in the way of publication. 00:16:15.636 --> 00:16:19.661 Except for education and entertainment, I'm not going to waste my time 00:16:19.661 --> 00:16:21.654 on things that won't have an impact. 00:16:21.654 --> 00:16:26.161 I try to be friends with everyone, but I hate it when you don't take me seriously. 00:16:26.161 --> 00:16:32.086 I don't hold grudges, it's not productive, but I learn from my experience. 00:16:32.086 --> 00:16:35.396 I want to make the world a better place. 00:16:41.102 --> 00:16:46.475 In 2004 Swartz leaves Highland Park and enrolls in Stanford University. 00:16:46.475 --> 00:16:51.848 He'd had all enterocolitis, which was very troubling and we were concerned about him taking his medication. 00:16:51.848 --> 00:16:55.863 He got hospitalized and he would take this cocktail of pills every day. 00:16:56.753 --> 00:17:01.093 And one of these pills was a steroid which daunted his growth, 00:17:01.093 --> 00:17:04.782 and made him feel different from any of the other students. 00:17:04.782 --> 00:17:07.828 Aaron, I think, shows up at Stanford ready to do scholarship 00:17:07.828 --> 00:17:12.801 and finds himself in effectively a baby-sitting program for overachieving high-schoolers 00:17:12.801 --> 00:17:20.828 who in four years are meant to become captains of industry and 1%'ers 00:17:20.828 --> 00:17:25.578 and I think it just made him bananas. 00:17:26.077 --> 00:17:29.197 In 2005, after only one year of college, 00:17:29.197 --> 00:17:35.874 Schwartz was offered a spot at a new start-up incubation firm called Y Combinator, lead by Paul Graham. 00:17:36.431 --> 00:17:39.777 He's like: hey, I have this idea for a a website! 00:17:39.851 --> 00:17:43.170 And Paul Graham likes him enough, and says: yeah, sure! 00:17:43.170 --> 00:17:46.650 Suddenly he drops out of school, moves to this appartment... 00:17:46.668 --> 00:17:49.604 So this used to be Aaron's appartment when he moved here. 00:17:49.604 --> 00:17:55.397 I have vague memories of my father telling me how difficult it was to get a lease 00:17:55.397 --> 00:17:58.737 'cause Aaron had no credit and he dropped out of college. 00:17:58.742 --> 00:18:04.989 Aaron lived in what's now the living-room and some of the posters are leftovers from when Aaron lived here. 00:18:04.989 --> 00:18:09.889 And the library... there are more books, but a lot of them are Aaron's. 00:18:11.551 --> 00:18:17.511 Aaron's Y Combinator site was called infogami, a tool to build websites. 00:18:17.511 --> 00:18:21.098 But infogami struggles to find users, and Swartz eventually 00:18:21.098 --> 00:18:25.037 merges his company with another Y Combinator project in need of help. 00:18:25.037 --> 00:18:29.919 It was a project headed by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, called reddit. 00:18:29.919 --> 00:18:33.988 That we were, starting from almost nothing. No users, no money, no code, 00:18:33.988 --> 00:18:37.657 and growing day by day into a hugely popular website. 00:18:37.657 --> 00:18:39.846 And it showed no signs of letting up, 00:18:39.846 --> 00:18:44.373 first we had 1000 users, then 10000, then 20000 and on, and on... It was just incredible... 00:18:44.373 --> 00:18:49.563 reddit becomes huge and it's a real sort of geeky corner of the Internet. 00:18:52.642 --> 00:19:01.220 There's a lot of humor, there's a lot of art, and there's just people who flocked to the site 00:19:01.220 --> 00:19:07.883 and made that site the main site they go to every morning to get their news. 00:19:07.883 --> 00:19:12.008 reddit kind of just borders on chaos at some levels, 00:19:12.008 --> 00:19:19.368 so on the one hand it's a place where people discuss news of the day, technology, politics and issues, 00:19:19.368 --> 00:19:24.824 and yet there is a lot of kind of Not Safe For Work material, offensive material, 00:19:24.824 --> 00:19:29.716 there are some sub-reddits where trolls find a welcome home 00:19:29.716 --> 00:19:33.929 and so, in that sense reddit has been kind of home to controversy as well. 00:19:33.929 --> 00:19:36.791 It kind of sits on that edge of chaos. 00:19:36.791 --> 00:19:41.081 reddit catches the attention of the corporate magazine giant Condé Nast, 00:19:41.081 --> 00:19:42.938 who makes an offer to buy the company. 00:19:42.938 --> 00:19:46.939 Some large amount of money, large enough that my dad was getting bugged with questions 00:19:46.939 --> 00:19:51.079 about like: "How do I store this money?" 00:19:51.302 --> 00:19:54.272 - Like a lot of money... - Like a lot of money. 00:19:54.272 --> 00:20:00.319 Like probably more than a million dollars, but I don't actually know. 00:20:00.319 --> 00:20:03.461 - And he's how old at the time? - 19 - 20... 00:20:05.165 --> 00:20:11.205 So it was in this apartment, they sat around on what predated these couches 00:20:11.205 --> 00:20:14.675 hacking on reddit, and when they sold reddit 00:20:14.757 --> 00:20:18.641 they threw a giant party, and then all flew out to California the next day 00:20:18.641 --> 00:20:21.885 and left the keys with me. 00:20:24.261 --> 00:20:27.480 It was funny, you know, he'd just sold his start up so we all presumed 00:20:27.480 --> 00:20:29.329 he was the richest person around 00:20:29.329 --> 00:20:33.920 but he said "Oh no, I'll take this tiny little shoe-box sized room, that's all I need." 00:20:33.920 --> 00:20:36.146 It was barely larger than a closet. 00:20:36.146 --> 00:20:42.499 The idea of him spending his money on fancy objects just seemed implausible. 00:20:42.580 --> 00:20:47.590 He explains it as "I like living in apartments so I'm not going to spend money ona new place to live, I'm not going to buy a mansion. 00:20:47.750 --> 00:20:49.888 And I like wearing jeans and a t-shirt, 00:20:50.016 --> 00:20:52.046 so I'm not going to spend any more money on clothes. 00:20:52.046 --> 00:20:54.576 So it's really no big deal." 00:20:54.576 --> 00:20:57.966 What is a big deal to Swartz is how traffic flows on the internet. 00:20:58.140 --> 00:21:00.680 And what commands our attention. 00:21:00.844 --> 00:21:04.252 In the old system of broadcasting, you're fundamentally limited by the amount of 00:21:04.252 --> 00:21:08.583 space in the airwaves. You can only send out ten channels over the airwaves, TV. 00:21:08.583 --> 00:21:10.915 Or even with cable, you had 500 channels. 00:21:11.003 --> 00:21:15.593 On the Internet, everybody can have a channel. Everyone can get a blog, or a Myspace page. 00:21:15.690 --> 00:21:18.274 Everyone has a way of expressing themselves. 00:21:18.274 --> 00:21:21.280 What you see now isn't a question of who gets access to the airwaves, 00:21:21.280 --> 00:21:25.100 it's a question of who gets control over the ways you find people. 00:21:25.120 --> 00:21:29.286 You know, you start seeing power centralizing in sites like Google, they are sort of gate-keepers that tell you 00:21:29.286 --> 00:21:30.993 where on the internet you want to go. 00:21:30.993 --> 00:21:34.273 The people who provide you your sources of news and information. 00:21:34.273 --> 00:21:38.314 So it's not only certain people have a license to speak, now everyone has 00:21:38.314 --> 00:21:40.904 a license to speak. It's a question of who gets heard. 00:21:45.196 --> 00:21:49.806 After he started working in San Francisco at Condé Nast he comes into the office 00:21:49.806 --> 00:21:53.792 And they want to give him a computer with all this crap installed on it. 00:21:53.792 --> 00:21:57.273 And say he can't install any new things on his computer. 00:21:57.273 --> 00:21:59.375 Which to developers is outrageous. 00:21:59.375 --> 00:22:02.095 From the first day he was complaining about all the stuff. 00:22:05.317 --> 00:22:11.147 "Gray walls, gray desks, gray noise. The first day I showed up here I simply couldn't take it. 00:22:11.147 --> 00:22:15.483 By lunchtime I had literally locked myself in a bathroom stall and started crying. 00:22:15.483 --> 00:22:18.285 I can't imagine staying sane with someone buzzing in my ear all day 00:22:18.285 --> 00:22:21.575 Let alone getting any actual work done. 00:22:21.575 --> 00:22:24.087 Nobody else seems to get work done here either 00:22:24.087 --> 00:22:27.587 Everybody's always coming into our room to hang out and chat, or invite us to play 00:22:27.587 --> 00:22:29.927 the new video game system that Wired is testing." 00:22:32.972 --> 00:22:37.867 He really had different aspirations that were politically oriented. 00:22:37.987 --> 00:22:41.862 And Silicon Valley just doesn't really quite have that culture 00:22:41.862 --> 00:22:46.967 that orients technical activity for the purposes of political goals. 00:22:47.237 --> 00:22:49.613 Aaron hated working for a corporation. 00:22:49.613 --> 00:22:53.673 They all hate working for Condé Nast, but Aaron is the only one who is not going to take it. 00:22:53.694 --> 00:22:55.884 And Aaron basically gets himself fired. 00:22:55.903 --> 00:22:58.313 By not showing up to work, ever. 00:23:01.183 --> 00:23:05.434 It was set to be a messy break-up. Both Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman 00:23:05.447 --> 00:23:08.277 declined to be interviewed for this film. 00:23:09.251 --> 00:23:15.891 He rejected the business world. One of the really important things to remember about 00:23:15.891 --> 00:23:22.664 that choice when Aaron decided to leave start-up culture is that he was also leaving behind 00:23:22.664 --> 00:23:31.334 the things that had made him famous and well-loved. He was at risk of letting down fans. 00:23:31.422 --> 00:23:35.866 He got to where he was supposed to be going, and had the self-awareness 00:23:35.866 --> 00:23:43.051 and the orneriness to realize that he had climbed the mountain of shit to pluck 00:23:43.051 --> 00:23:45.849 the single rose and discovered that he'd lost his sense of smell. 00:23:45.849 --> 00:23:50.399 And rather than sit there and insist that it wasn't as bad as it seemed, 00:23:50.399 --> 00:23:53.693 and he did get the rose in any event. 00:23:53.693 --> 00:23:57.413 He climbed back down again. Which is pretty cool. 00:23:58.026 --> 00:24:01.728 The way Aaron always saw it is that programming is magic. 00:24:01.728 --> 00:24:07.110 You can accomplish these things that normal humans can't, by being able to program. 00:24:07.110 --> 00:24:13.310 So if you had magical powers, would you use them for good, or to make you mountains of cash? 00:24:15.009 --> 00:24:18.478 Swartz was inspired by one of the visionaries he had met as a child. 00:24:18.478 --> 00:24:22.387 The man who had invented the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee. 00:24:22.387 --> 00:24:25.938 In the 1990s, Berners-Lee was arguably sitting on 00:24:25.938 --> 00:24:29.260 one of the most lucrative inventions of the 20th century. 00:24:29.260 --> 00:24:35.137 But instead of profiting from the invention of the World Wide Web, he gave it away for free. 00:24:36.067 --> 00:24:39.707 It is the only reason the World Wide Web exists today. 00:24:41.118 --> 00:24:45.261 Aaron is certainly deeply influenced by Tim. 00:24:45.261 --> 00:24:50.928 Tim is certainly a very prominent early Internet genius, who doesn't in any sense cash out. 00:24:50.928 --> 00:24:55.865 He's not at all interested in how he's going to figure out how to make a billion dollars. 00:24:55.865 --> 00:24:57.829 People were saying, ah there's money to be made there, 00:24:57.829 --> 00:25:00.636 so there would have been lots of little webs. 00:25:00.636 --> 00:25:02.139 Instead of one big one. 00:25:02.139 --> 00:25:05.030 And one little web, all sorts of webs doesn't work, 00:25:05.030 --> 00:25:08.080 because you can't follow links from one to the other. 00:25:10.173 --> 00:25:14.112 You had to have the critical masses, the thing was the entire planet, 00:25:14.112 --> 00:25:17.172 so it's not going to work unless the whole planet can get on board. 00:25:24.141 --> 00:25:28.372 I feel very strongly that it's not enough to just live in the world as it is, 00:25:28.702 --> 00:25:34.732 it's just kind of take what you're given, and you know follow the things that adults told you to do, 00:25:34.732 --> 00:25:39.032 and that your parents told you to do, and that society tells you to do. I think you should always be questioning. 00:25:39.045 --> 00:25:43.145 I take this very scientific attitude, that everything you've learned is just provisional, 00:25:43.405 --> 00:25:49.267 You know, it's always open to recantation or refutation or questioning. And I think the same applies to society. 00:25:49.267 --> 00:25:53.491 Once I realized that there were real serious problems, fundamental problems 00:25:53.491 --> 00:25:58.601 that I could do something to address, I didn't see a way to forget that, I didn't see a way not to. 00:26:02.600 --> 00:26:04.831 We just started spending a lot of time, 00:26:04.831 --> 00:26:06.621 just kind of as friends. 00:26:08.912 --> 00:26:11.884 We would just talk for hours, into the night. 00:26:14.393 --> 00:26:18.110 I definitely should have understood that he was flirting with me. I think to some degree 00:26:18.110 --> 00:26:23.980 I was like, this is a terrible idea, and impossible, and therefore I will pretend it is not happening. 00:26:25.161 --> 00:26:28.937 As my marriage was breaking down and I was really stuck without anywhere to go, 00:26:28.937 --> 00:26:32.927 We became roommates. And I brought my daughter over. 00:26:34.081 --> 00:26:37.246 We moved in and furnished the house, and it was really peaceful. 00:26:37.246 --> 00:26:40.816 My life had not been peaceful for a while, and really neither had his. 00:26:46.225 --> 00:26:54.073 We were extremely close from the beginning of our romantic relationship. 00:26:54.073 --> 00:26:57.633 We just... we were in constant contact. 00:26:57.633 --> 00:27:02.432 But we're both really difficult people to deal with. 00:27:04.495 --> 00:27:10.865 In a very Ally McBeal discussion he confessed he had a theme song, and I made him play it for me. 00:27:12.345 --> 00:27:16.504 It was Extraordinary Machine, by Fiona Apple. 00:27:16.504 --> 00:27:24.154 I think it was just that sense of being a little bit embattled that the song has. 00:27:25.054 --> 00:27:27.697 And it also had this hopefulness to it. 00:27:27.837 --> 00:27:34.418 ♪ By foot it's a slow climb. But I'm good at being uncomfortable so I can't stop... 00:27:34.418 --> 00:27:36.689 changing all the time ♪ 00:27:36.689 --> 00:27:44.481 In many ways, Aaron was tremendously optimistic about life. Even when he didn't feel it, 00:27:44.481 --> 00:27:47.041 he could be tremendously optimistic about life. 00:27:47.041 --> 00:27:49.561 ♪ Extraordinary machine ♪ 00:27:53.237 --> 00:27:58.317 - What are you doing? (Quinn) - Flicker has video now. 00:27:59.730 --> 00:28:01.743 Swartz threw his energy into a string of new 00:28:01.743 --> 00:28:04.731 projects involving access to public information. 00:28:04.731 --> 00:28:08.189 Including an accountability webside called Watchdog.net 00:28:08.189 --> 00:28:10.799 And a project called The Open Library. 00:28:10.986 --> 00:28:15.299 So the open library project is a website you can visit at openlibrary.org 00:28:15.299 --> 00:28:19.778 And the idea is to be a huge wiki, an editable website with one page per book. 00:28:19.778 --> 00:28:23.910 So for every book ever published we want to have a web page about it that combines 00:28:23.910 --> 00:28:29.551 all the information from publishers, from booksellers, from libraries, from readers 00:28:29.551 --> 00:28:34.587 onto one site. And then gives you links where you can buy it, borrow it, or browse it. 00:28:34.587 --> 00:28:39.958 I love libraries. I'm the kind of person who goes to a new city and immediately seeks out the library 00:28:39.958 --> 00:28:44.050 That's the dream of Open Library, is building this website where both you can leap 00:28:44.050 --> 00:28:49.297 from book to book, from person to author, from subject to idea. Go through this vast tree 00:28:49.297 --> 00:28:54.127 of knowledge that's been embedded and lost in big physical libraries. That's hard to find, 00:28:54.177 --> 00:28:59.086 it's not very well accessible online. It's really important because books are our cultural legacy. 00:28:59.086 --> 00:29:01.283 Books are the place people go to write things down. 00:29:01.283 --> 00:29:05.813 And to have all that swallowed up by one corporation is kind of scary. 00:29:06.730 --> 00:29:10.771 How can you bring public access to the public domain? 00:29:10.771 --> 00:29:14.828 It may sound obvious that you'd have public access to the public domain, 00:29:14.828 --> 00:29:21.368 but in fact it's not true. So the public domain should be free to all. But it's often locked up. 00:29:21.378 --> 00:29:26.756 There's often guard cages. It's like having a national park but with a moat around it, 00:29:26.756 --> 00:29:33.245 and gun turrets pointed out, in case somebody may want to come and enjoy the public domain. 00:29:33.245 --> 00:29:39.458 One of the things Aaron was particularly interested in was bringing public access to the public domain. 00:29:39.458 --> 00:29:43.258 This is one of the things that got him into so much trouble. 00:29:46.254 --> 00:29:52.794 I had been trying to get access to federal court records in the United States. 00:29:54.458 --> 00:29:59.108 What I discovered was a puzzling system, called Pacer. 00:29:59.518 --> 00:30:03.124 Which stands for Public Access to Court Electronic Records. 00:30:03.124 --> 00:30:07.314 I started Googling, and that's when I ran across Carl Malamud. 00:30:08.886 --> 00:30:14.997 Access to legal materials in the U.S. is a $10 billion per year business. 00:30:14.997 --> 00:30:23.004 Pacer is just this incredible abomination of government services. It's 10 cents a page, 00:30:23.004 --> 00:30:27.471 it's this most braindead code you've ever seen. You can't search it, you can't bookmark anything. 00:30:27.471 --> 00:30:31.891 You've got to have a credit card, and these are public records. 00:30:31.891 --> 00:30:37.429 U.S. district courts are very important, it's where a lot of our seminal litigation starts. 00:30:37.429 --> 00:30:44.369 Civil rights cases, patent cases, all sorts of stuff. Journalists, students, citizens and lawyers 00:30:44.369 --> 00:30:48.637 all need access to Pacer and it fights them every step of the way. 00:30:48.637 --> 00:30:55.246 People without means can't see the law as readily as people that have that gold American Express card. 00:30:55.246 --> 00:30:57.776 It's a poll tax on access to justice. 00:30:57.946 --> 00:31:04.096 You know the law is the operating system of our democracy and you have to pay to see it? 00:31:04.246 --> 00:31:07.135 You know, that's not much of a democracy. 00:31:07.135 --> 00:31:11.869 They make about 120 million dollars a year on the Pacer system 00:31:11.869 --> 00:31:18.236 and it doesn't cost anything near that, according to their own records. In fact, it's illegal. 00:31:18.937 --> 00:31:25.834 The E-government Act of 2002 states that the courts may charge only to the extent necessary, 00:31:25.834 --> 00:31:29.591 in order to reimburse the costs of running Pacer. 00:31:34.621 --> 00:31:40.160 As the founder of Public.Resource.Org, Malamud wanted to protest the Pacer charges. 00:31:40.160 --> 00:31:43.300 He started a program called the Pacer Recycling Project, 00:31:43.300 --> 00:31:47.297 where people could upload Pacer documents they had already paid for 00:31:47.297 --> 00:31:50.334 to a free database so others could use them. 00:31:50.334 --> 00:31:55.331 The Pacer people were getting a lot of flack from Congress and others about public access, 00:31:55.336 --> 00:32:00.925 and so they put togheter a system in 17 libraries across the country that was free Pacer access. 00:32:01.885 --> 00:32:07.625 You know, that's one library every 22,000 square miles, I believe, so it wasn't like pretty convenient. 00:32:08.095 --> 00:32:12.173 I encouraged volunteers to join the so-called Thumb Drive Court, 00:32:12.173 --> 00:32:17.157 and download docs from the public access libraries, upload them to the Pacer recycling site. 00:32:17.157 --> 00:32:20.813 People take a thumb drive to one of these libraries and they downloaded a bunch of documents 00:32:20.813 --> 00:32:25.089 and they sent it to me... I mean, it was just a joke. 00:32:25.089 --> 00:32:28.636 In fact, when you clicked on Thumb Drive Court, there was a Wizard of Oz [movie clip], 00:32:28.636 --> 00:32:32.111 you know, the Munchkin singing, so a videoclip came up: 00:32:32.173 --> 00:32:35.034 ♪ We represent the lollipop guild. ♪ 00:32:35.260 --> 00:32:39.386 But of course I get this phone calls from Steve Shultz and Aaron, saying: 00:32:39.621 --> 00:32:43.047 Gee, we'd like to join the Thumb Drive Court. 00:32:43.377 --> 00:32:47.544 Around that time I ran into Aaron at a conference. 00:32:47.544 --> 00:32:51.633 This is something that really has to be a collaboration between a lot of different people. 00:32:51.633 --> 00:32:53.347 So I approached him and I said: 00:32:53.347 --> 00:32:58.195 Hey, I am thinking about an intervention on the Pacer problem. 00:32:59.865 --> 00:33:04.442 Schultz had already developed a program that could automatically download Pacer documents 00:33:04.442 --> 00:33:06.459 from the trial libraries. 00:33:06.459 --> 00:33:08.796 Swartz wanted to take a look. 00:33:08.796 --> 00:33:13.481 So, I showed him the code and I didn't know what would come next, 00:33:13.481 --> 00:33:19.033 but as it turns out, over the course of the next few hours at that conference, 00:33:19.033 --> 00:33:24.588 he was off sitting in a corner, improving my code, recruiting a friend of his 00:33:24.588 --> 00:33:32.139 that lived near one of these libraries to go into the library and to begin to test his improved code, 00:33:32.139 --> 00:33:38.440 at which point the folks at the courts realized something is not going quite according to plan. 00:33:38.440 --> 00:33:42.901 And data started to come in, and come in, and come in 00:33:42.901 --> 00:33:47.632 and soon there was 760 GB of Pacer docs, about 20 million pages. 00:33:48.862 --> 00:33:52.098 Using information retrieved from the trial libraries, 00:33:52.098 --> 00:33:57.304 Swartz was conducting massive automated parallel downloading of the Pacer system. 00:33:57.304 --> 00:34:04.360 He was able to acquire nearly 2.7 million Federal Court documents, almost 20 million pages of text. 00:34:04.360 --> 00:34:09.865 Now I'll grant you that 20 million pages had perhaps exceed the expectations of the people 00:34:09.865 --> 00:34:14.535 running the pilot access project, but surprising a bureaucrat isn't illegal. 00:34:14.830 --> 00:34:19.096 Aaron and Carl decided to go talk to The New York Times about what happened. 00:34:19.731 --> 00:34:26.500 They also caught the attention of the FBI, who began to stake out Swartz parents house in Illinois. 00:34:26.639 --> 00:34:31.053 And I get a tweet from his mother, saying: "Call me!!" 00:34:31.053 --> 00:34:34.127 So, I think, like, what the hell's going on here? 00:34:34.127 --> 00:34:38.981 And so, finally I get a hold of Aaron and, you know, Aaron's mother was like: "Oh my God, FBI, FBI, FBI!" 00:34:40.271 --> 00:34:45.831 An FBI agent drives down our home's driveway, trying to see if Aaron is, like, in his room. 00:34:47.164 --> 00:34:51.899 I remember being home that day, and wondering why this car was driving down our driveway, 00:34:51.899 --> 00:34:55.110 and just driving back up. That's weird! 00:34:56.719 --> 00:35:04.953 Like, five years later I read this FBI file, like, oh my goodness: that was the FBI agent, in my driveway. 00:35:05.185 --> 00:35:09.009 He was terrified. He was totally terrified. 00:35:09.959 --> 00:35:14.920 He was way more terrified after the FBI actually called him up on the phone, 00:35:15.280 --> 00:35:19.302 and tried to sucker him into coming down to a coffee shop without a lawyer. 00:35:19.322 --> 00:35:23.664 He said, he went home and lay down on the bed and, you know, was shaking. 00:35:25.511 --> 00:35:30.006 The downloading also uncovered massive privacy violations in the court documents. 00:35:30.242 --> 00:35:34.922 Ultimately, the courts were forced to change their policies as a result. 00:35:34.922 --> 00:35:42.530 And the FBI closed their investigation without bringing charges. 00:35:42.530 --> 00:35:47.602 To this day, I found it remarkable 00:35:47.602 --> 00:35:52.674 That anybody, even the most remote [lessing] on filed office of the FBI 00:35:52.674 --> 00:35:57.746 How can you call yourself a lawman 00:35:58.055 --> 00:36:02.055 And think that there could be possibly anything wrong in this all world 00:36:02.055 --> 00:36:03.815 with making the law public ? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Aaron was willing to put himself at risk for the causes that people left him 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Bothered by wealth disparity, Swartz moved beyond technology into a broad range of political causes 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I went into conference and I invited him to [lessing] hang out an intern for a while 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so that, he could learn, you know, the political processes 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He was sort of learning about new community and new [less] skill and kind of learning hack polity 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's [less] ridiculous 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that miner should have a [less] way into their whole bodies are dripping with sweat 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 facing with the knowledge that if they dare to stop, they wouldn't able to put food on their table that night 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Well, I got to make larger and larger amounts of money each day just by sitting and watching TV 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but apparently the world is ridiculous 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, I co-founded a group called "The Progressive Change Campaign Community" 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And what we trying to do is we trying to organize people over the Internet who care about progressive polities 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and move into the country with more progressive direction 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 To kind of come together, join our e-mail list journal campaign 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and help us to get progressive candidates select all across the countries 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The group is responsible for uniting the [less] effort behind the campaign to elect Elizabeth Warren to the senate 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He might have thought of this dumb system but he came in and he said, "I need to learn the system" 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 cause you can be manipulated like any, you know, any social system 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but his passion for knowledge and libraries didn't take a back seat 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Arron began to take a closer look at the institution the published academic journal articles 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 My virtue of being a student that made of US university, I assume you have a wide variety of scholar [lessing]