0:00:07.549,0:00:14.092
[Brewster Kahle] Welcome. And welcome to the[br]celebration of the life and work of Aaron

0:00:14.092,0:00:22.199
Swartz, a man who was a spark for many of[br]us. I would like to thank the staff of the

0:00:22.199,0:00:29.081
Internet Archive, Lisa Ryan, the organizer,[br]Shannon Lee, Steve Walling, Karl Malamud and

0:00:29.081,0:00:34.081
Cindy Cohn for helping pull this together.

0:00:34.081,0:00:37.069
[applause]

0:00:37.069,0:00:46.309
[Brewster] As you probably know, there are[br]memorials going on all over the world. Hackathons

0:00:46.309,0:00:55.087
going on. There's an AaronSw IRC Chat for[br]those that are following the hackathons. And

0:00:55.087,0:01:05.032
these proceedings are in the public domain.[br]This isn't the type of event we imagined for

0:01:05.032,0:01:10.018
this space, but I can think of no better.

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To the organizer and coordinated for this[br]evening is Shannon Lee, and he will start

0:01:20.043,0:01:23.021
our program. Thank you very much.

0:01:23.021,0:01:32.063
[Shannon Lee] Thank you all for being here.[br]Aaron Swartz has left behind a challenging

0:01:32.063,0:01:38.021
legacy. Tonight, we're going to talk about[br]Aaron and what he left behind, and what we

0:01:38.021,0:01:43.045
can do to carry it forward. We're going to[br]have an array of speakers, beginning with

0:01:43.045,0:01:48.031
Danny O'Brien and ending with Karl Malamud,[br]and after that we'll have an opportunity to

0:01:48.031,0:01:56.032
share right here. I will see you at the end[br]of the speakers.

0:01:56.032,0:02:04.068
[Danny O'Brien] So I first met Aaron in 2001,[br]when Aaron was, I guess, 14, and was already

0:02:04.068,0:02:12.006
a leading light working with Tim Berners-Lee[br]on the project that we know as the Semantic

0:02:12.006,0:02:19.063
Web, an incredibly ambitious idea to encode,[br]in machine-readable form, all of the world's

0:02:19.063,0:02:19.086
knowledge.

0:02:19.086,0:02:26.028
And of course being a journalist at the time,[br]I seized on this opportunity to sneak an explanation

0:02:26.028,0:02:32.007
of the Semantic Web past my editor. It's almost[br]impossible to get any editor to understand

0:02:32.007,0:02:38.005
the Semantic Web. But the idea of a 14-year-old[br]boy helping Tim Berners-Lee will always pass

0:02:38.005,0:02:43.000
muster, even if they don't know who Tim Berners-Lee[br]is.

0:02:43.000,0:02:49.015
The editor, of course, is in charge of titling[br]the article, and with that supreme lack of

0:02:49.015,0:02:54.045
understand, he actually titled it, "A Teenager[br]in a Million," which of course was to miss

0:02:54.045,0:03:01.045
the point entirely. The point was that Aaron's[br]age wasn't a particularly unique thing and

0:03:01.045,0:03:04.009
Aaron himself wasn't the exceptional part[br]of this.

0:03:04.009,0:03:09.084
The exceptional part of this was an institution[br]that allowed someone like Aaron to walk in

0:03:09.084,0:03:15.077
through its door and, before anyone had noticed[br]where he came from or what age he was or what

0:03:15.077,0:03:20.088
his background was, they allowed him to start[br]contributing good work and learning from his

0:03:20.088,0:03:22.819
peers.

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An institution is not truly open until somebody[br]you could never even imagine exists walks

0:03:28.709,0:03:35.029
through the door. When Tim Berners-Lee describes[br]these moments at Aaron's funeral a week ago,

0:03:35.029,0:03:40.042
you could see, in a way that only Tim Berners-Lee[br]can convey, the sort of glee he had that at

0:03:40.042,0:03:45.209
last the system was working. These open mailing[br]lists, this open discussion, this exchange

0:03:45.209,0:03:50.068
of information was bringing new people into[br]building the web.

0:03:50.068,0:03:56.014
He told me then, "I was worried about revealing[br]my age and I did my best to keep it a secret.

0:03:56.014,0:04:03.065
Now, I let my words speak for themselves,"[br]and since then, so many words. Some written

0:04:03.065,0:04:10.819
in machine-readable form in Python, in computers.[br]Some written in brimstone and sulfur for Congress-readable

0:04:10.819,0:04:18.009
forms and all of it in plain text. All of[br]it in plain language for everyone to read.

0:04:18.009,0:04:23.009
And if he could not read enough words himself,[br]his programs read and scraped and passed the

0:04:23.009,0:04:29.065
rest. Aaron loved beautiful code. I think[br]the only time I really ever pained him was

0:04:29.065,0:04:34.379
when I'd said some program that he'd written[br]and I'd looked at was unreadable. It turned

0:04:34.379,0:04:40.349
out that it wasn't actually his code at all.[br]He'd written some code that had, in turn,

0:04:40.349,0:04:42.027
written that code.

0:04:42.027,0:04:43.789
[laughter]

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And yet I think it still hurt, that somehow[br]his own child had not inherited his own delicate

0:04:50.689,0:04:53.979
sensitivities.

0:04:53.979,0:04:57.083
Words fail me now, even though I have them[br]written down here. I mean, try as hard as

0:04:57.083,0:05:02.819
Aaron did, I don't think you could ever encode[br]all of his experience in words, and I don't

0:05:02.819,0:05:08.319
think that all of the relationships that he[br]built between so many different peers and

0:05:08.319,0:05:14.036
so many new people coming in could be ever[br]expressed in any number of RDF triplets.

0:05:14.036,0:05:20.096
I mean I can sort of try and convey the look[br]Aaron's face when he played with my daughter

0:05:20.096,0:05:25.539
Erin, nine. There were some pictures downstairs[br]that you may have saw him. But you can't really

0:05:25.539,0:05:30.033
convey that childish glee that most of us[br]lose long before we begin we begin work on

0:05:30.033,0:05:33.069
the semantic web at least.

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And I can't really describe to you the pain[br]and frustration when Aaron so effectively

0:05:39.699,0:05:46.569
demolished a defense I had of John Searle's[br]Chinese room argument, that I actually threw

0:05:46.569,0:05:52.379
down my knife and fork and stormed out of[br]my own Christmas dinner.

0:05:52.379,0:05:53.043
[laughter]

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Leaving, of course, the Turkey for Aaron to[br]fail to eat.

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[laughter]

0:06:00.889,0:06:05.979
There was always a sort of pleasure and ease[br]in forgiving Aaron for those sort of arguments.

0:06:05.979,0:06:12.369
And also, to watch him so easily forgive the[br]rest of us. And I don't think any archive

0:06:12.369,0:06:19.061
can hold those moments. But if I can share[br]with you some code, if I can't share with

0:06:19.061,0:06:26.379
you the code that made up Aaron, I can, I[br]hope, share with you the code that Aaron believed

0:06:26.379,0:06:28.909
could make more Aarons.

0:06:28.909,0:06:34.219
Aaron became Aaron because of his unfettered[br]access to information and the knowledge and

0:06:34.219,0:06:40.469
sharing of his peers. He was very lucky in[br]that respect. He had an incredibly loving

0:06:40.469,0:06:47.469
family who supported him who would pay for[br]him to fly out to meetings. He had a computer.

0:06:47.469,0:06:51.699
He had all the privileges and benefits that[br]being a young man in the United States of

0:06:51.699,0:06:55.559
America in the end of the 20th century have.

0:06:55.559,0:07:01.439
But he also had something new. He had a new[br]advantage, which was that the gates of the

0:07:01.439,0:07:06.569
construction of this technology that was beginning[br]to share information, was beginning to open

0:07:06.569,0:07:11.008
up, and he was one of the first, yes the youngest,[br]but one of the first to take advantage of

0:07:11.008,0:07:17.749
that and use his curiosity and his drive,[br]even at that age, to nip into there and beginning

0:07:17.749,0:07:20.479
sharing almost immediately with his peers.

0:07:20.479,0:07:25.849
And if anything bound together all of Aaron's[br]crusades, it was his belief that he was not

0:07:25.849,0:07:31.389
alone in this. That he was not exceptional,[br]and he believed he was not unique, and that

0:07:31.389,0:07:37.279
there were more than him out there with his[br]curiosity and talent.

0:07:37.279,0:07:45.559
People say, when we talked about Aaron's work[br]of taking the content of academic papers or

0:07:45.559,0:07:52.349
the content of the US legal system and opening[br]it up for anyone to use and see and crunch

0:07:52.349,0:07:57.003
and peruse. You know, who really is this for?

0:07:57.003,0:08:03.179
Who wants to know about the legal system,[br]can't in some way ask a friend or a contact

0:08:03.179,0:08:11.089
to get access to PACER? Who really has a craving[br]for academic knowledge can't find somebody

0:08:11.089,0:08:17.349
and sneak their way in to MIT or another institution[br]and just get that information, or work to

0:08:17.349,0:08:18.419
access it?

0:08:18.419,0:08:25.027
And those people forget, they forget that[br]if Aaron was a teenager in a million, that

0:08:25.027,0:08:30.809
soon, very soon, as we continue the great[br]work that we're indulged in here, that there

0:08:30.809,0:08:35.839
will be six billion people that we will connect[br]to the world information networks. And out

0:08:35.839,0:08:41.159
of those six billion people there will 1.2[br]billion teenagers.

0:08:41.159,0:08:47.081
And if my editors' statistics are correct-and[br]he never understood statistics either, then

0:08:47.081,0:08:53.075
there will be 1,200 Aarons out there, there[br]are 1,200 Aarons out there right now who are

0:08:53.075,0:08:59.149
as smart and engaged and as curious and as[br]driver as Aaron was. But they simply don't

0:08:59.149,0:09:05.023
have access to that information. There is[br]no closed archives, no carefully guarded Ivory

0:09:05.023,0:09:10.759
Tower, that can seat billions. But the open[br]society, the open and world wide web, the

0:09:10.759,0:09:14.949
free culture that Aaron worked for, is for[br]all of those people.

0:09:14.949,0:09:18.086
And if give them what they need, if we give[br]them the knowledge to feed their curiosity

0:09:18.086,0:09:26.031
and the care we must never forget they, that[br]amazing sort of resource of future Aarons

0:09:26.031,0:09:31.519
from Kabera, from Guangzhou or Asan. All of[br]those people will come, and they will build

0:09:31.519,0:09:34.000
the kind of things that Aaron was dreaming[br]of.

0:09:34.000,0:09:42.019
And so even though we've lost one Aaron, we[br]do have a potential, by continuing his work,

0:09:42.019,0:09:48.579
to find so many more. Aaron told me back in[br]2001 that one of the things that the web teaches

0:09:48.579,0:09:53.099
us is that everything is connected, hyperlinks,[br]and that we should all work together, standards.

0:09:53.099,0:09:58.779
Too often school teaches us that everything[br]is separate, and that we should all work alone.

0:09:58.779,0:10:05.024
I think one of the many, many tragedies of[br]the situation that we find ourselves in now

0:10:05.024,0:10:11.066
is that, at least in some moment of Aaron's[br]life, his belief that he was not alone failed

0:10:11.066,0:10:15.769
him, and for a few moments he believed himself[br]to be alone.

0:10:15.769,0:10:21.031
And I'm sure, out there, there are many, many[br]14-year-old children who feel the same way.

0:10:21.031,0:10:27.519
That they have that binding curiosity, that[br]fascination and that urge to change the world.

0:10:27.519,0:10:33.042
And that worry for a moment that it's just[br]them. And there are no tools and no capabilities

0:10:33.042,0:10:37.086
and no friends to help them continue in that[br]path.

0:10:37.086,0:10:41.048
I don't think it's ever too soon to begin[br]working with the rest of the world, and I

0:10:41.048,0:10:47.529
think we all need to stay together, and never,[br]ever again leave our friends too alone. A

0:10:47.529,0:11:02.009
boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts[br]of youth are long, long thoughts.

0:11:02.009,0:11:04.569
[applause]

0:11:04.569,0:11:07.129
[silence]

0:11:07.129,0:11:19.074
[Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman] The night before[br]Aaron died, he and I shared a grilled cheese

0:11:19.074,0:11:24.519
sandwich. This was one of his favorite foods.[br]As probably many of you know, there weren't

0:11:24.519,0:11:28.279
many of those favorite foods. It was a really[br]good grilled cheese sandwich. He was really

0:11:28.279,0:11:28.889
happy about it.

0:11:28.889,0:11:41.259
A week before he died, we woke up one morning,[br]and he said, "We really need to talk about

0:11:41.259,0:11:47.023
Bayesian statistics." I said, "Right now?[br]It's Sunday morning. It's like 7: 00 AM. Can

0:11:47.023,0:11:52.279
it wait?" He said, "No, it's really important."[br]We spent the next couple of hours working

0:11:52.279,0:11:58.439
through a naughty Bayesian statistics he'd[br]already asked the Internet with no useful

0:11:58.439,0:11:59.041
responses.

0:11:59.041,0:12:04.086
I have the notes. We ended up with a naughty[br]double integral that neither of us could solve,

0:12:04.086,0:12:14.093
but if anybody here wants to help me with[br]the solution, let me know.

0:12:14.093,0:12:21.089
He was really excited the last couple of months.[br]He was working on a drug policy research with

0:12:21.089,0:12:29.509
a friend of his, Matt Stoller, for GiveWell,[br]and he would read these articles, all the

0:12:29.509,0:12:33.017
academic literature, talk to the experts.

0:12:33.017,0:12:39.689
He got really into this one particular study[br]about an intervention that had been tried

0:12:39.689,0:12:48.022
in Hawaii for alcoholism. Control tests indicated[br]that it got 90 percent of alcoholics dry in

0:12:48.022,0:12:54.005
the first month, and he was so bubbling over[br]with excitement about all of it.

0:12:54.005,0:13:03.062
We went to Burlington, Vermont over New Years.[br]He got the flu, but he came out and played

0:13:03.062,0:13:08.018
Mafia one evening with the friends that we[br]rented a house with. I was really surprised,

0:13:08.018,0:13:13.022
because he didn't like playing games at all,[br]but Ada, Danny's daughter, was there with

0:13:13.022,0:13:20.074
us, and he really wanted to see what would[br]happen if Ada was the Mafia. [laughs] Unfortunately,

0:13:20.074,0:13:28.075
nobody selected Ada as the Mafia, which Ada[br]was really annoyed about. [laughs]

0:13:28.075,0:13:34.019
One of the things that I loved about Aaron[br]was the sheer number, and variety, and multitude

0:13:34.019,0:13:39.079
of wonderful, fascinating people who animated[br]his life. I had the great privilege of sharing

0:13:39.079,0:13:45.017
that life with him for the last 20 months,[br]but I know that I only met a small fraction

0:13:45.017,0:13:47.072
of the people whose lives he touched.

0:13:47.072,0:13:53.449
That's why I came out here today, because[br]I know that many of you were important to

0:13:53.449,0:14:01.149
him, and I wanted to meet you, and I want[br]you the stories like the stories I just told,

0:14:01.149,0:14:05.649
because I think it's really important that[br]his friends, his family, his colleagues, his

0:14:05.649,0:14:11.093
admirers know that he had a lot to live for,[br]and that he had a lot of happy moments in

0:14:11.093,0:14:16.749
those last few weeks and months.

0:14:16.749,0:14:26.069
I'm also here with another message. Aaron's[br]death should radicalize us. The trial and

0:14:26.069,0:14:30.079
the case hung over our entire relationship.[br]We started dating a few weeks before he was

0:14:30.079,0:14:40.089
indicted, a couple of months after he had[br]been arrested.

0:14:40.089,0:14:45.899
I met his parents for the first time at 12:[br]30 AM the night before the indictment, and

0:14:45.899,0:14:49.092
spent five hours with him in the courthouse[br]the next day. They didn't know I existed before

0:14:49.092,0:15:01.008
that, so that was an interesting first meeting.[br][laughs] He hadn't told me what was going

0:15:01.008,0:15:03.249
on when we first started dating.

0:15:03.249,0:15:06.949
All I knew was that there was something bad[br]happening in his life, and that I was a good

0:15:06.949,0:15:14.079
distraction from it. He called it the "bad[br]thing," and I had wild speculation about what

0:15:14.079,0:15:18.649
it might be. My leading candidate theory at[br]one point was that he was having an affair

0:15:18.649,0:15:23.399
with Elizabeth Warren and was going to ruin[br]her career.

0:15:23.399,0:15:26.037
[laughter]

0:15:26.037,0:15:31.006
He called me one night when I was at Frisbee[br]practice in DC, and he was in Boston. He said,

0:15:31.006,0:15:34.379
"The bad thing might be in the news tomorrow.[br]Do you want to hear what it is from me, or

0:15:34.379,0:15:38.329
do you want to read about it in the news?"[br]I said, "I want to hear from you."

0:15:38.329,0:15:44.024
He said, "Well, I've been arrested for downloading[br]too many academic journal articles, and they're

0:15:44.024,0:15:48.589
trying to make an example out of me," and[br]I said, "Well, that doesn't actually sound

0:15:48.589,0:15:55.043
like a very big deal." [laughs] He paused[br]for a second and he said, "Yeah, I guess it's

0:15:55.043,0:16:02.649
not like anybody has cancer." In the end,[br]it kind of was like that.

0:16:02.649,0:16:09.559
The only time I was ever really worried about[br]him, before the last week, was when he was

0:16:09.559,0:16:23.099
trying to decide whether to accept the plea[br]bargain. The whole thing was so hard and so

0:16:23.099,0:16:29.899
stressful, and he felt he carried so much[br]of the weight of it on his own. He didn't

0:16:29.899,0:16:34.035
want to involve any of his friends. He wanted[br]to protect people, but he wasn't very good

0:16:34.035,0:16:39.004
at protecting himself.

0:16:39.004,0:16:49.259
I went to Boston with him last month in December[br]for a hearing, and the judge granted another

0:16:49.259,0:16:54.129
evidentiary hearing about whether evidence[br]should be admitted, and the trial was delayed

0:16:54.129,0:16:57.019
for another couple of months.

0:16:57.019,0:17:05.053
He came out of the courtroom, and I tried[br]to give him a hug, and he pushed me away.

0:17:05.053,0:17:09.063
He said, "Not in front of Heymann. Not in[br]front of Steve Heymann, the prosecutor." He

0:17:09.063,0:17:17.054
said, "I don't want to show him that. I don't[br]want to show him any vulnerability."

0:17:17.054,0:17:22.058
I think Aaron made the wrong choice two weeks[br]ago. I think the odds were decent at the trial,

0:17:22.058,0:17:28.084
and I think, even if he hadn't won, that life[br]still was worth living, but I think he woke

0:17:28.084,0:17:33.056
up two years after this ordeal started, and[br]I think he just couldn't face another day

0:17:33.056,0:17:40.034
of the stress, the uncertainty, the lack of[br]control over his own destiny.

0:17:40.034,0:17:45.004
Aaron's death should radicalize us, and I[br]mean that specifically about us, about you,

0:17:45.004,0:17:50.029
if you're here in this room or if you're watching[br]this online. Aaron died because of deep injustice

0:17:50.029,0:17:58.003
in this world. Aaron loved to talk about the[br]"5 Whys" of the Toyota management system,

0:17:58.003,0:18:02.029
so I'm going to ask why. Why did Aaron die?

0:18:02.029,0:18:09.006
Aaron died in part because we live in a system[br]where the constitutional rights we've all

0:18:09.006,0:18:14.027
come to believe in, through civic classes[br]and through watching "Law & Order," don't

0:18:14.027,0:18:18.072
actually apply in the real world. There's[br]no right to a speedy trial. It had been two

0:18:18.072,0:18:22.087
years since Aaron was arrested. We still didn't[br]have all the evidence that the government...the

0:18:22.087,0:18:27.083
government still hadn't turned over all of[br]the evidence to us, that they were constitutionally

0:18:27.083,0:18:31.059
required to do so.

0:18:31.059,0:18:35.046
Why does that happen? In part, it's because[br]the system is so clogged up with cases, and

0:18:35.046,0:18:40.014
has so few human resources, it takes years[br]for practically anybody who actually wants

0:18:40.014,0:18:45.072
to go to trial to find out whether they're[br]guilty from a jury of their peers.

0:18:45.072,0:18:50.049
It takes them years because the system is[br]so clogged up, and so under-resourced, with

0:18:50.049,0:18:56.045
drug cases and with the senseless overcrowding[br]of our criminal justice system. Prosecutors

0:18:56.045,0:19:01.007
aren't used to going to trial. Last year,[br]only three percent of all federal charges

0:19:01.007,0:19:06.003
were taken to trial. Most of the rest were[br]resolved in plea bargaining.

0:19:06.003,0:19:12.063
Plea bargaining processes give prosecutors[br]enormous amounts of power. Imagine being totally

0:19:12.063,0:19:16.084
innocent of any crime and not having the resources[br]that Aaron had at his disposal, and the networks,

0:19:16.084,0:19:21.067
and the support. Many people feel they have[br]no choice but to accept a plea bargain. They

0:19:21.067,0:19:25.025
can't afford lawyers for two years.

0:19:25.025,0:19:31.087
You could say, in some sense, that Aaron's[br]death was caused by the war on drugs. He wasn't

0:19:31.087,0:19:35.094
a victim directly, but he was a casualty at[br]that war, that's aimed, actually, at quite

0:19:35.094,0:19:40.076
different people from Aaron.

0:19:40.076,0:19:46.008
Aaron's death should radicalize us. He died[br]because of a prosecutor and a US attorney

0:19:46.008,0:19:50.057
who had immense individual power over his[br]life, and were more interested in making a

0:19:50.057,0:19:55.062
high-profile example out of Aaron than in[br]justice or in mercy.

0:19:55.062,0:20:01.034
Why did they do it? In the case of the prosecutor,[br]Steve Heymann, the best theory I can offer

0:20:01.034,0:20:05.067
is that he's simply a vindictive old man who[br]really doesn't like young, upstart whippersnappers,

0:20:05.067,0:20:11.000
like Aaron, who are trying to save the world.[br]Heymann's the kind of guy who wants to claim

0:20:11.000,0:20:16.075
a notch on his belt and high-five other prosecutors[br]at lunch, but we have to follow the "Whys."

0:20:16.075,0:20:22.028
Why does this man have the power to ruin the[br]life of someone like Aaron? We can trace the

0:20:22.028,0:20:26.095
problem to tough-on-crime initiatives that[br]have systematically transferred power from

0:20:26.095,0:20:29.015
the hands of judges to prosecutors.

0:20:29.015,0:20:33.074
We can trace it to punitive sentencing guidelines[br]and ambiguous overreaching laws, like the

0:20:33.074,0:20:40.082
CFAA, that give prosecutors the power to charge[br]someone with decades in prison for a victimless

0:20:40.082,0:20:46.006
crime. In the case of Carmen Ortiz, the US[br]attorney who's Heymann's boss, Aaron's case

0:20:46.006,0:20:49.069
was a stepping stone to higher political ambitions.

0:20:49.069,0:20:53.087
Ortiz wanted to be a judge, or a governor,[br]or a senator someday. She probably still wants

0:20:53.087,0:21:00.013
to be. Unfortunately, in our society, one[br]of the well-trodden paths to elected office

0:21:00.013,0:21:02.012
is through the prosecutor's office.

0:21:02.012,0:21:07.053
That means that from mayors' offices to congress,[br]leaders are disproportionately people who've

0:21:07.053,0:21:12.001
made their name in being tough on crime, the[br]people who've spent the bulk of their career

0:21:12.001,0:21:18.029
trying to lock people up. They're people whose[br]job it is to be punitive and not just or merciful.

0:21:18.029,0:21:22.028
That's how we end up with these kinds of laws[br]to begin with.

0:21:22.028,0:21:26.008
They're people who embody a legal system that[br]locks up more than 25 percent of the prisoners

0:21:26.008,0:21:31.011
in the world, and we have only three percent[br]of the world's population. Why do we vote

0:21:31.011,0:21:37.007
for these people? Why do we provide them with[br]the incentives we do? Why do we, as a country,

0:21:37.007,0:21:41.045
applaud and reward them, and build structures[br]around them, as they lock up more than one-third

0:21:41.045,0:21:46.097
of the black men in our country?

0:21:46.097,0:21:50.089
Aaron's death should radicalize us because[br]he's probably the first person that most people

0:21:50.089,0:21:56.014
in this room have ever met who got swept up[br]by this system, but there are literally millions

0:21:56.014,0:22:01.044
of others whose lives are destroyed in this[br]country, and Aaron would've been the last

0:22:01.044,0:22:07.001
person who would want us to fetishize his[br]experiences or to treat him as exceptional.

0:22:07.001,0:22:13.048
In response to Aaron's death, I and his family[br]are calling for five things. First, Steve

0:22:13.048,0:22:16.086
Heymann and Carmen Ortiz must be held accountable.

0:22:16.086,0:22:18.044
[applause]

0:22:18.044,0:22:26.032
Second, MIT has lost its way, and it must[br]find it again. MIT could've saved Aaron with

0:22:26.032,0:22:31.036
a single public statement, and it refused.

0:22:31.036,0:22:32.044
[applause]

0:22:32.044,0:22:37.039
Third, all academic research from all time[br]should be made openly accessible to anyone

0:22:37.039,0:22:40.082
with an Internet connection.

0:22:40.082,0:22:43.058
[applause]

0:22:43.058,0:22:50.083
Fourth, we have to amend the Computer Fraud[br]and Abuse Act to prevent prosecutors from

0:22:50.083,0:22:53.083
these kinds of overreaches.

0:22:53.083,0:22:56.008
[applause]

0:22:56.008,0:23:02.066
Fifth, we have to reform a criminal justice[br]system where we incarcerate millions of people,

0:23:02.066,0:23:06.071
and prosecutors through the book at someone[br]like Aaron, but not a single banker has gone

0:23:06.071,0:23:13.052
to prison since the financial crisis.

0:23:13.052,0:23:19.013
[applause]

0:23:19.013,0:23:24.042
Aaron's death should radicalize us, but Aaron's[br]life should also radicalize us in a very different

0:23:24.042,0:23:32.002
way. One of Aaron's favorite shows was "Louie."[br]There's an episode, and I'm going to do my

0:23:32.002,0:23:37.089
best Louie impression, which probably isn't[br]very good, the episode where Louie gives a

0:23:37.089,0:23:39.013
little stand-up routine.

0:23:39.013,0:23:47.026
"I drive an Infiniti. That's really evil.[br]There are people who just starved to death.

0:23:47.026,0:23:52.051
That's all they ever did. There are people[br]who are born and go, 'I'm hungry.' Then they

0:23:52.051,0:23:57.079
die, and that's all they ever got to do. Meanwhile,[br]I'm driving in my car having a great time,

0:23:57.079,0:23:59.000
and I sleep like a baby."

0:23:59.000,0:24:04.014
"It's totally my fault, because I could trade[br]my Infiniti in for any other car, and I'd

0:24:04.014,0:24:09.039
get back like $20,000, and I could save hundreds[br]of people from dying of starvation with that

0:24:09.039,0:24:18.025
money, and every day, I don't do it. Every[br]day, I make them die with my car."

0:24:18.025,0:24:22.064
Aaron loved that routine, and he realized[br]something when we watched it together. He

0:24:22.064,0:24:27.086
realized that Louie copied this bit right[br]out of Peter Singer. This is a Peter Singer

0:24:27.086,0:24:33.032
essay as a comedy routine. Peter Singer was[br]one of the Aaron's favorite philosophers,

0:24:33.032,0:24:36.061
and he's a really uncomfortable philosopher.[br]A lot of people don't like thinking about

0:24:36.061,0:24:39.052
Peter Singer. Here's why.

0:24:39.052,0:24:43.008
Let's say you knew you had the power to change[br]a law that would save innocent people's lives,

0:24:43.008,0:24:48.014
maybe stopping a carcinogen from polluting[br]ground water near a town. Let's say you knew

0:24:48.014,0:24:53.004
it would save 10 people's lives, and you chose[br]to do something else instead, something that

0:24:53.004,0:24:59.038
didn't have much bearing or impact on the[br]world. Are you culpable? Peter Singer would

0:24:59.038,0:25:01.063
say yes.

0:25:01.063,0:25:05.046
Most of us studiously avoid answering that[br]question, because the truth is, we're faced

0:25:05.046,0:25:09.098
with questions like, "Should we trade in our[br]Infiniti?" or, "Should we work on the carcinogen?"

0:25:09.098,0:25:18.054
every day. It's really hard to live your life[br]thinking about that, but Aaron's life should

0:25:18.054,0:25:19.082
radicalize us.

0:25:19.082,0:25:26.069
Aaron lived a Singerian life more than anyone[br]else I've ever met. Aaron had money, we all

0:25:26.069,0:25:31.042
know he could've had a lot more if he had[br]tried, but he lived out of backpacks and he

0:25:31.042,0:25:32.066
stayed on people's couches.

0:25:32.066,0:25:37.019
Sometimes, I'll admit, it went a little too[br]far, like the time we'd been dating for a

0:25:37.019,0:25:41.016
few months, and we were meeting up in Boston,[br]and it was his responsibility to find us a

0:25:41.016,0:25:46.081
place to stay. He thought that an air mattress[br]on his brother Noah's bathroom floor was perfectly

0:25:46.081,0:25:51.014
sufficient, [laughs] but I respected him for[br]it.

0:25:51.014,0:25:55.095
He didn't buy an Infiniti. He didn't get a[br]nice apartment. When he died, he left his

0:25:55.095,0:26:02.045
estate primarily to GiveWell, probably the[br]most Singerian of all charities, but living

0:26:02.045,0:26:07.008
a life of personal austerity and charity isn't[br]enough. Aaron felt responsible not just for

0:26:07.008,0:26:11.061
the direct costs of his lifestyle, but for[br]the opportunity costs. He felt responsible

0:26:11.061,0:26:15.062
for the carcinogens he wasn't stopping.

0:26:15.062,0:26:20.047
Here in Silicon Valley, the idea of changing[br]the world is no mirage. You see examples all

0:26:20.047,0:26:26.034
around you, every day, of people who changed[br]the world, and Aaron was one of those people,

0:26:26.034,0:26:28.095
but the question is, how are they changing[br]the world?

0:26:28.095,0:26:34.094
Facebook has changed the world, sure, but[br]is the world better off because of Facebook?

0:26:34.094,0:26:38.075
Even more importantly, if you're deciding[br]whether to take a job at Facebook, is that

0:26:38.075,0:26:41.039
the place in the world where you can do the[br]most good?

0:26:41.039,0:26:48.005
Aaron wanted to do the most good. He wanted[br]to apply the Lean Startup framework to impact.

0:26:48.005,0:26:54.007
He was learning and iterating. He thought[br]we all needed to think both bigger and smaller.

0:26:54.007,0:26:59.041
He said to a few of my friends once, "The[br]revolution will be A/B tested."

0:26:59.041,0:27:00.037
[laughter]

0:27:00.037,0:27:07.091
That's what he was trying to do. I'm here[br]to ask the hard questions today. If you're

0:27:07.091,0:27:12.048
not already working to change the criminal[br]justice system in the US, what are you working

0:27:12.048,0:27:16.097
on? Is it more important than that? It might[br]be. There are more important things. There

0:27:16.097,0:27:23.065
are places where you can have more impact,[br]but there are so many ways, so many things,

0:27:23.065,0:27:30.041
that need to be changed about this world.[br]Which one of them are you working on?

0:27:30.041,0:27:34.078
Aaron's death should radicalize us, and his[br]life should radicalize us. The fact is, we

0:27:34.078,0:27:39.015
live in a world in which very few people we[br]know pay the ultimate price for their political

0:27:39.015,0:27:44.091
beliefs. We live in a world in which very[br]few people we know even suffer serious life-altering

0:27:44.091,0:27:49.058
consequences for their political beliefs,[br]but we live in a runaway global political

0:27:49.058,0:27:52.067
economy that's taking people's lives every[br]day.

0:27:52.067,0:27:58.042
Aaron wasn't trying to become a martyr when[br]he downloaded those JSTOR articles, but he

0:27:58.042,0:28:02.089
was taking a risk on behalf of the billions[br]of people around the world who grew up without

0:28:02.089,0:28:07.028
his privilege. More of us need to do that.

0:28:07.028,0:28:16.072
There are so many ways to have impact, so[br]many ways to help people. Aaron had an exchange

0:28:16.072,0:28:21.074
with David Segal, who runs Demand Progress,[br]the group that he founded, that many of you

0:28:21.074,0:28:24.002
know from the SOPA fight.

0:28:24.002,0:28:29.027
Aaron loved recounting this conversation.[br]David called him one night, and said to Aaron,

0:28:29.027,0:28:35.051
"Remember that year when we defeated SOPA,[br]got indefinite detention ruled unconstitutional,

0:28:35.051,0:28:41.001
and got both political parties to incorporate[br]Internet freedom into their platforms at the

0:28:41.001,0:28:46.037
conventions?" That was Aaron, David Segal,[br]and a couple other people. They did all that

0:28:46.037,0:28:48.058
in one year.

0:28:48.058,0:28:52.039
Everybody here is capable of that kind of[br]change. There are so many places in our world

0:28:52.039,0:28:57.054
where that kind of change can happen, just[br]from having somebody there, somebody paying

0:28:57.054,0:29:01.005
attention, somebody pushing.

0:29:01.005,0:29:06.085
If you're a programmer or technologist, like[br]many of you in the audience today, you have

0:29:06.085,0:29:12.013
special powers and special responsibilities.[br]I went to a talk once that Aaron gave, where

0:29:12.013,0:29:17.037
he spoke to maybe a couple dozen people, like[br]the people in this room, to programmers who

0:29:17.037,0:29:23.081
he was trying to convince to work in politics.[br]He told them, "You can do magic."

0:29:23.081,0:29:28.083
Aaron really could do magic, and I'm dedicated[br]to making sure that his magic doesn't end

0:29:28.083,0:29:44.025
with his death. I hope you'll join me.

0:29:44.025,0:29:46.077
[applause]

0:29:46.077,0:30:03.047
[Lisa Rein] I first met Aaron online on various[br]W3C mailing lists for XML and RDF. He kind

0:30:03.047,0:30:11.038
of came out of nowhere at the end of 2001,[br]as far as I could tell. Aaron's comments were

0:30:11.038,0:30:15.071
thoughtful and informative, and it became[br]clear pretty quickly that he had a better

0:30:15.071,0:30:20.048
understanding of markup languages and data[br]modeling than a lot of others on the list,

0:30:20.048,0:30:23.047
even some of the veterans.

0:30:23.047,0:30:29.003
Aaron had a talent for simplifying things[br]and getting to the heart of everyone's concerns.

0:30:29.003,0:30:35.029
He was also rather politically disarming because[br]he was, well, a kid, a kid with no ulterior

0:30:35.029,0:30:42.019
motives except wanting to be included and[br]taken seriously, as seriously as others.

0:30:42.019,0:30:48.025
In April 2002, during the very early stages[br]of the Creative Commons, I let Aaron know

0:30:48.025,0:30:53.076
that we were having a technical meeting at[br]Harvard that I wanted him to attend. That

0:30:53.076,0:31:01.049
was it. I really wanted to include him in[br]the whole project almost as equally as I was

0:31:01.049,0:31:09.087
involved in the project. I told him this was[br]happening for real, and with him included.

0:31:09.087,0:31:16.062
It was then that he let me know that he was[br]only 14 years old, and that I needed to give

0:31:16.062,0:31:20.082
his mother a call so he could figure things[br]out.

0:31:20.082,0:31:22.009
[laughter]

0:31:22.009,0:31:28.098
When I first insisted that Aaron attend this[br]meeting, everybody, even Lawrence Lessig,

0:31:28.098,0:31:35.006
at first thought that was really weird. "Do[br]you need Aaron to do your job?" was a pretty

0:31:35.006,0:31:42.054
popular question, and the answer was clearly,[br]"Yes." I needed Aaron to make sure that our

0:31:42.054,0:31:48.023
licensing markup was the absolute best that[br]it could be.

0:31:48.023,0:31:52.006
People were usually skeptical about Aaron[br]and his abilities when they first found out

0:31:52.006,0:31:58.003
he was only 14. But once they spoke to him[br]for even a little while, he would always win

0:31:58.003,0:32:06.085
them over. I knew if Lessig met him in person[br]that that would be that, and it was. Aaron

0:32:06.085,0:32:12.057
was growing up to become quite the technological[br]statesman.

0:32:12.057,0:32:17.085
So my strategy, in the spring of 2002, was[br]to introduce Aaron to as many people as I

0:32:17.085,0:32:25.038
could, and to introduce him to the right people.[br]This included people from the EFF and the

0:32:25.038,0:32:31.093
Internet Archive, mainly, and also included[br]going to cool events like South By Southwest.

0:32:31.093,0:32:38.041
In 2003, when he tried to get his own room[br]in the cool hotel, right across from the venue,

0:32:38.041,0:32:45.001
but ended up getting a room in the janky hotel[br]down the road with me, where I could be his

0:32:45.001,0:32:47.084
official adult supervision.

0:32:47.084,0:32:49.027
[laughter]

0:32:49.027,0:32:54.085
In October 2002, Aaron flew out to Washington,[br]DC, to camp out in front of the Supreme Court

0:32:54.085,0:33:00.012
with me and about eight other people. This[br]was the night before Lawrence Lessig's oral

0:33:00.012,0:33:10.009
argument in Eldred v. Ashcroft. This is the[br]Eldred shirt from that. We were rather surprised

0:33:10.009,0:33:15.008
that Aaron convinced his mother to let him[br]go. But there he was, staying in the same

0:33:15.008,0:33:17.087
bed and breakfast where I was staying.

0:33:17.087,0:33:23.000
I told them he was sort of like my little[br]brother, and that wasn't very far from the

0:33:23.000,0:33:32.064
truth. He was a little brother that I ended[br]up [crying] looking up to. EFF staff technologist

0:33:32.064,0:33:39.056
Seth Schoen took over as Aaron's chaperone[br]pretty quickly during that trip to Washington,

0:33:39.056,0:33:40.008
DC.

0:33:40.008,0:33:46.005
There was a moment at about one AM when Aaron[br]asked if he could walk around the block with

0:33:46.005,0:33:53.006
Seth. I thought they were kidding at first.[br]Were they serious? Were they crazy? But then

0:33:53.006,0:33:58.075
I realized it was one of those right-of-passage[br]moments. Plus I realized he wouldn't be by

0:33:58.075,0:34:02.033
himself, he was with Seth.

0:34:02.033,0:34:07.081
I think at that moment I passed on the torch[br]to Seth as Aaron's west coast guardian. But

0:34:07.081,0:34:14.004
we always stayed in touch. His birthday was[br]two days before mine, and he would remember

0:34:14.004,0:34:19.079
my birthday almost every year, and would send[br]me a nice little email wishing me a good next

0:34:19.079,0:34:30.097
year. Thank you.

0:34:30.097,0:34:42.051
[Seth Schoen] As Lisa was just recounting,[br]I met Aaron at the Supreme Court in October

0:34:42.051,0:34:49.007
of 2002, and we had gone to hear the oral[br]argument in Eldred v. Ashcroft. Most of us

0:34:49.007,0:34:53.679
non-lawyers had to spend the night sleeping[br]in the street in line in front of the court

0:34:53.679,0:34:55.048
in order to get a ticket.

0:34:55.048,0:34:59.067
The line for the oral argument starts the[br]night before. But even though Aaron was a

0:34:59.067,0:35:06.005
teenager, he was Larry Lessig's personal guest[br]at the argument. So since he had a ticket,

0:35:06.005,0:35:10.021
he had the luxury of spending the night in[br]a hotel, which his parents apparently really

0:35:10.021,0:35:12.004
appreciated.

0:35:12.004,0:35:16.048
But Aaron decided to spend most of the night[br]and most of the morning before the argument

0:35:16.048,0:35:22.051
hanging out with us at the encampment in front[br]of the court. In part to show solidarity with

0:35:22.051,0:35:28.046
the people who hadn't received a ticket, and[br]in part for the thrill of meeting actual,

0:35:28.046,0:35:31.000
grown-up copyright activists.

0:35:31.000,0:35:32.076
[laughter]

0:35:32.076,0:35:37.089
Aaron was truly star struck to meet people[br]he thought of as legendary copyright reform

0:35:37.089,0:35:43.054
activists. But within a decade, Aaron himself[br]would be among the most effective grassroots

0:35:43.054,0:35:47.051
copyright activists in the whole world.

0:35:47.051,0:35:52.091
At that moment he was the little kid markup[br]and metadata expert that Larry Lessig admired

0:35:52.091,0:35:58.099
enough to give him a front row Supreme Court[br]seat. And Aaron spent the evening with us

0:35:58.099,0:36:03.043
as we ordered pizza, which he could actually[br]eat, for delivery to the sidewalk outside

0:36:03.043,0:36:08.005
the Supreme Court, which was apparently not[br]a very unusual request for pizzerias in DC.

0:36:08.005,0:36:09.051
[laughter]

0:36:09.051,0:36:15.086
And all of us gossiped about copyright law[br]for a couple of hours. I saw Aaron again in

0:36:15.086,0:36:24.082
December. My friends Leonard and Sumana found[br]a picture, he's visiting my house, and I come,

0:36:24.082,0:36:29.006
like some people here, from a book family[br]and I have a lot of books and we spent about

0:36:29.006,0:36:35.006
three hours with Leonard and Sumana and Aaron[br]and I just sitting on my bed sort of manually

0:36:35.006,0:36:38.014
following hyperlinks between books.

0:36:38.014,0:36:38.055
[laughter]

0:36:38.055,0:36:45.072
"Oh, that book! Oh, well that's a reference[br]to that book." Aaron was there because Larry

0:36:45.072,0:36:51.031
Lessig was unveiling his Creative Commons[br]project in San Francisco. And Lessig had invited

0:36:51.031,0:36:57.004
Aaron, clad in a T-shirt, probably the youngest[br]person in the entire hall, up on stage to

0:36:57.004,0:37:03.011
talk about metadata. It was very awkward.[br]Aaron was trying to describe why it was useful

0:37:03.011,0:37:07.049
to be able to represent bibliographic information[br]in a machine-readable format.

0:37:07.049,0:37:11.001
And in fact Aaron was always trying to describe[br]why it was useful to be able to represent

0:37:11.001,0:37:14.001
bibliographic information in a machine-readable[br]format.

0:37:14.001,0:37:15.001
[laughter]

0:37:15.001,0:37:19.004
The audience had had a few drinks, I think,[br]and wasn't as focused as it might have been,

0:37:19.004,0:37:23.015
and didn't really care to envision this beautiful[br]feature in which search engines would make

0:37:23.015,0:37:28.028
it easy for everyone to find works they could[br]legally reuse and build upon. Which they now

0:37:28.028,0:37:31.049
can, thanks to Aaron's work.

0:37:31.049,0:37:36.061
But the audience didn't seem to get it. Lessig[br]was very gracious and he basically said to

0:37:36.061,0:37:42.055
the crowd, "See, our project is going to succeed[br]and it's going to succeed because we have

0:37:42.055,0:37:48.057
this genius creating our infrastructure."[br]Aaron reminded me how frustrating it is to

0:37:48.057,0:37:52.069
be curious about things that other people[br]don't understand. Or that other people regard

0:37:52.069,0:37:54.099
as trivial or bizarre.

0:37:54.099,0:38:00.006
He wrote a blog post about a theory that one's[br]degree of nearsightedness is affected by blood

0:38:00.006,0:38:05.054
oxygen levels, and that it might be possible[br]to use eye exercise to systematically reduce

0:38:05.054,0:38:06.012
nearsightedness.

0:38:06.012,0:38:11.037
"Aaron," he wrote, "was already experimenting[br]on himself to see if it would work, and he

0:38:11.037,0:38:17.047
said he wished he could meet a girl who wouldn't[br]laugh at this project." Later, Aaron met Seth

0:38:17.047,0:38:23.052
Roberts, a researcher who advocates self-experimentation[br]as a way of generating potentially-useful

0:38:23.052,0:38:25.049
wild ideas about health.

0:38:25.049,0:38:30.019
Roberts and Aaron got along extremely well.[br]I think that Roberts, like many other people,

0:38:30.019,0:38:36.035
felt that Aaron naturally generated potentially[br]useful wild ideas about absolutely everything.

0:38:36.035,0:38:42.054
I visited Aaron in his dorm at Stanford a[br]few years later. I was thrilled that he had

0:38:42.054,0:38:45.022
the opportunity to study at such a great university.

0:38:45.022,0:38:50.073
But Aaron was alienated from Stanford. He[br]had few friends, and the students around him

0:38:50.073,0:38:56.008
weren't curious about the things he was curious[br]about. This wasn't the way his Stanford adventure

0:38:56.008,0:39:01.057
was supposed to pan out. I helped him pack[br]for his flight to Boston for his interview

0:39:01.057,0:39:07.053
with Paul Graham, who was starting a fund[br]to invest in young people just like Aaron.

0:39:07.053,0:39:15.011
It want well. Aaron dropped out of Stanford[br]and moved to Boston. In 2006, just after Condé

0:39:15.011,0:39:19.007
Nast acquired reddit and just before they[br]fired Aaron, Aaron and I were at a hacker

0:39:19.007,0:39:26.034
conference together in Berlin. To Larry Lessig's[br]chagrin, Aaron and Lessig had, at that time,

0:39:26.034,0:39:30.085
fallen out of touch. Perhaps neither of them[br]were deeply involved in the day-to-day work

0:39:30.085,0:39:34.022
of Creative Commons, which had brought them[br]together.

0:39:34.022,0:39:38.014
Aaron had gone off to work in the startup[br]world while simultaneously deepening his study

0:39:38.014,0:39:44.009
of left-wind politics, macroeconomics, and[br]sociology. Lessig and Aaron were both planning

0:39:44.009,0:39:49.074
to tell America, as matter of some urgency,[br]what had gone wrong with the American project,

0:39:49.074,0:39:52.018
but they had slightly different diagnoses.

0:39:52.018,0:39:57.061
Our friend and I took Aaron out to Wannsee,[br]where Lessig was spending a year at the American

0:39:57.061,0:40:04.012
Academy in Berlin. Lessig looked extraordinarily[br]proud to see Aaron. Their meeting had, for

0:40:04.012,0:40:08.071
me, the sense of an extraordinarily poignant[br]reunion, as if they hadn't seen each other

0:40:08.071,0:40:13.001
in 20 years. Of course they had actually seen[br]each other a few months before.

0:40:13.001,0:40:17.083
But my friend and I left the two of them alone[br]for an hour or so, and I remember as we walked

0:40:17.083,0:40:24.005
away, seeing Lessig and Aaron leaning a wall[br]at the Wannsee train station, talking animatedly

0:40:24.005,0:40:29.003
to each other. It reminded me of the scene[br]at the climax of the German film "Goodbye

0:40:29.003,0:40:34.083
Lenin!" where we can see but not hear the[br]actors talking about incredibly urgent matters,

0:40:34.083,0:40:39.031
and we have to imagine for ourselves what[br]they must be saying to each other.

0:40:39.031,0:40:43.043
And I thought, Lessig is so proud-his protégé[br]is all grown up and he's come back to show

0:40:43.043,0:40:51.038
his respect for his teacher. Aaron was a free[br]speech absolutist's, free speech absolutist,

0:40:51.038,0:40:57.022
an idealist's idealist, an activist's activist,[br]and, I must say, a libertarian socialist's

0:40:57.022,0:40:59.019
libertarian socialist.

0:40:59.019,0:41:00.619
[laughter]

0:41:00.619,0:41:07.002
His credo was that bits are not a bug, that[br]come hell or high water we should celebrate,

0:41:07.002,0:41:11.032
and not fear, people's ability to communicate[br]to each other whatever they might choose to

0:41:11.032,0:41:16.027
communicate, and the infrastructure that supports[br]that ability.

0:41:16.027,0:41:21.061
Aaron came of age a long time after the end[br]of the cypherpunk movement. But he always

0:41:21.061,0:41:23.038
seemed like a cypherpunk movement. But he[br]always seemed like a cypherpunk and lived

0:41:23.038,0:41:27.018
up to the notion that cypherpunks write code.

0:41:27.018,0:41:32.013
He channeled all sorts of different idealisms[br]of supposedly bygone eras. You would have

0:41:32.013,0:41:37.074
thought he was too young to know about those[br]idealisms. And he did it in a way that mixed

0:41:37.074,0:41:43.035
intelligence, creativity, and humor. In the[br]long run, Aaron felt that he was going to

0:41:43.035,0:41:47.008
fix the world, mainly by clearly explaining[br]it to people.

0:41:47.008,0:41:48.083
[laughter]

0:41:48.083,0:41:54.052
I believe Aaron grew up to be exactly the[br]person that he would have been most astonished

0:41:54.052,0:41:59.036
and excited to meet in the line in front of[br]the Supreme Court. I've never known anyone

0:41:59.036,0:42:04.048
else like him.

0:42:04.048,0:42:18.076
[Peter Eckersley] So I know we have all been[br]spending a lot of time thinking about Aaron

0:42:18.076,0:42:24.052
and his life and what kind of person he was[br]and what he did. And I know many of you in

0:42:24.052,0:42:30.068
the room knew him, knew him well. Others probably[br]never got to meet him in person, saw him on

0:42:30.068,0:42:38.035
a mailing list or read his blog posts. And[br]then now, trying to figure out what we've

0:42:38.035,0:42:40.063
lost, who we've lost.

0:42:40.063,0:42:46.013
And for me, you know I was lucky enough, I[br]got to live with Aaron for a while, and we

0:42:46.013,0:42:51.007
got to be good friends and work on things[br]together. But I found I was always trying

0:42:51.007,0:42:57.086
to figure out exactly who he was and what[br]he was up to. Because he was such a complicated

0:42:57.086,0:43:06.073
and contradictory human being, and he'd get[br]you in these ways that you weren't expecting.

0:43:06.073,0:43:11.077
Some of this was simple, obvious stuff. You[br]know, I, look-he and I had met before, but

0:43:11.077,0:43:17.075
we moved to San Francisco at the same time.[br]I came here to work for the EFF. He was just

0:43:17.075,0:43:22.074
in the process of selling reddit and going[br]to Condé Nast and going through the messy

0:43:22.074,0:43:28.084
divorce that he had with the other cofounders.[br]And so I sent him an email and said, "Hey,

0:43:28.084,0:43:35.005
I'm setting up a sharehouse. Like, do you[br]want a place to live?" And he said yes.

0:43:35.005,0:43:39.089
And so we had this rambling Victorian in this[br]apartment building. And I said, "Oh, we've

0:43:39.089,0:43:43.081
got all these open rooms we need to fill."[br]And he's like, "Oh, there's this tiny little

0:43:43.081,0:43:51.078
one in the corner, I'll take that." This room[br]was the size of a-you know, it was a closet,

0:43:51.078,0:43:54.008
basically. We were pretty sure he was the[br]wealthiest person in the building. He'd just

0:43:54.008,0:44:00.064
sold reddit, but he wanted this tiny little[br]thing.

0:44:00.064,0:44:08.081
And getting to know him was weird, like...I'd,[br]I knew him, I knew his blog, I had met him

0:44:08.081,0:44:17.003
before. But living with him, the first experience,[br]he was so shy. Like, he'd just be there, and

0:44:17.003,0:44:24.085
like, in his own little world, struggling[br]to talk to people, until the conversation

0:44:24.085,0:44:31.008
took the right turn. You'd say the right thing[br]to him, and he would come alive, and he would

0:44:31.008,0:44:33.079
come so alive.

0:44:33.079,0:44:39.001
I remember Danny mentioned the Chinese room[br]argument, but I remember the day that somehow

0:44:39.001,0:44:45.004
I prodded him about that. And then for the[br]next week, you know, like we were going at

0:44:45.004,0:44:49.099
it. Like, I think he was totally wrong about[br]the Chinese room argument, actually. I still

0:44:49.099,0:44:50.061
do.

0:44:50.061,0:44:51.024
[laughter]

0:44:51.024,0:44:57.006
His position was crazy. He defended a crazy[br]position very well, and I had to argue him

0:44:57.006,0:45:03.095
into so many weird corners to get anywhere.[br]I remember another scene, we had a film crew

0:45:03.095,0:45:07.066
who showed up and stayed in our house and[br]filmed this thing, "Steal This Film." You

0:45:07.066,0:45:10.029
can go and see it on the Internet. You can[br]see Aaron in it.

0:45:10.029,0:45:15.059
They were a documentary crew talking about[br]copyright and trying to film these takes in

0:45:15.059,0:45:18.009
the middle of the night. You know, our cramped[br]little living room, and everyone was kind

0:45:18.009,0:45:24.096
of drunk and there was chaos and I remember[br]some of us were struggling to say anything

0:45:24.096,0:45:30.052
coherent to a camera. But someone pointed[br]a camera at Aaron and he caught fire.

0:45:30.052,0:45:39.119
Like, he just...he taught me how to, like,[br]speak to a room or speak to a television or

0:45:39.119,0:45:45.019
whatever it was. He just had a message that[br]he'd simplified out of the ether and could

0:45:45.019,0:45:52.076
deliver. And that was the same skill he turned[br]to politics and to so much else that he did

0:45:52.076,0:45:59.015
in his intellectual life, and it was beautiful[br]to watch.

0:45:59.015,0:46:05.038
And he paired that with this...you know, honestly,[br]he had a flare for self-promotion. There wouldn't

0:46:05.038,0:46:10.119
be hundreds of people in this room and hundreds[br]of people in all the rooms for all the memorials

0:46:10.119,0:46:14.066
that he's had in different cities, and millions[br]of people reading about him, if he didn't

0:46:14.066,0:46:20.007
have some little talent at getting the things[br]he was doing out to the world in a way that

0:46:20.007,0:46:27.004
people would notice. People noticed his 16-year-old[br]self. His 14-year-old self.

0:46:27.004,0:46:33.001
But he wasn't just a giant ego who kind of[br]was out there promoting himself because he

0:46:33.001,0:46:40.028
thought he was awesome. He actually...The[br]one thing he failed to care about, often,

0:46:40.028,0:46:48.019
was taking care of himself. And I remember,[br]like, living with him and trying to get him

0:46:48.019,0:46:52.007
to eat and...He wouldn't...

0:46:52.007,0:46:57.008
He had medical things that he was struggling[br]with, and I said, "Aaron, you know, like,

0:46:57.008,0:47:01.016
how does this work, like let's talk about[br]it. Surely you've read the research on this

0:47:01.016,0:47:05.061
condition. Like, we can go through what's[br]been tried...And he said, "No, I haven't read

0:47:05.061,0:47:06.084
any of it." Like, "I don't know anything about[br]it."

0:47:06.084,0:47:11.035
And I said, "Aaron! You devour books! Like,[br]I can see you devouring books, you've read

0:47:11.035,0:47:19.038
five this week. Like, you have a stack of[br]academic journal articles by your bed. We're

0:47:19.038,0:47:23.057
talking about half of them. Why haven't you[br]read anything about this condition that is

0:47:23.057,0:47:28.007
making your own life harder?" And he just[br]said, "Well, I don't think I'm that important.

0:47:28.007,0:47:34.051
The world's important," like...

0:47:34.051,0:47:46.088
Watching that happen was hard. You struggle[br]to take care of him. He also had these days

0:47:46.088,0:47:51.023
that were down. I mean, I guess it was a down[br]day in the end that got him. In between the

0:47:51.023,0:47:54.048
days when he was doing amazing amounts of[br]stuff. You all know how much he did.

0:47:54.048,0:48:00.609
He was too young to possible have done a third[br]of the things he managed, and who knows what

0:48:00.609,0:48:05.063
he would have achieved with another 50 years.[br]But in-between those days, there'd be days

0:48:05.063,0:48:12.075
when he was just blue. I remember I caught[br]him on one of those and said, "Aaron, this

0:48:12.075,0:48:16.109
is amazing stuff. We can go and do it right[br]now."

0:48:16.109,0:48:22.067
And he just said, "No, the code, it's all[br]terrible, it's ugly, it's broken." I'm like,

0:48:22.067,0:48:29.055
"OK, let's do some science." And he'd say,[br]"No, the data doesn't work, it sucks, it's

0:48:29.055,0:48:37.018
too hard." And I said, "Surely, there must[br]be something that you'd be doing. That really

0:48:37.018,0:48:45.071
would feel right." And he stopped for a while[br]and said, "Yes, actually. Typography."

0:48:45.071,0:48:47.001
[laughter]

0:48:47.001,0:49:00.004
I could do typography. Anyway, so he was contradictory.[br]You never knew exactly what to make of him.

0:49:00.004,0:49:04.369
He was brilliant and sometimes and infuriating[br]and wrong. Like, the Chinese room argument.

0:49:04.369,0:49:04.071
[laughter]

0:49:04.071,0:49:12.005
But then sometimes...I guess I'm talking about[br]paradoxes in Aaron. Sometimes he was infuriating

0:49:12.005,0:49:18.035
and wrong and brilliant at the same time.[br]And I have one story about a paradox. He and

0:49:18.035,0:49:21.021
I were talking about moral philosophy, ethical[br]philosophy.

0:49:21.021,0:49:26.009
We were both interested in these ideas, the[br][inaudible 00: 49:23] ideas of...actually,

0:49:26.009,0:49:31.001
we have a responsibility to find the thing[br]that we can do that makes the most difference

0:49:31.001,0:49:35.041
to the universe, to the world, and makes it[br]better, whatever that means.

0:49:35.041,0:49:43.042
But I had just read a paper about a paradox[br]showing that actually, if you write down all

0:49:43.042,0:49:48.073
of our most compelling intuitions about what[br]it is for the world to be good, so that we

0:49:48.073,0:49:52.071
can know how to make it better. You write[br]them all down, you can actually mathematically

0:49:52.071,0:49:59.092
prove it's a recent result, 10 years old by[br]a Swedish philosopher. Our deepest intuitions

0:49:59.092,0:50:04.039
about this are flatly contradictory. It's[br]a 'paradox. There is actually no completely

0:50:04.039,0:50:10.049
coherent definition of what makes the world[br]better.

0:50:10.049,0:50:13.067
And Aaron just looked at me and said, "That's[br]completely wrong." Like, "Actually, no, it's

0:50:13.067,0:50:18.096
this, this and this." And I said, "Aaron,[br]you're arguing with a mathematical theorem.

0:50:18.096,0:50:24.096
I have a proof of it right here. You're not[br]pointing out any flaws in the logic in this

0:50:24.096,0:50:26.109
paper."

0:50:26.109,0:50:32.859
And he said, "No, no, it's like..." Then I[br]stopped and I stared at him for a while and

0:50:32.859,0:50:39.072
I said, "I'm not sure you're right, but actually[br]maybe we can find a way out of this theorem."

0:50:39.072,0:50:44.015
It's not an impossibility theorem, it's not[br]a paradox.

0:50:44.015,0:50:49.031
Actually, maybe it's more like an uncertainty[br]theorem. We can rehabilitate it as a kind

0:50:49.031,0:50:53.052
of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle for[br]morality. You can't be completely sure about

0:50:53.052,0:50:58.077
what's right. But you can actually pin the[br]amount of uncertainty down to minimum and

0:50:58.077,0:51:03.018
still get the right answers to obvious moral[br]dilemmas.

0:51:03.018,0:51:07.041
So he and I actually sat down and wrote a[br]paper about this which we still haven't published.

0:51:07.041,0:51:12.065
I now actually have a...this is a thing I[br]promised to Aaron's ghost. I'm going to finish

0:51:12.065,0:51:20.047
that paper and maybe people will read it.[br]But he was paradoxical and yet he got so much

0:51:20.047,0:51:24.053
done, did so many amazing things at the same[br]time.

0:51:24.053,0:51:34.002
There's a lot more I want to say and there[br]are a lot of things that we all need to do.

0:51:34.002,0:51:40.041
Because Aaron's loss reminded us or pointed[br]out that they needed to be done. Some of them

0:51:40.041,0:51:47.052
are things that matter a lot to this community[br]here in this room. We need to free the literature,

0:51:47.052,0:51:50.097
the scientific literature, that Aaron died[br]trying to free.

0:51:50.097,0:51:59.069
And we also need to figure out what we can[br]do to fix the insane criminal justice system

0:51:59.069,0:52:03.369
in the United States.

0:52:03.369,0:52:06.059
[applause]

0:52:06.059,0:52:17.083
But I've said enough for tonight, and there[br]other people who will take up these threads.

0:52:17.083,0:52:34.083
[Tim O'Reilly] I've been asked how I as a[br]publisher who has an online service that puts

0:52:34.083,0:52:43.068
content behind a paywall could possibly be[br]a support of Aaron Schwartz, this guy who

0:52:43.068,0:52:53.095
downloads content from services like that.[br]And my answer is that we're trying to invent

0:52:53.095,0:53:04.017
the future, and the future does not look like[br]the past. And the future is uncovered by struggle

0:53:04.017,0:53:13.619
to figure out what works and what doesn't[br]work. And the people who figure that out are

0:53:13.619,0:53:16.008
people to whom we owe an enormous debt.

0:53:16.008,0:53:23.053
I was trying to think of, you know, past experiences[br]with Aaron. When I first met him, he came

0:53:23.053,0:53:31.017
to our Foo Camp and our Etech Conferences.[br]But what I decided to share with you is a

0:53:31.017,0:53:39.038
poem that I read as part of a talk that I[br]gave at our Etech Conference in 2008. And

0:53:39.038,0:53:46.006
I checked, and just to refresh memory, Aaron[br]was there.

0:53:46.006,0:53:52.619
The poem was part of a talk entitled, "Why[br]I Love Hackers." And I started out with a

0:53:52.619,0:53:59.045
picture of some berries, some poisonous ones[br]and some ones that were good to eat. And I

0:53:59.045,0:54:04.082
said, "Somewhere way back in time, somebody[br]had the courage to figure out which of these

0:54:04.082,0:54:14.007
things were good to eat." And I talked about[br]people wanting to fly, and how it was this

0:54:14.007,0:54:21.859
crazy dream, and eventually, we figured it[br]out, and lots of other stories from the history

0:54:21.859,0:54:23.005
of hacking.

0:54:23.005,0:54:29.043
And then I ended with a poem, which seems[br]singularly appropriate for Aaron because it's

0:54:29.043,0:54:36.007
about both the courage to try to do what hasn't[br]been done, to change the world, but also how

0:54:36.007,0:54:41.072
hard that is, and the challenge of it. It's[br]a poem called "The Man Watching," by Rainer

0:54:41.072,0:54:44.089
Maria Rilke, in translation by Robert Bly.

0:54:44.089,0:54:51.076
He said, "I can tell by the way the trees[br]beat, after so many dull days on my worried

0:54:51.076,0:54:58.023
window panes, that a storm is coming, and[br]I hear the far-off fields say things. I can't

0:54:58.023,0:55:01.091
bear without a friend. I can't love without[br]a sister."

0:55:01.091,0:55:09.095
"The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives[br]on across the woods and across time, and the

0:55:09.095,0:55:16.064
world looks as if it had no age. The landscape,[br]like a line in the psalm book, is seriousness

0:55:16.064,0:55:18.009
and weight and eternity."

0:55:18.009,0:55:27.014
"What we choose to fight is so tiny. What[br]fights us is so great. If only we would let

0:55:27.014,0:55:33.073
ourselves be dominated, as things do, by some[br]immense storm. We would become strong too,

0:55:33.073,0:55:35.003
and not need names."

0:55:35.003,0:55:43.003
"When we win, it's with small things, and[br]the triumph itself makes us small. What is

0:55:43.003,0:55:50.004
extraordinary and eternal does not want to[br]be bent by us. I mean, the angel who appeared

0:55:50.004,0:55:55.055
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament. When[br]the wrestler's sinews grew long like metal

0:55:55.055,0:55:59.096
strings, he felt them under his fingers like[br]chords of deep music."

0:55:59.096,0:56:07.043
"Whoever was beaten by this angel, who often[br]simply declined the fight, went away proud,

0:56:07.043,0:56:13.016
and strengthened, and great from that harsh[br]hand, that needed him as if to change his

0:56:13.016,0:56:21.349
shape. Winning does not tempt that man. This[br]is how he grows, by being defeated, decisively,

0:56:21.349,0:56:26.007
by constantly greater beings."

0:56:26.007,0:56:32.019
I don't know whether Aaron was defeated or[br]victorious, but we are certainly shaped by

0:56:32.019,0:56:38.034
the hand of the things that he wrestled with.

0:56:38.034,0:56:41.002
[applause]

0:56:41.002,0:56:56.001
[Molly Shaffer Van Houweling] I didn't know[br]Aaron quite as well as many who have been

0:56:56.001,0:57:01.024
so generous in sharing their memories. But[br]as a member of the board of directors of Creative

0:57:01.024,0:57:08.066
Commons, I am honored to be here to convey[br]CC's grief, our gratitude, and our commitment

0:57:08.066,0:57:13.046
to continuing to work toward the world of[br]openness and sharing that Aaron worked to

0:57:13.046,0:57:16.076
architect for all of us.

0:57:16.076,0:57:20.093
Many of you recently helped us celebrate the[br]tenth birth of Creative Commons, commemorating

0:57:20.093,0:57:27.021
the launch in December, 2002 of our first[br]suite of open content licenses at the party

0:57:27.021,0:57:32.599
that Seth described. But of course there was[br]a gestation period before the birth of CC

0:57:32.599,0:57:38.005
and that's when I met Aaron thanks to Lisa.[br]I think he was 15 when I met him, but appeared

0:57:38.005,0:57:42.005
to be about 11.

0:57:42.005,0:57:48.002
As most of you know, Creative Commons is a[br]steward of a set of public content licenses.

0:57:48.002,0:57:54.007
They have licensed deeds and legal code and[br]RDF metadata that is designed to make the

0:57:54.007,0:58:02.099
license human-readable and lawyer-readable[br]and machine-readable. That's the beauty of

0:58:02.099,0:58:03.082
the CC vision.

0:58:03.082,0:58:08.068
But it's also a challenge. It's a challenge[br]to find any one person who can really wrap

0:58:08.068,0:58:16.044
their heads around and talk about this idea.[br]A person who understands humans and lawyers

0:58:16.044,0:58:24.067
and machines. So when Lisa and I first described[br]CC at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference

0:58:24.067,0:58:29.022
in May, 2002, we needed some help.

0:58:29.022,0:58:38.002
Speaking for myself, I was human and I was[br]a lawyer, but I didn't read or speak machine.

0:58:38.002,0:58:45.072
So the idea of explaining what CC would have[br]to do with HTML, XML, RDF, and the W3C terrified

0:58:45.072,0:58:52.014
me. So I gave a presentation in which I said[br]some boring things about law and some vague

0:58:52.014,0:58:59.018
things about metadata. Lisa gave a demonstration[br]that I think was more exciting. But when the

0:58:59.018,0:59:05.096
complicated questions from the audience started,[br]we handed the mic down to little Aaron.

0:59:05.096,0:59:13.039
With some trepidation...I'd just met the kid-but[br]it was an act from me of pure desperation.

0:59:13.039,0:59:22.000
I couldn't answer those questions about RDF,[br]and I figured, well, at least he's adorable.

0:59:22.000,0:59:25.065
[laughter]

0:59:25.065,0:59:32.066
Of course, I found Aaron's notes on the presentation[br]still online this afternoon. They read almost

0:59:32.066,0:59:38.078
like poetry. "We did the Creative Commons[br]intro in the morning. Lisa forgot the VGA

0:59:38.078,0:59:44.029
dongle for her iBook, so I donated mine instead.[br]Whole thing seemed to go over pretty well.

0:59:44.029,0:59:47.025
I answered a couple of questions at the end."

0:59:47.025,0:59:53.022
I think Aaron answered all of the questions,[br]and I was wrong to be nervous about it. Of

0:59:53.022,1:00:00.046
course he could answer the questions and delight[br]the audience, not with his adorableness, not

1:00:00.046,1:00:07.869
only that, with his vision and with his ability[br]to communicate it to all of us.

1:00:07.869,1:00:13.094
We were finally hearing from someone who could[br]explain to humans, and even to lawyers, how

1:00:13.094,1:00:22.079
to harness the power of machines to overcome[br]unnecessary limits on sharing. Aaron's vision,

1:00:22.079,1:00:29.029
more powerful than I could explain or even[br]comprehend, how to harness the power of machines

1:00:29.029,1:00:34.018
to overcome unnecessary limits on sharing.

1:00:34.018,1:00:39.078
It was a vision Aaron pursued for CC, but[br]far beyond CC as well, as many of you can

1:00:39.078,1:00:48.041
attest better than I, but Aaron was not a[br]machine, and he was not a lawyer. He was a

1:00:48.041,1:00:57.005
human, and tragically mortal, but his vision[br]was not. The answers he gave to our questions

1:00:57.005,1:00:59.022
were not.

1:00:59.022,1:01:05.001
He shared them, and so we still have them,[br]and the people in this room are dedicated

1:01:05.001,1:01:11.034
to sharing them forward, and to making the[br]machines for sharing them forward work better

1:01:11.034,1:01:18.081
and better, and to making the law for sharing[br]them forward work better and better.

1:01:18.081,1:01:24.004
I want to end with something else that Aaron[br]shared. It's just a casual email to a W3C

1:01:24.004,1:01:31.034
list from August 2002. To me, it captures[br]his brilliance, his gift for communicating,

1:01:31.034,1:01:35.051
his vision of sharing, and his generous spirit.

1:01:35.051,1:01:43.109
"Hi there. If you haven't already heard, Creative[br]Commons is a new nonprofit organization working

1:01:43.109,1:01:47.047
to make it easier for copyright holders to[br]share their work by dedicating to the public

1:01:47.047,1:01:52.609
domain, or licensing it to the public on generous[br]terms. As part of that effort, we've been

1:01:52.609,1:01:57.369
working hard to develop our licenses and metadata[br]strategy over the past few months."

1:01:57.369,1:02:02.033
"When we launch our site, we want to not only[br]give our users licenses, but also a sample

1:02:02.033,1:02:06.095
of RDF that they can add to their web page.[br]We're hoping that by spreading these chunks

1:02:06.095,1:02:11.589
of RDF around the web, we'll provide a useful[br]base that interesting projects and applications

1:02:11.589,1:02:15.007
can exploit. For more information, please[br]check out our website."

1:02:15.007,1:02:20.068
"We'd appreciate your comments, thoughts,[br]and code. Please send them to the cc-metadata

1:02:20.068,1:02:27.038
mailing list. We'll be monitoring the list[br]and responding to your questions. Thanks.

1:02:27.038,1:02:28.025
Aaron."

1:02:28.025,1:02:35.066
"We'll be monitoring the list and responding[br]to your questions." I hope that, somehow,

1:02:35.066,1:02:40.089
Aaron is monitoring this list.

1:02:40.089,1:02:43.026
[applause]

1:02:43.026,1:02:49.007
I hope we return to his words and his vision[br]to help answer our questions, and that we

1:02:49.007,1:03:01.007
share those answers with our fellow humans.[br]To Aaron, thank you. Thank you for sharing.

1:03:01.007,1:03:05.096
[applause]

1:03:05.096,1:03:17.869
[Alex Stamos] Unlike a lot of the people here,[br]I didn't know Aaron. I never met him, didn't

1:03:17.869,1:03:22.094
speak to him on the phone, never even got[br]to exchange emails with him, which, ironically,

1:03:22.094,1:03:25.006
is why I'm here.

1:03:25.006,1:03:29.001
The fact that I didn't know him is the reason[br]why I was going to be the person that was

1:03:29.001,1:03:36.001
put forth to objectively explain to the jury[br]of what Aaron did, and I think I was able

1:03:36.001,1:03:41.064
to hold onto that objectivity until the last[br]week and a half, and per Teran's comments,

1:03:41.064,1:03:45.067
I've perhaps become much more radical than[br]I was before, which you can tell, because

1:03:45.067,1:03:49.053
I'm wearing my radical tie today.

1:03:49.053,1:03:52.066
[laughter]

1:03:52.066,1:03:57.058
What we were going to do is...I was objectively[br]going to go in front of that jury, and explain

1:03:57.058,1:04:02.093
to them that these horrible hacking crimes[br]that Aaron was accused of is functionally

1:04:02.093,1:04:08.051
the same as putting in the incorrect email[br]address to an airport WiFi, or going down

1:04:08.051,1:04:12.052
the street to Starbucks to change your IP[br]address.

1:04:12.052,1:04:18.023
Dan Purcell was going to get up there and[br]grill MIT and JSTOR witnesses, and talk to

1:04:18.023,1:04:22.005
them about how this kind of thing happens[br]dozens and dozens of times a year at MIT,

1:04:22.005,1:04:28.119
and yet Aaron is the first person to ever[br]have the Secret Service get involved. That

1:04:28.119,1:04:31.074
JSTOR witness was going to talk about how,[br]"Oh, there wasn't really any damage. We were

1:04:31.074,1:04:36.021
a little ticked off, but this isn't a big[br]deal for us, and we don't want this to happen."

1:04:36.021,1:04:41.098
Then Elliot Peters was going to get up and[br]give this fiery defense attorney speech, pounding

1:04:41.098,1:04:47.078
the table, and pointing to Boston Harbor,[br]and invoking the American Revolution, and

1:04:47.078,1:04:53.002
the spirit of freedom, and how Aaron lives[br]up to the greatest ideals in our founding

1:04:53.002,1:04:54.082
documents.

1:04:54.082,1:04:59.028
Then Aaron's future was going to be in the[br]hands of 12 normal people, I mean, normal

1:04:59.028,1:05:04.038
people who couldn't get out of jury duty,[br]but hopefully people who, I think, would have

1:05:04.038,1:05:12.013
had the sense to understand that there is[br]a huge chasm between the way Aaron was being

1:05:12.013,1:05:17.001
portrayed by the government and the young[br]man who was sitting there at that table.

1:05:17.001,1:05:21.066
I had faith in them, and we're not going to[br]get that chance to do all those things, and

1:05:21.066,1:05:27.031
we can't help Aaron anymore, but I think we,[br]and by "we," I mean everybody who is listening

1:05:27.031,1:05:32.599
to this, we can help the next Aaron, and we[br]didn't have to wait very long for the next

1:05:32.599,1:05:33.065
Aaron.

1:05:33.065,1:05:39.066
The next Aaron is the Chinese-American man[br]who is accused of stealing source code from

1:05:39.066,1:05:45.046
a hedge fund, and is being prosecuted under[br]the Espionage Act. The next Aaron is the Canadian

1:05:45.046,1:05:51.024
student who was expelled from his university[br]for pointing out security flaws to the university

1:05:51.024,1:05:54.043
in their software that exposed his personal[br]information.

1:05:54.043,1:05:59.000
The next Aaron is going to be that young lady[br]whose DEFCON speech is interrupted by the

1:05:59.000,1:06:07.119
clink of handcuffs, or that grandfather who[br]is mystified by the demand for $50,000 to

1:06:07.119,1:06:11.077
pay for copyright violations, because his[br]next door neighbor uses open WiFi to do a

1:06:11.077,1:06:16.072
little BitTorrent. Those are the next Aarons,[br]and those are the people we can help.

1:06:16.072,1:06:20.098
One of the reasons, I think we really to need[br]help them is, while I think all of us feel

1:06:20.098,1:06:29.044
gratified about the outpouring of love and[br]care, and the feeling of momentum that has

1:06:29.044,1:06:31.869
come out of the last week and a half.

1:06:31.869,1:06:38.002
We also have to be really aware that we want,[br]that when people face the same kind of odds

1:06:38.002,1:06:44.869
that Aaron faced, many of them without Aaron's[br]resources, that we want them not to think

1:06:44.869,1:06:49.096
Aaron's final moments of weakness and doubt[br]to be the kind of thing that they need to

1:06:49.096,1:06:52.089
do to bring about change.

1:06:52.089,1:06:54.021
There are two things we need to do for that.[br]One...

1:06:54.021,1:06:54.025
[applause]

1:06:54.025,1:07:04.081
One, we need to give those people as much[br]as much support as Aaron was able to give.

1:07:04.081,1:07:12.098
Those people don't know Larry Lessig. They[br]don't hang out with MIT professors, yet they

1:07:12.098,1:07:16.005
need the kind of support that Aaron was able[br]to muster.

1:07:16.005,1:07:20.064
One of the things I realized through this[br]whole thing is we never considered computer

1:07:20.064,1:07:27.007
science to be the kind of thing that is a[br]profession that changes lives, and something

1:07:27.007,1:07:31.099
this has demonstrated is that being able to[br]make an argument of whether a MAC address

1:07:31.099,1:07:37.031
is just something that you use to keep collisions[br]from happening on a network, it is not equivalent

1:07:37.031,1:07:39.078
to the serial number on a gun.

1:07:39.078,1:07:44.089
Making that argument is the kind of thing[br]that can mean spending decades in prison.

1:07:44.089,1:07:49.093
There are other professions that are life-changing,[br]medicine and law, and in those professions,

1:07:49.093,1:07:54.052
people have an idea about equal access and[br]helping people, and that doesn't happen in

1:07:54.052,1:07:56.065
reality, but at least they try.

1:07:56.065,1:07:59.071
There's an idea that everybody has a defense[br]lawyer. There's an idea that you can go and

1:07:59.071,1:08:03.094
get treated by a doctor, and they have an[br]ethical obligation to you. I think those of

1:08:03.094,1:08:09.022
us in the computer world need to see, via[br]Aaron's tragedy, that we have the same kind

1:08:09.022,1:08:11.031
of obligation.

1:08:11.031,1:08:13.021
[applause]

1:08:13.021,1:08:20.002
The second thing we all need to do is when[br]we are up here speaking, or we're commenting

1:08:20.002,1:08:27.369
on Reddit, or Hacker News, or talking to people[br]about Aaron, while we talk about the positive

1:08:27.369,1:08:33.679
change that is going to come out of his death,[br]we have to make it clear that all of those

1:08:33.679,1:08:38.279
positive things pale in comparison to what[br]he would've done had he lived.

1:08:38.279,1:08:39.019
[applause]

1:08:39.019,1:08:44.619
That's an important part of the message, because[br]we don't want those young people to think

1:08:44.619,1:08:51.179
that their only way out is to sacrifice themselves,[br]that they deserve to live too, and that they

1:08:51.179,1:08:58.309
have people who are standing behind them.[br]Thank you.

1:08:58.309,1:09:00.369
[applause]

1:09:00.369,1:09:13.609
[Cindy Cohn] Good evening. Thank you everybody.[br]We're all starting with how we met Aaron.

1:09:13.609,1:09:18.119
I think I met Aaron before this, but my first[br]real memory of him is on the steps of the

1:09:18.119,1:09:24.569
United States Supreme Court on the night before[br]the Eldred argument in 2002. I remember thinking,

1:09:24.569,1:09:28.509
"Does your mother know you're here?"

1:09:28.509,1:09:33.759
I recently found his account of that night,[br]and it reminded me of how very young he was,

1:09:33.759,1:09:39.279
how excited he was to be at the court, and[br]yet, his understanding of the nuances of the

1:09:39.279,1:09:46.429
Copyright Term Extension Act were better than[br]mine at that time. I also realized that by

1:09:46.429,1:09:51.949
having our first...or least, the first I'd[br]met, really, Fanboy, that we were building

1:09:51.949,1:09:55.082
a movement.

1:09:55.082,1:10:01.003
Since the early morning of January 12th, when[br]I learned that Aaron had passed away, I feel

1:10:01.003,1:10:07.289
like I've had a little Aaron on my shoulder,[br]reminding me that we are still part of a movement,

1:10:07.289,1:10:12.999
and demanding that we push forward, push further,[br]and that the tragedy of his death be parts

1:10:12.999,1:10:17.019
of the roots of something good and something[br]better.

1:10:17.019,1:10:24.239
I don't think Aaron named his organization[br]Demand Progress by accident. At EFF, we feel

1:10:24.239,1:10:28.809
this intensely, and I think we feel it in[br]two directions. First, we feel the need to

1:10:28.809,1:10:34.055
continue his work, opening access to publicly[br]funded and public domain information for all

1:10:34.055,1:10:38.719
people, so that you don't have to be in an[br]ivory tower to learn.

1:10:38.719,1:10:40.239
[applause]

1:10:40.239,1:10:48.989
The second, though, is the one that I've spent[br]most of my time on for the last few weeks,

1:10:48.989,1:10:54.001
and that was number four on Taren's list,[br]which is trying to fix the Computer Fraud

1:10:54.001,1:10:56.086
and Abuse Act.

1:10:56.086,1:11:00.829
EFF has a draft of some modest fixes that[br]would reduce the ability of prosecutors to

1:11:00.829,1:11:07.039
use the CFAA, and similar computer laws, to[br]ratchet up threats on people like Aaron. It's

1:11:07.039,1:11:10.034
on our website. It's on Reddit.

1:11:10.034,1:11:13.929
Representative Zoe Lofgren, as many of you[br]know, had led the way, and remains willing

1:11:13.929,1:11:21.599
to help, but we have to create the space for[br]real change, not not-real change, and that

1:11:21.599,1:11:26.269
remains to be done. Her initial proposals[br]are not sufficient.

1:11:26.269,1:11:32.026
We have a lot of work to do to get this where[br]it will be, but we need to ensure that what

1:11:32.026,1:11:36.789
happened to Aaron never happens to another[br]bright, idealistic, geeky kid who wants to

1:11:36.789,1:11:41.015
make the world a better place, and if we can't[br]do it in Congress, then we need to do it in

1:11:41.015,1:11:48.709
the courts, but we need your help. In fact,[br]we need the help of everyone you all know.

1:11:48.709,1:11:52.539
We need to marshal the same sort of support[br]for this fight that we were able to marshal

1:11:52.539,1:11:58.909
with SOPA about SOPA and PIPA, and maybe even[br]more, since this involves not just Hollywood,

1:11:58.909,1:12:06.329
but federal power, and we won't have Aaron.

1:12:06.329,1:12:11.032
I was hesitant to make this bold pitch at[br]Aaron's memorial, but honestly, I don't think

1:12:11.032,1:12:16.044
Aaron would've forgiven me if I didn't. We[br]can't help Aaron directly anymore, but we

1:12:16.044,1:12:21.449
can help the next Aaron, and the one after[br]that, and all of us who would be the beneficiaries

1:12:21.449,1:12:26.789
of what those next Aarons will create for[br]us, and the knowledge that they will make

1:12:26.789,1:12:32.209
available to all the rest of us and all the[br]people around the world.

1:12:32.209,1:12:38.849
I think we built the movement that I first[br]saw by seeing the little fanboy, Aaron Swartz,

1:12:38.849,1:12:45.719
in 2002, so now, let's use it.

1:12:45.719,1:12:49.619
[applause]

1:12:49.619,1:13:06.034
[Brewster Kahle] Wow. I learned from Aaron[br]what living an open source life was like.

1:13:06.034,1:13:15.059
I think he really live that way. He floated[br]and helped others. He gave everything away.

1:13:15.059,1:13:23.026
He really wasn't tied to an institution. He[br]really was not a company man in any sense.

1:13:23.026,1:13:31.389
He was really quite pure in his motivations,[br]and it made him incredibly effective of cutting

1:13:31.389,1:13:39.007
through a lot of the stuff that most of us[br]deal with, an open source life. He was able

1:13:39.007,1:13:46.078
to keep his self-interests at bay, which is[br]kind of remarkable for a lot of us, but he

1:13:46.078,1:13:54.909
was able to do it, and he was able to communicate[br]well with an open smile and a kind heart.

1:13:54.909,1:14:03.539
He had a way of spending time, and his energy,[br]on things that mattered, and he had a genius

1:14:03.539,1:14:10.026
at finding things that mattered to millions[br]of people. There are lots of things to work

1:14:10.026,1:14:14.479
on, but the things that he worked on were[br]incredibly effective.

1:14:14.479,1:14:25.239
We first met, I think, in 2002, at the Eldred[br]Supreme Court case in Washington, DC, when

1:14:25.239,1:14:29.849
we drove a bookmobile across, celebrating[br]the public domain by giving away books that

1:14:29.849,1:14:36.005
kids made, and also, then, at the Creative[br]Commons launch.

1:14:36.005,1:14:41.038
I really got to know Aaron when he said, "I'd[br]really like to help make the Open Library

1:14:41.038,1:14:49.003
website with the Internet Archive, to go and[br]give books, and integrate books into the Internet

1:14:49.003,1:14:56.349
itself." He said, "I've got this cool technology[br]called Infogami. It made possible to make

1:14:56.349,1:15:00.969
Reddit happen. Let's use it again for this[br]other thing."

1:15:00.969,1:15:06.489
It was wonderful to work with him, but it[br]was really unlike working with anybody else

1:15:06.489,1:15:13.042
I've ever met. You certainly couldn't tell[br]him what to do. He just did what was the right

1:15:13.042,1:15:19.699
thing to do, and he was right, certainly,[br]a lot more often than I was.

1:15:19.699,1:15:26.032
We worked together in other areas when he[br]was a champion of open access, especially

1:15:26.032,1:15:32.044
of the public domain, bringing public access[br]to the public domain. Most people think that's

1:15:32.044,1:15:37.539
kind of an obvious thing. "Isn't the public[br]thing mean that it's publicly accessible?"

1:15:37.539,1:15:39.769
Of course, all of us are like, "No."

1:15:39.769,1:15:47.032
It's sort of like there are these national[br]parks with moats, and walls, and guns, and

1:15:47.032,1:15:53.065
turrets pointing out in case somebody might[br]want to come near the public domain, and Aaron

1:15:53.065,1:15:59.889
didn't think this was right, and he spent[br]a lot of time and effort freeing these materials.

1:15:59.889,1:16:05.289
One of the first ones that we were actively[br]working together on was freeing government

1:16:05.289,1:16:10.889
court cases, so that anybody could see this[br]without having to have special privilege or

1:16:10.889,1:16:15.449
money, and also, to make it so you could data[br]mine it, and go and look at these things in

1:16:15.449,1:16:17.749
a very different way.

1:16:17.749,1:16:26.079
He freed and liberated a lot of court cases[br]from the PACER system, and uploaded them in-bulk

1:16:26.079,1:16:31.429
to the Internet Archive, so that people could[br]have access to these. There are now four million

1:16:31.429,1:16:37.659
documents from 800,000 cases that have been[br]used by six million people because of the

1:16:37.659,1:16:43.008
project that Aaron Swartz and others helped[br]start.

1:16:43.008,1:16:46.044
[applause]

1:16:46.044,1:16:53.429
It was an interesting project because it went[br]over many different organizations, each playing

1:16:53.429,1:17:02.309
a role, and all cooperating in a very non-corporate[br]way. It was a very Aaron style way of making

1:17:02.309,1:17:07.088
things happen, and the idea of making court[br]documents and legal documents available more

1:17:07.088,1:17:14.159
easily struck a chord with me, because in[br]college, I was trying to figure out how I

1:17:14.159,1:17:17.199
was going to try to get out of the draft.

1:17:17.199,1:17:26.449
My college didn't have a legal collection,[br]and the only way I could try to get to legal

1:17:26.449,1:17:35.349
court documents was to get an ID from my professor[br]and break into the Harvard Law Library to

1:17:35.349,1:17:38.078
go and read court documents.

1:17:38.078,1:17:40.979
[applause]

1:17:40.979,1:17:49.011
That sucked. It really makes no sense, and[br]Aaron not only saw that it doesn't make sense,

1:17:49.011,1:17:57.519
he decided he was going to try to help solve[br]this, not just for himself, but for everyone.

1:17:57.519,1:18:01.053
Then there were other public domain collections,[br]like the Google Books collection.

1:18:01.053,1:18:07.789
Google Books was a library project to go and[br]digitize lots and lots of books. A lot of

1:18:07.789,1:18:14.003
them were public domain. Google would make[br]them available from their website, but really,

1:18:14.003,1:18:19.239
really painfully. It would make it so that[br]if you wanted one book, you could get one

1:18:19.239,1:18:25.659
book. If you wanted 100 books, they'd turn[br]off your IP address forever.

1:18:25.659,1:18:32.001
This is no way to have public access to the[br]public domain. The Internet Archive started

1:18:32.001,1:18:42.057
getting these uploads of Google Books, going[br]faster, and faster, and faster. It was like,

1:18:42.057,1:18:48.599
"Well, where are these coming from?" Well,[br]it turns out, it's Aaron.

1:18:48.599,1:18:52.092
He and a bunch of friends figured out that[br]they could go and get a bunch of computers

1:18:52.092,1:19:01.119
to go slowly enough to just clock through[br]tons of Google Books and upload them to the

1:19:01.119,1:19:05.579
Internet Archive. Interestingly, Google never[br]got upset about it. The libraries, on the

1:19:05.579,1:19:11.179
other hand, grumbled. Anyway, they'll get[br]over it.

1:19:11.179,1:19:12.051
[laughter]

1:19:12.051,1:19:19.389
When this started happening, we said, "OK,[br]what's going on? Should we be concerned?"

1:19:19.389,1:19:24.719
"No, it's public domain. We just made sure[br]that we got the cataloging data right, and

1:19:24.719,1:19:28.036
we linked back to Google, so that if you're[br]on the book, you can go back to the original

1:19:28.036,1:19:37.479
page and see..." It all worked well, but there[br]was Aaron doing it again, bringing public

1:19:37.479,1:19:39.619
access to the public domain.

1:19:39.619,1:19:48.639
What is crushing to me is that Aaron got ensnared[br]by the Federal Government for doing something

1:19:48.639,1:19:56.084
that the Internet Archive actively encourages[br]others to do for our collections, and we think

1:19:56.084,1:20:04.199
all libraries should encourage, which is bulk[br]downloading to support data mining and other

1:20:04.199,1:20:12.709
research using computers. This is just the[br]way the world works.

1:20:12.709,1:20:16.026
[applause]

1:20:16.026,1:20:22.429
The first step is, for a computer to read[br]and analyze materials, to download a set of

1:20:22.429,1:20:32.005
documents. When Aaron did this from one library,[br]JSTOR, they strongly objected, and demanded

1:20:32.005,1:20:39.038
that MIT find and stop that user, which then[br]led US prosecutors to pull out their worst

1:20:39.038,1:20:40.709
techniques.

1:20:40.709,1:20:50.309
Did anybody stop to ask if bulk downloading[br]is a crime? I say, "No." Bulk downloading

1:20:50.309,1:21:01.055
is not in itself a crime. Let's stop this[br]practice of discouraging bulk downloading

1:21:01.055,1:21:06.949
because there are encouraging projects that[br]are learning amazing new things by having

1:21:06.949,1:21:14.084
computers be part of the research process.[br]Let's not stop this, and discourage young

1:21:14.084,1:21:22.059
people from coming up with new and different[br]ways to make access, to learn things from

1:21:22.059,1:21:25.079
our libraries.

1:21:25.079,1:21:34.709
What resulted, in this case, was tragic and[br]not necessary. Really, what we want is computers

1:21:34.709,1:21:43.479
to be able to read. Aaron knew this, we were[br]all building this, and he got ensnared anyway.

1:21:43.479,1:21:47.082
Let's let our computers read.

1:21:47.082,1:21:53.659
Because of this tragedy, JSTOR, I talked to[br]this morning, and the Internet Archive have

1:21:53.659,1:22:00.459
agreed to meet to discuss the broad issue[br]of data mining and web crawling. I hope that

1:22:00.459,1:22:06.689
we really make progress. At least there are[br]reasons to be positive.

1:22:06.689,1:22:16.011
This assault on Aaron would disillusion, discourage,[br]and depress a principled young man, and if

1:22:16.011,1:22:24.239
there ever was a principled young man, it[br]was Aaron Swartz. We miss you, and we will

1:22:24.239,1:22:29.709
carry on your important work.

1:22:29.709,1:22:33.389
[applause]

1:22:33.389,1:22:46.599
[Carl Malamud] Do not. Do not think for a[br]moment. Do not think for a moment, that Aaron's

1:22:46.599,1:22:52.059
work on JSTOR was a random act of a lone hacker,[br]some kind of crazy, spur-of-the-moment bulk

1:22:52.059,1:22:59.039
download. JSTOR had long come in for withering[br]criticism from the net.

1:22:59.039,1:23:04.084
Larry Lessig called JSTOR a moral outrage[br]in a talk, and I suppose I have to confess

1:23:04.084,1:23:12.219
he was quoting me, and we weren't the only[br]ones fanning those flames. Sequestering knowledge

1:23:12.219,1:23:18.719
behind pay walls, making scientific journals,[br]only available to a few kids fortunate enough

1:23:18.719,1:23:25.329
to be at fancy universities, and charging[br]$20 an article for the remaining 99 percent

1:23:25.329,1:23:28.009
of us, was a festering wound.

1:23:28.009,1:23:34.051
It offended many people. It embarrassed many[br]who wrote those articles, that their work

1:23:34.051,1:23:42.005
had become somebody's profit margin, a members-only[br]country club of knowledge. Many of us helped

1:23:42.005,1:23:49.009
fan those flames, and many of us feel guilty[br]today for fanning those flames, but JSTOR

1:23:49.009,1:23:51.061
was just one of many battles.

1:23:51.061,1:23:56.004
They tried to paint Aaron as some kind of[br]lone wolf hacker, a young terrorist who went

1:23:56.004,1:24:05.479
on a crazy IP killing spree that caused $92[br]million in damages, but Aaron wasn't a lone

1:24:05.479,1:24:11.489
wolf. He was part of an army, and I had the[br]honor of serving with him for a decade. You've

1:24:11.489,1:24:19.179
heard many things about his remarkable life,[br]but I want to focus tonight on just one.

1:24:19.179,1:24:25.005
Aaron was part of an army of citizens that[br]believes democracy only works when a citizenry

1:24:25.005,1:24:30.061
are informed, and we know about our rights[br]and our obligations, an army that believes

1:24:30.061,1:24:36.829
we must make justice and knowledge available[br]to all, not just the well-born, or those that

1:24:36.829,1:24:42.061
have grabbed the reins of power, so that we[br]may govern ourselves more wisely.

1:24:42.061,1:24:49.008
He was part of an army of citizens that rejects[br]kings and generals and believes in rough consensus

1:24:49.008,1:24:54.065
and running code.

1:24:54.065,1:24:58.059
[applause]

1:24:58.059,1:25:05.349
We worked together on a dozen government databases.[br]When we worked o something, the decisions

1:25:05.349,1:25:11.088
weren't rash. Our work often took months,[br]sometimes years, sometimes a decade, and Aaron

1:25:11.088,1:25:19.076
Swartz did not get his proper serving of decades.[br]We looked at and poked at the US copyright

1:25:19.076,1:25:27.015
database for a long time. It was a system[br]so old it was still running [inaudible 01:

1:25:27.015,1:25:28.139
25:25] .

1:25:28.139,1:25:29.139
[laughter]

1:25:29.139,1:25:35.084
The government had, believe it or not, asserted[br]copyright on the copyright database. Now how

1:25:35.084,1:25:42.699
you copyright a database that is specifically[br]called out in the United States Constitution

1:25:42.699,1:25:49.269
is beyond me. But we knew we were playing[br]with fire by violating their terms of use.

1:25:49.269,1:25:55.007
So we were careful. We grabbed that data and[br]it was used to feed the Open Library here

1:25:55.007,1:26:00.065
at the Internet Archive, and it was used to[br]feed Google Books, and we got a letter from

1:26:00.065,1:26:06.269
the Copyright Office waving copyright on that[br]copyright database.

1:26:06.269,1:26:11.209
But before we did that, we had to talk to[br]many lawyers and worry about the government

1:26:11.209,1:26:16.019
hauling us in for malicious, pre-meditated[br]bulk downloading.

1:26:16.019,1:26:17.007
[laughter]

1:26:17.007,1:26:22.699
These were not random acts of aggression.[br]We worked on databases to make them better,

1:26:22.699,1:26:29.209
to make our democracy work better, to help[br]our government. We were not criminals. When

1:26:29.209,1:26:36.499
we brought in 20 million pages of US District[br]Court documents from behind their eight-cent-per-page

1:26:36.499,1:26:43.289
PACER paywall, we found those public filings[br]infested with privacy violations.

1:26:43.289,1:26:49.739
Names of minor children, names of informants,[br]medical records, mental health records, financial

1:26:49.739,1:26:56.749
records, and tens of thousands of Social Security[br]numbers. We were whistleblowers, and we sent

1:26:56.749,1:27:03.013
our results to the chief judges of 31 District[br]Courts. And those judges were shocked and

1:27:03.013,1:27:07.729
dismayed, and then redacted those documents,[br]and they yelled at the lawyers that filed

1:27:07.729,1:27:12.038
them, and the Judicial Conference changed[br]their privacy rules.

1:27:12.038,1:27:12.088
[applause]

1:27:12.088,1:27:19.028
But you know what the bureaucrats did? You[br]know what the bureaucrats did who ran the

1:27:19.028,1:27:24.051
Administrative Office of the United States[br]Courts? To them, weren't citizens that made

1:27:24.051,1:27:32.005
public data better. We were thieves that took[br]$1.6 million of their property. So they called

1:27:32.005,1:27:38.084
the FBI. They said they were hacked by criminals,[br]an organized gang that was imperiling their

1:27:38.084,1:27:47.019
$120 million per year revenue stream selling[br]public government documents.

1:27:47.019,1:27:53.269
The FBI sat outside Aaron's house. They called[br]him up, and tried to sucker him into meeting

1:27:53.269,1:27:59.469
them without his lawyer. The FBI sat two armed[br]agents down in an interrogation room with

1:27:59.469,1:28:03.289
me to get to the bottom of this alleged conspiracy.

1:28:03.289,1:28:10.034
But we weren't criminals! We were only citizens.[br]We did nothing wrong. They found nothing wrong.

1:28:10.034,1:28:16.013
We did our duty as citizens and the government[br]investigation had nothing to show for it but

1:28:16.013,1:28:19.499
a waste of a whole lot of time and money.

1:28:19.499,1:28:26.849
If you want a chilling effect, sit somebody[br]down with a couple FBI agents for a while

1:28:26.849,1:28:33.309
and see how quickly their blood runs cold.[br]There are people who face danger every day

1:28:33.309,1:28:39.063
to protect us, police officers, and firefighters,[br]and emergency workers, and I am grateful and

1:28:39.063,1:28:45.034
amazed by what they do, but the work that[br]people like Aaron and I did, slinging DVDs

1:28:45.034,1:28:51.092
and running shell scripts on public materials,[br]should not be a dangerous profession.

1:28:51.092,1:28:59.079
We weren't criminals, but there were crimes[br]committed, crimes against the very idea of

1:28:59.079,1:29:06.209
justice. When the US attorney told Aaron he[br]had to plead guilty to 13 felonies for attempting

1:29:06.209,1:29:13.329
to propagate knowledge before she'd even consider[br]a deal, that was an abuse of power, a misuse

1:29:13.329,1:29:15.199
of the criminal justice system.

1:29:15.199,1:29:15.989
[applause]

1:29:15.989,1:29:25.369
That was a crime against justice, and that[br]US attorney does not act alone. She is part

1:29:25.369,1:29:32.659
of a posse intent on protecting property,[br]not people. All over the United States, those

1:29:32.659,1:29:38.849
without access to means don't have access[br]to justice, and face these abuses of power

1:29:38.849,1:29:40.001
every day.

1:29:40.001,1:29:47.034
It was a crime against learning when a nonprofit[br]corporation like JSTOR charged with advancing

1:29:47.034,1:29:54.929
knowledge, turned a download, that caused[br]no harm and no damage, into a $92 million

1:29:54.929,1:30:00.849
federal case, and the JSTOR corporate monopoly[br]on knowledge is not alone.

1:30:00.849,1:30:07.539
All over the United States, corporations have[br]staked their fences on the field of education,

1:30:07.539,1:30:13.699
for-profited colleges that steal from our[br]veterans, nonprofit standard bodies that ration

1:30:13.699,1:30:20.003
public safety codes while paying million dollar[br]salaries, multinational conglomerates that

1:30:20.003,1:30:26.051
measure the work of scientific papers and[br]legal materials by their gross margins.

1:30:26.051,1:30:27.769
[applause]

1:30:27.769,1:30:35.539
In the JSTOR case, was the overly aggressive[br]posture of the department of justice, prosecutors,

1:30:35.539,1:30:41.026
and law enforcement officials revenge, because[br]they were embarrassed that, in their view

1:30:41.026,1:30:45.439
at least, we somehow got away with something[br]in the PACER incident?

1:30:45.439,1:30:51.459
Was the merciless JSTOR prosecution the revenge[br]of embarrassed bureaucrats because they looked

1:30:51.459,1:30:57.489
stupid in the "New York Times," because the[br]United States Senate called them on the carpet?

1:30:57.489,1:31:02.709
We will probably never know the answer to[br]that question, but it sure looks like they

1:31:02.709,1:31:09.869
destroyed a young man's life in a petty abuse[br]of power. This was not a criminal matter.

1:31:09.869,1:31:12.038
Aaron was not a criminal.

1:31:12.038,1:31:17.709
If you think you own something, and I think[br]that thing is public, I'm more than happy

1:31:17.709,1:31:22.349
to meet you in a court of law, and if you're[br]right, I'll take my lumps if I've wronged

1:31:22.349,1:31:28.559
you, but when we turn armed agents of the[br]law on citizens trying to increase access

1:31:28.559,1:31:34.729
to knowledge, we've broken the rule of law.[br]We've desecrated the temple of justice. Aaron

1:31:34.729,1:31:37.053
Swartz was not a criminal.

1:31:37.053,1:31:38.909
[applause]

1:31:38.909,1:31:50.009
Aaron Swartz was a citizen, and he was a brave[br]soldier in a war which continues today, a

1:31:50.009,1:31:56.329
war in which corrupt and venal profiteers[br]try to steal, and horde, and starve our public

1:31:56.329,1:31:59.007
domain for their own private gain.

1:31:59.007,1:32:04.309
When people try to restrict access to the[br]law, or they try to collect tolls on the road

1:32:04.309,1:32:10.619
to knowledge, or deny education to those without[br]means, those people are the ones who should

1:32:10.619,1:32:19.719
not face a stern gaze of an outraged public[br]prosecutor. What the Department of Justice

1:32:19.719,1:32:24.579
put Aaron through for trying to make our world[br]better is the same thing they can put you

1:32:24.579,1:32:25.479
through.

1:32:25.479,1:32:31.004
Our army isn't one lone wolf. It is thousands[br]of citizens, many of you in this room, who

1:32:31.004,1:32:37.189
are fighting for justice and knowledge. I[br]say we are an army, and I use the word with

1:32:37.189,1:32:42.789
cause, because we face people who want to[br]imprison us for downloading a database to

1:32:42.789,1:32:48.032
take a closer look. We face people who believe[br]they can tell us what we can read and what

1:32:48.032,1:32:49.739
we can say.

1:32:49.739,1:32:57.189
But when I see our army, I see an army that[br]creates instead of destroys. I see the army

1:32:57.189,1:33:02.939
of Mahatma Gandhi walking peacefully to the[br]sea to make salt for the people. I see the

1:33:02.939,1:33:09.059
army of Martin Luther King walking peacefully[br]but with determination to Washington to demand

1:33:09.059,1:33:15.239
their rights. Because change does not roll[br]in on the wheels of inevitability, it comes

1:33:15.239,1:33:20.309
through continuous struggle.

1:33:20.309,1:33:23.789
[applause]

1:33:23.789,1:33:31.209
When I see our army, I see an army that creates[br]new opportunities for the poor. An army that

1:33:31.209,1:33:36.889
makes our society more just and more fair.[br]An army that makes knowledge universal. When

1:33:36.889,1:33:43.889
I see our army, I see the people who have[br]created the Wikipedia and the Internet Archive,

1:33:43.889,1:33:49.829
the people who coded GNU and Apache and BIND[br]and Linux, I see the people who made the EFF

1:33:49.829,1:33:55.057
and the Creative Commons. I see the people[br]who created our Internet as a gift to the

1:33:55.057,1:33:57.119
world.

1:33:57.119,1:34:03.409
When I see our army, I see Aaron Schwartz,[br]and my heart is broken. We've truly lost one

1:34:03.409,1:34:10.005
of our better angels. I wish we could change[br]the past, but we cannot. But we can change

1:34:10.005,1:34:16.289
the future and we must. We must do so for[br]Aaron. We must do so for ourselves. We must

1:34:16.289,1:34:22.369
do so to make our world a better place, a[br]more humane place, a place where justice works

1:34:22.369,1:34:26.053
and access to knowledge becomes a human right.[br]Thank you.

1:34:26.053,9:59:59.000
[applause]