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Aaron Swartz[/caption]I don't know the theory behind the position that academic research should be free to all because its cost is a "public expense". I have a hard time agreeing with this position simply because I recognize "public expense" is a euphemism for the proceeds of the institutionalized theft people call "taxation". However, for those who have no moral qualms about such theft, the claim they make (and which Aaron made, as far as I know) is very reasonable: The information produced from such expenditures belongs to the public and should therefore be available to the public for free. We bought it, so we own it, and anyone trying to prevent us from accessing it is behaving badly.
The tools and ease with which someone from the public accesses this information that he or she owns (along with everyone else) are a different story. Some may claim that JSTOR provided a valuable indexing service and ought to be compensated for it. I agree that a valuable indexing service provider should be compensated for its efforts, but when it has a monopoly on access to the information it indexes, the argument fails miserably. In the end, JSTOR finally did what Swartz urged them to all along (and what he did for them through stealth while they insisted on not doing it), perhaps in recognition that their position was immoral (blocking access until a member of the public PAID for information already owned by the public).
Free access to information is also intimately related to censorship on the internet, which is what Swartz is said to have stood against. We might ask what kind of censorship should be allowed on internet and what kind of information be protected as private.
Any kind of censorship should be allowed as long it is enforced without violating anyone's rights. Unfortunately, enforcing censorship without violating rights is nearly impossible. I censor myself without violence, as do most people, but when someone else (Swartz, Assange, The Tenth Amendment Center, FIJA, members of The Free State Project, etc.) is able to release information that someone (the government, a business like JSTOR or Monsanto, or a politician like Obama or Bush) has a reason to hide (profit motive, or perhaps fear of retaliation from the masses), "censorship" is just a euphemism for all kinds of violence, such as imprisonment (Assange, Manning), harassment (Swartz), fines, vengeful prosecution (Peter E. Hendrickson), and property confiscation.
On the point of hacking into computers and stealing academic information, it is important to recognize that as time goes by, what is legal and what is moral grow further and further apart. Schools teach students that following the law is the essence of the conscience. This has horrible effects. Since governments survive on the acquiescence of their victims, they learn early in life the clever Judo skill of using the enemy's efforts against him. Swartz may have realized that his situation was providing the government with fodder for its efforts to quell the modern trend toward agorism. In fact, as government regulation continues to increase in both breadth and depth, it becomes less important to fight it and more important to simply ignore it. Cuba is an excellent example of how black markets can fill in the holes created by rampant authoritarian control.
It is interesting that Swartz's case was called "United States vs Aaron Swartz." Was it really an entire nation against a sole citizen? In legal terms "The United States vs X" does not mean X has offended the entire nation. Often, the crime X has committed is a "victimless crime." When a government creates laws that criminalize behaviors that harm no one, then the cases it prosecutes to pass sentence on those who break such laws are described this way. So obviously, the description has little to do with the actual people of the nation and much more to do with the government itself.
But the biggest question in this case undoubtedly is whether Swartz died as a hero or a coward. Most people will not come to their own conclusion on the question of whether Swartz died a hero or a coward. Rather, they will allow others to make this decision for them. In an effort to forestall this tragic lack of self-worth and confidence in one’s own judgments, I'll provide arguments from both sides in order to drive my lazier readers to frustration with their own lack of effort, and to leave open the path to agreement with my more astute and resourceful readers regardless which side their judgment falls on.
On one hand, Swartz allegedly gave up in the midst of an important display of state depravity. Had Gandhi or John Lennon committed suicide because of the frustration they felt with the systems against which they were working, the world would be a far worse place. On the other hand, he may have been conveniently terminated through an apparent suicide in order to prevent some of his better arguments from becoming more widely known, or he may have determined that his personal existence had become a stumbling block for a movement that was more important to him than his own life.
As a voluntaryist, it is important to me to recognize the evil created and promulgated by the publicly acceptable coercive actions of government. Swartz's death highlights both the ugly effects of government interference and the extremes to which governments go in the direction of inhumanity. He was a hero before he died because of what he was fighting for, and one act of cowardice before his death, if that be what killed him, can't undo all the heroic things he accomplished.
About the Author
Dave Scotese is a software consultant, writer, founder of the literary community Litmocracy, and the webmaster for http://www.voluntaryist.com.
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