The Courageous Internet Activism of Aaron Swartz
Why copyright laws undermine the demands of justice
On 4 September 2024, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit delivered a momentous ruling that will have implications for readers around the world. The court upheld the lower court’s ruling in the case of Hachette v. Internet Archive, which found in favour of the publisher Hachette and deemed that the Internet Archive’s long-standing project of providing books for free to readers who needed them is a violation of US copyright law. The ruling places many non-commercial initiatives to make out of print books available to those who need them at risk for litigation.
On the day the court issued its ruling, I thought about my friends in Palestine, Syria, and Iran, who could not read the books that nourish their soul as they nourish mine, without access to websites that circumvent copyright to give them access to the books that shape their lives. The world is a better and more equal place thanks to the existence of these websites, no matter what publishers or the courts say.
I also thought about internet activist Aaron Swartz, co-founder of Reddit, who first revealed the political stakes of open access to me. Swartz fought for open access until the FBI decided to turn him into an example. Faced with a long prison sentence…
