Reaction: The Internet’s Own Boy
The Internet’s Own Boy, chronicles the story of programming prodigy and Internet activist, Aaron Swartz. Highlighting the two-year legal battle Swartz faced after systematically downloading academic journal articles from JSTOR, a privately operated digital library. Swartz possessed a self-imposed responsibility to provide the digital community unrestricted access to scholarly and copyrighted essays. Swartz viewed JSTOR, and similar privately owned academic databases with large access fees, as enemies of the publicly inclusive world wide web.
I found myself in a quagmire watching The Internet’s Own Boy. As the daughter of an Intellectual Property lawyer, I’ve always valued the legitimacy of a copyright. A copyright protects the author. A copyright ensures the integrity of the author. A copyright allows the material of the author to only be utilized with citation. I had never considered a copyright evil, nor had I ever considered a copyright to perpetually disadvantage individuals unable to access protected material.
Aaron Swartz fervent reaction to the inaccessibility of academic articles, inspired my newly extended approach to the concept of a copyright. Perhaps, by illegally downloading protected material, Swartz had a morally accurate concept of the accessibility of the world wide web. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, admired by Swarts for the creation of the world wide web, chose not to profit from the revolutionary invention. Burners Lee instead, wanted the world wide web, “to be used to expand the potential of the web as a channel for free expression and collaboration,” a theory Swartz found particularly noble, and utilized upon penetrating JSTOR.
If the world wide web was formulated to be inclusive and accessible, why do privately operated firms publish and limit access to scholarly articles? If copyrighted materials are available at public libraries, then why are copyrighted materials not available on the world wide web, a public commodity?
