Reflection on “The Internet’s Own Boy”
In watching the documentary, The Internet’s Own Boy, I found myself to be amazed at how incredibly intelligent of a person Aaron Swartz was. To be quite honest, I had never heard of him prior to this, and to find out he was a co-founder of Reddit was impressive. I was also blown away when I found out he worked on so many projects, even the function of RSS, something I had always seen but never really knew what it was. It inspired me seeing how young he had started to revolutionize the internet, and it made me a tad bit jealous, if I have to admit. He was just a pure inspirational genius. He seemed so loved by everyone he was around and they seemed to praise him for his passion in making the world a better place. It saddens me to know that it took me this long to discover who he was.
I think the documentary does a great job in presenting Aaron as a passionate human being; however, everyone that was interviewed seemed to have a great appreciation for Aaron, that now thinking about it, it made it a biased storytelling piece. The documentary really emphasized how much Aaron wanted to change the world and when it came down to talking about the legal issue that he was facing, there wasn’t anyone from the opposition to present their views on the problem. Because of this, the film made it easier on me to sympathize with Aaron and support his movement.
Despite the bias, I still believe that the government was going too far in the way they were handling the sentencing. In an article I found on Thinkprogress.org, it breaks down different crimes, such as manslaughter, bank robbery, and threatening the president, into their maximum sentences that do not amount to what they were trying to impose on Swartz for stealing scholarly articles. Seeing this, it made me cognizant of the issue that there aren’t any laws that protect a user online when it comes to accessing information.
Becoming aware of this and due to the conversations we’ve had on our online class, it has sparked curiosity in me to look further into the status of where this movement is. How much has it progressed or has it come to a halt? The last time, and unfortunately have to admit was also the first time, I heard about our rights as users of the internet was when Net Neutrality came about. The bill that the government was trying to pass did get rebuked, due to the outcries and protests of the citizens. This is an issue that continues on today and I am sure WILL continue further as our world becomes more web based. It is important that not only we have laws that protect us when our feet are on the ground, but also when we our fingers on the mouse and the keyboard.
