The Internets Own Boy — Reflection
The Internets own boy greatly surpassed my expectations. It wasn’t a boring documentary regurgitating facts, but instead an inspiring story about progress and change. From just watching the home videos of him growing up, I could already tell he was a genius. He understood the world around him differently, and cared about leaving a lasting positive impact on society. His work fighting unfair copyright laws and challenging the big corporations I believe definitely fueled a lot of the progress we’ve made towards making information more freely available on the internet. I believe his work also inspired similar minded individuals to challenge Big internet companies on Net Neutrality. After watching, its hard not to feel that it IS a moral imperative to share information with all of mankind. The fact that the internet wouldn’t even exists if it wasn’t given out for free should serve as a role model for the information available on it.
In the movie, the governments’ inability to adequately deal with cyber crime is very prevalent to me. I do not believe that Aaron should have been charged with 14 federal crimes and persecuted to the extent that he was. The improper system ruined a promising young scholars life. There should at least be guidelines distinguishing less serious offenses from more serious ones. Todays world is riddled with online crimes and concerns but are hackers really the equivalent to pirates? No, I don’t believe so.
Another area that “erked” me in the film was the extent to which business goes to make a profit off of what I personally believe should be public information, and off of the creators of that information. Just because someone can’t afford to pay, shouldn’t mean they can’t afford to learn because of it. It really is each and everyone of our responsibility to close the gap between the privileged and unprivileged in the world. Aaron did technically commit a crime, and some people argue he could have done things differently to affect change, but how do you get the people in power to give up some of it? It sounds like that route would be very long before any change could actually come of it.
I liked the way the film handled the telling of Aarons story, through the eyes of the people he knew and loved. Sure that may portray somewhat biased opinions, but we also get to learn about Aaron from the people that knew him best.
All in all, I’d definitely recommend this documentary. It’ll give you a captivating story while enhancing your outlook on attainable progress and change.
