Sunday, January 13, 2013

The Economist — Remembering Aaron Swartz: Commons man


Hounded to death.
TO CALL Aaron Swartz gifted would be to miss the point. As far as the internet was concerned, he was the gift. In 2001, aged just 14, he helped develop a new version of RSS feeds, which enable blog posts, articles and videos to be distributed easily across the web. A year later he was working with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web, and others on enhancing the internet through the Semantic Web, in which web-page contents would be structured so that the underlying data could be shared and reused across different online applications and endeavours. At the same time he was part of a team, composed of programmers like himself (albeit none quite as youthful), lawyers and policy wonks, that launchedCreative Commons, a project that simplified information-sharing through free, easy-to-use copyright licences.
Most of this he did for little or no compensation. One exception was Reddit, though he later sounded almost contrite about the riches showered on him and his colleagues by Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue and over a dozen other prominent lifestyle magazines, which bought the popular social news site in 2006. In any case, he wasn't a good fit for corporate life, he said, and left a few months later—or, depending on whom you talk to, was asked to leave. But the cash did let him focus on his relentless struggle to liberate data for online masses to enjoy for free....
Then the tale descends into darkness as government wields its coercive power to advance and protect enclosure.

The irony is that JSTOR has decided to open its archives to free online access (but not download) through Register & Read.

The Economist
Remembering Aaron Swartz: Commons man
G.F. | Seattle And M.G. | San Francisco

2 comments:

John Zelnicker said...

"Only the good die young."

guest said...

Aaron "got it": http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whynojobs