for a world thats no flat

8/10/2019 For a World Thats No Flat

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Madhyamam Online/EnglishFebruary 14, 2013

For a World thats not flat

"Aaron dead. World Wanderer, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one

down .Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep",tweeted1Tim Berners Lee , the

inventor of World Wide Web on the death of Aaron Swartz. The question of how should

Aaron Swartz be remembered in the annals of history remains equally before

the intelligentsia- the keepers of information and the people he stood for- "the

commons"; knows and know-nots. Eulogists havent failed to mention the credentials

of this computer prodigy.

At the age of 14, Aaron Swartz co-created RSS (Rich Site Summary) 1.0 which helps a

web reader to get updates from any website which confirms to its specifications. He

co-designed Creative Commons licenses, which made easy sharing and usage of

knowledge without law infringements. He dropped out from Stanford University, before

cofounding Reddit, a social and entrainment news website where users provided the

content. Later Reddit was sold to Wired Magazine Company for more than$10 million.

In 2007, he led the development of Open Library.org, an ambitious project to collect

information about every book ever published, which presently is having 1 million

disabled friendly books in public domain. If the story ends here, Aaron would have

been remembered like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook or Steve Jobs of Apple but with a

tint of ideology about an Open Society.

Exploring this tint of ideology and his pursuit of world where knowledge is accessible

to everyone, one could understand that it cost him a lot. On the day when US court

filings data base , PACER opened up its paid access for free but limited to17 libraries

, Aaron ran a script which downloaded 19.8 million pages of text worth 3 million

dollars for free public distribution. Later he founded Demand Progressand played a

huge role in building up massive campaigns against the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the

US Senate and its US House of representatives equivalent, the Stop Online Piracy Act

(SOPA) which was allegedly lobbied by Hollywood and Music Industry for 94 million

1The blue underlined words refers to corresponding links to the information cited
https://twitter.com/timberners_leehttps://twitter.com/timberners_leehttps://twitter.com/timberners_leehttp://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/christine-lagorio/alexis-ohanian-reddit-how-i-did-it.htmlhttp://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/christine-lagorio/alexis-ohanian-reddit-how-i-did-it.htmlhttp://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/christine-lagorio/alexis-ohanian-reddit-how-i-did-it.htmlhttp://www.theverge.com/2013/1/22/3898584/aaron-swartz-profile-memory-to-myth/in/3637531http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/22/3898584/aaron-swartz-profile-memory-to-myth/in/3637531http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/22/3898584/aaron-swartz-profile-memory-to-myth/in/3637531http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13records.html?_r=1&http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13records.html?_r=1&http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13records.html?_r=1&http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/198693-the-copyright-lobby-comeuppancehttp://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/198693-the-copyright-lobby-comeuppancehttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13records.html?_r=1&http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13records.html?_r=1&http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/22/3898584/aaron-swartz-profile-memory-to-myth/in/3637531http://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/christine-lagorio/alexis-ohanian-reddit-how-i-did-it.htmlhttps://twitter.com/timberners_lee


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dollars.Following the world-wide public protest , marking American Censorship Day

on 16th November 2011 and internet black outs by Wikipedia, Reddit etc., a large

number of US politicians withdrew their support for the Acts. Meanwhile, he was

arrested from MIT Campus for downloading over 4.8 million articles from JSTOR

which he collected for free public distribution. He had to face an superseding

indictment of 13 felony counts (Felony counts increased from four to thirteen) through

which he could have faced up to 35 years in prisonand fine of one million dollars.

Later, though JSTOR dropped the case, the trail continued with US attorney Ortizs

assertion stealing is stealing and finally on 11th January 2013 he was found dead

after hanging himself in his Brooklyn apartment. Again, he should not be confused

with Robinhood, even though Aarons activism not only cost him talent but his life too.

Delineating the personality of Aaron, which has been largely exercised by popular

media to find out reasons of his genius, activism or his precarious death, largely

outlays a parley of following stages ; a) an internet prodigy and activist, b) kernel-

space technology and user space politics, c)memory and myth; and d) knowledge and

power. But this evolution of descriptions fails to go beyond stage b and get submersed

in the process of creating myth out of memories of Aaron. Its essential to go beyond

stage c but definitely not to pathologize the story as Lawrence Lessigworried.

"Freedom of speech has been under threat in every age .The digital age is in fact the

biggest opportunity for freedom since Gutenberg" - Timothy Garton Ash, Oxford

Historian and leader infree speech debate.

A bigger opportunity always comes along with a bigger threat. Here, a threat which

has been resounded by the intellects of the hour; like Karl Marx who was worried

about the increments of technology by bourgeois production relations, leading to

alienation and later marginalization of the large by the accumulation of wealth by few

or like Michael Foucault who believed in the knowledgepower duality where power is

constituted through accepted forms of knowledge, scientific understanding andtruth.

If I may lend Eric Hobsbawms terminologies, what else did humanity witness in its

course from the age of revolution to the age of capital, empires and extremes but the

rise of the enlightened against the vicissitudes of power on their lives?
http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pdfhttp://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pdfhttp://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.htmlhttp://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.htmlhttp://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bullyhttp://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bullyhttp://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bullyhttp://freespeechdebate.com/en/http://freespeechdebate.com/en/http://www.wdog.com/rider/writings/foucault.htmhttp://www.wdog.com/rider/writings/foucault.htmhttp://www.wdog.com/rider/writings/foucault.htmhttp://www.wdog.com/rider/writings/foucault.htmhttp://freespeechdebate.com/en/http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bullyhttp://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.htmlhttp://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pdf


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We live in the age of information with its surplus yearning to connect the far and near;

an age of knows and know-nots. But as Aaron Swartz notes in his opening lines of

Guerilla Open Access Manifesto: "Information is power. But like all power, there are

those who want to keep it for themselves". The Leviathan- Nation States did realize

this erudition of Aaron beforehand , which reflected in their ironical stands during the

debates that happened in recently concluded World Conference on International

Telecommunications (WCIT) of UN International Telecommunication Union.

Superficially it appeared as a debate between neo-liberal States and pro-State control

notions of China and Russia, but both positions were poisoned ice cream candied

with nuts and dried fruits- with varying levels of obscurity. When the latter openly

contested and confessed its going to decide what its people would think, the former

presumably stood for freedom of expression but was ensuring the monopoly of ICANN

(Internet Corporation for Assigned Name and Numbers), a private non-profit entity

which was previously overseen by US. The dichotomy in the stands could be

understood when the same free nationsappeal for laws like SOPA and hunts down

people like Aaron Swartz under hollow acts like Computer and Fraud Abuse Act inside

their countries.

The questions around obscurity and access had once led to the criticism of the

writings from Plato through Hegel to Derrida. Today these questions permeates the

circles of intelligentsia , especially when mass movements necessarily doesnt lie under

the wish and will of intellects , it had attained universality in the backdrop of events

like social media fuelled - Arab Spring which shook decades of

dictatorship, controversies around vaulted Internet services in China ,the attempts to

arrest the Wikileaks Founder, Julain Assange at Ecuadorean Embassy or more

evidently in the protests that happened in India after the gang rape of a woman in

Delhi on 16thDecember 2012.

Further , the debates of freedom to express (here to connect) can be around another

dimension , when the law fails to provide adequate space for technology and its

creators .It is becoming more evident when it comes to developing nations like India

which is estimated to have a third of Worlds poor and with an one-fourth population
http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txthttp://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txthttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/technology/dark-warnings-about-future-of-internet-access.html?_r=2&http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/technology/dark-warnings-about-future-of-internet-access.html?_r=2&http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/technology/dark-warnings-about-future-of-internet-access.html?_r=2&http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt


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illiterate. The Narmada Bachao Andolan or protest against Kudankulam Nuclear

Power Project can also be considered as repercussions when the space provided for

technology was not bound by ethics. The public clamor againstarrestingtwo students

in Mumbai for posting and "liking inface book on the death of Bal Thackeray was an

example of the invasion of social controls into the newly built cyber space for a

deviance check ; no less was the move of a publishersconsortium of Oxford University

Press, Cambridge University Press and Taylor & Francisagainst a photocopy shopin

the campus of Delhi School of Economics on charges of copyright infringement, but for

deterrence . All theses ruptures exist as coordinates in an ill-built space that

developing nations are creating as they embrace more technology and information.

They are derivatives of a mismatch between science, and law with its ethics binding

science. A discrepancy in these Urim and the Thummim of human philosophical

understanding would cause serious casualties and Aaron was the most recent victim

to it.

May be its the circulatory of power we should question not the law it makes .More

precisely not just the Nation-States alone. How else the Nation-States both in high and

low of developmental indices have rules like18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(4)of US or66 A of India

IT Actwhich hold the potency to be draconian ? Then we will have to see who gives us

information ,point fingers to them and ask Roman Satirist Juvenals classic question:

Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?(But who will guard the guard themselves?) . The

power to control binaries and bits by AND, NOT, OR Gates and other complex IC chips

created a world of information surge and unprecedented technological inventions for

humanity. But their metaphorical counterparts like e-journals created by free public

contribution but with heavy access payments, search engines giving populist choices,

advertisement propelled corporate media or the state which censors media are all

equally perpetuating marginalization of knowledge and therein of people.

To liberate data from the hands of conglomerates, is important not only because

"bringing down the things from the top and making it more egalitarian is something

that we should strive for" but "for everything there exists someone who cares a great

deal about it" and "everyone has a way of expressing themselves" (Quotes from Aaron

Swartz's interview withSteal this film). The#pdftributeevent which saw uploading of
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/21/world/asia/india-police-arrest-student-over-facebook-post.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/21/world/asia/india-police-arrest-student-over-facebook-post.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/21/world/asia/india-police-arrest-student-over-facebook-post.htmlhttp://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/issue/news/delhi-university-students-enraged-by-cambridge-university-press-legal-action/http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/issue/news/delhi-university-students-enraged-by-cambridge-university-press-legal-action/http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/issue/news/delhi-university-students-enraged-by-cambridge-university-press-legal-action/http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aaron-swartz-part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aaron-swartz-part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aaron-swartz-part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20537332http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20537332http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20537332http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20537332http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzNXDdjtXQIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzNXDdjtXQIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzNXDdjtXQIhttp://pdftribute.net/http://pdftribute.net/http://pdftribute.net/http://pdftribute.net/http://pdftribute.net/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzNXDdjtXQIhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20537332http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20537332http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aaron-swartz-part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/issue/news/delhi-university-students-enraged-by-cambridge-university-press-legal-action/http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/21/world/asia/india-police-arrest-student-over-facebook-post.html


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a large number of academic articles online for free public distribution and

organizinghack nights are definitely expressing the public grief but the mourners

should not forget the greater debate; the debate in which the gatekeepers of

information keep the law of the land in their bay and provide fragmented spaces for

people to access knowledge and develop their identity. If regulation of the regulators

seems anarchical or idealist, its at least required to maintain the axioms of law in

correct posture, like the ones of deterrence and proportionality, for if else the sources

of knowledge that the gatekeepers protect would extinguish- which is existential both

for the people at the centre and margins. This essentially has to be addressed

considering facts like the largest democracy in the world is turning out to become the

largest IT power in the world too. To an extreme, an age where a hacker community

could threaten to topple a democracy politically is not so far .More importantly, the

law framework and state policies or other power derivatives should reform so as they

dont create outcast in cyber space as done through Caste segregation by

Brahamaincal systems or the Indian State pursuit of Naxalites.

During the Freedom to Connect conference 2012 mentioning about the success of

anti-SOPA-PIPA movement, Aaron noted "We won this fight because everyone made

themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this

crucial freedom. They threw themselves into it...."

Lets keep spaces for innovation in our mind, society and law, else like Aaron Swartz,

the prodigies of future will have to write notes in their blog onwhat if they get hit by a

truck and end it with a line I'm not dead yet ! .Its not just this tint of irony

that completes the life of this young man, rather it's the ideas that he left for free and

connected world beyond obscurities of two infinite ends - a world that's not flat .
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/aaron-swartz-memorial-hacknight/article4327400.ecehttp://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/aaron-swartz-memorial-hacknight/article4327400.ecehttp://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/aaron-swartz-memorial-hacknight/article4327400.ecehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgh2dFngFsghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgh2dFngFsghttp://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_8/If%20I%20get%20hit%20by%20a%20truck...http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_8/If%20I%20get%20hit%20by%20a%20truck...http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_8/If%20I%20get%20hit%20by%20a%20truck...http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_8/If%20I%20get%20hit%20by%20a%20truck...http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_8/If%20I%20get%20hit%20by%20a%20truck...http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_8/If%20I%20get%20hit%20by%20a%20truck...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgh2dFngFsghttp://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/aaron-swartz-memorial-hacknight/article4327400.ece

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