A revolutionary who didn’t want a conviction on his record in case he wanted to work in the White House; a genius programmer who failed to predict that crime would lead to prosecution and a fighter who simply gave up, Aaron Swartz was a young man of contradictions only hinted at in the documentary “The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz.”
Swartz, one of the developers of Reddit and a hacktivist devoted to freeing up information, turned down a three-month prison sentence after he illegally downloaded massive amounts of data from M.I.T. Instead, at 26, he committed suicide in Brooklyn last year. This one-sided documentary, told entirely by supporters, paints Swartz as a hero pursued by malign forces.
It’s easy to share the film’s outrage, though: Swartz was a fascinating, brilliant figure whose martyrdom has added urgency to the push to make public university research, which is massively supported by tax dollars, then hidden behind paywalls to benefit private corporations.
May his death not be in vain.