On January 6, 2011, American computer programmer/Internet ‘hacktivist’ Aaron Swartz was arrested for downloading too many articles from the academic journal database JSTOR. He was a Harvard research fellow, so technically he had every right to them.
But then again, to see one user hacking in (followed by actually trespassing on the physical premises to hook up a laptop) and attempting to systematically download the contents of their entire repository admittedly might ring a little unorthodox. His intentions are still dubious, and whether he was planning to construct some free distribution platform or simply just make a political statement with the action was never properly clarified. Nevertheless, U.S prosecutors came down hard on him anyway.
With a cumulative maximum penalty of a million dollars in fines and the threat of up to 35 years in prison looming over him, Swartz declined a plea bargain and spent the next two years battling a draining and expensive case, all the while campaigning for human rights and the freedom of information across the digital domain. On January 11, 2013, just two days after the prosecution rejected a counter-offer from him, Swartz was found dead in his apartment, where he had hanged himself.
It was in witnessing the outpourings of sympathy, grief and rage across the Internet following his suicide that filmmaker Brian Knappenberger became motivated to make a documentary on his life. “I just wanted to know more about why his story resonated so much with people, and also some of the deeper issues and problems that his story seemed to ignite”, the director says. His film The Internet’s Own Boy premiered at this year’s Sundance Festival to great acclaim and is now set to screen at New Zealand’s own International Film Festival this month.
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Charting Swartz’s formidable grasp over the Internet from an early age right through to the complexities and implications of his case, the documentary is a legal thriller, a human portrait and an call-to-arms all at once. Chatting to Knappenberger, the sense of outrage so palpable in the film seems to simmer in his voice.
“In the two years he was involved in this legal nightmare, there were real crimes going on”, Knappenberger declares. “It was at the same time that the financial meltdown was happening. None of the people who were the architects of that have seen the inside of a courtroom in any significant way. Why is it so important that this kid be labelled a felon? It’s a question you keep circling back to, and there’s no great answer”.
As much as The Internet’s Own Boy emphatically mourns the tragic conclusion of Swartz’s life, it’s also intended to open a discourse about the American justice system and our civil liberties within this space. There’s a particular moment within the film where Swartz’s ex-girlfriend Quinn Norton angrily conveys a deep sense of frustration that we, as a society, have settled for this fundamentally flawed system.
Photo: NZFF
Knappenberger agrees that this sequence is the film’s defining statement. “97% of the people in our criminal justice system right now plead out”, he says. “They plead instead of going to trial… It’s crazy to think that 97% of people in our criminal justice system are guilty. It can’t be true. We’ve given prosecutors so much power to leverage against defenders that they just give up. They don’t have the money. They don’t know their rights. That’s led to the United States’ massive incarceration rates, which are just shameful.”
But as much as the film is about amplifying this discourse, it’s also about commemorating and mourning its central tragedy, and Knappenberger was always conscious of exactly how much Swartz meant to people. “It was emotionally turbulent, for sure”, says Knappenberger of the shooting process. “I feel a little strange saying that though, because obviously, it’s a lot worse for the family…we were interviewing people very close to the time when he died, when they had lost somebody that they loved very deeply. It was a very raw, emotional experience for most people.”
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As neither the prosecutors nor MIT (where Aaron’s arrest took place) appear, the interviewees pretty much wholly come from Aaron’s corner. It seems his concerns were more about justice than achieving balance. “I tried so hard to get all those people in the film”, he sighs. “I wished they would talk to me. I wished they would come clean on this case. Why was so much made of this one person?” While The Internet’s Own Boy could be accused of bias, it’s certainly not for lack of trying. If anything, the absence of these figures only seems to soak deeper into the fabric of the film. “I think it’s shameful that they’re not more transparent about this”, says Knappenberger damningly, and the film never disguises its intentions to persuade you of the same.
There’s a real palpable dark side to the Internet that we have to get a grip on. It’s not something that’s out of our control. The Internet is a machine made of code and laws.
But while the emphasis of the conversation for American audiences is on this broken justice system, Knappenberger hopes the film will incite a larger conversation within the global community about how our human rights are applied within the digital space. “We all live in a new world now, with massively networked lives”, he says. “It’s not like the Internet is some distant realm of geeks and hackers. It’s where we live. It’s where everybody lives. Our laws have to reflect our values.”
He believes stories like Swartz’s are instrumental in directing attention to our role in securing these freedoms. “I think now we’re realizing the dark side of the Internet; that it can be used as a tool for surveillance, tools for corporations to extract private data from us… the structure itself can be messed with in order to control us in different ways. There’s a real palpable dark side to the Internet that we have to get a grip on. It’s not something that’s out of our control. The Internet is a machine made of code and laws. We get to tell it what to do”.
Featuring in the film is a clip from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, which brilliantly encapsulates the absurdity. It features footage from Congress in which representatives, discussing the now-thwarted SOPA bill, offer statements like “Maybe we ought to ask some nerds what this thing really does”. These excerpts then cut to reveal host Jon Stewart and his reliably smug expression, who then remarks, “I think the word you are looking for is experts”.
Knappenberger points at this segment as a great example of the disconnect. “It’s not okay for the people making laws and legislation to not understand the Internet. [It’s] the basic thing we all use for the majority of our waking hours… This is our life and society now.” If Swartz’s story leaves us with anything, it’s the reminder that the more we sit back and watch monolithic corporate powers and dated paradigms define this incarnation of society, the less we will be able to call it our own.
The Internet’s Own Boy is screening as a part of New Zealand’s International Film Festival.
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