There has been a lot of news about Internet copyright this year, but this is not the first time such issues have appeared. The 2014 documentary "The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz" discussed how to promote copyright reform on the Internet and Freedom of Information . The film is brought into the film with the words of Henry David Thoreau , the author of "Walden", who is also a philosopher of abolitionism, anarchism and naturalism . 0 1+ Storyline The first sentence of the movie leads directly to the finale of the protagonist - the news of Aaron Swartz's death is announced. Born in the United States to three brothers, Aaron became literate and started using computers at the age of three. At the age of 13, he built a non-profit website on his own, and later became a member of the RSS building group. Enrolled at Stanford University at 18, dropped out a year later to build the Infogami website, sold it to Reddit and became a millionaire. But he still lives in a small apartment, wears a T-shirt and jeans, and has no pursuit of material pleasures. Aaron cares about the flow of internet traffic, and where people's attention goes.
Aaron's first teacher was Tim Berners Lee , who founded the World Wide Web . Initially, the components that formed the World Wide Web were very simple, but because they were not connected to each other and could not jump links between networks, each small independent network could not achieve much value. Tim Berners Lee made the most of it by putting them together effectively and making it public for free .
Aaron is passionate about the free culture movement , and he wants to use programming to do things that actually advance human development, not just as a tool for profit. So he quit his Silicon Valley job and rejected that business world.
Aaron's focus on the Open Library of the Web was the turning point that led to his death. He tried to really introduce public access (Public Access) into the public domain (Public Domain) . In the impression of most people, these two concepts seem to be equivalent. The rapid development of the Internet has made people's access to information more and more diversified. But in fact, many articles of academic value need to be paid, and this income cannot be directly given to the creators. The author's papers are often reluctant to enter the database at a very low price. The value of the library database is that it provides a platform to integrate multiple resources and improves the efficiency of user access. However, in this system, the creators who have truly created the wealth of human spiritual civilization are not included under a reasonable reward mechanism .
One of the respondents, Carl Malamud , founder of the non-profit website public.resource.org, protested the fee system for the government website Pacer. As an important window of judicial disclosure and services in the United States, Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) enables the public to search online for case information from more than 200 U.S. federal district courts, appellate courts and bankruptcy courts through a single point of access. According to Pacer's own records, operating costs are almost zero, and the United States can bring in $10 billion in business each year through access to legal materials. Journalists, students, citizens, and lawyers all need a Pacer, but people who have no money to read the law have a harder time reading the law than those with an American Express Gold card. In 2020, the U.S. federal court's judgment against the Pacer website also mentioned that, according to evidence provided by three non-profit organizations, the Pacer website costs about $1 million a year to operate and maintain, but its revenue from user fees has been steady. growth, reaching $146 million in 2016. According to investigations by three agencies, the U.S. Federal Court Administrative Office (AO) used the above funds for other purposes. Judge Todd M. Hughes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit wrote in his judgment: "If a large portion of the public cannot afford to access court records, it will undermine public participation and oversight of the judicial process. capabilities.” The ruling, while not removing the paywall for Pacer’s website services, upheld a previous Washington District Court ruling that the current 10-cent per page fee was “higher than what is necessary for the system to operate . ” But there are policies above and countermeasures below. Carl Malamud aggressively pursues Pacer's recycling project: Let netizens upload purchased Pacer documents, or download documents from libraries that can be accessed publicly, and upload them to a free database for others to use. Aaron is involved in this activity, not by stealing information for profit, he hopes to promote the publicity of the law. He improved the code, downloaded it from Pacer in parallel on a massive scale, and ended up with nearly 2.7 million federal court documents. The download also uncovered a massive invasion of personal privacy in court documents. Aaron's actions led to threats of surveillance from the FBI, although no lawsuit was ultimately filed. During this period, Aaron made a variety of attempts. He was introduced to Congress for an internship through a friend. He hoped to understand the system by studying political procedures, so as to better optimize it.
At the same time, he has not diminished his interest in institutions that publish academic journals , several of which include JSTOR and ISI. In the Internet age, articles will be scanned, digitized, summarized and locked up after they are published, and then put online by for-profit companies. Academic journals are essentially the wealth of online knowledge for all mankind, and many articles are even from the Age of Enlightenment, but you need to pay again to read them. Third world countries such as India are even less able to enjoy access. The same is true in China. When publishing an article in academia, the author often has to pay the publication fee to the magazine. After publication, the magazine automatically obtains the authorization of the article, and then sells it to HowNet. After CNKI is included, other scholars need to pay for CNKI when they go to CNKI to download articles. The real thing is taken from the people and sold to the people.
This matter itself has no entanglement with Aaron, but Aaron wrote a Python script and logged in JSTOR in the MIT library to continuously crawl articles. After being blocked, the computer IP address was quickly reassigned and then downloaded. Although JSTOR and MIT took a series of measures to prevent it, Aaron found the unlocked computer room in MIT's basement and directly plugged the computer into the Internet port to download. After finding out, the authorities did not unplug Aaron's laptop and hard drive, but installed a camera in the computer room to capture Aaron as evidence, and applied for permission to search Aaron's home and office, and filed a lawsuit against him. Aaron's case was transferred to the Secret Service. Previously, the Secret Service had originally only investigated Internet credit card thefts. After the 9/11 incident, under the influence of the haze of terrorism, Bush passed the "Patriot Act" and established the Electronic Crime Task Force , which expanded the powers of the Secret Service. They brought Aaron's case to the hands of federal prosecutor Steve Heymann , who received widespread media attention and credit for catching the hackers in the notorious credit card theft. It is implicitly mentioned in the film that Steve Heymann may be preparing for a career.
Looking at the background of the era at that time, social and political activities were unprecedentedly active, and hackers and Anonymous set off a large number of protest marches. The government was under enormous pressure, and they decided to punish Aaron severely to deter others. But from the perspective of judicial justice, Aaron's actions did not deter homeland security, nor did it cause the leakage of state secrets. He just downloaded a large number of academic articles in the basement of the library. He's not commercializing or even distributing the downloaded content. Aaron's original intention is exactly what he has repeatedly mentioned in his lobbying speeches: to promote the publicization of intellectual property . Aaron declined a plea deal. Before that, Aaron worked on a project at Stanford with another law student: by analyzing downloaded Wanlaw law databases, it discovered corrupt relationships between law professors and large corporations as funders, and corporations through funding Scientists directly control the scientific research results of climate change research, and allow them to present corrupt behaviors such as results that are beneficial to their own interests . But Aaron never made those files public. Perhaps it was the tension in the Internet situation at that time, or Aaron touched the brows of many giant companies. The government prosecuted Aaron and defined his behavior as a commercial criminal crime, equivalent to credit card theft. Aaron's girlfriend at the time couldn't stand the government's threats and oppression, and accepted the "Queen for a day" agreement : exchanging information in exchange for protection from prosecution. The ex-girlfriend's confession in the documentary interview may not be entirely hypocritical, but her weakness makes it impossible to contend with such a well-established system. This also led to the breakdown of the relationship between Aaron and his girlfriend. "You are standing on the opposite side of history," his girlfriend once told government officials who were pressuring the investigation. She referred to the Open Access Guerrilla Manifesto written by Aaron in 2008 .
Later, Aaron founded Demand Progress , which played a decisive role in the victory against the Stop online privacy act. The act gives the U.S. government the power to monitor online infringements, making it easier for the government to shut down accused websites on the grounds of copyright infringement, essentially destroying the structure of the Internet in the name of anti-piracy.
Following Aaron's public speech, millions of people contacted Congress and signed the anti-SOPA petition. A total of 115,000 websites changed their webpages and displayed anti-SOPA banners on their homepages. In a bill with the most disparity in power and funding, Aaron used his technical superiority and athleticism to win.
In 2012, federal prosecutors issued a replacement indictment against Aaron . The original 4 felonies became 13, and the jail time and fine were greatly increased. The law the prosecution used to charge was primarily the Computer Fraud and Abuse Law of 1986 , which was influenced by the exaggerated depiction of the destructiveness of computers in the movie War Game. Such a clumsy, vague, and unclear law is a powerful weapon against anyone the government wants to prosecute. Because by this standard, the vast majority of people are breaking the law. Aaron, who spent millions of dollars fighting the lawsuit, faces a $1 million fine and 35 years in prison. He again rejected a plea deal. In 2013, he took his own life with a belt in an apartment. His death prompted a new law to reform the "Computer Fraud and Abuse Law, " which was named after him , "Aaron's Law." A few weeks after his death, a 14-year-old figured out a way to detect pancreatic cancer early by logging into JSTOR, reading the vast knowledge base, and emailing the entire Department of Oncology at Johns Hopkins University with access to Opportunities for researchers to further advance their experiments. In the end, they succeeded in developing a life-saving early-stage pancreatic cancer test. " That's why what Aaron does is so important, " the kid said in the news .
02+ Perspectives The documentary 's perspective is a bit monolithic , focusing on the perspectives of Aaron's family, friends, two girlfriends, and journalists and professors who want to promote net neutrality and freedom of information. The rhetoric has simply attributed his death to a corrupt government and schools and corporations that sat idly by. There is not much difference in the camps of the interviewees, and workers from major institutions such as MIT and JSTOR did not appear on the scene, and the documentary only transitioned by saying "xxx refused to appear on the scene". It's not that the director guides the trend of public opinion, but a single-dimensional subjective speculation and cheap moral criticism make it difficult for the audience to reflect on the underlying structural problems that caused this tragedy from a multi-dimensional perspective. Without a regulatory idea, it can only generate emotions, which fade away over time. Aaron's true thoughts, we do not know. In his most vulnerable and depressed state, we do not speculate whether the people around him fail to help.
03+ Structure The documentary presents Aaron's childhood experiences, from dropping out of school, resigning, and turning to his political activism career, using a typical linear narrative structure, but the structure is fragmented and unclear. The reason is that Aaron could not bear the pressure of imprisonment and committed suicide because he downloaded a large number of papers in the MIT computer room and was prosecuted by the government for a federal felony. But this event is not the last in the timeline, it and the death of Aaron at the end are mixed with various events, which directly catalyze the continuous increase and escalation of the punishment by the government. However, in the narrative editing of the documentary, there is no difference between the heavy scenes and the cutscenes that express the personal characteristics of the protagonist on the side , and still only rely on the straightforward narrative on the timeline. There is also no sense of urgency for the events to be pushed forward layer by layer, and the catharsis of the grief after the death of the protagonist reaching its peak, such as using whatever material comes to mind, the introduction of the background of the times and the interests of the company is also randomly interspersed in the main story line. . The criminal indictment that puts Aaron under enormous pressure throughout the film stems from the massive download of papers. Aaron's guilt has not been increased by the government simply because of the plethora of papers he is acquiring. Putting the incident into the context of the times, the United States was affected by the haze of terrorism after the 9/11 incident, and tried to prevent terrorist attacks by upgrading network monitoring . and then societyPolitical activities are unprecedentedly active, and a large number of protests and marches by hackers and Anonymous have affected social stability. The government is under enormous pressure in this context. Secondly, Demand Progress, founded by Aaron, directly led to the victory in resisting the "Stop online privacy act", which greatly thwarted the government's psychological defense and was unable to advance the implementation plan. It also affects multiple interests. When it was discovered that Aaron's soul could not be bought by quantitative pricing, capital and power could only be isolated and suppressed to achieve various levels of suppression, causing him to lose love, money, emotional connection with other people, and even freedom. After all, This is the track that capital is best at.
04+ Characterization Throughout Aaron's life, his political pursuit is the publicization of human spiritual civilization, whether it is a large number of academic papers downloaded in JSTOR, or a large number of federal court documents downloaded in Pacer. He has skills that can make money every day, but he devotes his energy to fighting the power abusers who are abusing technology. His brother said that Aaron felt that as long as he could explain one thing to everyone, everyone would follow him to do the right thing. Aaron is the Don Quixote in the real world, but the struggle for power requires the skill of playing with the stakes, and the pursuit of justice and equality is often lost to those in power who are swallowed up by power, because the latter has no bottom line. When I first saw the documentary a few years ago, I couldn't quite understand Aaron's behavior. Why does Aaron constantly challenge authority and disrupt the operation of a well-managed academic paper platform? Will the "free" public form invisibly cause the "depreciation" of academic papers, and not show enough respect for the labor results of content creators? And the word "piracy" implies the derogatory connotation of stealing, and the word "protection of intellectual property " itself occupies the moral high ground. What I didn't realize at the time was that when a creator's labor is submitted to the platform, the residual value generated thereafter has little to do with the creator itself . One of the interviewees in the documentary, Lawr nce Lessig, is a friend of Aaron, the founder of CC, and one of the founders of Creative Commons . He has published a series of landmark treatises in the field of intellectual property including "Code", "The Future of Ideas" and "Free Culture". He mentioned that "human civilization is a 'piracy'" - not only many Hollywood movies are "pirated", but records, radio stations and cable TV are all "pirated". Lawrence Lessig believes that "Americans are somewhat schizophrenic." On the one hand, they encourage innovation and value freedom in the establishment of culture; on the other hand, they adopt an extreme protectionist copyright legal framework, monopolize knowledge, and hinder innovation.
When ordinary people think about problems from their own perspective and are limited to one-third of the land in front of them, Aasron is already advancing the process of human civilization in a larger pattern. His greatness lies not only in mastering the technology of writing code, but also in understanding the absurdity of the underlying structure of rules, and using Internet technology to solve problems that change human history in a broader context.
The advanced learning ability is accompanied by a personality disorder. He doesn't like going to school, he doesn't like second-hand information from teachers. As his peers struggled with the fear of being dominated by their studies, he saw that behind the education system was the absolute voice of the bureaucracy.
Before the popularization of papermaking in Europe, the Bible could only be printed on rare and expensive parchment. The vast majority of Christians do not have the Bible and can only come close to understanding Christianity through the stories described by the Pope. Thanks to the backwardness of technology, the Pope has monopolized the right to interpret religious teachings. When a small group has the final right to interpret a field, it becomes relatively easy to change the rules of the game according to individual wishes. This is what Aasron says is why the spread of knowledge is so important. The documentary does show Aaron's charisma, but it focuses too much on personal heroism . After watching the movie, the vast majority of the audience can only be immersed in the helplessness of the system and the powerlessness of hitting the stone with the egg. It is difficult for us to blame each other in the form of accountability such as "who did it wrong", and it is impossible to use the simple sentence "the world is not worthy of him" to make a conclusion. Even if the emerging field has just started, and the social system in this area is not yet perfect, modern society is by no means the worst era, and it has infinite possibilities for optimization in the future. Aaron has witnessed the tremendous changes that the Internet has brought to human history, and he has also made a fight to move society forward. The world needs freedom fighters like Aaron and a more rational government to preside over change.
05+ Reflection The documentary raises questions that we cannot avoid. For example, with the development of the Internet, how should the old copyright system be reformed ? How do we define infringement? Where is the scale of measurement? Who should decide this scale? In February 2021, the operator of the Renren Film and Television subtitle group was arrested . Most netizens feel sorry for the lack of a convenient platform for downloading foreign film and television works, and they also know that the subtitle group is a legal gray area. "Copyright Law " stipulates that the right to translate is also the right of the copyright owner of film and television works, and unauthorised translation and dissemination of translated works is also an infringement. Although few foreign film and television companies will sue for rights protection on this ground. The subtitle group that gathered at the beginning did use love to generate electricity, and it was precisely because there was no profit-making and no commercial use, making this a shield to protect themselves. In the later stage of development, the form of subtitle groups has changed from "external subtitles" to pressing subtitles into the film and publishing them to provide "complete film" download , which involves copyright issues, but it does not constitute a particularly large lethality. What really puts the Renren film and television subtitle group in danger is that their operators commercialize high-profile piracy and put in a lot of advertisements. Unauthorized translation and sharing of other people's works is an infringement, but free sharing is a civil infringement, and its existence depends on whether the copyright owner is prosecuted, and it is a crime to make profits and the amount of illegal income is large. However, the annihilated Renren Film and Television is not the only one that does this. The translation teams of various Korean variety shows on station B also commonly add advertisements to the translated films, and obtain a large number of clicks. Market audiences have such a large number of movie viewing needs, and when formal channels cannot provide a high-quality movie viewing experience, most audiences can only obtain resources by means of low cost, such as fast-forwarding advertisements in the first few minutes. Another piece of news about copyright issues is that in April 2021, Goose Factory and other platforms jointly boycotted unauthorized video clip infringements. It is true that there are secondary film and television creations of uneven quality on the Internet. When the public has a strong desire to express and create, it is difficult to break through the spontaneous behavior of the people from the source. Not to mention the simple and rude three-minute talk about the creative level of the movie genre, there are not a few movie critics and analysis with a unique perspective like the tenth screening room of CCTV6. More importantly, a new form of media communication that is more efficient than word of mouth has emerged among the people : the "Tucao" of the secondary editing has driven the traffic of the work, and "Amway" has promoted the movie viewing craze and consumption. It is not only negative, but it is very thin and flat to look at these issues only in terms of "infringement". If we increase the suppression and control of ideology, art creation can only form a unified form of expression, hand in hand and collectively praise the mainstream core values, which is one of the reasons why domestic film and television works are more difficult to produce high-quality products. The purpose of copyright protection established by the law is to protect the interests of creators, but boycotting unauthorized video clips does not increase the income of creators, nor does it have an incentive effect on creative behavior. On the contrary, strong publishing platforms can take advantage of their own channels and funds to obtain bilateral pricing power for "creators" and "audiences". As capital monopolizes the circulation market, most of the profits brought by property rights go to channel monopolies that have nothing to do with content creation, protecting the interests of platform giants, while content creators are still the ones being squeezed. At this level, it is contrary to the original purpose of the law for copyright protection. The legal definition of "intellectual property" is "a legal monopoly", and its inherent monopoly attribute also limits the spread of knowledge and culture to a certain extent. If there is no corresponding "anti-monopoly law" constraints, intellectual property will only become a weapon for capital to raise prices after gaining market dominance. Although the finished film after the secondary creation of film and television editing and subtitle group translation is in the gray area of copyright, these edge ball behaviors provide convenience for the audience. No one wants to go to some weird website to download resources, as viewers of course expect it to be legalized and systematized. However, when the superstructure only pursues a monopoly in a certain field and continuously raises the entry threshold to extract excess profits, the source of public grievances and piracy will never be eradicated.
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