All posts by lisa

Aaron Swartz Memorial - San Francisco, Digging Deeper, History, PACER, Public Access to the Public Domain, Remembering Aaron, Video

Brewster Kahle at Aaron Swartz San Francisco Memorial 2013

Come to our Raw Thought Salon from 7-9 pm, with DJs afterwards till 2am :) – TICKETS

Originally posted on January 11, 2016:

Brewster Kahle at the Internet Archive, January 24, 2013
Brewster Kahle at the Internet Archive, January 24, 2013

From the San Francisco Aaron Swartz Memorial. January 24, 2013.

Link to Video on the Internet Archive.

Brewster does a great job of explaining to us about Aaron’s “Open Source Life,” and how “bulk downloading” (although it got Aaron into trouble) is in itself, is not only “not a crime,” but a desirable action with outcomes that benefit the public.

He also sheds light on Aaron’s ongoing quests to make U.S. legal court documents (via PACER) and works in the Public Domain (via GoogleBooks) more publicly accessible (rather than locking both up  behind paywalls or with cumbersome downloading restrictions).

Brewster Kahle:

I learned from Aaron what living an Open Source life was like. I think he really did live that way. He floated and helped others. He gave everything away. He really wasn’t tied to an institution. He really was not a company man in any sense. He was really quite pure in his motivations, and it made him incredibly effective at cutting through a lot of the stuff that most of us deal with.

An open source life.

He was able to keep his self interests at bay, which is kind of remarkable for a lot of us. But he was able to do it. And he was able to communicate well with an open smile and a kind heart. He had a way of communicating with this energy on things that mattered and he had a genius at finding things that mattered to millions of people. There are lots of things to work on, but the things that he worked on were incredibly effective.

We first met, I think, in 2002 at the Eldred Supreme Court case in Washington DC, where we drove a Bookmobile Across, celebrating the Public Domain by giving away books that kids made, and also then at the Creative Commons Launch. But I really got to know Aaron when he said ‘I’d really like to help make the Open Library website with the Internet Archive’ to go and give books and integrate books into the Internet itself. And he said “I’ve got this cool technology, called “Infogami,” it really made it possible to make Reddit happen. Let’s use it again for this other thing.”

And it was wonderful to work with him, but it was really unlike working with anybody else I’ve ever met. You certainly couldn’t tell him what to do, he just kind of did what was the right thing to do, and he was right certainly a lot more often than I was. We also worked together in other areas, when he was a champion of open access, especially of the Public Domain. Bringing public access to the Public Domain.

Most people think that’s kind of an obvious thing. Doesn’t “the Public Domain” mean that it’s publicly accessible? Of course all of us say “No!” It’s sort of like there are these National Parks, with moats and walls and guns turrets sort of pointing out, in case someone wanted to come near the Public Domain. And Aaron didn’t think this was right. And he spent a lot of time and effort freeing these materials.

One of the first ones that we were actively working together on was freeing government court cases, so that anybody could see this without having to have special privilege or money, and also to make it so you could data mine it, and go and look at these things in a very different way. So he freed and liberated a lot of court cases from the PACER system, and uploaded them, in bulk, to the Internet Archive, so that people could have access to these. There are now 4 Million documents, from 800,000 cases that have been used by 6 million people, because of the project that Aaron Swartz and others helped start.

It was an interesting project because it went over many different organizations, each playing a role and all cooperating in a very non-corporate way. It was a very Aaron style way of making things happen. And the idea of making court documents and legal documents available more easily struck a chord with me because, in college, I was trying to figure out how I was gonna try to get out of the draft. And my college didn’t have a legal collection, and the only way that I could try to get to legal court documents was to get an ID from my professor and break in to the Harvard Law Library to go and read court documents. That sucked! It really makes no sense, and Aaron not only sort of saw that it doesn’t make sense. He decided he was going to try to help solve this. Not just for himself, but for everyone.

Then there was other Public Domain collections like the Google Books Collection. Google Books was a library project to go and digitize lots and lots of books. A lot of them were Public Domain. Google would make them available from their website, but really really painfully. It would make it so if you wanted one book, you could get one book. If you wanted 100 books, they would turn off your IP address forever. This is no way to have public access to the Public Domain, and the Internet Archive started getting these uploads of “Google Books.” Going faster, and faster, and faster. Like well, where are these coming from? Well it turns out it’s Aaron. He and a bunch of friends figured out that they could go and get a bunch of computers to go slowly enough to just clock through tons of Google Books and upload them to the Internet Archive. Interestingly, Google never got upset about it. The libraries, on the other hand, grumbled. Which is so… Well anyway. They’ll get over it.

So, when this started happening, we said “Ok. What’s going on? Should we be concerned?” The answer was “No, it’s Public Domain.” We just made sure that we got the cataloging data right, and we linked back to Google, so that if you’re on the book, you can go back to the original page and see the da da da da da. And it all worked well.

But there it was. Aaron doing it again; bringing access to the Public Domain.

What is crushing to me is that Aaron got ensnared by the Federal Government for doing something that the Internet Archive actively encourages others to do for our collections, and we think all libraries should encourage, which is: Bulk downloading to support data mining and other research using computers. This is just the way the world works.

The first step is for a computer to read and analyze materials is to download a set of documents. When Aaron did this from one library, JSTOR, they strongly objected, and demanded that MIT find and stop that user, which then led U.S. Prosecutors to pull out their worst techniques.

Did anybody stop to ask if bulk downloading is a crime? I say “No. Bulk downloading is not, in itself, a crime.” Let’s stop this practice of discouraging bulk downloading, because there are encouraging projects that are learning amazing new things by having computers be part of the research process. Let’s not stop this and discourage young people from coming up with new and different ways to learn things from our libraries.

What resulted, in this case, was tragic, and not necessary. Really, what we want is computers to be able to read. Aaron knew this. We’re all building this, and he got ensnared anyway. Let’s let our computers read.

Because of this tragedy, JSTOR, whom I talked to this morning, and the Internet Archive, have agreed to meet to discuss the broad issue of data mining and web crawling. I hope that we really make progress. At least there’s reasons to be positive.

This assault on Aaron would disillusion, discourage and depress any principled young man, and if there ever was a principled young man, it was Aaron Swartz.

We miss you, and we will carry on your important work.

Link to Brewster’s talk on video at archive.org

All Speakers, SF Memorial, at archive.org

Open Mic Portion of memorial (Includes John Perry Barlow and many other incredible talks)

Music, Raw Thought at The DNA Lounge, The Week In Aaron Swartz Day-Land

The Week In Aaron Swartz Day-Land-January 3 2019

It’s hard to keep up with the developments on numerous fronts in the Aaron Swartz Day community, so we’re going to start posting little updates about the week before to help keep you informed.

Here are last week’s media & developments:

1. Q & A Event – January 11th at the DNA Lounge, 7:30pm – This is the sixth anniversary of Aaron’s death. We are having an event to discuss what exactly happened to him with an opportunity for lots of Q & A for those with specific questions at the DNA Lounge from 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm. Vegan pizza will be served and Lisa Rein and others will be answering some questions to help folks gain a better understanding about what actually happened.

2. Video and partial transcription of Barrett Brown and Trevor Timm at the Aaron Swartz Day 2018 Evening Event – Barrett explains the main takeaway from his new book “My Glorious Defeats: Hacktivist, Narcissist, Anonymous: A Memoir” – and also how he and Aaron had communicated via email and were collaborating on a project before Aaron’s death.

3. Video and partial transcription of Cindy Cohn & Cory Doctorow with Annalee Newitz discussing “The End of Trust” – a new McSweeney release. – Cory and Cindy give it to us straight regarding the challenges of attempting to protect our privacy against prying eyes, and offer some strategies for dealing with them.

4. A blast from the past: Aaron’s close friend Ben Wikler dispels the commonly misunderstood notion that Aaron somehow died for the Freedom of Information. (Or died over “freeing” the journal articles he downloaded from JSTOR – more on this soon, but quick version is that there’s no evidence he was going to release them at all.)

5. Interview with Cain MacWitish, one of our Raw Thought DJs performing January 11th at the DNA Lounge. Here’s CAIN’S SET FROM OUR NOVEMBER 9, 2018 EVENT.

6. Interview with Tha Spyryt, one of our Raw Thought DJs performing January 11th at the DNA Lounge. Here’s THA SPYRYT’S SET FROM OUR NOVEMBER 9, 2018 EVENT.

7. COME TO THE DNA LOUNGE  ‘RAW THOUGHT‘ on  February 8th from 9 pm – 2 am. TICKETS

Raw Thought was the name of Aaron Swartz’ blog, and his writings and life hath inspired a monthly gathering of music, life & looking beneath the surface, also named “Raw Thought.”

Mind bending visuals, generated live by Projekt Seahorse will be projected on four screens in two rooms. Our crew of seasoned DJs and experimental upstarts (both human and alien) will combine to keep your heart pumping in two rooms!

 

Aaron Swartz Day 2014, Remembering Aaron

Ben Wikler Remembers Aaron Swartz

From 2014:

Hi, I’m Ben Wikler. I was a close friend of Aaron’s.

Aaron was somebody who had enormously wide-ranging interests and was dedicated to making as big a difference in the world as he possibly could. That’s what he loved to do.

When he downloaded articles, some people describe it as his great act of civil disobedience, and I don’t think he saw it that way at all.

This wasn’t the fight of his life, it was only the fight of his death.

The fight of his life is still unfinished. It’s the big project of making the world a just and safe and fair place for everyone.

*Clip above from the November 8, 2014 television broadcast of “The Internet’s Own Boy,” on PivotTV.

Aaron Swartz Day 2018, Freedom of the Press Foundation, History, Transcripts, Video

Barrett Brown and Trevor Timm at Aaron Swartz Day 2018’s Evening Event

Link to YouTube video  — Internet Archive Video — Audio (.wav)

Trevor Timm and Barrett Brown

Partial transcription:

Trevor Timm: Could you tell us a little bit about what the theme is of your memoir…What are you trying to get across to readers?

Barrett Brown: There are a couple sort of overlapping issues. One is that, these institutions that we’ve inherited. We should not be surprised when they fail. They weren’t invented by philosopher kings with unlimited resources and the ability to implement their vision. They grew up haphazardly by very imperfect people and are frequented and designed and maintained by certain subsets of people that sometimes are outright psychotic. And other times, when they are noble, have their hands tied.

So, we have these institutions crumbling and proving themselves to be less solid than we once assumed them to be. That’s important.

The other important aspect of our age is that we can no longer look back on the 80s and 90s or 60s or anytime prior to determine what’s possible. To determine what’s viable or probable. The framework, the environment in which human collaboration occurs has changed so fundamentally and drastically in a historically short period of time that we cannot base our course of action, or the experiments we undertake, or the things we do on what others were able to pull off. We just can’t. What we can do, is always keep in mind that all human collaboration; Human collaboration is where all this comes from. All of our states. All of our laws. All of our problems. And so when the means change, and the possibilities suddenly increase in ways that we can’t understand yet, we have to explore all of these options. And I think it’s viable to really be able to do that in an effective way in the next decade or so, with Pursuance and all of these other things that are coming out.

Trevor Timm: Absolutely. (pause) With this being Aaron Swartz Day, I’d love to hear from you; Did you actually know Aaron personally? If you did or if you didn’t: How do you think about his legacy?

Barrett Brown: I didn’t really know him. I think I encountered him once or twice online.

He (Aaron) once offered to do an FOIA request on persona management. One of my interests back then. One of these disinformation propaganda methodologies that have come out of the intelligence contract industries, and had been encouraged by various states. Something that I think is very dangerous. So he offered to do his thing on that. To explore the possibilities and see if we could get some information on it. And the interesting thing about that is that I’d sort of forgotten about it until very recently. I’m not sure where that was left. I’m not sure if he got some results back. Someone asked me about it.

But it showed Aaron Swartz knew what was important. He agreed with me on this one aspect of these propaganda methodologies being important, and he also anticipated all of us in envisioning a different kind of internet that we didn’t accept from last year, that we’d actually build from the ground up according to our values…

(Yes, the sound mysteriously goes out for 15 seconds at the end, but probably it was just operator error as there were many errors throughout the broadcast – many apologies and I PROMISE we’ll have a professional webcaster next year :,-(

ASD Next Phase Events, Digging Deeper, Raw Thought at The DNA Lounge, Remembering Aaron

Raw Thought “Q & A Event” 7:30 PM January 11th, DNA Lounge SF

By Lisa Rein

Remembering Aaron – A thoughtful “Q & A Event”

Come to the Raw Thought Q & A event – with vegan pizza and discussion – on Friday, January 11th, at the DNA Lounge from 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm (before the music starts at  our  monthly RAW THOUGHT event, at 10pm- TICKETS HERE).

Many of the volunteers and attendees at last year’s Aaron Swartz Day event asked us to provide a smaller get together for discussion. This is us trying to do that :-)

We will be discussing and learning about Aaron’s life & history, including some Q & A time that I’ve been promising for a while.

We will also discuss some of the new things we have learned over the past year about the bizarre situation around Aaron’s court case.

Vegan pizza will be served! (It’s really yummy! :-) (Gluten-free crust available upon request – email aaronswartzday@gmail.com)

Besides myself, Ryan Shapiro, who headed up the recent FOIA case where he discovered Aaron was on the FBI’s radar as early back as 2007, will be there in person to tell us about his FOIA lawsuit – where he was able to obtain parts of Aaron’s FBI file that were previously unavailable.

Ryan’s lawsuit, and the documents it obtained, helped us to understand that Aaron had been erroneously swept up in a 2007 terrorist investigation. This most likely caused the FBI to treat him with rougher hands during its subsequent encounters with him afterwards. Here’s the article explaining more: https://gizmodo.com/fbi-secretly-collected-data-on-aaron-swartz-earlier-tha-1831076900

Email me at AaronSwartzDay@gmail.com to RSVP & get on the guest list. If you wish to purchase a $10 ticket, great! – you can do so here.

Afterwards, we are having another “Raw Thought” music and art event – with an art installation by Grumpy Green.

Artwork by Grumpy Green.

DJs include: Mochipet, Tha Spyryt, Cain MacWitish and Ozlo Glowing (Ailz). Projekt Seahorse is doing visuals and is also displaying his art.

Raw Thought, of course, was the name of Aaron’s prolific blog, which you can read more of here: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/archive

We will move forward together and make the world better!
No one can stop us <3

Digging Deeper, Music, Raw Thought at The DNA Lounge, Remembering Aaron

Raw Thought DJ “Tha Spyryt” Interviewed in Mondo 2000

Tha Spyryt will be performing at 11:30 pm, at the next RAW THOUGHT at the DNA Lounge (A Dance Night with a Psychedelic Chill Room) on January 11, 2019 at the DNA Lounge – 10pm – 2am. Also performing: Mochipet, Ozlo Glowing and Cain MacWitish.

Check out Tha Spyryt’s complete set from the first ever “Raw Thought” music event – at the Aaron Swartz Day opening night party, November 9, 2018.

Tha Spyryt is performing on January 11 at the DNA Lounge at this month’s “Raw Thought” Event

A Conversation with Tha Spyryt – A Raw Thought DJ Performing January 11 at the DNA Lounge

If “Raw Thought” sounds familiar, it should. It was the name of Aaron’s prolific blog – and one of the main goals of these events – besides providing a great place to meet people and dance – is to continue to spread Aaron’s knowledge and ideas to a larger audience.

Tha Spyrytis a member of Aaron Swartz Day’s Raw Thought Crew that performed for the first time together on November 9, 2018.

LR: So how long have you been creating music?

Tha Spyryt: Creating music? Music is more of a translation or interpretation of creation.

Four years off and on learning production seriously, my friend Moda Graphik taught me Ableton in 15 minutes which got me into it, however stopped for awhile and now refocused on it as a means to harness all mediums of art I work on, or “create” / translate. Before that spent many years in the underground, club, and festival scene performing live visuals with major headliners, participating in tour life, or creating new media content and being immersed in music production/event culture…

LR: What’s your favorite new piece of equipment?

TS: My friends :). Making noise with people seems to be one of the best parts about performing or playing instruments music what have you. Lately I have been learning to understand that we are all the best machines we will ever need.

Technology is just an extension, but implementing our strengths can be a place that new possibilities arise. + Along with new friends is new studios, new instruments, and new spaces to travel to. Experience, vision, & inspiration: equipment that is intangible yet crucial to the construction of any piece. Bliss random answers always serve hot meals, though a miracle is often the luck of decisive reaction.

***Remembering Aaron – A thoughtful Dinner Party***

Come to the Raw Thought dinner party on Friday, January 11th, at the DNA Lounge at 7:30 pm (before the music performances start at 10pm). We will be discussing and learning about Aaron’s life & history, including some Q & A time that I’ve been promising for a while. We will also discuss some of the new things we have learned over the past year about the bizarre situation around Aaron’s court case.

Please do RSVP by writing: aaronswartzday@gmail.com. (Space is limited.)

We will move forward together and make the world better!
No one can stop us <3

Check out Tha Spyryt’s All Purple EP
Aaron's Writings, Announcements, Raw Thought at The DNA Lounge, Remembering Aaron

The Next “Raw Thought” Announced for January 11 at the DNA Lounge

Update December 23, 2018:

Yes, January 11th is the anniversary of Aaron’s death, but rather than to just say a few words and be sad, as is often the case on this blog every year, we are going to use the opportunity to raise awareness about his case and build out our community a bit, while everyone is paying attention. Our discussion will be from 7:30-9pm at the DNA Lounge – vegan pizza will be served. Email us at aaronswartzday@gmail.com or tweet/DM @AaronSwartzDay if you are interested in coming to our little info-filled dinner session from 7:30-9pm. RSVP required.

During our Aaron Swartz Day weekend in November (and around the world), many people came to meet others who care about helping the world and to learn from each other *even though they don’t know a lot about Aaron himself*.

Folks often learn more details about Aaron, what happened to him, and all of his various cool projects and causes *after they get there* – and I ended up wishing I had provided some introductory material to them before the conference.

So, this year, more than ever, it seemed important to bring his messages to a larger audience, with something positive to offer – even on this saddest of days coming up (January 11).

We hope no one is offended by our having a dance night on this day; and felt it best to explain our reasoning, just in case: We have a lot of work to do and it’s best to keep up our momentum from November’s event.

Thank you.

****original post below from December 12, 2018***

Raw Thought is a monthly dance event at the Above DNA Lounge – with a big room in front and a Psychedelic Chill Room in back, and DJs going, simultaneously, in both, from 10pm-2am.

Also featured are freshly generated, mind bending visuals courtesy of Projekt Seahorse. (Here’s a clip of Projekt Seahorse performing with Tha Spyryt at the Internet Archive from November 10, 2018.)

Raw Thought was the name of Aaron’s prolific blog, and one of the main goals of these events – besides providing a great place to meet people and dance – is to continue to spread Aaron’s knowledge and ideas to a larger audience.

In the fall of 2018, a group of Aaron Swartz-inspired DJs circling Noisebridge convinced us to have a dance night at the DNA Lounge in celebration of Aaron as an “Opening Night Party” to our Sixth Annual Aaron Swartz Day.

As a result, November 9, 2018 became the historic date of the very first “Raw Thought at the DNA Lounge.” (Here’s Tha Spyryt’s set from that night!) It was so awesome we all decided to keep doing it, once a month, in 2019.

The next Raw Thought is Friday, January 11, 2019, from 10pm-2am.

Each Raw Thought features the sounds of the “Raw Thought Crew” – Six DJs with varying styles and flavors; all very experimental and progressive in nature. Some of them have more than one persona :)

Mochipet                               Melotronix                               Tha Spyryt

mangangs                          Ailz – Ozlo Glowing                 Cain MacWitish

Live visuals by Projekt Seahorse

Raw Thought at the DNA Lounge happens every second Friday:

January 11      –      February 8      –      March 8      –      April 12

Raw Thought is every second Friday at the DNA Lounge.

Next show January 11, 2019. See you next year!

 

Aaron Swartz International Hackathon 2018, Art, Audio, History, Music, Press, Remembering Aaron, SecureDrop

The Kitchen Sisters Profile Aaron Swartz Day Co-Founder Lisa Rein as “The Keeper of the Day”

Aaron Swartz Day as told by Lisa Rein

Aaron Swartz Day co-founder Lisa Rein talks about about her work with the annual hackathon. Founded in 2013 after the death of activist and programming wunderkind Aaron Swartz, the event draws attention to Aaron’s story in hopes of protecting others from similar circumstances and offers a yearly showcase of the many projects initiated by Aaron as well as new projects inspired directly by him and his work.

Lisa also talks about her background as archivist for Chelsea Manning: “When I learned more about Chelsea, without getting into whether you agree with what she did or what she didn’t do, she definitely followed her heart and wanted to improve the world and that’s an Aaron Swartz Day thing.”

The original tracks by Lisa used in this piece include: Hiding, Slipping Away, and It’s Alright.

Produced by Michal Wisniowski and The Kitchen Sisters

Lisa Rein, Co-Founder, Aaron Swartz Day. Chelsea Manning’s Archivist, Dr. Timothy Leary’s Digital Librarian (Photo: Kevin Footer – Art Design/Concept: Kenneth Bryan Smith)
Aaron Swartz Day 2018 - Projects, Aaron Swartz International Hackathon 2018, Art, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Game Development, History, Internet Archive, Live Streamed Events, Opening Night Party, SecureDrop, Virtual Reality

Live Stream Link and Everything You Need To Know About This Year’s San Francisco Event

LIVE STREAM: https://tinyurl.com/ASDLiveStream

Here’s a little index that we’ll keep adding to over the next day or two:

TICKETS                           Located at: The Internet Archive

Projects to Hack On at the Conference (so far – as people can invent their own projects at any time over the course of the weekend!) (Including projects for non-programmers!)

Speaker Schedule (Saturday and Sunday)

VR Faire (new page coming soon), featuring:
-The EFF’s “Spot the Surveillance”
–Noisebridge‘s BCI (Brain Computer Interface) Application,
(new page coming soon)
–GameBridge‘s VR Tour of Noisebridge

Awesome plant-based food by LeCupboard

Opening Night Party at the DNA Lounge