Aaron Swartz: A Theoretical Analysis

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Aaron Swartz was a man who didn’t like having his actions and movements being restricted. This translated into his works through the projects and businesses he built. The film The Internets Own Boy focuses on Aaron Swartz and his beliefs and values in the realm of computers and the Internet, one of his focus’ being the belief in communal access and contribution to information on the internet. In The Wealth of Networks, Yochai Bencher touches on his focus on the concept of open platforms for multi-person production and sharing, with no financial gain. Both Swartz and Bencher share view with “commons”. Aaron Swartz believed people should be guaranteed their freedoms and liberty that should come with use of the internet, which was pinnacle in …show more content…

Swartz believed in peer production platforms, where the production of the content and information of a website was dependant on what Bencher describes as “individual action that is self-selected and decentralized, rather than hierarchically assigned” (p62). Swartz’s websites RSS, Redditt, and The Info, Creative Commons, and many more, were created with the idea of an open platform, with their copyright going from the common “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved”. Swartz was always questioning things, and believed in information. As a result, he believed in accessible information, and that internet users should be able access and contribute to. He and Bencher both believed in decentralized peer production, in that the contributios would unite and and be effective even though “the number of people whose will counts to direct effective action” (p62). Swartz’s view of open access wasn’t only limited to creating content, but also with sharing information that is already online. For example, rather than internet users constantly paying for public records, Swartz brought public access, to public domain, with websites such as WatchDog and OpenLibrary, users were able to pull scholarly articles for

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