30/01/2026
This month of January, the Pirate Party commemorates the memory of Aaron Swartz, hacktivist, and contributor/founder to major internet projects such as Creative Commons, RSS, The Open Library, Reddit and Thoughtworks.
In 2008, Swartz downloaded and made available 2.7 million (20% of total) publicly accessible federal court documents as part of an open government project for which he was subsequently investigated and acquitted by the FBI.
In 2009-2010, Swartz founded the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (to support the election and advocacy for progressive politicians) and Demand Progress (an advocacy group for civil liberties in government). In 2011 he joined Occupy Wall Street and in 2012 he joined the anti-SOPA movement.
In 2008, he downloaded 3.5 million research studies from JSTOR in the belief that scientific research should be open access. For this, he was arrested and prosecuted in 2011 with a potential sentence of 50 years in prison and USD$1 million in fines. On the evening of January 11, 2013, he was found dead in his apartment by su***de.