Hacktivist organization, Anonymous, appears to have hacked MIT’s
website and left a tribute message to the late Internet activist, Aaron
Swartz. ”We tender apologies to the administrators at MIT for this
temporary use of their websites,” writes a postscript to a memorial note posted
by Anonymous, on a subdomain of the official MIT.edu website. “We do not
consign blame or responsibility upon MIT for what has happened, but call for
all those feel heavy-hearted in their proximity to this awful loss to acknowledge
instead the responsibility they have — that we all have — to build and
safeguard a future that would make Aaron proud”.
Earlier this evening, MIT’s network went offline and there was notable evidence that Anonymous
had caused the outage.
Swartz was set to stand
trial next month for releasing
millions of pay-walled academic papers from the popular JSTOR database. The
case has set off a firestorm of online protest related to overzealous
litigation and copyright policy and the President of MIT has called for a formal
investigation of the accusations.
The hacked page calls for an investigation into the Swartz case,
the reformation of copyright policy, and greater protections for a free
Internet. The page also posted an open-information manifesto Swartz
composed, “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto”.
For now, the link here is still live. Since it will likely be taken
offline soon (if it was indeed a hacked page), we have posted the full message
below in quotes,
In Memoriam, Aaron Swartz, November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013,
Requiescat in pace.
A brief message from Anonymous.
Whether or not the government contributed to his suicide, the
government’s prosecution of Swartz was a grotesque miscarriage of justice, a
distorted and perverse shadow of the justice that Aaron died fighting for —
freeing the publicly-funded scientific literature from a publishing system that
makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it — enabling the
collective betterment of the world through the facilitation of sharing — an
ideal that we should all support.
Moreover, the situation Aaron found himself in highlights the
injustice of U.S. computer crime laws, particularly their punishment regimes,
and the highly-questionable justice of pre-trial bargaining. Aaron’s act was
undoubtedly political activism; it had tragic consequences.
Our wishes
§ We call for this tragedy to be a basis for
reform of computer crime laws, and the overzealous prosecutors who use them.
§ We call for this tragedy to be a basis for
reform of copyright and intellectual property law, returning it to the proper
principles of common good to the many, rather than private gain to the few.
§ We call for this tragedy to be a basis for
greater recognition of the oppression and injustices heaped daily by certain
persons and institutions of authority upon anyone who dares to stand up and be
counted for their beliefs, and for greater solidarity and mutual aid in
response.
§ We call for this tragedy to be a basis for a
renewed and unwavering commitment to a free and unfettered internet, spared
from censorship with equality of access and franchise for all.
For in the end, we will not be judged according to what we give,
but according to what we keep to ourselves.
Aaron, we will sorely miss your friendship, and your help in
building a better world. May you read in peace.
—-
Who was Aaron Swartz? A hero in the SOPA/PIPA campaign, Reddit
cofounder, RSS, Demand Progress, Avaaz, etc…:
—-
Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want
to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage,
published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized
and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers
featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You’ll need to send enormous
amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access
Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their
copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet,
under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios,
their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up
until now will have been lost.
That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to
read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing
the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at
elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South?
It’s outrageous and unacceptable.
“I agree,” many say, “but what can we do? The companies hold the
copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and
it’s perfectly legal — there’s nothing we can do to stop them.” But there is
something we can, something that’s already being done: we can fight back.
Those with access to these resources — students, librarians,
scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet
of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not —
indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a
duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with
colleagues, filling download requests for friends.
Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly
by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating
the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.
But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground.
It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the
moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t
immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to
let a friend make a copy.
Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under
which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything
less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving
them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies.
There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come
into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our
opposition to this private theft of public culture.
We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our
copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of
copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put
them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to
file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.
With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong
message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the
past. Will you join us?
Aaron Swartz
July 2008, Eremo, Italy
—–
You were the best of us; may you yet bring out the best in us.
-Anonymous, Jan 13, 2013.
—-
(Postscript: We tender apologies to the
administrators at MIT for this temporary use of their websites. We understand
that it is a time of soul-searching for all those within this great institution
as much — perhaps for some involved even more so — than it is for the greater
internet community. We do not consign blame or responsibility upon MIT for what
has happened, but call for all those feel heavy-hearted in their proximity to
this awful loss to acknowledge instead the responsibility they have — that we
all have — to build and safeguard a future that would make Aaron proud, and
honour the ideals and dedication that burnt so brightly within him by embodying
them in thought and word and action. Original frontpage)
