On the Media #1

The Wunderkind of the Free Culture Movement. Aaron Swartz had the goals to change the world. He had a vision that the internet was the means by which the world could be changed and he knew that the first step to a better world was free knowledge. Copyrighted material is not free on the internet and the is the problem that Aaron had. So he basically took as many possible copies of scholarly journals from J-Store and was sharing them with the world. When he was caught he returned the files and although J-Store dropped the charges the prosecuting attorney's continual pushed for "justice." This "justice" that was demanded eventually caused Aaron to take his
own life. But why did it have to come to this? Was the fight really worth the ceasing of one man who has been contemplated as a criminal or a revolutionist. I side with the revolutionist and idealist standpoint. Aaron Swartz saw the future. He was not pushing for socialism he was pushing for the right to gain knowledge being available to everyone. The way I view this in my own life right now is with textbooks. We live in a digital age and yet we are still paying hundreds of dollars for college textbooks each semester. Nobody wants to be carrying around large heavy paper copies but at the same time who is willing to pay the same price for a PDF copy that you can't sell? Why are these books not offered for free in PDF formats? We pay our tuition and our fees for classes and then on top of that a professor holds to right to assign additional fees to us based on a corrupt industry of textbook makers who only re-arrange the same material every 3-5 years in order to make more money. If Aaron was successful in his actions and continued in the pursuit I believe not only would our country and world be better off as a society but as an education system as well. This young man struggled in educational systems and yet he saw the bigger picture and the need for school and surpassed it by using his own means of study. The millennial generation is just the beginning of technology, as future generations come the technology will advance and take over more aspects of living and the textbook companies see that and are scared. Copyright was a thing of the past and needs to be reformed and regulated on what should actually be Copy-written and what should be shared. Free the media and free the mind.

https://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/ondemand/565907