The idealist : Aaron Swartz and the rise of free culture on the Internet / Justin Peters.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Peters, Justin, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Information commons--United States.

Information commons.

Freedom of information--United States.

Freedom of information.

Copyright.

History.

Intellectual freedom.

United States.

Intellectual freedom--United States.

Copyright--United States--History.

Internet--United States.

Internet.

Swartz, Aaron, 1986-2013.

Swartz, Aaron.

Physical Description:

x, 337 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First Scribner hardcover edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Scribner, 2016.

Summary:

"A smart, lively history of the Internet free culture movement and its larger effects on society-- and the life and shocking suicide of Aaron Swartz, a founding developer of Reddit and Creative Commons-- from Slate correspondent Justin Peters. Aaron Swartz was a zealous young advocate for the free exchange of information and creative content online. He committed suicide in 2013 after being indicted by the government for illegally downloading millions of academic articles from a nonprofit online database. From the age of fifteen, when Swartz, a computer prodigy, worked with Lawrence Lessig to launch Creative Commons, to his years as a fighter for copyright reform and open information, to his work leading the protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), to his posthumous status as a cultural icon, Swartz's life was inextricably connected to the free culture movement. Now Justin Peters examines Swartz's life in the context of 200 years of struggle over the control of information. In vivid, accessible prose, The Idealist situates Swartz in the context of other "data moralists" past and present, from lexicographer Noah Webster to ebook pioneer Michael Hart to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In the process, the book explores the history of copyright statutes and the public domain; examines archivists' ongoing quest to build the "library of the future"; and charts the rise of open access, copyleft, and other ideologies that have come to challenge protectionist IP policies. Peters also breaks down the government's case against Swartz and explains how we reached the point where federally funded academic research came to be considered private property, and downloading that material in bulk came to be considered a federal crime. The Idealist is an important investigation of the fate of the digital commons in an increasingly corporatized Internet, and an essential look at the impact of the free culture movement on our daily lives and on generations to come"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

The bad thing

Noah Webster and the movement for copyright in America

A tax on knowledge

A copyright of the future, a library of the future

The infinite librarian

The case for the public domain

"Co-opt or destroy"

Guerilla open access

Hacks and hackers

The Web is yours

How to save the world.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-317) and index.

ISBN:

9781476767727

1476767726

OCLC:

932463247