The Internet’s Own Boy

The new film by Brian Knappenberger, director of We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists, follows the late Internet activist and programming pioneer Aaron Swartz from his teenage emergence on the Internet scene and involvement in RSS and Reddit, to his growing interest in political advocacy and the controversial actions he allegedly took in downloading nearly four million academic articles from the online service JSTOR. The film explores Aaron’s arrest, the prosecution’s tactics in bringing the case to trial through the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the CFAA, and the impact a seemingly small hacking gesture had on Aaron’s life and the possible future of information access on the Internet.