In our COM 201 class was watched the film The Internet’s Boy about American computer programmer and entrepreneur Aaron Swartz. The film is relative towards our course as we are learning about copyright, creative commons, rational justification, moral failures, etc. Also known as an Internet hacktivist, Swartz hacked JSTOR by downloading locked files into his hard drive that could only be accessed through payment. Why did this genius want to get his hands on to these files? Because they were millions of texts of scholarly journals and recycled law papers full of knowledge that could benefit the world as a whole. So, Aaron did not do this for himself, he was making an idealistic decision by putting himself at risk for others. The results seemed ridiculous as many thought that he should not have been given the attention similar to the criminal system, he was just trying to make a point.
Throughout the film, we are familiarized with the words copyright and creative commons. It is important, especially for us as bloggers, to give credit to those whose work we are using and to not make money off of it. Later, we come across issues regarding ethical decisions and moral failures. In Swartz case, as mentioned before, he made an ethical decision for the sake of others as the locked knowledge had great potential of benefitting the world. Moral failures are shown as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) made a moral failure of taking the wrong stance and helping the government when they really could have made a better decision.
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