Aaron Swartz Died 3 Years Ago Today – In Remembrance of This Special Soul

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Three years ago humanity lost a brave, brilliant and kindhearted individual named Aaron Swartz. On that day, I composed a post expressing my outrage and sadness. Once again, I have decided to repost that piece on the anniversary of his death.

I would like to add that if you haven’t seen the Aaron Swartz documentary, The Internet’s Own Boy, I highly recommend you do.

Let us take inspiration from his life and his struggles in order to continue his very important and courageous work. What follows is the original post, Remembering Internet Prodigy and Activist Aaron Swartz (1986-2013): Your Life is an Inspiration:

Remembering Internet Prodigy and Activist Aaron Swartz (1986-2013): Your Life is an Inspiration

It takes a person like Aaron Swartz to remind you how little you are actually doing to bring forth social, political and economic justice in this increasingly insane and sick world.  I’m not exaggerating when I say his life was an inspiration. At 14 years old he helped start the RSS feed system, which so many now use to read content online. He also co-founded Reddit, and its sale to Conde Nast is what afforded him the resources to dedicate his life to the defense of a free and open internet.  His most remarkable success in this regard was the creation of the organization Demand Progress, which was instrumental in defeating the internet censorship bill know as SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act).

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Aaron Swartz Died 2 Years Ago Today – In Remembrance of This Special Soul

Screen Shot 2015-01-11 at 9.36.29 AMTwo years ago humanity lost a brave, brilliant and kindhearted individual named Aaron Swartz. On that day, I composed a post expressing my outrage and sadness. I reposted it on the anniversary of his death last year, and am reposting it again today.

I would also like to add that if you haven’t seen the Aaron Swartz documentary, The Internet’s Own Boy, I highly recommend you do.

Let us take inspiration from his life and his struggles in order to continue his very important and courageous work. What follows is the original post, Remembering Internet Prodigy and Activist Aaron Swartz (1986-2013): Your Life is an Inspiration:

Remembering Internet Prodigy and Activist Aaron Swartz (1986-2013): Your Life is an Inspiration

It takes a person like Aaron Swartz to remind you how little you are actually doing to bring forth social, political and economic justice in this increasingly insane and sick world.  I’m not exaggerating when I say his life was an inspiration. At 14 years old he helped start the RSS feed system, which so many now use to read content online. He also co-founded Reddit, and its sale to Conde Nast is what afforded him the resources to dedicate his life to the defense of a free and open internet.  His most remarkable success in this regard was the creation of the organization Demand Progress, which was instrumental in defeating the internet censorship bill know as SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act).

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Bitcoin vs. Apple: Videos of Users Destroying Their iPhones Proliferate on YouTube

Apple unleashed a well deserved firestorm in the Bitcoin community with its decision to suddenly ban the extremely popular Blockchain app. This app was the last remaining user friendly way to facilitate Bitcoin transactions on iPhones and it had been downloaded 120,000 times. Apple has remained completely silent on its reasons for removing the app, … Read more

Has Chase Begun a Covert War on Bitcoin?

The past several days have seen considerable weakness in the price of bitcoin. The selling was sparked by the revelation that the Chinese government had essentially instructed its financial system to avoid it. Then yesterday it was revealed that China had banned third-party payment companies from doing business with bitcoin exchanges. As far as price is concerned, I have stated repeatedly via Twitter that I think the China news caps the upside in the near-term (baring other material news of course) and that we are in a new range of $650-$1050 per BTC. At roughly $700 where we are now, I think at least 75% of the “China premium” is now out of the price. This sets up a solid risk/reward profile. However, there is one thing in the U.S. that people should be aware of and represents some headline risk if true.

Recently, a friend of mine noted that Chase has threatened to shutdown his business account due to his use of Coinbase (remember Coinbase recently received the largest VC investment in Bitcoin to-date). Apparently, the problem hasn’t been when money moves out of U.S. banking deposits and into the Bitcoin ecosystem, but rather when the currency is converted back to dollars and then deposited back into the Chase accounts. With this already being in my mind, I read the following Reddit post this morning:

Hi everyone,

A few weeks ago, I posted that Chase decided to terminate my account, and they never notified me as to why they would do this. However, I believed it to be Bitcoin-related.

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Erik Voorhees Responds to Peter Schiff’s Bitcoin Criticism in an Open Letter (This is Excellent)

Last week, Peter Schiff put out a video titled: Bitcoin vs. Gold, which quite frankly was horrible and one of the worst videos he has ever done. It added nothing the the debate that everyone involved in Bitcoin isn’t already completely cognizant of, but even beyond that, it framed the debate around Bitcoin in a totally unproductive and useless way. The reason I say this is because the debate is not Bitcoin vs. Gold, the debate is Bitcoin vs. Fiat Money. Gold is a store of value that has survived as such for thousands of years and and has also served as money for a decent part of human history. Gold will never be worth zero, Bitcoin could certainly trade back to near zero some day. We all know this.

So the key point from my end is, Bitcoin is not competing as a store of value versus gold, it is competing as a currency versus fiat money, and on that count it is superior in an extraordinary number of ways. His video was so awful that I challenged him to a debate on his radio show on Bitcoin via Twitter.

 

He never responded to me, but fortunately he did have Erik Voorhees on his show to discuss the topic. While I have not listened to the show because apparently you need to be a subscriber to Schiff’s radio show to hear it, Erik Voorhees wrote a follow up open letter to Schiff afterwards. All I can say is that this is one of the most eloquent, incisive and thoughtful articles in support of Bitcoin I have ever read.

I have republished the entire thing from Reddit below (emphasis added by me):

An Open Letter to Peter Schiff A follow-up to the discussion on the Peter Schiff Show, December 2, 2013 (this has been emailed to Peter just now)

Dear Peter,

It was a privilege and an honor to be a guest on your radio show today. I’ve been a fan of yours for more than five years; you were one of the reasons I discovered Austrian economics (and, in turn, Bitcoin), and your eloquent explanation of consumption vs. production in an economy has guided my outlook of the world ever since. So thank you sincerely for what you’ve taught me, and for the opportunity to appear on your show. It was a really special moment for me.

While we had some valuable discussion today, I felt a follow-up was appropriate to better articulate my points. You’re right to be highly skeptical of such a new technology and monetary system, but please take the time to ensure your skepticism doesn’t blind you from what I humbly suggest is one of the most important tools for human freedom ever conceived.

The Fundamentals

First, Bitcoin must always be considered as two things: the payment network (Bitcoin) and the currency units (bitcoins). Condemnations of the latter can often be resolved with an understanding of the former. Satoshi should have named them differently to avoid this initial confusion.

When you suggest that bitcoins have “zero intrinsic value,” you are only considering the currency unit itself and ignoring the payment network. While I prefer the term “utility” over “intrinsic value” (because all value is subjective to the valuer), I may indeed admit that bitcoins, as currency units all by themselves, have no fundamental utility and are completely uninteresting. But – and this absolutely critical – the payment network has vast utility.

In fact, this network is probably one of the most valuable and consequential technologies currently on the planet. Some of us realized this a few years ago. Others are realizing it now. Many more will realize it in the future. The Bitcoin network is, fundamentally, a ledger of title controlled by no man. Ponder that for a moment. The transmission of value and ownership has thus just been severed from the State, not by impotent voting, but by the technological achievement of man.

Now, during the show, you agreed that perhaps this payment network has utility. So, if the network (Bitcoin) has utility, and only one currency is accepted on this network (bitcoins), and those bitcoins are scarce, then should not those units themselves command a market price? Who knows what that price should be, but there should be a price, no?

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Remembering Internet Prodigy and Activist Aaron Swartz (1986-2013): Your Life is an Inspiration

It takes a person like Aaron Swartz to remind you how little you are actually doing to bring forth social, political and economic justice in this increasingly insane and sick world.  I’m not exaggerating when I say his life was an inspiration.   At 14 years old he helped start the RSS feed system, which so many now use to read content online.  He also co-founded Reddit, and its sale to Conde Nast is what afforded him the resources to dedicate his life to the defense of a free and open internet.  His most remarkable success in this regard was the creation of the organization Demand Progress, which was instrumental in defeating the internet censorship bill know as SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act).

He ran afoul of the law due to his actions in the fall of 2010 when he downloaded millions of academic journal articles from the nonprofit online database JSTOR.  While JSTOR could have pursued charges against Aaron for his activities, they decided against it.  However, our Federal Government was not so kind.  They decided to make an example of Aaron and charged him with multiple felonies.  Charges that carried up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines.  Aaron was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment this past Friday, in an apparent suicide.

If you had asked me about Aaron Swartz three days ago I could have told you none of the above.  This is despite the fact that I now spend pretty much all of my time trying to read through news and understand the true nature of the world around me.  Even more pathetically, it is despite the fact that a close friend of mine had met Aaron this past summer and was trying to coordinate a time for us all to meet.  Sadly, we never connected.

As part of my tribute to Aaron, I will commit myself even more fully to the cause of freedom in America.  I spent the last 12 hours reading about him and I have compiled some of the most interesting excerpts from various sources below.  Please take the time.

First from the official statement from his family and partner:

Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community’s most cherished principles.

Next from Lawrence Lessig, the director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and friend of Aaron.  He writes:

Early on, and to its great credit, JSTOR figured “appropriate” out: They declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its. MIT, to its great shame, was not as clear, and so the prosecutor had the excuse he needed to continue his war against the “criminal” who we who loved him knew as Aaron.

From the beginning, the government worked as hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did in the most extreme and absurd way. The “property” Aaron had “stolen,” we were told, was worth “millions of dollars” — with the hint, and then the suggestion, that his aim must have been to profit from his crime. But anyone who says that there is money to be made in a stash of ACADEMIC ARTICLES is either an idiot or a liar. It was clear what this was not, yet our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed.

I get wrong. But I also get proportionality. And if you don’t get both, you don’t deserve to have the power of the United States government behind you.

For remember, we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House — and where even those brought to “justice” never even have to admit any wrongdoing, let alone be labeled “felons.”

From the Huffington Post:

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