Remembering Aaron Swartz
纪念艾伦·施瓦茨
Commons man
自由网络的布衣战士
TO CALL Aaron Swartz gifted would be to miss the point. As far as the internet was concerned, he was the gift. In 2001, aged just 14, he helped develop a new version of RSS feeds, which enable blog posts, articles and videos to be distributed easily across the web. A year later he was working with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web, and others on enhancing the internet through the Semantic Web, in which web-page contents would be structured so that the underlying data could be shared and reused across different online applications and endeavours. At the same time he was part of a team, composed of programmers like himself (albeit none quite as youthful), lawyers and policy wonks, that launched Creative Commons, a project that simplified information-sharing through free, easy-to-use copyright licences.
你可以说艾伦·施瓦茨的才华是“上天的礼物”，但这并非重点。因为对于互联网而言，他本身就是“上天的礼物”。早在2001年，年仅14岁的施瓦茨就协助创建了RSS源的新规则，从而方便了博客、文章和视频在网上的传播。一年之后，他又与万维网之父蒂姆·伯纳斯·李爵士等人一道，用语义网对互联网进行完善（在语义网的架构下，网页内容的基础数据可以在不同的网络应用和项目中，得以共享并重复使用）。同时，他还是发起“知识共享”项目的团队一员。“知识共享”通过免费易用的版权许可，简化信息共享；其幕后团队除了有律师和政策专家，还有和施瓦茨一样的程序员（不过谁也不如他年轻）。
Most of this he did for little or no compensation. One exception was Reddit, though he later sounded almost contrite about the riches showered on him and his colleagues by Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue and over a dozen other prominent lifestyle magazines, which bought the popular social news site in 2006. In any case, he wasn't a good fit for corporate life, he said, and left a few months later—or, depending on whom you talk to, was asked to leave. But the cash did let him focus on his relentless struggle to liberate data for online masses to enjoy for free.
他做这些工作的报酬极其微薄，甚至为零。Reddit是个例外：2006年，这家红极一时的社交新闻网站被康泰纳仕集团收购（后者是《Vogue》等十多家著名生活时尚杂志的出版商），施瓦茨和他的同事从中获利颇丰。然而，他事后谈及这笔财富的语气几近悔恨。他表示，自己和公司生活完全格格不入，几个月后就辞职了（也有人说他是被劝退的，当然这得看你问的是谁）。不过这笔现金的确让他可以专注于自己的不懈斗争：让广大网民可以免费享受数据的自由之战。
For although programming was his first love, campaigning was his true vocation. He co-founded Demand Progress, a group that rails against internet censorship and which played a prominent role in the online campaign last year that helped to scupper proposed anti-piracy legislation supported by Hollywood film studios and other content owners. His Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto of 2008 presaged—and perhaps inspired—recent threats by academics to shun journals that charge readers for access.
因为虽说编程是他的至爱，但自由之战才是他真正的天职。他是“求进同盟”的创始人之一，这一团体不仅谴责网络审查，还是去年挫败反盗版立法议案的功臣：它是网上抵制运动的中流砥柱，而此役对于最终胜利功不可没（该法案的幕后支持者是好莱坞制片商等内容所有者）。近期，学界人士发出威胁，将会抵制向读者收费的期刊；此举在施瓦茨2008年的《开放存取的游击宣言》中便早有预言，又或者此举正是受其启发。
Around 2006 he obtained—though he would not say how—the complete bibliographic data for books held by the Library of Congress. He thought it unfair that the Library's catalogue division charged hefty fees to provide this information, which, being the work of the government, had no copyright protection within the United States. So he posted it in the Open Library, which aims to provide an entry for every book in existence as part of Internet Archive, a project founded by the internet entrepreneur Brewster Kahle to store a copy of every web page of every website ever to go online.
2006年左右，施瓦茨拿到了国会图书馆藏书的全部书目数据（不过对于获取途径，他却不愿提及）。在他看来，这一信息作为美国政府的工作，在国内不受版权法的保护，因此该馆编目部门对此收取高额费用，实为不公。于是，他把信息放入“公共图书馆”（作为“互联网档案馆”的一部分，“公共图书馆”旨在将所有现存书籍全部入册；而该“档案馆”是由互联网企业家布鲁斯特·卡勒创建，旨在为所有网站的页面一一备份。）
Aghast at how federal court documents were available only for a price from the inappositely named Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system, in 2009 he used the free access temporarily granted to public libraries to retrieve 18m pages of PACER's 500m documents before he was cut off. They ended up on public.resource.org, founded by Carl Malamud, a veteran advocate of open access, also known as the internet's public librarian. The FBI investigated but did not pursue charges.
还有一件事让施瓦茨忿忿不平。那就是联邦法庭记录必须付费方可查阅，而且这一查阅系统名为“公众获取电子版法庭记录的途径”，但却名不符实。于是2009年时，他利用公共图书馆获得的临时免费权限，从该系统的5亿份记录中获取了1800万页的信息，直至这一权限被废止。这些信息最后被放到了public.resource.org上（该网站的创始人是倡导开放存取的老将、被誉为“互联网图书馆馆长”的卡尔·马拉默德）。联邦调查局对此立案调查，但并未提起诉讼。
The authorities weren't always so lenient. In 2011 he was arrested for allegedly retrieving 4.8m documents from JSTOR, a fee-based repository of articles from scholarly journals. Prosecutors claimed that Mr Swartz, a fellow at Harvard at the time, installed a laptop in a wiring closet at the nearby Massachussetts Institute of Technology and used a pseudonym to gain access, which is free to staff and students at subscribing institutions. If convicted, he would have faced up to 35 years in prison and a $1m fine.
然而当局并非总是这么心慈手软。2011年，施瓦茨因涉嫌从JSTOR系统获取480万份文档而被捕（JSTOR是基于收费模式的学术期刊存储系统）。检方称，施瓦茨犯案时还是哈佛大学的研究生，由于JSTOR系统对付费院校的教员和学生免费开放，他便在附近哈佛大学的配线室中安装了一部手提电脑，并用假名进入该系统。如果获罪，他可能面临最高35年的牢狱和100万美元的罚金。
JSTOR settled its civil issues with him, and considered the matter closed. Indeed, soon after the prosecutors pounced with criminal charges, it opened up all public-domain articles in its trove. And, two days before Mr Swartz's premature death on January 11th, apparently by suicide in his New York apartment, it expanded a test programme to enable limited reading of about 4.5m articles to those who register for a free account.
JSTOR与施瓦茨达成民事和解，并认为此事已经了结。事实上，在检方提起刑事诉讼后不久，JSTOR就开放了系统中所有公共领域的文章。今年1月9日，也即施瓦茨去世的两天前，JSTOR扩大了一项测试方案，让注册免费账户的读者可以在一定限度内阅读大约450万篇文章。1月11日，施瓦茨死于纽约的公寓内，很显然是自杀身亡。
The prospect of prison may or may not have been what pushed the 26-year-old, long struggling with bouts of depression, over the edge. Opinions varied as to whether prosecutors could secure a conviction. They certainly believed they had enough to put him away. Lawrence Lessig, a well-known web theorist and academic, as well as Mr Swartz's friend and mentor, thought that the evidence was enough to demonstrate that his protegé's act was wrong, morally if not legally, but deserved only minor punishment. Alex Stamos, who was to testify as an expert witness for the defence, described it as "inconsiderate", not criminal.
26岁的施瓦茨长期患有抑郁症。让他走上绝路的可能是牢狱之灾，也可能不是。对于检方能否让其获罪，人们看法不一。检方当然相信，自己有足够的证据让他坐牢。著名网络理论家、学者劳伦斯·莱斯格是施瓦茨的导师和朋友，他认为，证据足以证明自己的门生有过错，即使他没触犯法律，也有违道德，但只应稍事惩罚。亚历克斯·史塔摩斯原本要以专家证人的身份为被告作证，在他看来，施瓦茨的行为只是“不替他人着想”，并未触犯刑法。
On hearing of his death Babbage (G.F.) reviewed a number of e-mails he exchanged with Mr Swartz in 2000-01. The boy was in his mid-teens but his prose, taut and to the point, was as mature as his precocious mind. He wanted to know where your correspondent obtained book data for a price-comparison site. He even suggested a collaboration, regretfully unconsummated, that later became the nucleus of the Open Library.
得知他的死讯后，本栏目作者G.F.回顾了2000至2001年间，自己与施瓦茨的电邮往来。那时的施瓦茨不过是个十四五岁的少年，但他的文风简洁明了、一针见血，和他的思想一样老成。他询问笔者获取图书信息的途径，以便用于一个价格比较的网站。甚至他还提出了一份合作建议，而这后来成了“公共图书馆”的核心理念；遗憾的是，笔者与他的合作并未实现。
With typical foresight, a decade ago Mr Swartz put up a web page that appoints a virtual executor and instructs him to make the contents of his hard drives public, one last gift to the online commons. But meagre compensation for the loss of that most uncommon of online commoners. As Sir Tim put it, in fewer than 140 characters, "Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep." And the web wept.
早在十年前，施瓦茨就以他特有的远见，在网上为自己的虚拟遗嘱指定了执行者，并将自己硬盘中的内容交由后者公开，作为留给网络大众的最后一份礼物。但这远远无法弥补他的离世带来的损失，因为我们失去的是网络大众中最不同寻常的人物。正如蒂姆爵士在一份简短的悼词中所说：“艾伦已逝。我们迷途世间，却痛失一位睿智的长者；我们以黑客身份为公义而战，却痛失一位战友；我们为人父母，却痛失一位共同的孩子。让我们寄以哀思。”于是，哀思便在网络蔓延。