Aaron Swartz at 40: The Internet’s Own Boy

November 8 would have been Aaron Swartz’s 40th birthday. We are marking it with a free screening of The Internet’s Own Boy, Brian Knappenberger’s 2014 documentary about his life, his work and his fight for an open internet. We’ll come together to remember him, talk about his ideas, and think about how to carry them forward here in Portland.

The format is simple: a short welcome, the film, and a brief closing. You don’t need a technical background, or to know anything about Aaron’s story, to come.

Aaron Swartz was a programmer and activist. At 14 he helped write the RSS 1.0 specification. He later helped build the technical architecture of Creative Commons and was an early co-owner of Reddit. He also founded Demand Progress, which campaigned against the Stop Online Piracy Act until Congress shelved the bill in 2012. He believed knowledge should be open to everyone and that technology could give people more power over their own lives. He died in January 2013, at 26, while facing federal charges for downloading millions of academic articles through MIT’s network.