**The Ideals of Aaron Swartz in an Age of Control**

The 10th anniversary of Aaron Swartz's death is a poignant reminder of the ongoing struggle for open knowledge, digital rights, and a fair society. His legacy continues to inspire those who seek to challenge the status quo and create a more just world.

Aaron Swartz was a brilliant technologist, programmer, and activist who helped shape the modern web from a young age. He co-authored RSS, contributed to Creative Commons, and played a key role in Reddit's early development. But what set Aaron apart was his moral clarity and conviction that access to knowledge is a fundamental right.

In a world where academic research is locked behind expensive paywalls, Aaron saw an injustice so obvious it demanded action. His famous "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto" was not the work of a reckless radical, but of someone deeply aware of history, inequality, and the asymmetry of power between institutions and individuals.

"Information is power," he wrote, "but like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves." Aaron's decision to download and share academic papers was an act of civil disobedience rooted in a long tradition that includes figures like Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. Yet the response he faced was disproportionate and devastating.

The U.S. government pursued him aggressively, threatening decades in prison under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a vague and outdated law that grants prosecutors enormous discretion. The pressure, psychological toll, and fear became unbearable. On January 11, 2013, Aaron Swartz took his own life at the age of 26.

His death was a failure of our society, exposing how legal and academic systems prioritize punishment over justice and target those challenging information monopolies. Yet Aaron's legacy continues through the fight for open access, digital rights, and ethical technology.

Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) defend privacy and free expression, while Creative Commons promotes shared culture and knowledge. Open access has expanded via platforms like Sci-Hub, Open Library, and institutional mandates pushing research beyond paywalls.

However, trends that would have worried Swartz are growing: the concentration of power in a few tech giants, opaque algorithms shaping public discourse, and surveillance capitalism, where companies routinely collect and monetize personal data, making mass tracking and profiling a normalized practice.

Aaron's legacy lives on through efforts to protect open access, digital rights, and ethical technology. Organizations like the EFF work to defend privacy, free speech, and innovation, while Creative Commons helps people share knowledge and culture freely.

Open access to research has expanded thanks to platforms such as Sci-Hub and Open Library, as well as rules that require publicly funded studies to be made available outside paywalls. At the same time, trends that would likely have troubled Swartz are becoming stronger: more power concentrated in a few big tech companies, algorithms that quietly influence what people see and think, and "surveillance capitalism," where companies collect and sell personal data at scale.

Governments have increased their control over the digital world, often citing national security, child protection, or the fight against disinformation to justify widespread surveillance, weaker encryption, and content filtering. Laws similar to the CFAA still make many online activities illegal, discouraging security research, investigative journalism, and activism.

Researchers and whistleblowers can face serious legal risks for revealing flaws or abuses that the public has a right to know about. Meanwhile, access to knowledge is again under strain: a small number of academic publishers continue to dominate and profit, and AI systems consume enormous amounts of human-created content without clear consent, credit, or fair return.

This makes Aaron's core question, "who owns knowledge?", more urgent than ever. In this context, Aaron's legacy is shaped not only by his brilliance but also by his humanity: those close to him described him as deeply sensitive to injustice, genuinely concerned for others and future generations, and committed to the belief that the internet could still be a force for good.

Aaron Swartz showed that understanding systems gives us the power to challenge them, and that empathy gives us the reason to do so. His life asks us uncomfortable questions: when does obedience become complicity? When does neutrality become surrender?

Honoring Aaron Swartz today means more than remembering him. It means defending encryption, open access, and press freedom, challenging abusive laws, and building technology that serves people—not surveillance or control.

Aaron believed that another internet, and another society, was possible. That belief did not die with him. It lives on in every line of open-source code, every freely accessible paper, and every act of resistance against the enclosure of knowledge.

We must continue to fight to ensure that his ideals live on as a lasting legacy.