You can keep the spirit of the lit fest going all year round by downloading the printers row at where you will find all of the chicago tribunes book content free and discounted ebooks for subscribers and the complete printers row we will leave about 10 minutes at the end of the program for a q a session, so if you have questions please sign up at the microphone to your right and ask questions at the microphone so the home viewing audience can hear the question and before we begin, please silence your phones and turn off thank you, tom. And welcome, welcome here to Jones College prep. Great to have you here. Im sure you dont mind being many this airconditioned venue in this airconditioned venue on this hot chicago day. Y. Were delighted today to welcome a son of the north shore, justin peters, correspondent for slate, formerly wrote a lot of things i read in the columbia journalism review as well whose recentlypublished book is the idealist. Its a book thats both biography and exploration of history and musings on the future. It puts in context so many of the struggles that those in the media have had with not just the media, but in the culture have had with the idea of whats free and whats valuable on the internet. Stuart brand famously said information wants to be free, less famously said information also wants to be expensive. And the tension between those two views is part of whats at the heart of what led aaronhat swartz from Highland Park, a brilliant young man who, whether you know it or not, has affected how you get information on the internet to take his own life in the middle of a dispute over intellectual property. But this book, justin, is notok just about aaron swartz. A as the subtitle says, its about the rise of free culture on the internet, and its also about the people before aaron swartz yeah. Who were grappling with it. Could you talk about some of those . Well, as we were talking before we came on stage, i didnt realize this book budget actually going to be just about aaron swartz until i started writing it. And once i started writing it, i realized, well, we know what happened to aaron. We know how his story began, how it ended. What we dont really know as much or at least what i didnt know was how did america get toh the point where Academic Research papers are considered private property. And downloading a lot of those papers without explicit permission is considered a federal crime punishable by up to 95 years in federal prison. And once i realized it, that was going to be the central question of my book. I realized i had to really go back in time to the beginnings of statutory copyright. And trace the development from there really to sort of figure out how we got to the point where aaron swartz kills himself in january 2013. So the book goes back to the development of the ambiguity Berg Guttenberg press and uses that first really Disruptive Technology as a way to sort of trace the coevolution of those notions that information wants to beof free, and it also wants to be expensive. And its usually the readers who want the information to be free. And its usually publishers and governments who want the information to remain expensive. And i stop at various sort of points throughout history and look at various representative figures who believe in one or other. One of the fascinating sentences that sticks in my mind is your, as you are surveying the peoples attitudes toward information in the internet, you say those of us, those people involved in the growth with and the building of the internet think its largely about yes, but it has always, comma, always, comma, always been about no. Talk about that idea and also about your emphasis of it. Well, i think i say that right at the beginning of the book because there is this sort of strain of utopianism that sort of animates a lot of what the sort of earliest web colonists, few if you will, thought the web was going to be, right . B its going to be this transformative medium that brings disparate people, you know, together to length from each other to learn from each other, to work on projects together, to collaborate. Weve got the ability to share information and share stories and share conversation with the click of a button. Its easier now than ever before. Theres so much less technological friction. But the development of devices that remove technological friction do not remove social friction, right . In fact, often they create more social friction. And, you know, thats really one of the main points of the book, that in every sort of new,at cos disseminative dice that comes along twice that comes along device that comes along, the guttenberg press, the offset Printing Press, radio, television, the tape recorder, the onepiece photo copier, the internet, right . There are always these social forces that react against the development of these technologies to say, well, wait a second. Right now information is more free, but we have businesses built on monetizing the technology that exists. And if these new technologies are going to imperil our existing business models, weve got to pass laws or do something to make sure that doesnt happen. Ex and you correctly laws characterize another institution that we wouldnt ordinarily think of as a technology as falling into that category, and thats the free Public Lending Library. Th that was a technology forr sharing. And interestingly, you could argue that it was the guilt tha Andrew Carnegie and others felt about policing the masses that led to the establishment of these places. Yeah, i do argue that. And i had a lot more of that in the early draft of the book, and then there are points when i was writing this where im like, well, im interested in this threepage digression on the carnegie librariesings, but theres libraries, but theres probably only four othe people who are, so i should remove it. [laughter] r yeah, one could make the case that carnegie was trying to expiate his guilt for the homestead strike and a bunch of other things by opening these lending libraries for theen benefit of the working man across america. But youre absolutely right, owen. The Public Lending Library was a technology as much as the Printing Press was, as much as the internet was. And, in fact, i draw all of these sort of comparisons between the role that the Free Public Library played in the development of america and the development of the notions that america is the sort of place where the country benefits when information is made more accessing bl to those accessible to those who can least afford it. And the development of the internet, and i think its no surprise that aaron swartz himself was a huge believer in the power of libraries, the power of material in libraries to really transform the world. Aaron swartz did not leave behind a lot of clues to the what led him to his final decision, nor although he was a very public person in many ways in his writings on the internet, a lot of the inner workings that led us there. Other than a random manifesto here and there. Did you get a sense from your research of what turned him in, turned him from this sort oforta brilliant, idiosyncratic kid ind Highland Park into this crusader on behalf of an idea . Its hard to pinpoint one sort of moment or one encounter that sort of turned him from one to the other. I mean, this is a kid who before he turned 21, he sold a company to conde nast for what wasr probably eight figures. And he didnt get partners, but this was a guy who at a very young age had achieved what, you know, millions of people, you know, are working towards and dreaming towards. And instead resting on his laurels or going to start more companies, he reacted very sort of physically against the notion that, well, im an entrepreneur now. And instead devoted the rest of his life to the doing what was probably the polar opposite of what everyone expected him to do. Y but to get back to your question, i think from his earliest days as sort of a computer prodigy in Highland Park spending his off hours on the internet communicating and collaborating with a bunch of, you know, very accomplished adults to try to build the next generation of open web, that he saw the power of the collaborative dynamic that the web could promote. Right . He saw the power of a medium that would allow a precocious, very sort of enthusiastic teenager to the be accepted to be accepted as a peer with computer scientists and law professors. And it was a world in which you were judged by the quality ofge your contributions, not your credentials that had been conferred by some hierarchical institution. And that idea that there was sort of a world that could be more inclusive to sort of contributions and ideas from alu parties, you know, really sort of stuck with him throughout his life. And wherever he ran into institutions that were the opposite of that, right . . Re high school he spent, you know, his ninth grade year at north Shore Country Day School on the north shore trying to convince his principal to basically change the way the school worked. Theres this part in the book where i say he would schedule meetings with the principal and hand this guy articles on education reform that he had xeroxed. And i just, when i learned that, i just imagined the flummoxed look that must have played over this guys face as this, youou know, small, highpitched voice, you know, kid is trying to basically tell him how to do his job better. But his proposed reforms, obviously, didnt take, so he Left High School early. He went to stanford. Again, lasted one year. Didnt like it. Left. Went to silicon valley. Sold his company to conde nast. Moved out to california to work from the offices of wired news. On his blog he wrote that his first day of work ended with him crying in the bathroom because it was so horrible. To be clear, there was nothingrr objectively horrible about his office. This was one of those offices that you read about. It probably had pingpong tables and nap pods and all the stuff that, you know, people want to have in an office. E. But for aaron it was an office, right . Where he had to make other peoples priorities his priorities. Where he had to make other peoples sun the center of his universe, and he was just not prepared to do that ever. And i think that sort ofev resistance to other people sorth of telling him what to do, or other people telling him what was best even though he could clearly see from his perspective that it wasnt best that sort of drove him throughout his life. And thats another thread in the book, is that aaron although in many ways a unique individual, wasnt necessarily [inaudible] i mean, theres a whole, you write early on about a series of lean, earnest young men and women determined to make a difference in this world of free information and trying and its culture and trying to affect their dreams for what it could be. Who are a couple of those lean, earnest individuals who stick in your mind . So noah webster was lean andn earnest when he set off on horseback from his home in connecticut in 1786 to go to every single state legislature in america to try to lobby them for, to pass copyright laws. They call webster, or i callll webster, i suppose i am them the father of copyright in america. Ri and the nickname sort of fits, because webster was perhaps the first person who was determine canned to make his determined to make his living solely by what he had written, right . So webster realized that in a World Without statutory copyright laws, there was really no way that an author who was not of means could make a living from what he wrote. So, and this was before, this was in the articles of confederation era. Hi there was no strong sort of federal government. So each state had its own copyright laws or didnt. E and webster said, well, you know, i want to write this book, and i want people to read it, and and i want to not have to, you know, work for a living and write books at candlelight, so im going to go to legislature to legislature and lobby them for copyright laws, and thats what he did. And he was very successful. And when the federal government passed the copyright act of 1790, it was very much sort of websters example that led that law to take the shape it did. So websters one of the first lean, earnest young men that we meet in the idealist. Then we can fast forward almost 200 years to a guy named michael hart who wasnt lean. [laughter] he was a very bulky guy. Probably one of the most earn people whos ever lived. Ver live michael hart was the father of the web site called project guttenberg. He was the first person to put an ebook, to create an ebook, right . To put sort of documents online. He was a student at the u of i in 1971 when in a series of sort of unexpected events, he got access to this mainframe computer in the u of is Material Sciences laboratory. And this computer was connected to a local Campus Network. And hart realized that hed been given great power, and he wanted to do something great with it. So it was july 4th, 1971. He had been to the Grocery Store earlier that day, and a patriotic checkout clerk hadot slipped a copy of the declaration of independence in his bag. D and hart had this brainstorm, he said, well, im going to type up the declaration of independence and put it on this Campus Network so that anyone who wants to access it can access it. And he did. And no one accessed it because it was 1971, and the Grocery Stores were giving away copies for free. Gr [laughter] but, it was less the outcome of what happened in effect that he done Something Like that. Hart saw the future that moment. He saw there was going to come a day with the internet is going to be the library of choice for the world and i want to spend the rest of my life typing things up and putting them online and thats what he did. Think about this, if you are not familiar with project gutenberg, which assembled early on in my professional interactions with online content in the 80s, but michael hart and others like him types the complete words of shakespeare into a computer so that they could be accessed online. He didnt scan it in pdf it ladies and gentlemen and rely on ocr on character recognition, type the entire bible. This is not a guy like the most updated version of microsoft word. Hes using word processing top software that existed in the 80s. He spent literally the 1980s typing up the king james bible. Its a very long book, but also the technology that existed for random people out there that wanted to type up books and put them online when he started typing, the only choice you had was alls. Olowercaseletter is not an option. They are all in full capitals because thats what writing online was like in the 1970s. So, the reason why going to people like webster and hearts isnt just because they are fascinating. They are and honestly there were times when i was writing this book when im thinking, you know, i could also be writing a book about michael hart. Maybe i will at some point, but the point is exactly to put schwartz in line with earnest information idealistic they can before him and to make the point that his story is not unique in the history of the world, that its very much its very best exists as a descendent of these sort of they pop up every sort of 20 or 30 years in world history. People who are determined to change the world by sharing information, determined to harangue other people into carrying caring about these matters as much as they do. And always, always, always to borrow a phrase, encountering resistance from people with other interests, many of them to carry interests. We may have people interviewing audience on cspan or here in the auditorium who dont know why aaron swarts was arrested on the charged, pursued by prosecutors and ultimately found himself in a corner of not of his own making. Maybe you could just recap what led to that events because all of this. In september, 2010, aaron swarts who at the time was working at harvard university, he was a fellow there. He walks down cambridge massachusetts to the campus of that Massachusetts Institute of technology, connect to the mit Computer Network and connects to this database called j store. Is stands for journal storage this nonprofit database that contains full digital back files of hundreds and hundreds of academic journals. Its a fantastic resource and by connecting through mits Computer System the swarts who accessed for free, so he connected to j store. He runs this Computer Program that starts downloading articles from j store rapidly. Like hundreds of articles per second, Something Like that. A very effective program, so effective it ends up crushing the j store servers when its running. The j store tech people Say Something tapping and eight cut off sources access. He comes back the next day and connect that a different ip address and they cut him off again. Doesnt end in cut him off again comes back the next month, runs of the same sort of dance and j store is like something is going on. We dont know who is downloading these articles. Its an is it an overzealous professor or student, are they overseas hackers planning to take our entire archives and sort of give them away for free online dust diminishing the value of the archives . We dont know. Luckily, the storm passes and they think whoever was doing this stuff has gone, but they didnt. What aaron do, aaron who is downloading all of these papers found a better way to do it. He found a basement in building 16 on the mit campus, a wiring closet. He jacked his computer directly into the Campus Network and he tweaked his Download Program to not overthrow j stores computers. This was in november, 2010. He was slowly draining the entire archive and he went on undetected until new years. They are like this guys back. We need to find him and stop him and they found him. They set up a camera in the closet where his computer was. They got a picture of aaron. He was covering his face with a bicycle helmet but it was a poor disguise. Two hours after he came to retrieve his computer mit police found him riding his bike in cambridge back toward