Open Access to knowledge/Archives

Something I found really interesting in this week's material on the topic of open access to knowledge is the trailer for "The Internet's Own Boy." I found the trailer really ominous and interesting so I ended up actually watching the film to see what it was really about and I was totally transfixed. It's a really messed up tale about Aaron Swartz, the creator of Reddit, who was a programming prodigy and information activist. He ends up taking his own life at the young age of twenty-six because he finds himself in some legal trouble as a result of trying to set information free. What he did specifically was hack into MIT's system and illegally download academic journal articles from JSTOR, which is a scholarly database I'm sure we all have used, to set free to the public. He was charged for a number of things, facing 35 years in prison and a million dollars worth of fines. But his mission was an innocent one in my opinion. He felt strongly that it is plainly bullshit that we have to pay money to gain access to knowledge. Which is totally true. When you think of kids that don't have the money to get the information they need for papers and projects, etc.; how is that really fair at all? PACER charges eight cents per page of information that should be free.The saying that knowledge is power is very true and unfortunately it is the rich people of the world that gain this power but shouldn't necessarily have it. It is honestly ridiculous and it's very sad that this man had to die because of all the anxiety that was put on him as result of this. In his short life he did a lot of great things and if he were still alive I'm sure we would've benefitted from his mind.