自由網絡的布衣戰士—艾倫·施瓦茨
Remembering Aaron Swartz
紀念艾倫·施瓦茨Commons man
自由網絡的布衣戰士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.
你可以說艾倫·施瓦茨的才華是“上天的禮物”，但這並非重點。因爲對於互聯網而言，他本身就是“上天的禮物”。早在2001年，年僅14歲的施瓦茨就協助創建了RSS源的新規則，從而方便了博客、文章和視頻在網上的傳播。一年之後，他又與萬維網之父蒂姆·伯納斯·李爵士等人一道，用語義網對互聯網進行完善（在語義網的架構下，網頁內容的基礎數據可以在不同的網絡應用和項目中，得以共享並重復使用）。同時，他還是發起“知識共享”項目的團隊一員。“知識共享”通過免費易用的版權許可，簡化信息共享；其幕後團隊除了有律師和政策專家，還有和施瓦茨一樣的程序員（不過誰也不如他年輕）。
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.
他做這些工作的報酬極其微薄，甚至爲零。Reddit是個例外：2006年，這家紅極一時的社交新聞網站被康泰納仕集團收購（後者是《Vogue》等十多家著名生活時尚雜誌的出版商），施瓦茨和他的同事從中獲利頗豐。然而，他事後談及這筆財富的語氣幾近悔恨。他表示，自己和公司生活完全格格不入，幾個月後就辭職了（也有人說他是被勸退的，當然這得看你問的是誰）。不過這筆現金的確讓他可以專注於自己的不懈鬥爭：讓廣大網民可以免費享受數據的自由之戰。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.
因爲雖說編程是他的至愛，但自由之戰纔是他真正的天職。他是“求進同盟”的創始人之一，這一團體不僅譴責網絡審查，還是去年挫敗反盜版立法議案的功臣：它是網上抵制運動的中流砥柱，而此役對於最終勝利功不可沒（該法案的幕後支持者是好萊塢製片商等內容所有者）。近期，學界人士發出威脅，將會抵制向讀者收費的期刊；此舉在施瓦茨2008年的《開放存取的遊擊宣言》中便早有預言，又或者此舉正是受其啓發。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，施瓦茨拿到了國會圖書館藏書的全部書目數據（不過對於獲取途徑，他卻不願提及）。在他看來，這一信息作爲美國政府的工作，在國內不受版權法的保護，因此該館編目部門對此收取高額費用，實爲不公。於是，他把信息放入“公共圖書館”（作爲“互聯網檔案館”的一部分，“公共圖書館”旨在將所有現存書籍全部入冊；而該“檔案館”是由互聯網企業家布魯斯特·卡勒創建，旨在爲所有網站的頁面一一備份。）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 , 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.
還有一件事讓施瓦茨忿忿不平。那就是聯邦法庭記錄必須付費方可查閱，而且這一查閱系統名爲“公衆獲取電子版法庭記錄的途徑”，但卻名不符實。於是2009年時，他利用公共圖書館獲得的臨時免費權限，從該系統的5億份記錄中獲取了1800萬頁的信息，直至這一權限被廢止。這些信息最後被放到了上（該網站的創始人是倡導開放存取的老將、被譽爲“互聯網圖書館館長”的卡爾·馬拉默德）。聯邦調查局對此立案調查，但並未提起訴訟。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.
然而當局並非總是這麼心慈手軟。2011年，施瓦茨因涉嫌從JSTOR系統獲取480萬份文檔而被捕（JSTOR是基於收費模式的學術期刊存儲系統）。檢方稱，施瓦茨犯案時還是哈佛大學的研究生，由於JSTOR系統對付費院校的教員和學生免費開放，他便在附近哈佛大學的配線室中安裝了一部手提電腦，並用假名進入該系統。如果獲罪，他可能面臨最高35年的牢獄和100萬美元的罰金。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與施瓦茨達成民事和解，並認爲此事已經了結。事實上，在檢方提起刑事訴訟後不久，JSTOR就開放了系統中所有公共領域的文章。今年1月9日，也即施瓦茨去世的兩天前，JSTOR擴大了一項測試方案，讓註冊免費賬戶的讀者可以在一定限度內閱讀大約450萬篇文章。1月11日，施瓦茨死於紐約的公寓內，很顯然是自殺身亡。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歲的施瓦茨長期患有抑鬱症。讓他走上絕路的可能是牢獄之災，也可能不是。對於檢方能否讓其獲罪，人們看法不一。檢方當然相信，自己有足夠的證據讓他坐牢。著名網絡理論家、學者勞倫斯·萊斯格是施瓦茨的導師和朋友，他認爲，證據足以證明自己的門生有過錯，即使他沒觸犯法律，也有違道德，但只應稍事懲罰。亞歷克斯·史塔摩斯原本要以專家證人的身份爲被告作證，在他看來，施瓦茨的行爲只是“不替他人着想”，並未觸犯刑法。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.
得知他的死訊後，本欄目作者G.F.回顧了2000至2001年間，自己與施瓦茨的電郵往來。那時的施瓦茨不過是個十四五歲的少年，但他的文風簡潔明瞭、一針見血，和他的思想一樣老成。他詢問筆者獲取圖書信息的途徑，以便用於一個價格比較的網站。甚至他還提出了一份合作建議，而這後來成了“公共圖書館”的核心理念；遺憾的是，筆者與他的合作並未實現。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遠見，在網上爲自己的虛擬遺囑指定了執行者，並將自己硬盤中的內容交由後者公開，作爲留給網絡大衆的最後一份禮物。但這遠遠無法彌補他的離世帶來的損失，因爲我們失去的是網絡大衆中最不同尋常的人物。正如蒂姆爵士在一份簡短的悼詞中所說：“艾倫已逝。我們迷途世間，卻痛失一位睿智的長者；我們以黑客身份爲公義而戰，卻痛失一位戰友；我們爲人父母，卻痛失一位共同的孩子。讓我們寄以哀思。”於是，哀思便在網絡蔓延。
