Portland Civic Lab hosted a screening of The Internet’s Own Boy on what would have been Aaron’s 40th birthday and asked a number of people to contribute their thoughts for the occasion.

Carl Malamud
Carl Malamud founded Public.Resource.Org.

He and Aaron worked together for more than a decade, including the project that pulled millions of federal court records out from behind the PACER paywall.

In 2022, he received the Internet Archive’s Hero Award.

When Edan at Portland Civic wrote to him in October, he answered in fifteen minutes with these three sentences:

“Aaron Swartz was a force of nature and it was a privilege and an honor to work with him for over a decade.

Universal access to human knowledge is the great promise of our times and Aaron believed that fervently. He spent his life trying to make it possible.”

— Carl Malamud, Public.Resource.Org.