What the open internet actually gave us. The man who died defending it. And what we lose if anonymous access ends.

Aaron Swartz was twenty-six years old when the United States federal government decided to make an example of him.

He had downloaded a large collection of academic journal articles from JSTOR using MIT's open network — articles produced largely through publicly funded research, locked behind corporate paywalls, inaccessible to the billions of people whose taxes had often funded the underlying science. JSTOR, the actual injured party, declined to press charges. The federal government prosecuted anyway, pursuing an indictment that carried a potential fifty-year sentence.^[1]

The state that prosecuted Aaron Swartz for sharing knowledge is now the state that wants to know who you are before you access it.

That is the human story at the centre of this debate. But it is not the only one.

What the Open Internet Actually Gave People

The UN recognised in 2016 that internet access is inseparable from Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — the right to freedom of expression — affirming that "the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online."^[3] Finland declared broadband a legal right in 2010. Costa Rica's Supreme Court ruled the same year that internet access was fundamental to democratic participation and civil rights.^[4]

These are not abstract principles. They describe what the open internet actually does for real people.

The teenager in rural Fermanagh

Consider what the open web gave to a gay teenager in rural County Fermanagh in 2005. No visible community. No safe space. No one to tell. Research consistently shows that LGBTQ+ young people living in rural areas face substantially higher rates of social isolation, depression, and suicidality than their urban peers.^[5] The Trevor Project found that while 84% of LGBTQ+ young people wanted to engage with a mental health counsellor, half of those did not receive counselling — with geographic location a determining factor.^[6]

What the internet gave that teenager was a private route to people who understood them — not a formal service, not a referral, not a waiting list. An anonymous search. A forum. A community that existed nowhere within twenty miles of where they lived. Research into rural LGBTQ+ youth found that connecting with others who shared their experiences required the ability to remain anonymous — specifically to avoid exposure in their offline communities.^[7]

Anonymity was not a bug. It was the feature that kept them safe.

The woman researching her options at 2am

Consider what it gave to the woman in a controlling relationship, researching her options at 2am when her partner was asleep, on a phone she would clear afterwards. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline receives more contacts via its website than its phone line.^[8] The ability to search privately — to find options, read accounts, understand rights, locate services — without leaving a traceable call record is not a convenience. For some people it is the first step out. Tying that search to a verified identity destroys it.

The patient, the whistleblower, the dissident

Consider what it gave to people with stigmatised health conditions — addiction, mental illness, sexual health concerns — who could research symptoms and find services without registering their vulnerability with anyone. Consider the whistleblower who needed to reach a journalist. The activist in a community where their politics had become dangerous to hold publicly. The person with unorthodox religious views navigating a tightly-knit community. The patient researching a terminal diagnosis before they were ready to discuss it with anyone.

The open internet did not just democratise access to information. It democratised access to the private processing of that information — the ability to ask the question you could not ask anyone you knew, without that question becoming part of a permanent record attached to your legal identity.

Fair Rules. Not Surveillance.

Some regulation of digital markets is not just acceptable — it is overdue. Amazon's platform dominance has enabled it to operate simultaneously as marketplace and competitor, using supplier data to identify and undercut successful products while leveraging logistics control to extract concessions from businesses with no alternative.^[9] The hollowing of high streets is real. The concentration of market power in the hands of a handful of platforms is a genuine market failure that deserves genuine legislative response.

But the tools to address Amazon's dominance are competition law and regulatory enforcement. Not the surveillance of every person who uses the internet.

We already have laws against fraud, harassment, exploitation, and incitement. They apply online. What they require is political will and adequate resourcing — both of which are more reliably provided to bodies pursuing copyright infringement than to those pursuing serious exploitation. That disproportion is not incidental. It tells you whose interests the enforcement architecture is primarily organised to serve.

The open web is not perfect. It has never been. But its imperfections are the imperfections of human nature — which existed before 1993 and will exist after any legislation a government can produce. The question is always: which interventions address the harm, and which merely address the inconvenience of the powerful?

Swartz spent his short life asking exactly that question. The answer cost him everything.

Next: Part 3 — The Lock. Why Digital ID is itself the safety risk, why it won't stop criminal activity, who it will actually harm — and the child protection argument examined.