What really happened to hacktivist Aaron Swartz?

You can either listen to Jian's chat with Brian Knappenberger and Cory Doctorow by clicking on the listen button, or watch it in the window below.

Jian speaks with Brian Knappenberger, director of The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz, and Swartz's close friend, Cory Doctorow. Swartz, a young activist hacker and Reddit co-founder, was facing up to 35 years in prison for illegally downloading data in the name of information access freedoms. He took his own life in 2013 while awaiting trial.

Knappenberger and Doctorow discussed Swartz's work both as a technological wunderkind and as a champion for more open data access.

"His fingerprints are all over the early internet, but his legacy also lives on in the activist community," Knappenberger said. "This notion that you can put some of your efforts and skills into the public interest."

A 2009 photo shows internet activist Aaron Swartz, subject of a new documentary. Swartz took his own life in 2013.  (AP/The New York Times, Michael Francis McElroy)

Doctorow, who is also an activist and author, told Jian it's difficult to assess what kind of emotional toll Swartz's impending trial and the prospect of a 35-year prison sentence had on him. He also remembered his friend as a genius whose spirit remained uncorrupted.

"It's like he was a Martian from the Planet Internet, who on the one hand knew how all this technical stuff worked, but hadn't had all that kind of stain on his soul the rest of us got on the way to acquiring the same knowledge," Doctorow said.

Knappenberger's documentary opens June 27, 2014 in selected theaters in the United States and Canada. For more information, check out a website for the film at Aaron Swartz: The Documentary.