Whitney Matheson

USA TODAY

With net neutrality and surveillance being such hot-button issues right now, one wonders what insight Aaron Swartz would have had to offer.

Swartz, who committed suicide last year at 26, was admired by technology leaders and activists for his prodigious programming skills and strong beliefs in civil liberties. As a teen, he was involved in the development of RSS before going on to create a company called Infogami that later merged with the social news site Reddit. He also created organizations devoted to Internet issues and protecting online freedoms.

A new documentary examines Swartz's life and tragic death, which came in the wake of a two-year legal battle with the federal government. In The Internet's Own Boy (in theaters and on demand June 27), director Brian Knappenberger talks to Swartz's family, friends and admirers about his legacy.

"We made the film fairly quickly," Knappenberger told me in a phone interview. "It debuted at Sundance about a year after Aaron died. It was intense because we were talking to people soon after they'd lost someone that they loved deeply. ... It was very emotional."

In 2011 Swartz was arrested after he was found downloading academic journal articles from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He later was charged with violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and faced a lengthy prison sentence and hefty fines.

"It was striking to me that not a lot of people had talked about his case," Knappenberger says. "I didn't realize why that was until I started making the film. ... He didn't want to talk about it with too many people because he thought it might be a cause for the prosecutors to try to interview them. And he didn't want to anger the prosecutors by making too much of a public spectacle of it, so he actively tried to keep it quiet."

Swartz was somewhat of a celebrity in tech circles, but the film underscores that the causes he believed in — and ultimately died for — apply to Internet users worldwide.

"I mean, the truth is, the Internet is not some distant realm of geeks and hackers," Knappenberger says. "It's a place where we all live. So the notion of how information flows is important to everybody."

Along with details about the film, the official site for The Internet's Own Boy (takepart.com/internets-own-boy) includes petitions and suggestions for how viewers can reform computer crime laws and support issues Swartz advocated.

Adds Knappenberger: "I think we're at a kind of crossroads where we have to decide what kind of Internet we want. Do we want an Internet where the government can surveil us? ... Or do we want the Internet to be about expression and creativity and innovation? That's really what's at stake here."

The film arrives in theaters and on-demand platforms June 27. For more, follow @internetsownboy on Twitter and visit its Facebook page.