WASHINGTON -- One of the staunchest Republicans in Congress, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), attended a Capitol Hill memorial on Monday for progressive activist Aaron Swartz, praising the fallen Internet icon's political courage and saying he has common ground with much of Swartz's legacy.

"He and I probably would have found ourselves at odds with lots of decisions, but never with the question of whether information was in fact a human right," Issa said at the memorial.

Swartz, who was one of the earliest minds behind Reddit, took his own life in January after fighting federal hacking charges for two years. He had long been an advocate for both an open Internet and the democratization of knowledge. Prosecutors pursued him for downloading millions of academic journal articles from the online database JSTOR, but Swartz had devoted much of his activist energy to liberating information. At age 14, he helped develop the Creative Commons license, an alternative to copyright that allows works to be shared freely, so long as they are not used for profit. The license is used heavily by Flickr and many other websites. Later, Swartz downloaded public court documents from the PACER system in an effort to make them available outside of the expensive service. The move drew the attention of the FBI, which ultimately decided not to press charges as the documents, were, in fact, public.

Issa told a crowd of hundreds Monday night that Swartz's life's work resonates with him on a personal level.

"Ultimately, knowledge belongs to all the people of the world," said Issa.

Issa, who has a long history of partisan aggression towards Democrats on Capitol Hill, was one of only a handful of Republicans to attend the memorial for Swartz. Issa was also the first congressional Republican to oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill that Internet freedom activists ultimately stymied -- with Swartz playing a leading role in the fight. Issa has continued to embrace Internet freedom causes, though he has said he opposes one of its core policies, net neutrality.

On Monday night, Issa argued that the open access movement has strong ties to bedrock conservative principles -- a point that many Republicans have been reluctant to embrace.

"'Stick it to the man,' something from my generation, resonates with everyone here tonight," Issa said. "Ultimately, trusting a government is inconsistent with our founding words, 'We the people.' Aaron understood that … Our copyright laws were created for the purpose of promoting useful works, not hiding them. Our government and every asset of the government belongs to the American people. Not one piece of federal land is off your ability to walk through at your pleasure, unless there's a valid reason to prohibit that. That principle, I think Aaron and I would always agree on. The principle that we own our government, we own all the rights and privileges that God gave us."

In the fall of 2010, Swartz downloaded millions of academic journal articles from the online database JSTOR. He had legal access to the documents through his JSTOR account, but violated the database's Terms of Service agreement by downloading them en masse. JSTOR had backed out of Swartz's prosecution, and to some the case has become a symbol of prosecutorial abuse.

Issa, who is leading a congressional investigation with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) into the prosecution of Swartz, chided federal prosecutors for so fervently pursuing Swartz over "harmless acts."

"The best and the brightest in our prosecution -- our U.S. attorneys -- should care about disposing of small cases quickly and big cases properly. And this wasn't a big case, and we know that," said Issa on Monday. His words were met with applause from the audience.

"The issues that Aaron has left behind and the causes that he believed in are ones that I believe will live on in this Congress," Issa said.

Related on HuffPost:

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  • Sir Tim Berners Lee, Founder Of The World Wide Web

    He <a href="https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/290140454211698689">tweeted</a>: “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.”

  • Quinn Norton, Freelance Journalist And Swartz's Close Friend

    "We used to have a fight about how much the internet would grieve if he died. I was right, but the last word you get in as the still living is a hollow thing, trailing off, as it does, into oblivion." Read more <a href="http://www.quinnnorton.com/said/?p=644">here</a>.

  • Danah Boyd, Social Media Researcher And Swartz's Friend

    "What I feel right now is anger. I'm angry at Aaron, angry at the state, angry at MIT, angry at anti-hactivist sentiment & angry at myself." Read Boyd's full statement on Swartz's death <a href="http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2013/01/13/aaron-swartz.html">here</a>.

  • Cory Doctorow, Science Fiction Author And Swartz's Friend

    "Whatever problems Aaron was facing, killing himself didn't solve them. Whatever problems Aaron was facing, they will go unsolved forever. If he was lonely, he will never again be embraced by his friends. If he was despairing of the fight, he will never again rally his comrades with brilliant strategies and leadership. If he was sorrowing, he will never again be lifted from it." Read more <a href="http://boingboing.net/2013/01/12/rip-aaron-swartz.html">here</a>.

  • Swartz Family Statement

    “Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death.” Read more <a href="http://rememberaaronsw.tumblr.com/post/40372208044/official-statement-from-the-family-and-partner-of-aaron">here</a>.

  • Lawrence Lessig, Director Of The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics At Harvard University

    "The question this government needs to answer is why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a 'felon.' For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million-dollar trial in April -- his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge. And so as wrong and misguided and fucking sad as this is, I get how the prospect of this fight, defenseless, made it make sense to this brilliant but troubled boy to end it." Read more <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/aaron-swartz-suicide_b_2467079.html">here</a>.

  • JSTOR, Academic Archive

    "We are deeply saddened to hear the news about Aaron Swartz. We extend our heartfelt condolences to Aaron’s family, friends, and everyone who loved, knew, and admired him. He was a truly gifted person who made important contributions to the development of the internet and the web from which we all benefit." Read more <a href="http://about.jstor.org/statement-swartz">here</a>.

  • L. Rafael Reif, MIT President

    "I have asked professor Hal Abelson to lead a thorough analysis of MIT's involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual activity on our network in Fall 2010 up to the present. I have asked that this analysis describe the options MIT had and the decisions MIT made, in order to understand and to learn from the actions MIT took. I will share the report with the MIT community when I receive it." Read more <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/letter-on-death-of-aaron-swartz.html">here</a>.

  • Anonymous, Hacktivist Collective

    On Sunday night, one day after Swartz's death, Anonymous knocked out Internet access at MIT, <a href="http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/anonymous.html" target="_hplink">according to The Tech</a>, a campus newspaper. Two MIT-affiliated websites were rewritten with the following message from the hacktivist group: "Whether or not the government contributed to his suicide, the government's prosecution of Swartz was a grotesque miscarriage of justice, a distorted and perverse shadow of the justice that Aaron died fighting for - freeing the publicly-funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it - enabling the collective betterment of the world through the facilitation of sharing - an ideal that we should all support." Read the full text of the hack <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5975646/anonymous-hacks-mit-in-aaron-swartzs-name">here</a>.

  • Danny O'Brien, Journalist And Swartz's Friend

    "Ada [O'Brien's daughter] cried, then we hugged, then Ada suggested we have a goodbye party, with ice-cream and sprinkles and a movie, and make a board where we could pin all our memories. We laughed at how funny he was. Aaron taught her so well." Read more <a href="http://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2013/01/12/he-was-funny/">here</a>. <strong>Correction:</strong> This slide originally reported that Ada was Aaron Swartz's daughter, not Danny O'Brien's. The Huffington Post regrets this error.