Richard Stallman on Copyright

A couple of people submitted links to a transcript and .ogg of a recent Stallman talk at MIT. Stallman is in his usual fine form.

Comments

Re:RMS rulez

[ryants]

He has a very balanced view on issues, and, what's more, he communicates it very clearly.

Exactly.

RMS simply spouts common sense. Of course, as the old cliche goes, common sense ain't so common, and therefore he gets labelled as extremist.

We desperately need more geeks like RMS who can argue a political case so well.

Or can spout more of that rare common sense. :)

Ryan T. Sammartino

RMS rulez

[Cardinal Biggles]

RMS once more makes fools out of those who call him an extremist (or even communist).

He has a very balanced view on issues, and, what's more, he communicates it very clearly. I especially like his comparison of the present government attitude to copying to that of the Soviet Union.

We desperately need more geeks like RMS who can argue a political case so well.

Re:RMS rulez

[Rogerborg]

• I especially like his comparison of the present government attitude to copying to that of the Soviet Union.

Personally, I find Stallman repetitive and over wordy and repetitive, but that's probably because I read so much of his stuff. But he can still occasionally send a shudder down my spine, and that comparison was spot on.

Ideally, I'd like to see him become a proper media whore and push more emotive issues like that. He's talking sense, but he needs to dumb it down a lot and come up with some bullet points that Joe Sixpack can understand.

He has a clear grasp of the language of propaganda, so instead of berating Big Business for abusing it (like they'll care), why doesn't he use it? Publishers lie about "losing" money to fair use music/video sharing (they never had it in the first place, so how did they "lose" it?), so it's equally (non)sensical to say that DMCA et al will "lose" the public X jillion credits by stopping them performing (legal) fair use sharing.

Basically, I appreciate what Stallman says, but I feel that if he really wants to make a difference, he needs to stop preaching to the choir and fight dirty.

Re:RMS rulez

[(void*)]

You did not pay attention. He did not say "copying wasn't unencombered". What he did say was that "copyright was not existent". He is arguing about the LAW of COPYRIGHT and why it should be diminished.

The fact that the Church was controlling copying through other means is quite irrelevant. As RMS shows, he lives in the present. Copyright is the unjust law that is being extended as a means of control. Just like the Church used illiteracy to control people. Perhaps in those times, RMS would be exhorting us to learn to read?

Re:Stallman wants you to be poor

[PD]

My BS alarm is going off. How about a pointer to the article you're talking about? You're making a claim, and you need to provide the evidence.

Scoop of bull

[SlippyToad]

If *you* can create any "intellectual property" in a vacuum, with neither precedents nor a critical audience, you are welcome to try. However, I doubt you could invent the whole of literature in your head and write a completely original novel from scratch. In fact, I would categorically state that such a thing is impossible. It's also categorically impossible for anyone to write a wholly original song. One only learns to create intellectual property by first imitating that which has come before. Let's think about how many Disney movies, for example, were based on 17th or 18th century fairy tales? Hmm?

One of the points he makes in his talk (which *you* clearly did not read) was that the ever-increasing lifetime of copyright means that starting with the 20th century, some works will never enter the public domain. The interesting outcome of this, which Stallman didn't explore, but which I think would change some peoples' minds, is the "black hole" of our culture. Simply put, authors and songwriters have an expectation of semi-immortality. Once their career ends, their nostalgic audience will pass down their works to children, who will eventually write it into its proper place in history books. Thus the hue and clamor over the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame, and who does and does not belong in it.

The problem is that in order to survive a work has to be copied. A large business concern (for example, whoever holds the legal right to copy the Beatles' albums) will continue issuing copies as long as its economically feasible. But after the interest dies down, they won't have a reason to continue issuing CD's or vinyl. History has proven (with the example of abandonware in particular) that a publisher or copyright holder will squat on a piece of property that no longer makes money, rather than release it to the public domain.

So set our wayforward machine to 2062. The Beatles are surely dead by this time, and their works, by US and European retroactive copyright laws, are locked in vaults and no longer available in stores. The only people who would want to copy their music would be fans who were alive during the group's career. I was born just exactly at the period that the Beatles' career was ending, and I am probably one of the youngest people who maintains an active interest in collecting their recordings. I will surely be dead and gone by 2062, and I doubt I'll be able to transfer my interest to my son. So the mouldy old CD's in the attic of my house will probably be thrown out, or get left in the heat and melted, or in some other way be destroyed. And the warehoused copies that some enormous conglomerate record company owns? Well, suppose they are just costing storage money, and the company decides to throw them out?

This is a long-drawn out scenario but it's too easy to see it happening. In the case of literature, one of the real problems in studying the history of literature, or the language it's written in, is the accuracy of the source text. It's generally determined that we do not have an original copy of the Cantebury Tales in Chaucer's own hand. So there is some doubt that maybe Chaucer was someone else, or didn't write what we thought he did, or didn't do it as well. The same kind of confusion exists for Shakespeare's works. We don't have the originals in many cases, and we doubt that we are looking at the authentic thing. Maybe we read an "improved" copy.

It's pathetic that in one hundred years, despite the ready availability and incredibly low cost of duplication, that we may be wondering what the hell happened to the great works of the 20th century. Even worse, we won't have great works of the 20th century. We'll just have the bubble-gum dreck of the current moment. This is a distinctly frightening, orwellian concept. As restricted-use schemes become the norm, it may be impossible for us to rewind our tapes, or books, or music, to capture them. We may only have access to machine-generated drivel, and our art and music will have no cultural meaning except as advertising and propaganda.

as you sit in front of your pentium class computer system that was made possible only by a long series of intellectual property defended by law,

I would defy you to prove that patent law protections were required for our technology to exist. Most especially in the case of Intel, they have a physical product they are selling. Yeah, ripoffs can be made, but Intel can always fight the ripoffs by making their product more efficiently, of higher quality, and cheaper. This is the essence of competition. A company that cannot survive by making a better product than their competition doesn't deserve to.

I would also defy you to prove that literature, music, and art require copyright to exist. The converse is quite easy to prove, since without literature and music, there would be nothing to protect. But artists and authors and musicians have demonstrated throughout history that not only will they create their works for free, they will often do so under highly adverse circumstances, even risking their lives to express their opinions. An artist or author incapable of viewing their output as anything but a monetary investment is likely not a very good one.

A place to start on free text books.

[KyleHa]

There must be some old text books whose copyrights have expired. They're probably out of date (unless they're arithematic books), but they might be a good starting point for someone who knows the subject. Rather than compile a new one from scratch, why not start with one of those and bring it up to date?

Re:A place to start on free text books.

[bcrowell]

QUESTION: ...That's what I do - educational, electronic media projects. I couldn't find an example [of a free one]. Do you know of one?

STALLMAN: No, I don't.

That was really bizarre. There are tons of free textbooks on the web. Check out The Assayer and Andamooka as starting places. It's particularly strange that Stallman would say this, since he's a computer scientist, and computer textbooks (and manuals) are the biggest single category of free books.

Continuing on the same topic, Stallman says

I started proposing this free encyclopedia and learning resource a couple of years ago, and I thought it would probably take a decade to get things rolling. Now we already have an encyclopedia that is rolling.

The most charitable way to describe this statement is that Stallman must have a horrible memory. As discussed ad nauseum on Slashdot a few months ago, Nupedia came first, then Stallman contacted them, then they agreed to GFDL it, then Stallman went ahead and tried to muscle his way in anyway with the confusingly named "Gnupedia."

The Assayer - free-information book reviews

Re:Stallman wants you to be poor

[QuantumG]

You insult communists when you call Stallman a communist. His opinions are entirely centered around the individual. He talks about freedom and "rights" way too much to have any valid communist opinion. All his opinions deal with things that are copiable and as such are inately incompatible with the notion of property. Please, read something about communism before your criticize. There are strong arguments against communism, but you are not even close to stating them.

Inflexible != Extremist

[JCCyC]

People confuse those two concepts. RMS's positions are not really that extreme (lots of people would have copyright abolished; he wouldn't); but he is inflexible in those positions, as in "not giving an inch". Big difference.