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Transcript of Eben Moglen's Harvard Speech
An anonymous reader writes "Groklaw has a transcript of Eben Moglen's Harvard Speech + Q&A up. Good Stuff. During the Q&A he made a good point to think about: 'We stand for free speech. We're the free speech movement of the moment. And that we have to insist upon, all the time, uncompromisingly. My dear friend, Mr. Stallman, has caused a certain amount of resistance in life by going around saying, "It's free software, it's not open source". He has a reason. This is the reason. We need to keep reminding people that what's at stake here is free speech. We need to keep reminding people that what we're doing is trying to keep the freedom of ideas in the 21st century, in a world where there are guys with little paste-it labels with price tags on it who would stick it on every idea on earth if it would make value for the shareholders. And what we have to do is to continue to reinforce the recognition that free speech in a technological society means technological free speech. I think we can do that. I think that's a deliverable message.'"
I read the whole transcript yesterday. I just wish I could have watched it or at least listened to it. The online archive is in perpetual time-out mode. Has anyone got an (unofficial?) mirror of it? Is anyone allowed to? Can we 'torrent this?
I just want to hear Eben's jokes in Eben's voice. Someone worth listening to for an hour and a half is a rare bird.
cheers...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
Anybody from Harvard: Am I allowed to attend lectures without being part of Harvard? Are they public lectures? Can I obtain permission to attend them?
Being a recent grad student at a tech school, I know that school ID's are seldom checked at these occasions, but would like to know if it's against the rules or something.
Thank you.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
At about an hour in length, it was quite good. I really recommend it, because it puts both SCO and the things you hear Stallman say into very nice perspective, and shows how terribly confused Darl McBride really is. In particular you should watch for Moglen's description of the problems with using Eldred v. Ashcroft to support the odd notion that the GPL is unconstitutional. Darl doesn't realize it, but his argument indicates that he and the FSF are actually on the same side of that Supreme Court case.
Does this mean that any piece of closed-source software is a threat fo Free Speech?
Are the store shelves that are stocked with closed-source games and applications threatening the world? The customers who buy them don't seem much to care.
Maybe some legislation is in order to free the source!!!!
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
"It's free software, it's not open source"
I think if they want to make this message strongly they should keep it simple. Making the distinction between "free software" and "open source" will just confuse most members of the public. Isn't "open source" also about free speech? The same general principals apply don't they? Why do they have to confuse the issue?
Thank You!!!!! and Amen !!!!
IMHO this is what all the other people (like Lessing) who want a compromize between the copyright lords and the information wants to be free crowd miss. That it's not about copyrights at all, it's about free speech. In the eyes of the internet there is no difference between copyright content, porn content, and free speech content. If you have someone in a position to restrict any information, you have someone in a position to restrict any information they disagree with - it's that simple.
I think in the end though, we will not be able to rely on the government to secure our free speech rights online. We're simply gonna half to do it in ourselves in defiance. We're gonna half to force an all or nothing proposition. A) Shut down the internet, B) have no controll over content online. So other than that, the internet is completely outside the governments juristiction.
Having listened to the speech, I assure 'yall it's much better listened to than read.
I've put together a BitTorrent share with a Speex encoding of his speech. Please be gentle.
Hear hear. Now can someone please point this out to the PocketPC developers out there? I got myself this new fangled PDA from Microsoft and the complete lack of GPL code out there for it is truely amazing.
There are plenty of applications, most of them are shockingly written but the developer has stuck it up on Handago with a tag of $15 in the hope that he/she can make a quick buck off it.
I, on the other hand, tried to garner interest in developing a simple framework to allow embedded visual basic programmers to create today plugins really easily. The idea was that the code to produce the today screen (which had to be eVC++) would be GPL and that the code for interfacing to it would be free (for use under any licence). Anyone who improved the protocol had to share it, but you didn't have to share the code for your own application if you really didn't want to.
Unfortunately I can't programme today screens (or evc++ for that matter) for toffee to I advertised for people to help me.
I had interest from 10 people - not one of them was interested in it being GPL. They would only agree to work with me on it if it was going to be sold and licenced to "approved" people. In short, they wanted to make money from something closed and hidden.
So what can I do? Learning eVC++ is not really an option unless people want to see something in 2010. Is there anywhere I can find good people who are willing to spread the GPL word in the PocketPC community?
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We need to keep reminding people that what's at stake here is free speech. We need to keep reminding people that what we're doing is trying to keep the freedom of ideas in the 21st century, in a world where there are guys with little paste-it labels with price tags on it who would stick it on every idea on earth if it would make value for the shareholders
Funny... that would make one think that patents are the enemy here, not copyrights. Copyrights protect the embodiment of a single idea in a concrete form. Patents protect an idea which is a process of doing something.
Ergo, both of these guys are barking up the wrong tree.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
There is a deliberate obfuscation that leads to the legitimate confusion regarding Open Source vs. Free Software. That obfuscation was created by Richard Stallman.
Stallman's motives are not a secret. I own an old issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal that published a rant by Stallman which lays out his views in a completely unambiguous way; I really need to find it again so that I can post the exact reference when needed. In that rant, Stallman unambiguously made it clear that he considers making money from software to be *bad*, period. He suggests that it is flat out wrong for software companies to exist and that the world would be better served if, perhaps, a government agency wrote freely distributed software. He invokes Kant's philosophy explicitly to provide the so-called moral justification for this view; a philosophy which is utterly against personal gain of any sort.
The bottom line of intellectual property is this: The creator of that IP has an absolute moral right to determine how his property may be used. Some choose to (try to) sell that IP; if there is a market, so be it. Some have chosen to simply give it away; that is also their right. However, the secondary issue then remains: Are they doing so because they feel guilt about making a profit? Because "knowledge should be free"? If so, they are operating on a bad moral premise, the idea that profit is evil. Even if it's $1 for an entire operating system. (Note that Red Hat charges a lot more than that for support, but Linus Torvalds and others who created their product gets no compensation linked to those charges.)
The SCO legal action is bound to be used as a straw man to attack profit making with software IP. Their basis for claiming ownership of Linux is specious. The real issue, again, is whether the *creator* (or creators) of a piece of IP have the moral right to designate its usage. In other words, whether the products of the mind can be *property*. Grant that and the side by side existence of Microsoft with Open Source is no mystery and no problem. Attack that and you do attack the foundations of a civilized society, because you support the notion that "society" can freely steal from those who create.
What a patronizing way to refer to people (like me) who are trying to make a living selling their own work.
That's how these guys think about anybody who doesn't drink their free-everything Kool-Aid.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
There should be an inspiring spokesman like this at every Open Source convention. The community needs it.
Stallman has done a great service to the community by keeping this aspect of the movement alive. I have had direct correspondance with him multiple times and he has NEVER failed to personally write back with elaboration on a point or a rebuff to an argument. He must have spent the majority of every day for the past 25 years spreading the case for Free Software one person at a time like that without compromise, which is how he has achieved what he has achieved and deserves respect in the community regardless of personal wranglings.
However, Stallman is so marred with 25 years of personal politics that it is difficult for him to inspire. It never seems like he can quite decouple the ideals of freedom of expression from a certain "I _AM_ THE IDEALS, RECOGNIZE ME, the GPL is the ONLY way to go" attitude.
If the entire community can be inspired to the real ideals of Free Expression, than the GPL itself would almost be irrelevant. Stallman has used the GPL as the glue to keep the community together regardless of it's beliefs on the issue of free expression, but this needs to be seen as an entirely secondary issue.
I hope to at least see Eben Moglen and similar speakers invited to more software conferences.
Braddock Gaskill
The ACLU doesn't even have a clue.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I think the OP is objecting to people who want to put prices on all intellectual property, not just some of it. Even RMS thinks that not all software must be free. I agree. I think people who want to write free software (like me) should be free to do so, and companies like Microsoft that want to write non-free software should be free to do so.
The issue is when people try to sue the free software writers out of existence, e.g. SCO. They think all software should come from big companies with big licensing fees. Moderation is key. I use some non-free software. I also use plenty of free software. I do not impose my views of this on the public or the economy.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
I have enough trouble getting my boss to distinguish b/t "open source" and "shareware". Throwing "free software" into the mix is going to hurt corporate adoption, not help civil liberties.
The thing that Bruce Perens, etc., understand that Stallman does not is "branding". "Open Source" is a distinct, brandable term. It has successfully fought off imitation brands like Microsoft's "Shared Source" concept. It even has a crisp, compact logo. The FSF does not understand this game, and they can't seem to produce a brand name w/o botching it up with recursive algorithms ("HURD"), semantic ambiguitiy ("free software"), or phonetic confusion ("GNU"). And their logo sprawls all over the place.
Furthermore, the FSF appears to have a touch of NIH syndrome ("not invented here"). Stallman tries to draw a distinction b/t the terms "free software" and "open source", but they mean the same thing, practically speaking. Why hair-split the semantics when you could present a unified, prepackaged concept to the world?
Sigh... enough ranting. I just want to see FSF do the little things that would help give it corporate cred.
FYI, the GNU homepage has a lot of actions you can take to support free software politically. Take a look.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
For those of you who appreciate the irony of an FSF speaker being recorded in a proprietary format, I should tell you I have already asked both Eben Moglen and the JOLT Harvard folks to consider distributing their talks in free formats under licenses that allow at least verbatim distribution in any medium.
Prof. Moglen told me if the JOLT folks did not produce a free format copy of his talk, he would do so himself. The person I spoke with at Harvard said he would take the licensing issue to their board for review.
Digital Citizen
Incorrect.
While the purposes you outlined are correct, nothing was weakened. It's a use of the existing copyright system to ensure that the end-user is given the same freedoms (and restrictions) given the re-distributors. Those freedoms are the right to read the source, make modifications, and pass the code + modifications on to others.
Regarding patents: both OSS and FS allow patents to be filed. The difference is that FS requires the patent owner to license the patent for free and without much restriction (IIRC) to the end user, such that the end user's freedom to re-distribute and modify are not restrcited.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
How free is the speech when there are restrictions placed upon how, when, and where I can use that speech? The GPL is more facist than free as it restricts the way I may use that speech (i.e. code).
I'm not arguing that's necessarily a bad thing, but I do object to calling something free when it really isn't.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
So I read the article on deuceofclubs - what exactly does that have to do with Free Speech?
Sounds to me like Trademark or copyright violation or maybe even fraud...but not free speech.
If U2 sued them for saying 'U2 Sucks' then that would be about free speech.
And they admitted that they were trying to dupe customers into thinking the album was a U2 album! I can see the point they were trying to make - but don't think they chose the right means to try and make the point.
Can someone sum up the differences between Free Software and Open Source Software?
I'll use an analogy that my friend told me once. Think of vegetarians. There are some people who are vegetarian because they believe killing animals is wrong. There are others who are vegetarian because some medical report says it's healthy. In other words, the former have ethical reasons, while the latter have pragmatic reasons.
So far so good. There doesn't seem to be any major conflict. The trouble starts when new findings are released which say that eating meat is actually good for you. The second (pragmatic) group will then eat meat too, while the first group WILL NOT - their point is that killing animals for food is wrong, irrespective of whether it's healthy for you or not.
The first group is Free Software, who advocate freedom as the primary goal and software as merely incidental. The second group is Open Source, who always advocate sharing source for practical benefits (more eyes examining etc), but don't say anything about freedom and liberty. If there is some exploit in the future that makes it seem like closed-source or proprietary software might offer benefits that open-source cannot, then the shear between the two groups will be readily apparent, with the Open Source advocates using closed-source for its benefits, and Free Software advocates holding out on principle.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
So I read the article on deuceofclubs - what exactly does that have to do with Free Speech? Sounds to me like Trademark or copyright violation or maybe even fraud...but not free speech.
To me, this particular case illustrates that there's a very nebulous line between intellectual property, trademarks, copyrights, and free speech, at least when it comes to art.
Making a statement in art seems very much like an aspect of free speech. Is that only when the art doesn't cost anything? When you're an artist that actually wants to make a career out of creating art, does that mean you're not allowed to parody, satire, or generally make a statement using aspects of our society that happen to be trademarked or copyrighted?
Part of the point of this was that at the same time, U2 was using other's copyrighted content without reimbursement in their own concerts. They'd no doubt argue that this was done for their art, but apparently other artists aren't allowed to do likewise, not when it involves U2 trademarks an content. (Note that this was mainly a spat between labels, but U2 declined to make a stand on principle when it came to this particular spat.)
Anyway, this is a bit off-topic, so I'll not belabor the issue.
1984, Associate, Cravath Swaine & Moore, New York.
1983, IBM Corporation, Armonk, New York, Associate Corporation Counsel
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Interesting...
It just put a few pieces together for me, since Cravath Swaine & Moore are currently representing IBM in SCO vs. IBM (and that Boies, whose firm represents SCO in that action is also a former associate of Cravath Swaine & Moore) who left to form his own firm (something very uncommon with a prestigious firm like theirs).
Small world, huh?