Lessig, Stallman in New Documentary

Alternative Freedom is a documentary on intellectual property rights featuring lots of interviews with folks like Stallman and Lessig, as well as people like DJ Danger Mouse (creator of the Grey Album). They have a trailer available, but if you're in NYC the movie is now showing. If anyone manages to go, I'd love to see some real reviews of it.

Comments

Quicktime?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

From TFL

Viewing the trailer requires Quicktime. If your browser does not support embedded files you can dowload the .mov directly here.

Whoa! RMS is going to crack it!

It falls to me to tell them they are doing so, that they with their own actions are giving certain large companies more power. When you send someone a ".doc' file, a "Word' file, or an audio or video file in RealPlayer or Quicktime format, you are actually pressuring someone to give up their freedom. Perhaps because I constantly have to bring this up, people believe I don't have a sense of proportion.

Sometimes people take for granted that I will participate in those activities with them. Thus, when I webcast a speech, I have to ask which format it is going to be webcast in. I am not going to go along with a webcast of my speech about freedom that you have to give up your freedom in order to hear or watch. Once I put my coat over a camera before giving my speech, when I learned it was webcasting in RealPlayer format. [emph mine]

Note - I am not making fun of RMS here - I greatly admire his principals even if I am too lazy to always follow them myself.

Oh - and anyone interested in hearing the grey album mentioned in the /. summary, a torrent. It is an amazing album.

Re:Quicktime?

[Odocoileus]

I am interested in seeing the movie. I do not live in NY, nor did I see any mention of a way to obtain a copy. Does anyone know when private copies will be available?

Re:Quicktime?

[jtvisona]

I have an advanced copy, but the DRM seems insurmountable...

Re:Quicktime?

[stinerman]

RMS usually prefers Ogg Theora. All the stuff on audio-video.gnu.org is in that format.

Re:Quicktime?

[stinerman]

I always wondered what his position would be for using non-free/patented codecs and algorithms in countries that don't have software patents. For instance, if I live in the EU, is it morally permissible in RMS's eyes to use mp3s? As you say, lame is a good choice and is LGPL, so it should be permissible to use it under such a jurisdiction. Using mp3s doesn't hinder freedom in that respect, although a tangential argument would be that in some countries mp3s rely on patented technologies, so the program wouldn't be free the world over, which is a goal of the free software movement.

Re:Quicktime?

[Cal Paterson]

I agree. It's an interesting grey area. I, also, get the impression that RMS's view that mp3 is less than desirable because it is patented in some countries.

Personally, I agree in. However, mp3 has Free Software tools available for it, and so does MPEG4. Lame and ffmpeg are both good pieces of software. While the mp3 format is technically proprietary, I feel that in reality the format has now been forced open by lame. When it's worth doing, I use ogg (ie when I am doing the original encode of a file) for this reason. I don't however, transcode mp3s into ogg (unless space is an issue). However, the current issue is that ogg isn't brilliantly supported. I also like FLAC (the audiophile is shining through ;))

I can see the Ogg formats taking over eventually. They're nice, and they're small, and imo, they're a hell of a lot better than aac in most instances.

Gads

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'll wait until this one comes out on video....I for one don't relish being cooped up in theater, wedged shoulder-to-shoulder, with the hygiene-challenged social misfits who would find a documentary of Richard Stallman interesting.

Re:Gads

[Rolan]

(BTW, Michael Moore made like $12 million on that film -- has anybody else profited more from the war in Iraq?)

Haliburton comes to mind easily.... Add A few dozen politicians, just about anyone in the "defense" industry.....

bootleg anyone

[EccentricAnomaly]

If anyone manages to go, I'd love to see some real reviews of it.

bring in a cam-corder too while your at it :)

Hey editors...

[SpectreHiro]

I know y'all like to leave the submissions relatively untouched, but...

Lessing?

In the freaking headline?

fer[sic] christ's sake...

I also realize this is a tech site, and 90% of people here are familiar with the gentlemen in question, but it'd be nice to reference their full names at some point in the blurb.

Lawrence Lessig
Richard Stallman

Re:Hey editors...

[stinerman]

The overlooked problem is that the article doesn't look like it was submitted by anyone. It looks like Taco just wrote the summary himself. If that is the case, Taco is drunk or just pulled off one hell of a troll.

lets pirate this movie

[sentientbrendan]

for the *irony*.

Also, what's with the free Zarathustra thing at the beginning of the trailer? What does Neitzsche have to do with intellectual property rights?

Re:lets pirate this movie

[OECD]

What does Neitzsche have to do with intellectual property rights?

His work is in the public domain.

Request

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternative Freedom is a documentary on intellectual property rights featuring lots of interviews with folks like Stallman and Lessig, as well as people like DJ Danger Mouse

Please link Danger Mouse correctly.

Thanks

NYT has reviewed it

[joshdick]

"If anyone manages to go, I'd love to see some real reviews of it."

http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v _id=345768

Putting aside your personal feelings on copyright, that review is enough to make me want to stay away from it. As the review points out, I would be better served by reading Lessig's blog, among others.

DJ Dangermouse

[El Nombre]

FYI, DJ Dangermouse is one half of Gnarls Barkley (along with Cee-Lo), the band who reached UK's #1 chart spot with a download only single "Crazy". See the slashdot story here: http://slashdot.org/articles/06/04/02/2232226.shtm l

Most people here made fun of their names and assumed they are trash. They're worth checking out however, St. Elsewhere, their debut album, just leaked and should be released soon. Dangermouse is a talented guy.

And for those who haven't heard the Grey Album, I'd suggest giving it a listen too. (For those who don't know its a mix of the Beatles' White Album, and Jay-Z's Black Album.

Re:DJ Dangermouse

[jb.hl.com]

I'd also mention that he did a lot/most of the production work on Gorillaz' last album, Demon Days. (EMI, apparently, shat themselves when they heard of Gorillaz' choice, as they were the ones who sued Danger Mouse over the Beatles sampling...)

Re:Sheep Shears

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Stallman isn't behind the "OSS movement", but anyway, we don't need a cult of personality at this point. We need people who are thinking for themselves to realize that freedom is important. This is slowly happening (and the pace is picking up, even) but what people are afraid of is that the laws and technology will increasingly make it difficult to show people the tangible reasons why freedom is important.

Email your theatres

[iplayfast]

I just emailed cineplex to ask them if they would be showing it.
here

This type of movie only get's shown if there is a demand for it.

Re:RMS is just a whiny old hippy

[squiggleslash]

Seriously, he's not Ghandi. He just doesn't *pay for software* That doesn't exactly make him a saint.

Perhaps if you understood his principles, you might understand why other people admire them. RMS is perfectly happy to pay for software, he just wants the freedom to be able to change and redistribute that software to anyone who needs it and his changes to it.

It's about being able to help one's fellow man, and about avoiding software that prevents that. That's something to be admired, especially when you consider how impractical what RMS was demanding was when he created the GPL.

Re:RMS is just a whiny old hippy

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Seriously, he's not Ghandi. He just doesn't *pay for software* That doesn't exactly make him a saint.

He pays for software with his time. He created GCC - without it the vast majority of software you use would not be possible.

I like open source too, but these are not the grand principles he makes them out to be. It's just a way of distributing *computer software*, which isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. Computers in general are not a major source of tyranny in the world.

1) Stallman has got nothing to do with Open Source.

2) Computer software is the aspect of life where Stallman feels he can make a difference. And he does - rather then bitching about other achievements.

but by refusing to use *any* software that is commercial, you aren't helping anyone. Certainly not developers.

Here you display a complete lack of understanding for Stallman's beliefs. He isn't trying to help developers. He's trying to help users.

In short your post is an ill-informed troll. There are better anti-rms trolls out there. Please read up on them before posting here again.

Re:No sir!

[vux984]

Fahrenheit 9/11 was aimed at the "I'm too stupid to actually educate myself on policy, so I'll watch this movie by a fat sweaty retard and then ACT like I know what the fuck is going on crowd"

That "fat sweaty retard" made $12,000,000 making fun of the government?? What is retarded about that?

As for the movie, yup, it was over the top, but so what? (And yes I called it a movie not a documentary on purpose!) The pro-war-on-terror bullshit and rhetoric that spews from Washington is just as over the top, and has made Dick Cheney and friends far more money, at the expense of the American public both in dollars and in lives.

Moore made a movie, that's what he does for a living, that's no secret. That it raised some important questions is all the better. The worst thing anyone can say about it is that its been marketed as a genuine documentary; but on some level I find it that its part of the parody -- like "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" being dressed up as a news show.

That some people take it as the 'gospel truth' is unfortunate, but even that is far less damaging to America than beleiving what the governments been telling you.

People don't watch "serious documentaries" in America. Perhaps the *best* way to generate awareness that something is wrong is with comedy, parody, and over the top nonsense -- at least its entertaining enough that lots of people will watch it, and if people talk about it, or start having conversations about just what was true what wasn't, and just how over the top it was, it will accomplish far more than some dry documentary presented on the history channel that nobody watched and nobody talks about ever has.

WTF?

[C10H14N2]

Stallman has nothing to do with Open Source? Fine, he has a major semantic hair up his butt about the term "Open Source," but the whole idea of "Free Software" is his raison entière d'etre. Methinks this is why some people roll their eyes. Okay, we "get it." Now can we stop splitting hairs over it, puhhhleeaase without devloving into some asininely pedantic semiotic circle-jerk?

Re:RMS is just a whiny old hippy

[goldspider]

If the GPL was about 100% freedom and choice, it would be called the BSD license.

The GPL (especially the latest draft) has less to do with freedom than it does promoting RMS' (and by proxy the FSF) personal ideology.

Re:RMS is just a whiny old hippy

[bentcd]

If the GPL was about 100% freedom and choice, it would be called the BSD license.

Well, there's freedom and then there's freedom. It is generally not desirable that people have the freedom to take other people's freedom away, and this is what the GPL addresses which BSD does not.