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RMS Protest Song On Gitmo
An anonymous reader tipped us to a protest song RMS has written and recorded (while visiting Cuba) and is hosting on stallman.org. It's a sort of parody, although it's too serious really to be called that, in Spanish of the song "Guantanamera," in which a Gitmo prisoner talks about his experiences and mourns his fate. RMS wrote the lyrics in 2006 after learning what "Guantanamera" actually means. The lyrics are moving, and the recording, in Ogg, is competent — RMS sings well and he's got some amateur musicians from Cuba backing him up. Here are the lyrics and an English translation.
I wonder how he managed to visit Cuba without violating the federal law that prohibits US citizens from trading with our enemies.
There are several exceptions to the restrictions on travel to Cuba.
I would imagine that RMS went there for a conference on free software. This would fall under an exception which doesn't require special permission from the State Department.
Ogg is a completely open format. Ogg is the encapsulation format used for vorbis audio. Ogg is fully documented in RFC 3533. Similarly, the Vorbis specification is also readily available. It is unencombered by patents and the source code to the reference libraries is available under a BSD-like license and is free to use in both commercial and open-source software. RFC's are about as official as you can get for an open standard.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Seemingly ridiculous, indeed, save for one point: If ever they find you gave money to some "terrorist" group or were involved with some "communist" organization, they can deport you. Not because giving your money to some "terrorist" group or having "communist" friends is illegal (it may not be), but because you lied on your immigration forms, and entered the country thus on false pretenses. That's sufficient to deport you, without the hassle of formally accusing you of dubious crimes.