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Richard Stallman Talks On Copyright Vs. the People
holden writes "Richard M. Stallman recently gave a talk entitled Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer Networks to the University of Waterloo Computer Science Club. The talk looks at the origin of copyright, and how it has evolved over time from something that originally served the benefit of the people to a tool used against them. In keeping with his wishes to use open formats, the talk and QA are available in ogg theora only."
What's with that guy who asks Stallman if he's familiar with the anime industry?
600+ megs linked off the front page.. you must hate these guys.
How we know is more important than what we know.
...and they act all corporationy.
Apparently there aren't people involved. Just faceless corporations. It's so much easier to raise up some good old fashioned rabble that way, I suppose.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Why is there no transcript? I'm not saying I couldn't download the video and watch it, but I'd rather not spend at least an hour downloading it and then have to watch it.
I find his choice of CC license odd given his talk.... He spends most of the time talking about the importance of derivative works, but then releases his talk under a no-derivatives license. Oh well :(
Am happy to say: I was there! :)
It was a good lecture, Stallman has some interesting ideas on what should be done. In particular he talks about how society and copyright never clashed before as the public never had the ability to create commercial grade copies of content (before the advent of the PC). He then goes on to explain a way that copyright can be reformed, including some possible categories for works (based upon their usefulness and application within society). Bit of a spoiler: the works that are instructional (cook books, car manuals, GNU+Linux howtos etc.) should be totally Free, but art for arts sake should have a 5-10 year copyright. There are many more details that you should watch the video to find out about (plus my memory of the event is a little vague and the video hasn't downloaded yet).
The talk drifted at the start and in the middle, with blather about GNU+Linux and the evils of Vista; although some of the Vista evils are on-topic, Stallman did lose his way a bit on the subject. Otherwise it was damn good, well worth going to and/or watching on your OGG player!
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
VLC is just one player that can play Oggs, download it free here.
If someone did an ogg vorbis (just the sound) that would be good for us to listen to on the go, the main video file is 686.3 MB which would mean I would have to ditch a lot of stuff to get it on my rockbox.
My little Linux and tech blog
RMS gave the same speech two years ago in Bulgaria.
Not everyone who saw the lecture agreed with the contents. A counterpoint can be found here.
I didn't write that counterpoint, but there's one thing the author and I agree on: Richard Stallman is a lot more crazy in person. One guy in the audience asked how he was supposed to pay for his university education by releasing free software. Stallman didn't really give him an answer, he just told the student that he didn't have to go to school, and he had no right to release closed source software in an attempt to earn money. Stallman has compared closed source software to "a crime against humanity", yes?
I talked to Stallman after the lecture. I asked him how he paid the mortgage after leaving MIT in 1984. He said that that he's never had a mortgage and "he lives cheaply". I later heard that he basically squatted on the MIT campus.
See, here's the problem with Stallman's philosophies: they're highly incompatible with the status quo, and there's no clear path for change. If you want people to do $Y instead of $X, $Y has to be relatively pin-compatible with $X. Telling people to write free software is well and good, but your paradigm isn't going to have much success if it also requires programmers to buy a house, get married, and otherwise have a normal life.
On a related note, I also asked Stallman what he thought of the wedding photography industry. For those of you who don't know, typical wedding photographers cost over a thousand dollars, show up at your wedding to take pictures, and then make you pay through the nose for prints. They don't even give you the copyright, if you want more prints you have to go back to the photographer! One must shop around to find a photographer who'll actually give you the digital originals. Anyway, I asked Stallman if he thought this was analogous to what was happening in the software world, and he said no. He thought closed source software was a greater imposition on freedom than holding wedding memories hostage.
The man is too close to his particular pet cause.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
Please kindly ignore the incorrect link. The correct one is here. (Damn tabs)
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
use open formats, the talk and QA are available in ogg theora only
HAIL CAESAR, for he cometh this way (then we piss on his tracks)
If you allow people leeway they will repay you back at a later date by supporting you.
That's exactly how I bought fraps. When it first came out I was a poor student and couldn't afford the proggy. But I've tried it and it just kicks ass.
Years later, when I become a poor designer, I shelled out the $40, and send the author a mail giving props. If I had never tried fraps I bet I would just pirate it to "see" how good it is and ended up not paying. But to revisit the site after all these years and see this guy still at it, with a lifetime upgrade, that $40 was one of the best $40 I've spent on useful stuff. Even more useful now with youtube.
The same can be said for Wii. I am in Hong Kong and I can pirate the Wii like no tomorrow, but I chose not to in order to thank nintendo. After all these years of being the underdog, the big N never gave up on us and made something truly new. I don't even play much on it, but it's a good feeling.
It was really easy to watch that video, click on the link and it plays strait away with no problem at all... I've tried to get online streaming video to work before but never had any joy because of the damn DRM - I almost started to wonder if it was my fault.
Hurray for open formats!
HAIL CAESAR, for he cometh this way (then we piss on his tracks)
Excuse me good Sir!
I consider myself to be a passable student of the Classics but you seem to be using a classical allusion of which I am unfamiliar. I would be most grateful if you could elucidate.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I was little worried to read "bit of a spoiler"... You may recall that when the sixth Harry Potter book came out back in '05, Stallman decided that the best way to fight copyright was to post a bunch of Harry Potter spoilers without any warnings on the FSF web pages.
If the DMCA had been up for a vote, I would've been tempted to support it just to spite that guy.
Am I the only person who has the sudden urge to download it and transcode it into mp3? Or even better, DRMed WMV?
:D
But RMS, information wants to be free, and this is just another form for it to freely take!
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Yea and what the fuck did that guy just write?
I use your software every day, and I am really am grateful for your varied contributions. But can you go home now, and keep to yourself, please? All that crazy is just hurting our cause.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Stallman rocks
Nico M, London, GB.
...was the speeding ticket I got on the way to it and a fine for "driving on a non-valid licence".
My wife and I got married in front of a Justice of the Peace (who married us at the cost of a small donation to charity), the photographer (yes, holds our pics hostage, but wasn't expensive and as you say, it's only some photos) and two observatory technicians roped in as witnesses (for the price of a bottle of cheap ass champagne).
My best friend's wife discovered he had a trustfund (I've known him for 40 years and didn't know) so there wedding was like every 'Friends'-meets-Woman's-Weekly-fantasy hell you can imagine and cost a fortune...and it SUCKED! But that's what happens when you marry a stupid harpie slag who wants to play Queen for a Day then relive it every day for the rest of her life.
But I'm not bitter that she's almost bankrupted him and never lets him out to play with his old friends anymore. Nosirree. At least it turns out she's barren. Every cloud and all that...
Ahem.
What needs to happen in a lot of circumstances is that copyright should not be transferable. So, if I write a song, it belongs to me. If a company wants to promote it, we can make a service contract. But the copyright is mine, not theirs. The labels are my agents, they could provide studios, or off-site storage for my works, and people with marketing savvy. But guess what? The industry that gave us the indentured servitude of the recording contract is no more. iTunes is more of a music company than any label out there. All they are are assholes with legal degrees.
Not being able to force artists into loan sharking arrangements with the labels would mean, however that all the labels as they exist now are effectively and instantly bankrupt. Yay. Without this leverage, The artist writes contracts with agents, and grants his or her managers a piece of his copyright for say, five years. So, the more tracks of mine they sell, the more they make. The more concerts I give to the bigger audiences, the more money they make. But the artist is in control. He has the copyright. I might spare them 10% of revenues, or 50% if I'm a newbie. But it will revert to me.
Because, after all, what function do the huge conglomerated labels have? They used to provide money for manufacture and distribution. They no longer have any significant burden, since once the final track is laid down, all they have to do is sell copies for more than it costs to download. And they were loan sharks. Game over. Finita la commedia.
The site's gone down, so here's a copy of the torrent file:
rms-talk.ogg.torrent
I didn't get the Q&A torrent.
That torrent saturated my 100Mbit connection... Will keep on seeding.
Text is just better for this sort of thing.
If there was a text version of the talk, we could get the gist of it in a few minutes. It would also use much less bandwidth, and I'd be able to read it at work!
Stallman is an interesting guy. But I've heard his talks before, and he tends to say the same things over and over. I doubt his position on copyright has changed since his last talk. So I'm not downloading and watching the video unless I know there's a specific reason to do so. And unfortunately, I will never know.
By all means, provide a video link, but lets have a text version too. If I wanted to watch the news I'd turn on the TV.
It's not much of a counterpoint, since this guy basically argues that programmers should be able to get paid for their work (something that noone really contested) not that SW should be closed (which would be a real counterpoint).
The lack of copyright and programming as a profitable business are not the same. You can find examples of copyrighted programs failing to bring in any money (just ask shareware authors) and there are programmers who are paid to work on copyleft stuff (I would venture to guess that most of the Linux code submitted lately is written by professionals paid to do so).
Sure, you can argue that copyright is a useful tool when it comes to bringing together supply and demand on the marketplace but it would be foolish to state that it is the only possible method to do so.
Real life is overrated.
I just love him, The Open SOUrce GUY GNU. Very funny man Richard. I attended one of his conferene in India, damn i was very much motivated by his speech. Now i m using Open Source SOftware.. FOSS... Cheers Richard..
Best Regards, Eliena Andrews
Crazy. If instructional works are free, won't their quality suffer? Who would bother making a nice one? Yes, yes, I want to rely on wikihow when fixing my ABS system on my car... I think reasonable limits should be imposed on copyrights. But to deny them?...crazy.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Fine here now - did you get Nagiosed? Must be pretty late in Ontario. As an ex-SysAdmin who was on a NetSaint bleeper for 5+ years I can afford a chuckle. I DO hope everyone downloading IS using an open-source Bittorrent client - there are plenty of seeds on both files (only 1 for the 1989 Bill G talk though (my he looks tiny in the photo - guess that's not a fav publicity shot).
/ bill-gates-1989-big.jpg/
/. HTTP bad BT good!
Bill G http://natural-flavours.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/files
BT http://bittorrent.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/
Nico M, London, GB.
There are way more files there than the tracker would let you know:
http://taurine.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/files/
But you probably noticed.
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
I ran all the way to the server room :) Fortunately someone else beet me to the csc :)
I've only just started watching this video, but I've noticed something. I think this is the only time I've ever seen someone doing a public speech sipping on a bottle of cola. If he uses cola instead of water that might explain his paunch.
I would suggest that 'promoting progress for the benefit of the public' being the only legitimate purpose of copyright requires justification.
Another possible purpose is to protect the right of the creator to be the sole beneficiary of his labour.
Points to consider include dependence on earlier work and novelty and the benefits of the creation vs. the costs of protection with respect to those who have to pay.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
In keeping with his wishes to use open formats, the talk and QA are available in ogg theora only.
Fine, but why not provide this as Ogg Vorbis as an alternative and reduce the size by 95%? There's no slides, no demonstrations, nothing but Stallman talking and sipping whatever-it-is so the video content holds no value.
Regardless of the moral angle, "free" software is aggressively lowering prices in most areas of traditional software.
The money is moving from traditional software to software delivered as a service.
Let's assume that this trend continues and that any software you can get your hands on is both free and eventually also comes with source code.
What about the new generation of software-as-service, the stuff that will be making all the big money, like Adwords/Adsense. The software has never been distributed, does RMS believe he still has a moral right to the source code? Should everyone who writes a line of code be forced to register it in a central bank, or just give it up when asked?
If ASP/Web style software is not tackled surely you end up in a worse situation than before the Free Software movement started since you won't be able to even get the binaries let alone the source.
Someone should transcode the ogg and upload it to YouTube just to make a point. It would be fair use - a means to provide the content to those who cannot, for whatever reasons, play ogg streams (iPhone users, if no one else). I can just see the cognitive dissonance Stallman would experience: to demand a take-down and remain pure to doctrine (but at the same time join league with the copyright cartels he decries) or leave it alone and allow people to actually hear the message.
I'd do it, but I'm just not that interested in what Stallman has to say.
If you tried to do this, the studios could simply recast their agreements such that the artists become employees and the works are made for hire.
If copyrights are non-transferable, and if works cannot be owned by employers, then the whole software industry will fall apart, so I don't think you reasonably prevent that sort of arrangement from happening.
Every /. story about the RIAA involves a conflict between principals dejure and the defacto state of affairs.
"Five years is plenty fair IMHO for getting paid for (in some cases a few hours worth of work), over and over again for the rest of one's life."
James MacNeil Whistler sued John Ruskin for libel. On the stand Whistler was asked how he could ask for two hundred pounds for two days work. He responded that he was charging for knowledge "gained in the work of a lifetime." Among musicians that don't appreciate his work, Handel will still remain immortal for writting The Messiah in a mere three weeks. IIRC, Dostoyevsky "knocked off" Notes from the Underground. When you argue that monetary compensation derived from copyright should be tied to hourly measures of time you assume equivalence in the value of work by Beethoven and one by Madonna. Hell, in this day and age, a fella can make millions by playing a game of basketball. How long does that take, an hour and a half?
Stallman's fanaticism is nowhere more perfectly reflected than in his release of the audio in only .ogg format. While legally .ogg is open, what is easier to play? .Ogg or .mp3? If the goal is to allow information to spread - then why not simply allow both formats?
To make a point Stallman seems to be compromising what should be the aims of his own movement - free flow of information and open access.
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Lot's of people here cannot or don't want to understand what rms talks about. You have to be able to discern some abstract concepts in a philosophy before commenting on it or on its supporters. Free software is essentially a practical way to create a post-scarcity reality in the software market. It's important to understand the importance of this achievement in order to develop an appreciation of free software.
Perhaps the only thing worse is when they don't even sign their name.
Never seen "BottleGuy" before. New sort of nasty.
Hopefully someone will mod it up into visibility.
This scheme is the solution:
1. Bring back copyright registration. A work is only protected, if it is in a government database.
2. To register a work, you must pay a $1 fee. It gives you protection for one year.
3. You can extend the copyright indefinitely. The second year costs $2, the third year costs $4, the fourth $8 and so on.
4. When a the copyright is no longer extended, the work falls in the public domain.
That way, even the poorest artist can afford to register their work: $15 buys you protection for four full years!
Even ten years is not that much: $1023. And if you really find a money-maker, a million dollars buys you a 20-year monopoly to the income stream. And Disney should be happy: if they have something really worthwhile, a billion dollars shouldn't be too much for a 30-year exclusive arrangement.
What's wrong with you? You live in a cave the last 8 years? Oh, I bet you _like_ installing Quicktime and RealPlayer and trying to get rid of those icons in your status bar.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Mod parent troll
(though admittedly funny)
shocker site link
www.tdobson.net #### Dare to Dream #### blog.tdobson.net
Quicktime plugins for the ogg vorbis and theora formats, for both Mac and Windows, are available from Xiph: http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/download.html
o rbis_Speex_Theora_and_FLAC.htm
For Windows users who'd rather use an existing player than install VLC, try the DirectShow filters: http://free-codecs.com/download/Filters_for_Ogg_V
This wouldn't solve a thing. If you write a song then in most cases you do retain copyright on it right now. There are two types copyrights on music - the copyright on the lyrics/composition and the copyright on the recording. A typical record contract signs over rights to the recording (as well as an N-recording exclusive agreement etc).
Furthermore who is the rightful creator and thus owner of a copyright holder of a recording? The band that played? The sound engineers who recorded/mixed/mastered it? The people who paid for all this to take place? Why is it alright to treat the sound engineers as just work for hire, but not the musicians? What about the case of studio musicians that have no more lineage to the original music as anyone else? If you are going to say that copyright can't be transfered you need to be able to pin it down to begin with, and that isn't at all straight forward with group efforts, even between members of a band.
So suppose you do assign the entire copyright to the musicians. Now you still have to come to some sort of agreement as to who gets paid what when from the fruits of this work. Unless the musicians are able to put up the money themselves, then they are going to have to get financing. The financier is naturally (and rightly) going to want a good deal - either strong collateral or a greater portion of the profits since he is bearing all the risk. In the end they sign a contract stating who gets what, and presumably they are all in agreement with that contract or they wouldn't sign it.
Note that who retains copyright doesn't matter! If you sign a contract saying that you are going to pay back $X and/or Y% of revenue, then you have to pay it regardless of who holds the copyright. The problem with the current situation (or rather the situation ten years ago, which is now changing) was one of unbalanced power. The record companies controlled all the outlets for discovering music and thus signing a deal with them was really the only chance of becoming widely known. That is why they were able to get people to sign horrible contracts.
All these suggestions about not allowing transfer of copyright or not allowing corporations to hold copyright, are just shortsighted attacks on the symptoms of the problem that won't result in any real progress, and will create many practical difficulties. They have great visceral appeal, but the only thing they will change is the legal technicalities of how contracts are written.
To change the relationship, you need to change the power balance not the law - you need to make recording companies a commodity. This is done by breaking down their monopoly on music, and by decreasing the cost of recording, producing and advertising. The internet and other progress in technology are already doing these things. We don't need the government to step in and fix things, we just need them to step back and stop hindering us with their barrage of new unbalanced copyright laws.
Also for Windows, more up-to-date DS filters that include Vorbis support along with other formats are available --
p _id=173941.
(Don't fear the name and beta status, this is the de facto official release of ffdshow.)
"ffdshow tryouts" project: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?grou
Haali Media Splitter: http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/
Yeah, and I think we should ban forests. If you want to plant a bunch of trees together, though, that's fine. But none of this exploitative forest crap.
How the hell did you get modded up?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
'Amoral' means devoid of moral distinction. You were looking for the word 'immoral'.
From Merriam-Webster's online dictionary (used because the OED requires a subscription):
amoral
being neither moral nor immoral; specifically : lying outside the sphere to which moral judgments apply
immoral
not moral; broadly : conflicting with generally or traditionally held moral principles
See the difference?
Most programmers never own the copyrights on what they make. Most of them work for corporations developing software to support business processes and for internal use. Only a fraction of software is developed for resale, and of that, only a fraction is shrink-wrapped.
So the the bulk of companies selling software make their money by providing services after the fact. Think of like an SAP where the basic program by itself is useless without paying someone many $Millions to customize and install. Windows & Microsoft are the real anomalies out there. They sell software direct to consumers.
Programmers probably do okay financially without owning copyrights. So the argument that without copyrights programmers will live in cardboard boxes isn't backed up by the reality today.
I have a short writeup of the experience at this talk here: http://www.computersamurai.com/?p=19
The awesome UWaterloo CS club also hosted Bjarne Stroustrup this week. Good work luring the CS talent to our little village!
I cannot and don't want to understand how someone can call something which brought about a revolution in communication, entertainment and productivity, affecting billions of people in a positive way, immoral. The idea that closed source software is immoral is closer to religion then philosophy. It is also insulting, idiotic and ignores the history of computers. Was it immoral for apple to release the mac and commodore to release the 64, both closed source? When my Dad brought home a tandy craptacular in 1978, was he exposing his 3 sons to immorality because it was also closed source? I just don't equate immorality with the rapid acceptance of PCs into homes around the world. Free software didn't do that, atari, commodore, apple, IBM and, yes, microsoft did that.
This latest rant from RMS sounds almosts exactly like what the Sony execs said when asked about the price of the PS3 before it launched. The sony fanboi comments at the time sound more than a little bit like yours. "You poor dumb ingrates just don't understand and lack the depth to appreciate the accomplishment."
If I elucidate, I'm going to elucidate all over you!
On a related note, I also asked Stallman what he thought of the wedding photography industry. For those of you who don't know, typical wedding photographers cost over a thousand dollars, show up at your wedding to take pictures, and then make you pay through the nose for prints.
Photographers will follow the money if nessary. If they advertise and get enough business, then they have no reason to change. If the money becomes educated and job hires a photographer with a contract for copyright including posting online for far away friends, putting into a slideshow on DVD for gifts, etc, then you will find photographers. The cost of advertising is shifted. Now you have to take bids and view potential canidates portfolios. This shift has started. As it becomes more popular, the traditional photographers will lose business to the new requirements. The shift is slow because of the entrenched model, but just like the Record industry, the shift will take time with lots of screaming and complaining in the meantime. Look for photographers lawsuits for wedding albums scanned and placed online for distant relatives. Then watch the public opinion and education to kick in.
Free software hasn't replaced closed software yet. Open document standards hasn't replaced closed formats yet. It is unavoidable the movement has started and isn't going to reverse anytime soon. Even Microsoft who wouldn't touch an open document format with a 20 foot pole is learning to adopt or die. They have seen the handwriting on the wall. There is no other way. The photographers are not as much in the limelight, but the same movement is hitting them. More people are looking at their wedding photo contract with a critical eye. Many photographers are moving to middle ground to protect the big portion of their business expensive prints. The middle ground is many photographers now offer lower resolution (web friendly) photos as part of the package with permission to email, post, and put on DVD slideshows. The really nice prints are retained under the old model. This is much like what MS is doing. They accept ODF and make no bones it's the low resolution no features version, but also have this much nicer format you can also use, but to use it you need MS Office. Kerching!
The truth shall set you free!
It's just like politics, you have extremists on both sides. Some things are great when they are open source, like for instance Operating Systems, Shared Libraries, File Formats, or pretty much anything that is common between lots of developers, it just makes sense for these things to be open. On the other side though, it also makes sense to have closed source stuff, like word processing applications, games, and such that people and companies can make a profit off of, otherwise there is no incentive to make them other than the desire to use them. I use word/open office all the time, but I have no desire to code it.
RMS doesn't think documentation should have the same freedoms as software anyway. Witness non-removable unmodifiable manifestos in software manuals, as well as incompatible licenses between a manual and the work it describes.
Your definition of "crazy" seems to be: believing in unpopular opinions and making funny phrases such as "holding wedding memories hostage"; I suggest to you that "crazy" is a bit more involved--many great people in history fit your definition of "crazy".
Many people accuse RMS of being against programmers, and the classic example is the claim that his GPL favors users over programmers. There is, however, another interpretation, namely that RMS has such high respect for programmers that he expects them to set an example for others. You dismiss RMS too quickly.
He himself as a programmer indeed sets an example for others. He worked hard and long enough in his life so as to win millions of dollars in awards for his contributions to society. He has earned money in various other ways. However, none of this involved programming non-free software. He figured out how to do that when the opportunities were fewer, and it not unreasonable for him to expect others to do the same today. They have to figure it out, so do not expect him to always hold their hand.
However, that is only "half" of the story. Indeed, the fraction might be smaller. The other part is the "live cheaply" part. That part is what people are in denial about: their materialism is sacred. Yes, he relied on cheap shelter from friends at MIT. So what? People often could have cheaper shelter but fail to exploit it.
Your wedding photographs example reminds me of the flagrant excesses of the western world. Partly to save money, my wife and I were married in front of a judge and received photographs from friends at that time. Seventeen years later, despite missing out on an expensive wedding, we are still very much in love, and that's the only thing that counts.
If more programmers learned to be thrify, they would change their tune and wonder why RMS repeats the obvious. But thriftiness is foreign to western society. We are ridiculous hypocrites when we advise the Chinese and Indians on how to live with fewer emissions.
I listened to the q&a that included that question. The questioner was saying "since it costs me a lot to learn programming and to have a house, I should be be able to make proprietary software".
Stallman's answer was interesting. He said that most programmers don't get paid to make proprietary software, which is evil, or free software either. Most programmers get paid to make custom software, which is OK.
The distinction is that custom software is made for someone (usually a business), and that as a programmer you normally don't restrict the rights of that person. You tend to give them the source code. Therefore your own behavior is ethical towards that client, and Stallman sees no problem with it.
Whereas with proprietary software, you are explicitly being unethical towards your customers. And your mortgage or student loan is really no excuse for unethical behavior. (After all, you freely made the choice to take on the debt.)
He made some similar comments about not letting Steve Jobs off the hook after his invitation to the music companies to let iTunes distribute non-DRMed music. Stallman basically said that unless Jobs was doing all he could to stop the madness (while being part of the system), then merely foisting the blame on the music companies while continuing to benefit doesn't relieve Jobs of his responsibility for participating in that system.
Please learn the difference between amoral and immoral.
Stick Men
I heard this talk at Rutgers University a few months ago, and I asked how the GPL copyleft mechanism would stand if copyright protection of "knowledge works" (which he included software under) was removed. It relies on the author having some aspect of control over the distribution of his code in order to enforce the added restrictions.
I didn't get a satisfactory answer out of him, something along the lines of legislating terms of the GPL. Any takers?
Many thanks to the AC who did the first part. Still needs someone to proofread it while listening to the talk and post back errors. Slashdot can't handle a 68Kb comment, so I'm posting this in two parts. Yeah, I might get some karma for this, or I might not. I don't care.
... Canada's ... there's a little threat of that popping up here, and Waterloo has, right now, a really bad website 'cause it's pretty new, but we hope to improve it, but we do have a mailing list and it's defective-by-design@uwaterloo.ca.
...
... a filename under that, that they should go to
...
[Stallman stands up]
Better stand up. I'm less likely to fall asleep that way.
[Stallman takes a drink]
This is not a talk about free software. However, I better start by saying a little about free software because the occasion for this topic is a question some people asked me at the end of speeches about free software.
Oh, by the way, shouldn't you announce the site that you set up?
[Stallman points to someone in the audience]
P.I.A.: Um, yes [person in audience responds]
[Stallman motions for them to stand with him]
Come and do it. Stand up.
P.I.A.: Um
RMS: We set up a site to im... which we'll tell you about at the beginning and at the end to organize the fight against unjust copyright laws in Canada
[Stallman motions again to P.I.A.]
P.I.A.: Basically, if you know what the DMCA is
RMS: And what's the website?!
[Laughter in audience]
RMS: What's the URL?!
P.I.A.: Say it. You know it. You said it. [Referring to persion in audience #2]
[More laughter]
P.I.A. #2: The website is off of the WSIC, the Waterloo Students' Information
RMS: [interrupts] Sorry, what is the U. R. L. ?!
[Laughter]
P.I.A. #2: wsic.uwaterloo.ca
RMS: So, that is it, or there is there another
P.I.A. #2: There is a link
RMS: OK, so wsic.uwaterloo.ca. Go there and you can sign up to be on this mailing list. It's not going to send you a lot of mail. But it's a way of getting in touch with you when an action is planned: an action, with which you can influence the battle over your freedom. It's not enough just to be upset and angry and want something, you gotta do something to make a difference in the outcome. And that's what this activity is meant to get organized.
[2:22]
[Stallman drinks]
Anyway, I started the free software movement in 1983. Announcing a plan to develop a free software operating system that would make it possible to use a computer and have freedom, because the existing operating systems were all proprietary: all of them subjugated the user. Proprietary software keeps users divided and helpless - divided because everyone is forbidden to share it with anyone else, and helpless because the users don't have the source code so they can't change it. They can't even verify what it's doing. And many non-free programs contain malicious features designed to spy on the user, restrict the user, or even attack the user. And, these features are possible because the developers have power over the users in the first place. If the developer want to impose something nasty on the user, he can. And the only recourse the users have is not to use that program. And sometimes all the alternatives have similar malicious features, which means the users effectively have no influence at all.
[3:43]
[Stallman drinks]
So. The idea of the free software movement is that users should have freedom. What does that mean? There are four essential freedoms that a user should have: freedom zero is the freedom to run the program as you wish. There are programs that don't even give you that much freedom. Freedom 1 is the freedom to study the source code of the program and then change it to make the program do what you wish, instead of what the deve
Second half, since slashdot can't handle a 68Kb comment.
... the user's computer, and then disguising its own presence so if the user tried to look for it in certain obvious ways, it wouldn't even show up. It also damaged the security of the machine against other threats, and if that wasn't bad enough it also committed copyright infringement because it had ... it contained code of free programs that were released under the GNU General Public License. [laughter]
... really enforcing those laws strictly against mega-corporations. Laws are meant to be enforced strictly only against you and me. However Sony did get a lot of hostility and eventually promised that in the future when it developed Digital Restrictions Management it wouldn't do all the other nasty things that it did that time. You see, the hostility was mostly based on the other nasty things that Sony did along the way, rather than on the evil purpose of doing this in the first place: the evil of trying to stop people from copying. Most people accepted that, and they only criticized the means. So Sony said "oh no, we won't put rootkits on our CDs anymore." So having learned their lesson, their idea is that the rootkit will be installed on your computer before you buy it and it will be impossible to remove. And that's called "Windows Vista." [laughter]
... to increase Microsoft's control over everything. It keeps on contacting Microsoft over the Net and demanding upgrades and the user can't even refuse them. Which means it's nothing but one big back door. Anytime Microsoft wants to stop you from doing this or that, control ... take more control of any kind, it can just do so, because your computer has no security against Microsoft, if it's running Windows Vista. And that is very dangerous.
... developing Windows itself, and accused them of uh ... working for Al Quaida as well as Microsoft, trying to insert a back door that Microsoft wasn't supposed to know about. Well, apparently that attempts failed. We have no way of checking if there was another that succeeded. But we do know that in 1999, Microsoft was caught having installed a back door for the use of another even more violent terrorist organization: the United States Government, [laughter] specifically the National Security Agency.
... basi
[41:55]
[Stallman drinks]
So, that's whats going on in the area of movies and video. But we can see attempts to restrict us in music, as well. For many years, some apparent compact disks aren't real compact disks, they're corrupt disks. Because they're designed not to be standard, not to be proprly readable with your computer. Sony got in a lot of trouble, although not as much as it should have, for its scheme to produce corrupt disks, because Sony had the bright idea of putting on the disk a program that would automatically load into a Windows system if a person put that disk into it. And what did that program do? It's what's called a "rootkit," which meant that it actually broke the security of the machine and installed itself into the system. But why did it do this? Well, its purpose was to stop the user from copying whatever files were read off that disk. But they way it did this was by illegally breaking the security on the computer
[43:58]
[Stallman drinks]
Now, that was a felony in the US, but I don't think Sony was ever prosecuted. They're not interested in uh
[45:23]
[Stallman drinks]
Windows Vista is designed specifically to pull the chains tighter around every user's neck. That's what it exists for. It's entirely designed to increase
[46:24]
I mean, we don't know what there is in Microsoft software that could be used by terrorist organizations. A few years ago in India, I was told they had arrested some Windows developers, that is, people working on
[47:20]
So it's not only Microsoft that could uh
'ogmdemux rms-talk.ogg -nv' gave me this file: http://rapidshare.com/files/44102394/rms-talk-audi o-only.ogg.html
So as long as the whipmaster doesn't beat us too badly, we're okay? The explanation you gave doesn't support your conclusion ("copyright isn't always the answer") because anime makers live within the copyright system; they are copyright holders and they have built their business depending on continuing copyright power. Although you acknowledge that anime fans are getting away with illicit derivative works, illicit sharing, illicit broadcasting, etc., you don't acknowledge that this is no way to live.
Better to challenge the copyright system by making desirable activities non-infringing; in other words, allow people to legally do what they want to do. This is what Stallman's talk encourages people to do—engage in organized political action aimed at reforming copyright law to our benefit. You can see another implementation of this philosophy in his work developing free software (we are better off developing free programs to do anything we need computers to do). Settling for a sleeping giant approach, as the anime situation suggests, is capitulation to power. Giving in does nothing to challenge either the idea of copyright or the abuses of power that copyright law allows. Modern publishing technology places us in a position to do things we couldn't do before, things we were formerly willing to trade away (in the ancient past few could afford printing presses so it made sense for the public to trade away publication and distribution in exchange for more published works). Therefore it's better to renegotiate the bargain of copyright and grant ourselves the freedom to do the things we couldn't do rather than hope that a copyright holder won't win lawsuits against us for copyright infringement.
Digital Citizen
Not a counterpoint Look. Stallman is a very smart man and an experienced lecturer. He has probably given this overview talk a thousand times. And I bet every time he is asked the same question. The guy who asked the question got what he deserved in. Let me elaborate. RMS makes a proposition - "Closed source software is immoral". "If it's immoral then how do I feed my family, pay off my student loans, by lot's of cool hi-tech gadgets, etc.?" is in no shape of form an argument, counterpoint or counterexample against the proposition" And that's why "I don't care" is an appropriate answer. Let me elaborate even further. You either agree with the proposition or disagree with it. If you disagree then there is no question of how one should make a living. You should just continue to cash in on writing proprietary software. If you agree (and notice how at this point convincing the general population that proprietary software is immoral becomes completely irrelevant. All that matters is that you agree) and you are a moral person than there are also shouldn't be a question. You just stop doing it. Otherwise you agree that it is immoral and moral people don't do immoral things (by definition) but you're saying that you won't stop doing an immoral thing until you figure how to make money in some other way. Logically, you have just admitted that you're an immoral person. So what kind of answer should someone who has just publicly admitted that he is immoral expect from RMS??! The guy in the audience is lucky RMS didn't attack him and kicked out his immoral ass.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
One important point that nobody has made yet is that Freedom #1 (mutation) and #3 (selection) are the basic evolutionary rules. Evolution is the most successful principle on this planet, it has made humans out of unicellular organisms. It has made Wikipedia such a success.
While looking at the history of Windows, we can see what happens if software is not free and has a monopoly: new versions are no advancements anymore but only serve to keep the monopoly.
So not only do RMS's freedoms allow us to trust software, they will also, in the long run, make sure, that software is getting better.