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Stallman On the UK Digital Economy Bill
superapecommando submitted a blog entry written by Stallman about the UK's bandwidth initiatives. RMS says "When I read about Gordon Brown's plan to give the UK more broadband, I couldn't restrain my laughter. Isn't this the same clown now busy circumventing democracy to take away broadband from Britons who already have it? And what good would broadband do them if they're punished for using it (or even being suspected of using it)? Laying cables would be a waste of resources if people are not allowed to use them.
Brown did suggest another possible use for broadband. He said that it would enable MPs to better communicate with their constituents and keep track of what they want."
...it's so Peter Mandelson can hand a nice, fat-profit-inducing mess over to Murdoch and the big media companies. Crack down on things they see as threatening their revenue stream, and give people a big fat pipe from which to slurp premium content. In return, maybe there'll be some favourable coverage in the media of Labour in the run up to the election on May 6th.
Richard Stallman will always find something to complain about if something even hints at the possibility of not completely adhering to his myopic point of views and mentality. This isn't news, it's in my horoscope every day.
Look who's talking!
If you're in the UK, 38 degrees have made it easy to write to your MP about this bill.
Over 20,000 people have already done so.
Stallman does the right things but the way he relates his thoughts don't really map well onto others. He is too rigid when it comes to Free software, ideally all software should be Free but until the transition is over - say another 20 years - then some mixing is pragmatic for the now to enable functionality: like binary blobs in the Linux kernel. I like a lot of what Stallman has to say but I always translate it into less dogmatic terms and take the hard edges off. Free is the ideal Open is the pragmatic, he kicked off Free and that led to Open and Open is not as dogmatic as Free - things evolve. Open also markets better.
Shh.
My 1992 proposal for a special tax to be distributed to artists, with the money partly shifted from the most popular ones towards those not quite so successful, is still applicable.
Yup, I have just read that and its a pile of crap - the whole idea seems to be to reward those who are successful less and less, and reward those who are failing more. Why are those who are popular less deserving of those who are not? This isn't some politically correct playschool, where everyone holds hands to cross the line together at sports day rather than crown a sole winner - no, this is real life.
Now, I am against this Bill (and have written, faxed and phoned by MP - she will be calling for more discussion and consultation), but Stallman and his stance isn't the answer.
He said that it would enable MPs to better communicate with their constituents and keep track of what they want.
So, how fat a pipe do you need for that? 100 Mb/s? 1 Gb/s?
The answer to your question is complex and arduous to obtain, as it depends on many factors.
The main variable, would clearly be whether, during the communication itself, the constituents would be female and naked.
For anything that politicians will actually pay attention to, I should think that a 56Kb dialup would be sufficient.
"He said that it would enable MPs to better communicate with their constituents and keep track of what they want."
I want them all to fuck off and die.
Painfully, if possible.
Ciao, Obnoxio
To enable the surveillance telescreens promised us with such fanfare by Orwell in 1984. Cameras on the street really don't do the job.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Governmental types simply can not stand the idea of free and open communications. I have always maintained that there would be a point where all governments would seek to stifle the net. I am not an anarchist but I do believe that even when one is lucky enough to have a good government that that same government will seek to expand and control more territory as well as to have more and more control over all people within its domain.
If I were to predict a tipping point where the iron hand becomes really visible it would be when we have easy, ultra secure, encryption. At that point the assumption will be that every communication just might be terrorist or treasonous in nature.
How does pragmatism get to the endpoint? If you pragmatically go with mixing, then there's no need from those who want propriatory to go any further. So how do you get to the state you SAY (not believe) you want: all software should be Free?
That's a pretty incorrect understanding of RMS's economic model. He never advocated a pure donation economy and has clarified multiple times that there is nothing wrong with making a profitable business around open source software. If you want to try relying on the viability of his model, go work for Red Hat for a few years.
So I sent a link to article to my mum and girlfriend, both of who are with the ISP Tiscali. It came back with "Unnacceptable Mail Content". Tinfoil hat engaged, I sent a few more variations to see exactly what they're blocking. As far as I can tell, it's any link to a guardian.co.uk url. Interesting, given there's an election coming up... Try it for yourself if you know anyone on tiscali - send a mail with a guardian.co.uk URL in the body.
I actually stopped reading when RMS started calling people clowns and saying that they aren't going to allow people to use their broadband. Name calling? Really? Then following it by saying they won't let people use the broadband while forgetting that they just mean people suspected of violating copyright and get accused several times? Stuff this well balanced belongs on Faux News. Sorry RMS, I didn't finish reading the article because you write like a clown. (couldn't resist...)
Fixed that for ya.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
I disagree. I believe he happened to hook onto what Information technology allows: the eradication of scarcity. Free and Open software is only possible because of information networks that make the cost of its distribution trivial. Open Source and the "Stone-Soup" parable it encapsulates is something to be studied and lessons drawn from for the inevitable period when we turn all our manufacturing over to machines and the scarcity of human labor no longer applies. What are we going to do then? I would hope that post-scarcity lessons from information networks translate well over to post-scarcity in goods and services. Otherwise we're in for a rocky ride, well that probably anyway.
Shh.
And can you point out any place where some people actually honestly tried to implement communism on a national level? (as contrasted with small, informal communities or modern-day communes, which can and do work sensibly)
Look, "communism" was just a dream, a different kind of religion if you will, that some people tried to sold here and there at few point in time; without actually any intent of implementing it (apparently it was partially succesfull, seems you bought it). Similar to, say, "Land of Opportunity".
(btw, I take it you are againt socialist funding of highways (hence few industries getting unfair advantage), airports (again) or military?)
One that hath name thou can not otter
The government in the UK is running out of public camera bandwidth. There are a lot of those cameras around, you know!
How can you keep an electronic eye on everyone if public bandwidth is clogged by bothersome subjects pirating American mass media?
A massive roll-out of British Broadband means Her Majesty's Peepers (aka HeMP) will be able to see all, and know all.
HeMP for all Britain!
"And can you point out any place where some people actually honestly tried to implement communism on a national level?"
Is this a trick question? The bolsheviks were true communists and they've been followed by Mao, kim Jong Il and various other tin pot african, asian and south/central american dictatorships.
In fact the Bolsheviks never achieved the communist state they dreamt of.
Lenin replaced Tsarism with "the dictatorship of the proletariat" described as "An immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the rich: . . . and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, for the exploiters and oppressors of the people — this is the change which democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.”
Lenin, Trotsky etc. believed that there had to be some harsh times, during which enemies of the revolution had to be taken out of the equation (massacred, sent to the Gulag, whatever), during which the proletariat would be re-educated (to destroy the religion and royalism that was supposedly keeping them chained), creating the conditions under which a utopian communist state would emerge, as Marx and Engels predicted, whereupon the dictatorship could cease, not being required any more.
They were idealists, but they were ruthless idealists and they performed atrocities in pursuit of their dream. We can agree, I'm sure, that the anticipated ends did not justify the means. Then Stalin took over, a ruthless, paranoid, corrupt madman, and really wrecked the whole thing. It's likely however, that no matter who had been involved, they'd have succumbed to inevitable corruption and madness.
As the GP said, aside from some village sized communes, genuine communism has never been achieved.
Plenty of dictatorships modelled after the Soviet Union though. I'll give you that.
Bottom line is - there is a more-or-less one-to-one correlation between
the sets of people who:
1. outright violate copyright on a grand scale.
2. are poor earners, social misfits...
What a post. I'm reminded of O'Reilly, in conversation with The Daily Show's Jon Stewart: "You got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night. 87% are intoxicated when they watch..."
Tell me, do you find that outright manufacture of statistics is generally an effective mechanism in successfully debating complex issues? If you do, do you find that this mechanism is:
a) a good thing, because you get to win arguments based on totally uncited shit you pulled out of your ass, or
b) seriously concerning, because entire areas of governmental policy are set via arguments based on totally uncited shit that lobbyists pull out of their asses?
Your post is an example of extremely lazy ad hominem argumentation, and possibly also extremely lazy thinking as well. Here are some statistics for you. Given that this is a story about filesharing activities in the UK, here's a stat from the UK:
It is not impossible that 23% of individuals in the UK all share the same characteristics (poor earning, social misfits, highly vocal complainers) - although if that is the case it is surprising to me that only 20684 emails (rather than the expected 7-8 million) have been sent to MPs regarding the Digital Economy Bill. But can you really characterise 23% of the population as 'a minute fraction'?
Does anyone give a fuck what some dumbass hippy who has some cushy university job and doesn't understand business thinks?
Yes.
RMS is saying what we're pondering in our own minds, but don't dare say without sounding crazy.
Well, no, he's not.
For one thing, the rest of us concerned citizens here in the UK have been following the progress of the Digital Economy Bill for months. There are several organised groups opposing the draconian penalties proposed by the more extreme advocates, there is serious opposition from many politicians, thousands of people have written to their MPs on the subject, and it has been widely covered in various parts of the media, including mainstream services like the BBC.
Moreover, as usual RMS started out with hyperbole and extreme positions that don't necessarily correspond to reality. He is the last kind of person we want wading into this discussion, and if he continues mouthing off in his usual way, the only thing he can possibly do is lend credibility to the other side of the debate with moderate politicians who are somewhat aware of the views but very aware of how to spot a quack when they see one.
Please, someone, shut the guy up, or at least stop repeating his words as if he has any significance whatsoever in this context.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.