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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.
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.
For anything that politicians will actually pay attention to, I should think that a 56Kb dialup would be sufficient.
When I was brought up in Wales in the 1980s, I felt that Cymdeithas yr Iaith (the Welsh Language Society) were making unreasonable demands in their campaigning. And I still do to an extent.
But, in the 1960s and earlier, the right for Welsh people to speak and learn in their mother tongue was a serious civil rights issue. By the 1980s things had improved greatly, largely thanks to the activities of Cymdeithas yr Iaith.
I think that by continuing to maintain pressure, perhaps for demands that are a step too far, they prevent the pendulum from swinging back to where it was in the 60s.
I think the same goes for Stallman. Many people benefit from Free Software. Many people would be satisfied for a less pure Free Software world than Stallman demands. But without Stallman's purist stance, the average would shift to a less free position. I wouldn't want that.
(Sith) Lord Mandelson, is that you? Please enlighten us what we are allowed and not allowed to share!
Its called copyright, and you are more than welcome to create something of your own and grant permission to others to distribute it - why this overwhelming sense of entitlement about needing to be able to distribute other peoples works against their will?
I see my other post is marked as a troll - interesting how dissenting viewpoints and opinions simply aren't allowed here any more.
The argument against copyright is a fair one - but it almost completely seems to orientate around other peoples copyrighted works, and being able to distribute those works freely. Its certainly has a sense of 'I want what they are selling, but I don't want to pay them what they are asking for it, they should take what I am willing to offer and nothing else, but in any case I should still be entitled to their work' and I don't like that one little bit.
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.
I have a much simpler argument: If a law is impossible or almost-impossible to enforce, there is something wrong with that law.
So in a hypothetical past where forensics are worthless and it's easy to get someone alone and slit their throat without getting caught, that there should not be a law against murder?
I think a much stronger argument is that when a huge segment of the population performs some act routinely without any sense of guilt, that's evidence that society as a whole doesn't consider it wrong. In a secular society, what can define right and wrong, except the consensus of the people? If the consensus is that something is not wrong, why is there a law against it?