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FSF Starts Anti-ACTA Campaign
judgecorp writes "Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman has said in a blog post that the ACTA file-sharing proposals punish users unfairly. He wrote, 'Any time there is a proposal to change things for the worse, the obvious way to oppose it is to campaign for the status quo. To campaign for the status quo suggests the approach of singing its praises; thus, praising WIPO is a natural way to highlight how ACTA is a step for the worse. However, where there have been previous changes for the worse, lauding the status quo tends to legitimize them. The past 20 years have seen global waves of harmful changes in copyright law — some promoted by WIPO. To confront a further assault by presenting the status quo as ideal means we stop fighting to reverse them. It means that our adversaries need only propose a further affront to our rights to gain our acceptance of their last affront. Instead of making the status quo our ideal, we should demand positive changes to recover freedoms already lost.' The FSF has launched a petition against the ACTA proposals."
Sure, I want everything I can consume for free. So does everyone I know. Why should I pay for something when I can get it for free? I am a smart, knowledgable person with a high-speed Internet connection - that by default means I can freely pirate media, software, etc. Today my risk is that someone will track me and "discover" my IP address is sharing outbound - anything I can do to prevent that discovery means less risk.
People that are not as smart, knowledgable and do not have high-speed Internet connections today have to pay for their media. This is a pity, but about all you can say now is too bad for them.
What Mr. Stallman seems to be advocating is that as long as nobody collects any money directly for distribution that it should all be free. It means an end to all revenue (after the first distribution) of anything digital - all the first recipient has to do is "share". And why wouldn't everyone on the Internet "share" in this manner? I cannot envision any reason why there wouldn't be web services set up to assist with this, probably ad supported.
It means the end of revenue from any commercial works. I suppose there might be some pretty creative ways to trick people into paying for something later on - restricted distribution, over-the-top embedded ads and using music, movies and books as advertising for other physical-world services that can't be copied digitally. But for the most part I think the idea of commercial media would pretty much end.
Some would say that it is about time. Some folks actually employed in the production of commercial media and software might notice they are going to lose their job. But they can join Mr. Stallman in donating their newly-found free time to non-commercial (free) software development. If they aren't a programmer, well, they don't fit in Mr. Stallman's world anyway. That's why we have welfare.