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Stallman Crashes Talk, Fights 'War On Sharing'
schliz writes "Free software activist Richard Stallman has called for the end of the 'war on sharing' at the World Computer Congress in Brisbane, Australia. He criticized surveillance, censorship, restrictive data formats, and software-as-a-service in a keynote presentation, and asserted that digital society had to be 'free' in order to be a benefit, and not an attack. Earlier in the conference, Stallman had briefly interrupted a European Patent Office presentation with a placard that said: 'Don't get caught in software patent thickets.' He told journalists that the Patent Office was 'here to campaign in favor of software patents in Australia,' arguing that 'there's no problem that requires a solution with anything like software patents.'"
I'd prefer Stallman's outspoken extremism vs the quiet extremism that corporations would place us under if no one spoke up.
Bonkers are the people who see what's going on around them, and say and do nothing.
bought about the creation of the middle class, modern democracy, and the death of the feudal system and the aristocracy
it took awhile. the feudal system and the aristocracy in their time were just no brainer common sense, and the idea of challenging them was either something to be laughed at or you must be crazy to believe they could ever end or to doubt their validity
the internet means the death of the entire concept of intellectual property
it will take awhile. in our time some people just take the idea of intellectual property as just no brainer common sense, and the idea of challenging it is either something to be laughed at or you must be crazy to believe it could ever end or to doubt its validity
in today's age, stallman is but a distant voice in the wilderness, but he's actually 100% correct, just way ahead of his time, too far ahead, to gain any traction
the simple truth is that intellectual property is a completely flawed concept. it made sense before the internet when media had to be physically printed and physically distributed. much as the feudal system made sense when only a few could afford book knowledge
all that intellectual property has going for it now is legal and cultural inertia. it is of course completely philosophically untenable when media can be shared at zero cost at great distances with millions instantaneously. it will take time, but intellectual property is going down the tubes. the intartubes
let us work hard to hasten its demise
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I recall when I went through a rather lengthy discussion with the UK government about software patents, and the state of the law. It became very clear that regarding patent law, the UK government and the UK patent office is very heavily influenced by advisors who are, almost to a man, commercial patent lawyers. The remaining industry spokesmen are from big business.
It doesn't take a huge amount of understanding or research to see that SME innovation has more or less been destroyed by the existing patent processes. Entry into big success is done through innovation still - but not so much via the patent route. I would contend that companies like Facebook was successful, NOT because of whatever patents they may have held, (or bought), but because they were able to identify a market demand and react to it faster or more successfully than existing big industry was able.
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Copying other people's stuff and giving it away isn't "sharing."
If you want to share, create your own work and give it away for free.
In the past (and present) this is precisely what Richard Stallman did with GNU. He wanted software to be free. Instead of bootlegging copies of Windows (or MS-DOS) he created his OWN stuff and gave it away for free. Now Linux is a force to be reckoned with. If he had simply pirated other peoples' work, this innovation would have never happened.
Shouting, running, making a fool out of himself. I think if only he would do the sort of things he does without calling a ruckus, then people might take him more seriously.
May be he doesn't care about being taken seriously. May be he just wants people to be serious about defending their own right to free expression. And I am sorry for people who are turned away from his lucid arguments because they think that non-violent protests against economic oppression and political censorship are "extremism": can people be any more docile?
Given the number of corporate shills who show up at F/OSS conventions peddling things like, "'you people' need to get over software patents" or "sometimes you just can't just hand the source over to the client, its just good for business" or "I'm not calling you people communist -or even traitors, but you have to wonder about someone who doesn't genuinely care about the shareholder's position", I have no problem with Stallman shitting in their yard. Good for him.
The headline says "crashes".
The article says "interrupted", but gives no details.
The article has two pictures (#18 and #19).
#19 looks like Stallman posing after the event for the benefit of the camera.
#18 is probably the interruption.
All you can see from the picture is that Stallman (and friend) stood at the front of a conference room holding poster-board signs.
It looks like Stallman has a sheaf of papers in his hand, so maybe he said something.
In other words, if he would just keep his mouth shut, not make anyone uncomfortable, and not live out his philosophy, he would be acceptable to you. Get back to us when you've done even _an eighth_ of what RMS has done for software freedoms that all of us benefit directly from.
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I would tell the corporate world that free software is good for the economy, and good for their business.
There are plenty of vendors out there who have built products on top of Linux, Apache, etc.
If Linux, Apache, etc. were not available for free, these vendors either would not have been able to launch their products, or would have paid huge licensing fees for crap like the Microsoft web server, driving up their prices.
If it weren't for these kinds of public software projects, everything would be more expensive, from consumer electronics to enterprise appliances.
You have a crucial point that you fail to see: those two forms of IP are already distinguished in legal institutions: copyright and patents. the problem, is that both legal institutions are being extended out of control... but the difference is there, and we only need to adjust one (patents) and abolish the other.
But independently of that particular solution, the fact that technological development makes some particular form of social institution or enterprise obsolete is not the problem. If the invention of the wheel made some forms of transportation obsolete, considerations about the preservation or future or pre-wheel forms of transportation should not be valid arguments in discussions about development and deployment of the wheel.
In other words....it doesn't matter. The problem right now is not how are we going to secure that there are incentives for people to invent stuff, but that the mechanisms that we do have in place, that were never created with that intention but also work as incentive structures, are becoming unacceptable threats to the public interest and freedom.
First we need to stop the escalation into police states that the extension of these mechanisms is bringing about, THEN we should let the people that are trying to make money inventing stuff work out how they are going to actually make any.
In other words: the "technological development" argument is moot. it is not going to happen, period. So don't use it to respond to my complaints about my lost freedoms, because i'm being monitored, censored, persecuted, fined and incarcerated NOW, and you want me to worry about the potential profit problem of some corporation in some undefined future. get your priorities right.
As a subsidiary argument, you can reconsider the reasons that were argued in its time for the implementation of IP protection. it was never "let's secure a revenue stream for the author", it was much more a thing of "let's secure the integrity of the produced media for the future, by preventing unauthorized sub-par copies to be made and distributed". That line of thought rests, however, on the direct correlation between cheap copy and low quality copy that digital media makes obsolete.
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem