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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.
Look at these people, like Richard Stallman, who want our economy to die! We must have software patents! And an ACTA equivalent, and a DMCA equivalent, and secret police, and blah blah blah.
Bonkers are the people who see what's going on around them, and say and do nothing.
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.
I admire the sort of things he's doing, but the way he does them is troublesome. He shouldn't for example be blocking access to an Apple store despite their terribly non-free products. Nobody likes an asshole and would tend to ignore it. Now, if he were to stand outside, offering leaflets on why Apple is wrong, but disguising it as something like "Bad Computer Practises", or "Why Software Freedom is Important" instead of "Apple is crap! Don't buy from them!" which no one will pay attention to, I think he'd get a lot further.
Good luck, rms.
He's following in the late great Grace Hopper's footsteps. Hopper wrote the world's first compiler (FLOW-MATIC), then co-wrote the world's second compiler (COBOL). She coined the word "computer bug"; the first computer bug was a moth that got fried in the circutry. In pursuit of her vision she risked her career in 1949 to join the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation and provide businesses with computers. There she began yet another pioneering effort of UNIVAC I, the first large-scale electronic digital computer. To ease their task, Admiral Hopper encouraged programmers to collect and share common portions of programs. Even though these early shared libraries of code had to be copied by hand, they reduced errors, tedium, and duplication of effort. Stallman has some big footsteps to follow.
Free Martian Whores!
Are you seriously arguing that African countries are the way they are because they have no IP laws?? As for China, I think they are innovating just fine, and in a few years they might give us a run for our money.
This is getting tangential, but... As I've argued before, when a debate starts focusing on terminology, both parties need to step back ask why people are worried so much about the terminology. Typically it is because words have added emotional baggage or implications, that either side wants to subtly slip into the debate without actively addressing the point.
...). The other side wants to use the word "sharing" similarly (it's good, everyone is taught to share, no one is harmed, ...).
In this case, one side really wants to use the word "stealing" to be used, because of the emotional baggage of associated with it (it's wrong, it's bad, no one honest would do it,
But in an intellectually honest debate, both sides would willingly back off from contentious terminology, and use neutral terms and focus on the particulars. Regardless of whether distributing digital copies is "sharing" or "stealing" (or both, or neither), we should debate whether said distribution is a net gain for society. We should debate whether said distribution violates a party's basic rights. And then from those points, we should debate what law would be both fair and socially-helpful.
I fully acknowledge that words have meaning, and we should try to be precise with language. But this is exactly why an honest debate should not invoke terms with an intent to capitalize on ambiguity. My main point is not to let debate get derailed by terminology concerns. Focus on the nature and consequences of the activity being debated, rather than ambiguous labels or partial analogies.
In the case of copyright, it becomes very difficult to argue for the social necessity, and intrinsic justness, of very long-term and rigidly-enforced copyright when you can no longer draw a false analogy to stealing of physical property. Conversely, it becomes difficult to argue that copyright infringement is completely without harm once you remove the sharing rhetoric and focus on the incentive/social-contract aspect of copyright law. In other words, I believe a socially-constructive compromise is more likely to arise from that kind of honest debate (yes, I know how unrealistic it is to expect that kind of debate to actually happen).
No, we need IP laws and the lack of them will bring innovation to a standstill.
You have it all wrong: for example James Watt brought the development of the steam machine to a standstill using his patents, and only after these patents expired, innovation could continue:
There is a problem currently with laws that were written with humans in mind, being interpreted to cover corporations.
For example; California's property tax reform a few decades back, was written to protect older citizen's from being taxed out of their family homes. It limits the amount your property tax can go up, unless you sell your property or perform a major upgrade. Now, however, there is a problem. Corporations also own property, but quite often they never sell it or transfer it... and they don't die of old age. There is simply no mechanism in place to allow Corporations to have the value of their property reassessed on a periodic basis to adjust their property tax to reflect current value.
Whether this is good or bad is not the point. The point I am making is that corporations are not human beings and thus laws written for human beings might not work as intended when applied to corporations.
For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious and wrong.