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RMS Responds To NPR File-Sharer's Blog
New submitter UtucXul points out that Richard Stallman has penned a lengthy response to NPR intern Emily White for her post on the organization's site about how she failed to pay for a significant amount of recorded music, acquiring it instead through Kazaa, friends, and CDs owned by the radio station at which she was employed. (We previously discussed musician David Lowery's response; quite different from RMS's, as you might expect.) Stallman wrote,
"Copying and sharing recordings was not a mistake, let alone wrong, because sharing is good. It's good to share musical recordings with friends and family; it's good for a radio station to share recordings with the staff, and it's good when strangers share through peer-to-peer networks. The wrong is in the repressive laws that try to block or punish sharing. Sharing ought to be legalized; in the mean time, please do not act ashamed of having shared — that would validate those repressive laws that claim that it is wrong. You did make a mistake when you chose Kazaa as the method of sharing. Kazaa mistreated you (and all its users) by requiring you to run a non-free program on your computer. ... However, that was in the past. It's more important to consider what you're doing now, which includes other mistakes. You're not alone — many others make them too, and that adds up to a big problem for society. The root mistake is treating a marketing buzzword, 'the cloud,' as if it meant something concrete. That term refers to so many things (different ways of using the Internet) that it really has no meaning at all. Marketing uses that term to lead people's attention away from the important questions about any given use of the network, such as, 'What companies would I depend on if I did this, and how? What trouble could they cause me, if they wanted to shaft me, or simply thought that a change in policies would gain them more money?'"
Even though I am sympathetic with the author, that is some of the shittiest writing I've seen in a while, which is telling considering the level of writing on the internet. "It's not bad because it's good" is hardly a compelling argument.
The world needs people like RMS... really. I mean, he is out there on the fringe, where rational thought breaks down into fantasy, but you also have a lot of people in power who are at the other extreme and also living in a kind of fantasy bubble.... heavily subsidized by corporate players of course to ensure they see things the "right" way.
Like so many things in life, the right way isn't always the left or the right, the blue or the red, the democrat or republican, or whatever... its the middle ground where interests from all sides are considered.
On my way home, ill be driving down the central reservation, just to make this point. :-D
copying your GPL'd program without credit and copyrighting it is stealing
there, fixed that for you
claiming copyright on stolen music would be the same thing, simple sharing is not
No, that's not what he said. Don't worry, others have deliberately misconstrued what he has said on the topic in the past. Also, he's talking about music which doesn't have the "proprietary" vs. "free" distinction (the only way to have proprietary music is to never, ever share it.)
I don't believe that Stallman said anything about the copyrights themselves. His point was, again, about the implied (false) moral weight behind declaring "sharing" as being wrong (something opposite to what we're taught as children.) He then proceeds to point out fairly common failings of the music industry as a whole and the laws surrounding copyright, and basically makes the point that there are systematic flaws in the way we compensate artists and that the status quo basically feeds the machine that tries to shove crap like SOPA/PIPA down our throats.
So then it's okay to make a derivative work from a GPL work and distribute it without the source code, as long as you do it for free and are "sharing"? Think for just a minute about why that's not the case.
The "repressive" laws that say that sharing copyrighted content that you didn't get pemission to make distributable copies of are the exact same "repressive" copyright that makes enforcing the GPL possible.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
And RMS stance on that issue is that in the absence of copyright there would not be as significant a need for the GPL. The GPL is a way to mitigate the damage of copyright, it's not a substitute for abolishing it.
In the absence of copyright, and thus the absence of a GPL with any teeth, how would you force me to hand over source code when you get a binary?
Did you even read her shitty little article? What this "Emily" moron did was (except for a little file sharing with Kazaa in fifth grade) is trade mix-tapes and songs with -- as she stated -- "family and friends".
That is NOT the same as file sharing. That is NOT the same as bit torrent and "piracy" and "copyright infringement" (no matter what side you fall down on in those issues). "sharing mix tapes and songs from family and with friends" has generally been considered fair-use and has been done for DECADES. I am fucking shocked at the responses I've seen all over the place -- showing the extreme fucking ignorance of idiots everywhere -- acting as if trading a mix-tape or duplicating an album for your girlfriend or your brother is the same as going to the pirate bay and uploading and seeding the latest #1 billboard album.
I mean, fucking seriously, what the fuck?!
And what makes this rambling 20 year old moron's comments even dumber is that she's convinced that she did something wrong. We now live in a world where we have children CONVINCED that SHARING MUSIC WITH AN ACTUAL FRIEND OR FAMILY MEMBER is the same thing as operating a massive piracy/duplication crime syndicate that pumps out $5 copies of DVDs and CDs on the streets of new york and that she has somehow committed some sort of crime or even some sort of copyright infringement (she hasn't).
Fuck, I completely give up. There is no more hope. The mindless idiots have let the corporations dictate to them what is and isn't appropriate and fair use and we've passed that on to an entire generation or two of children who now just accept that it's wrong, because they don't know any better and assume that corporations get to have absolute and complete control on everything, because they say so, and anything contradicting them must be theft and must be a crime.
RMS can quite happily say all this bullshit about morals and how some laws are just completely wrong, but he equally does nothing about it.
All he does is try to educate people about unjust laws! That's pretty much his entire gig. That was the entire point of the article we're talking about here.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
What sort of parallel world did I enter?
One where you haven't been paying any attention?
RMS has strongly opposed copyright for a long time, and wants to abolish it and substitute the legal requirement for anyone to provide source to any software they distribute. (In effect, tyrannically imposing a "free" license on everything.) He invented "copyleft" (and its GPL embodiment) as a temporary measure, turning copyright against its rent-seeking purpose, until such time as he can achieve his goals legislatively.
However, it's not at all clear whether he'd be okay with simply invalidating copyright (making everything public domain, aka actual freedom, but permitting binary distribution of closed- and open-source alike), or if he prefers to keep copyright+GPL until he can bring about his "utopian" laws.
Does that mean that if it's okay for other people to ignore proprietary copyright, then people can also freely ignore the GPL and make and distribute derivative works of GPL products without source code?
New here? This is RMS's (and a good chunk of /.ers') mindset:
Sharing is moral, thus he doesn't mind, whether or not you break the law to do so.
Distributing software and NOT distributing source is immoral, thus he does mind, whether or not you break the law to do so.
He's a zealot; morality (in his definition -- if you disagree, you're wrong and/or evil!) matters, law doesn't. He only cares about law inasmuch as it can be useful club to beat people with.
If people want to get paid for their creations, then why do they bloody insist on giving it away for free on a $10 CD or $2 of Internet bandwidth?
Musicians just don't seem to be able to understand that they're not CD manufacturers, and they're not Internet Service Providers, they can't charge for CDs, and they can't charge for Internet copying. What they can charge for is only their music... which they're stupidly giving away. People is already being generous when they buy plastic or bandwidth from them (being able to buy it from cheaper stores) just so they get their cut and try to recover their creation costs, but that's the wrong way to go about it.
Artist, does it cost you $60,000 to make your work (include your own salary)?... Pro-tip: Sell it for $60,000, not for $0.99. If your work is really worth that, people will pay the cost. Set up a kickstarter and watch it happen. If your work isn't worth what it costs, then there's no market for you. Tough. But please stop all this lunacy, we need it to stop freaking yesterday.
-Sincerely, an audio engineer who understands what is wrong with the businesss
Children are starving in Africa and you give a shit about a fucking NPR File Sharer's Blog? Fuck you. Instead of shooting electron beams at a NPR File Sharer's Blog to see what happens these scientists should be in the wheat fields growing food for starving children in 3rd world countries.
The children are starving not because of a scarcity of food but because certain people in Africa are PREVENTING the food
from getting to the people who need it.
If you really truly want to make the world a better place, kill yourself.
RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is good
The term "giving away" implies a situation where one party is deprived of something so another person can have it. This is not an accurate representation of Stallman's views, nor is is an accurate description of copyright infringement. When a copy is made and provided to another party, both parties now have the item in question.
RMS believes the above described behavior is morally correct, and should be universally allowed. Furthermore, he believes software is an entity unto itself that has rights, just as a person has rights. I happen to disagree with him on these points, but regardless of your position on such matters, it is very important to describe them correctly. Much as RMS has a long history of attempting to redefine the word "freedom" to suit his sociopolitical agenda, I must disagree with those who attempt to make statements on important matters such as these without getting their definitions right.
Write failed: Broken pipe
>>>Yes, Kazaa "mistreated her" by her voluntarily deciding to download, install and use the program without any coercion from the makers of the program
Kazaa usually had tracking bots buried inside of it, or installed alongside it, without ever informing the users. So YES she was harmed by the program. That is what Stallman means by "non-free" - The program was a danger to the users due to its closed-off environment.
>>>One can only hope she won't be scarred for life from that heinous act.
Perhaps not "for life" but she would suffer shorterm scarring if Kazaa or its partners had stolen her ID, or credit card number. You sir are too trusting of the programs you download, if you believe it's okay to just download random shit to your PC w/o any harm.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I respect RMS' position on software, even if I don't fully agree with it. As I understand it, he says that a software developer should be able to make money by selling services, e.g. maintaining/customizing software, and there are people out there who do just that.
But I think the argument falls down for music. Sure, following the 'services' argument, performers can make a living (in theory) by performing the music. But not all song-writers are also performers. So in this case, how would RMS propose that a songwriter get reimbursed? What about the people involved in the production of music, e.g. sound engineers.
I think the "music is like software and should be just as free" analogy does no't work.
(This is not to support the RIAA's unacceptable use of the the courts to prosecute the token file-sharing user with outrageous and probably unconstitutional damage judgements.)
Wait, did you just accuse the person to whom you were responding of being an African dictator?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
RMS seems to be embracing a self-contradictory position.
He's all for ignoring the unjust copyright laws when they don't suit his position.
But the FSF goes after people for violation of their license which is based on the same unjust copyright laws.
http://www.fsf.org/news/2008-12-cisco-suit/
In fairness to the GP, describing those view accurately makes it much harder to undermine them. Therefore it's actually important to the opponents to NOT describe them accurately.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I don't believe he's a proponent of forcing anyone to share. He's an opponent of forcing others not to share.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Give away doesn't necessarily mean anyone is deprived of anything. It often does, but not always.
If I watch your prize dog while you are on vacation, a pedigreed breeding dog and I give away his sperm to someone, I have given something of value away. But you aren't deprived of it, that sperm would have been dead by the time you got back from vacation and it would have been replaced by then with new live sperm anyway.
You'd do well to stick to the point at hand instead of trying to put up a semantic front.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The term "giving away" implies a situation where one party is deprived of something so another person can have it. This is not an accurate representation of Stallman's views, nor is is an accurate description of copyright infringement. When a copy is made and provided to another party, both parties now have the item in question.
Wrong. The term giving away means whatever our society decides it means. There are clearly multiple scenarios in which the term can be used and trying to shoehorn a definition into just one or the other doesn't make sense. In the same way people discuss abortion and want a bright line between life and non-life...the world is more complex and there are lots of things that can't be neatly divided.
In the case of "giving away" copyrighted material...when people use that term pretty much everyone understands that it means we have an artificial system called copyright created for economic reasons and the "giving away" violated the rules of that system.
Trying to argue "but it's not theft" or "it's not the same as real property" misses the point...we all know that but we don't want to use a 17 word sentence to refer to the situation at hand.
So my takeaway from today is it's obviously okay to take GPL software and use it however I want, regardless of whether or not my use violates the terms defined within the GPL. RMS doesn't feel other licenses need to be honored, so there's no compelling reason to follow the terms of his licenses. So lets start using it in our commercial devices, modify it however we want and not bother releasing the source.
I don't think that that reasoning holds water. It's not about copyright law. Copyright is just a tool. RMS' key idea (as I interpret it) is that technology has given us the ability to copy information and knowledge and art and records (as in recordings of historical events), and that this copying allows us to share these things with everyone. He believes that the potential benefit of this sharing to humanity is so large that it outweighs anything else. After all, knowledge is power, and knowledge increases freedom. So, we must share as much information and knowledge and art and records as we can for the betterment of us all.
So what about software? Is taking a piece of software and distributing it in binary form sharing of information and knowledge? Well, what happens is that, if it's well-written software that fits the user's needs, it lets the user do something with less effort. It doesn't communicate anything about how it's done though, so that the user learns nothing, and it creates a dependency of the user on the software manufacturer. Once the user has chosen to use the binary-only software, they are no longer free to arbitrary change what they're doing, they have to ask the manufacturer to change the software.
Contrariwise, if the software is distributed with source code included, then this is a case of sharing information and knowledge. The user can learn how the software does things on their behalf, and is free to change how the software does things on their behalf. And that makes the world a little better. Again, this is not an opinion about copyright law. In one case following this ideal happens to entail violating copyright laws, while in another it doesn't. That just means that current copyright laws have some good and some bad effects, nothing more.
"Let me try to explain: File sharing undermines somebody else's business model."
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Robert A. Heinlein
I think that says it all.
we all know that
Do we now? I've personally seen a fair number of people who really do believe it's theft. I've also seen people who didn't know what copyright infringement was and believed that it's actually theft in the most literal sense simply because many people happen to call it that. Calling what may be a crime in some places "theft" really can confuse people.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Bad example. Actually, as the owner of the dog, I have been potentially deprived of something - the market for that dog's sperm. There may only be a handful of people in this world who would be interested in buying the dog's sperm for breeding purposes. Since you have gone and sold it to one of those people, my ability to make money off of that sperm when I return from vacation has been irreparably harmed.
Incidentally, I do fall on the side of supporting file sharing, as long as a person does not try to resell a person's music/software/etc for monetary gain.
Emily White violated the copyrights on the music she acquired ("I've swapped hundreds of mix CDs with friends. My senior prom date took my iPod home once and returned it to me with 15 gigs of Big Star, The Velvet Underground and Yo La Tengo"). You'd think RMS would be against that, since the GPL expresses (admirable IMO) restrictions on what you can do with it under those same copyright laws. His arguments why Emily "did nothing wrong" are mostly the lame tired shit piracy apologists have trotted out for decades now
Untrue. Artist royalties are often ~20% of the sales price; this chart says $.09 for an iTunes download, and artists self-releasing through CD Baby keep 75%. The meme that artists don't get money seems to be a deliberate misunderstanding of the money record companies advance against royalties so artists can make a quality record (The Trichordist explains this well). Regardless of the percentage it is not the consumer's right or job to decide if that's a reasonable or obscene deal from the record company and online store. FFS, if you don't like a song enough to pay $0.99 for an unprotected DRM-free legal copy of it so the artist gets some money in exchange for your enjoyment of her creative endeavor:
1. Skip it and enjoy the zillions of free songs out there — under CC share licenses, out-of-copyright, in the public domain, live performances from trade-friendly artists on Internet Archive, etc.! As RMS knows from software, there are great free alternatives to restricted paid works, so go support those!
2. If you whine "Waahhh, this song I want ought to be free like all those others" so you pirate it anyway, your parents raised you badly.
RMS goes on
Not true. Paying for the copyrighted recordings you want and love works great and delivers money to artists so they can make more! It's insulting to suggest artists should instead try to collect money for something completely different — "touring and T-shirts". (No Sgt. Pepper for you, John Paul George and Ringo are going deaf on another tour that only their teenybopper fans attend.) The idea that artists should not charge for a quality studio recording has been immensely damaging to "the Progress of Science and useful Arts" in the area of recorded music, it's a big reason why today's songs are made on laptops instead of with crack session musicians. And as RMS later acknowledges, touring doesn't even work for those bands that do perform live, because they can't afford to travel to all their fans, then on any night only a fraction of fans in an area make it to the show.
RMS is on better ground with the first of his two ways to support artists
Great idea, let's hope it happens. But his second is a fantasy:
It's been tried, the Fairtunes service during Napster's golden era. I ponied up money for a song I shared, but in several y
=S
By stealing it (and don't pretend it's anything but theft just to make yourself appear to be slightly more ethical), you are depriving the creators of money. If it's not worth buying, then don't steal it. Funny how my children managed to learn this at about the age of six.
Arguing that software has rights is even more delusional than Romney's believe that corporations are people,
I think that depends on what you consider to be "rights" and where you believe the rights lie. We routinely declare objects to be historical or natural landmarks and that designation includes protection from vandalism, destruction, exploitation and so forth. The object has effectively been given a right to continued existence. Is it delusional of us to have done that?
The majority of the US also believes that books shouldn't be banned or burned. Not only that, but we generally believe they should be available for free to those who seek them out (which is why we have libraries). Books have effectively been given not only the right to exist, but the right to be read. Is that delusional?
I'm not sure just what rights RMS thinks software should have because I hate his writing style and can never finish reading any of his diatribes, but it's not entirely out of the question to say that an object effectively has some rights. I would probably disagree with RMS about what those rights are, but I wouldn't say that arguing that software has rights is delusional.
Copyright is an agreement
No, it isn't. Copyright is a government monopoly, which is theoretically, given to authors
It is not morally correct to break this rationale, yet it has already been broken by the copyright holders many times. Unfortunately, corrective action has not happened, because the economic incentives happen to be asymmetrically distributed. The large harm the violations by the copyright holders have caused is spread over many people, while the huge benefits have accrued to very few, who make a lot of extra profits and engage in all sorts of rent-seeking activities that extend and defend the violations of the original agreement.
And by this argument, as the creator of a book, song, or film, I have been deprived of the market for my movie/film/song by your giving copies to other people for free.
So I'm not clear - you say you support sharing as long as it's not for financial gain... but then you say that giving something away (or providing a free copy of something) is depriving the creator/original owner of that item a market for their product.
You seem to be arguing that filesharing is okay, but you're trying to paint that the scenario above, where you're "deprived of a market for your product," is somehow injurious to you. So if someone's sharing activity is damaging to you... then how can it be morally correct? Whether they do it for a profit, or do it for free, it's simply a matter of how MUCH they've harmed you, not a question of whether or not they're harming you.
So what you're saying is that RMS has the simplistic world view of a toddler, where everything is black and white, and no middle ground exists - say, where a person creating a book, or film, or song, is happy to share his creation with the world, but stipulates that anybody wanting to take a copy of that work should give him $2 as compensation? In this world view, either you share everything with everybody, or you share nothing and exist in isolation.
Any "forced" sharing or "forced" compensation is morally wrong. If a musician says, "I have created this song. If you want a copy, I want $1 from you," then there are three possible scenarios:
1) Is the song valuable to you? Do you enjoy it? Do you believe that $1 is an reasonable trade for the value that song represents to you, and are you okay with the "don't share with other people" restriction? If so, then conclude the transaction.
2) Is the song not valuable to you? Why would you want to take a copy at all, then? Patronize musicians whose business model and asking price are more palatable to you.
3) Is the song of some value to you, but you either disagree with the price or the "no redistribution" stipulation? Then open a negotiation with the musician - if you reach an agreement that both of you are happy with, conclude your transaction. If you can't reach a mutually agreeable plan, then the song is not worth the price, and you walk away from the transaction.
That is it - there is no "right" for you to take whatever you want whenever you want it. There is no "right" for the musician to take money from you if you don't want to give it - any answer to this "problem" that does not involve a mutually agreeable voluntary transaction between the purchaser and the seller is immoral.
Incidentally - why is it that people who hold this simplistic world view are also some of the most vocal critics of social media? If sharing is always ethical, shouldn't anything that encourages more sharing be an unequivocally ethical thing as well? And why do you care if somebody else gets value out of what you've shared? Sharing shouldn't have a price tag associated with it, right?
RMS' concept of sharing here is about that of a spoiled brat 10 year old.
Anyway, your last paragraph is a PERFECT way to illustrate how dumb this is.
Let's replace ARTIST with his GNU organization. Let's replace the copyrighted MUSIC where the 'right' to distribute is controlled through a purchased license with GPL'd GNU SOFTWARE where the 'right' distribute it is controlled through the GPL license.
By your logic (and possibly his), a person that happens to find GNU software on a torrent someplace with all the licenses stripped out is perfectly entitled to 'share' and take that copy and use it however they see fit (perhaps in their closed-source products?). There's no reason they'd then be bound by the distribution terms on the GPL at that point, would there? After all, if you find some music on a server someplace, you're no longer bound to respect the distribution terms of THAT, so why so with software?
Record companies are (almost all) horrible, horrible things that scam (almost all) artists out of their hard work without paying them a dime... but this is just stupid.
RMS should stick to fighting to convince the creators of things to make them free to share. The terms that makers (and their agents) apply to their creations' use should be respected. The fight is to convince people to change the terms, not to selectively ignore the ones you don't like.
I have used free software, and I've shared code back out of a sense of reciprosity. That's a good thing. However, I totally reserve the right to decide on a case-by-case basis what products of my labor are free to share and what I might decide to charge money for.
"The cost to copy is nothing, so it must be free" is BULLSHIT. Products are not 100% production costs. There's the initial development cost, sometimes advertising costs, office space costs, etc. The decision a person or company makes to produce something is based on looking at all of these costs together and trying to see if the sales will be worth ALL the costs.
Just saying "obviously by copying this so easily your business model sucks, so free music for me and you totally deserve to go broke, fool" is not much different than "your front door was open, and it was TOTALLY easy to just walk in and take your stuff... your ownership of things model sucks... so you totally deserve to lose everything, fool". Both things very well could be foolish, given the environment... but that doesn't make actively taking advantage of that person and enriching yourself at their expense right.
What RMS should be arguing for is a boycott of old-school record companies and an embracing of music from artists who promote sharing of their music and aren't represented by bags of slime. Only, there's a lot of good music out there you can only get from record companies... and most people wouldn't know where to start to find the other kinds of artists... and all their friends are listening to the record company music... so that's hard.
Emily DID WRONG in going the easy route and just taking music that should have been bought. Not a lot of wrong, in the scheme of things (especially given the victims).... but wrong nonetheless.
It feels good to give... and it feels GREAT to give something that doesn't cost anything to give. That doesn't make it universally right. The world is more complex than "it feels good so it must be right". Grow up, RMS.