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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?'"
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.
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
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
"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.
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.