Eben Moglen Explains Freedom and Free Software in Two Video Interviews

Eben Moglen, says Wikipedia, "is a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University, and is the founder, Director-Counsel and Chairman of [the] Software Freedom Law Center, whose client list includes numerous pro bono clients, such as the Free Software Foundation." And if that wasn't enough, since 2011 he's been working with FreedomBox, a project working toward "a personal server running a free software operating system, with free applications designed to create and preserve personal privacy." Prof. Moglen is also one of the most polished speakers anywhere, on any topic, ever. That's why, instead of editing this interview Timothy Lord did with him, we simply cut it in half, removed a little introductory and end conversation, and let the Professor roll on. The second half of this interview will run tomorrow. It's at least as worthwhile as the first half, especially if you are interested in Free Software.

Comments

You need to have the Adobe Flash Player

[Anonymous Coward]

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Access

[mfwitten]

Please provide links to downloadable files for future videos; please don't force your users to suffer some terribly inefficient and limited player like that of an embedded flash player—not only does, say, mplayer use far fewer cycles to play the same damn video, but I can also speed up playback to nearly 2x the rate (without comical effect!), which saves me time, thereby allowing me to spend more time viewing slashdot advertisements.

Re:Access

[Jeng]

I am always amazed when someone mentions the advertising on this site since almost everyone uses ad-blockers theses days, but also if you are in good standing slashdot gives you the option of not seeing the advertisements.

I really don't think slashdot makes much from displaying advertisements.

Now if slashvertisements are real, well they may make some money off those.

Re:Access

[iroll]

Don't you think you might be projecting just a teensy bit? Most people aren't suffering when they watch a video on youtube. Neither are their computers.

If you're a sophisticated enough user to care about the number of cycles mplayer uses versus flash, you should be sophisticated enough to, say, install a userscript like ViewTube

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/87011

...that will send the video format (codec and size) of your choice to a non-flash player of your choice. You can even download the video and watch it offline later!

Those rare individuals who can't watch a flash video and can't figure out why are probably not suffering either, because they probably don't care.

It's a feature not a bug

[Jeng]

That's why, instead of editing this interview Timothy Lord did with him, we simply cut it in half, removed a little introductory and end conversation, and let the Professor roll on.

Yea, that's the ticket, we don't need editing, just cut the video in two. Also, lets make sure to remove context like introductions.

Ok, since all you did was cut the video in two and remove context, did you at least make a transcript this time?

Re:It's a feature not a bug

[eugene ts wong]

There is a link under the video to hide or show a transcript.

Re:It's a feature not a bug

[Jeng]

Also I, like many here, read slashdot at work and if you are reading a web page you may be doing some research or something, but if you are watching a video then it is pretty clear you are not doing your job.

...and the irony!

[AliasMarlowe]

Did they even ask Eben Moglen's opinion on presenting an interview with him using the non-free flash player?
And I concur with mfwitten - please provide a downloadable link, even if it's to the accursed ooyala.com...

Re:...and the irony!

[jalet]

I don't know for Eben Moglen, but I can say for sure that RMS didn't appreciate when we recorded and streamed a conference of him with proprietary software and codecs (RealServer+RealVideo).

Not only did we re-encode the video into an open format, but we went so far as to develop an entirely Free conferences/courses recording and streaming software (based on GStreamer) as a result.

Unfortunately the original website is down, but the latest source code is currently available from http://depot.univ-nc.nc/sources/ for those who might be interested.

Anyone care to comment on the content?

[crazyjj]

Now that we've had the requisite 400 posts complaining about the video codec and the bad jokes, does anyone care to comment on what he said?

Anyone?

Re:Anyone care to comment on the content?

[SirGarlon]

No. If I wanted to watch video, I would be on YouTube, not Slashdot. I come to Slashdot to *read*.

Re:Polished?

[Neil_Brown]

Interesting link — although the content seems not to bear out the headline.

It looks like a disagreement over stance to me, with some parts highlighted in bold to emphasise the author's point that Eben held a different view to him. There's one "," but no "" or "" — it's not as if Eben was even saying something stupid or irrelevant, just seemingly not what the author wanted to hear for his article, and characterised Eben's answers as "yelling."

Upload to Youtube

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, Slashdot, please consider it. The player is better, and crucially it's trivial to download the content then strip out the audio.

Then like most lectures I can listen to it on headphones while doing so many other things away from the computer. This is a major asset.

Or just supply the ogg. That would work fine. Just please do it. The increase in utility is enormous.