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]

You need to have the Adobe Flash Player to view this content.
Please click here to continue.

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.

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.

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.