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RMS, Aaron Swartz Among 2013 Internet Hall of Fame Inductees

Posted by Soulskill on from the barry-bonds-given-the-cold-shoulder-again dept.

gnujoshua writes "The Internet Hall of Fame inducted 32 new members, today. This years class had a number of 'policy innovators' and activists including Aaron Swartz (posthumous), John Perry Barlow, Jimmy Wales, and Richard M. Stallman. Stallman had this to say upon his induction: 'Now that we have made the Internet work, the next task is to stop it from being a platform for massive surveillance, and make it work in a way that respects human rights, including privacy.'"

6 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. RMS named by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think the world is actually finally reaching a more dire version of the 2010 panel of this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/743/

    1. Re:RMS named by kthreadd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How to you know that Microsoft Word doesn't spy on you? Do you have the source code?

  2. RMS and unintended outcomes by hazeii · · Score: 4, Interesting

    >Stallman had this to say upon his induction: 'Now that we have made the Internet work, the next task is to stop it from being a platform for massive surveillance, and make it work in a way that respects human rights, including privacy.'"

    In retrospect, it would have been neat to have written that kind of thing into the GPL (the spooks would have run Windows servers instead, and our privacy would be safe if we used anything more complex than ROT13).

    --
    All your ghosts are just false positives.
  3. RMS is a hero in my eyes (again) by hojo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In my idealistic youth, I thought of him as a programming God.

    As I grew older, I began regarding him as more of a cranky old, "get off my lawn", impractical hard liner.

    Now, with the whole NSA/Snowden revelations, I realize I was wrong to be complacent. He has reverted to deity status for me.

    1. Re:RMS is a hero in my eyes (again) by Karl+Cocknozzle · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In fact, at this point, I'd put even money on the assertion that the only reason anyone is even talking about this is because the media is telling us to care about it.

      Really? The coverage I have seen is focused almost exclusively on "the hunt for Eric Snowden" and takes very little time to discuss the substantive issues raised by his revelations--chiefly that most of our privacy has been a facade for the better part of a decade. I was never that cynical before this, so congratulations for being the first ones to believe something was amiss.

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      Who did what now?
  4. Re:A Plead from Jimmy Wales by TWiTfan · · Score: 4, Funny

    Expect a crazy video to soon follow from John McAfee, detailing how the Illuminati stopped him from getting in.

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