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| Лекция прошла в 18:00 5 марта 2008 года в ИФ РАН. | | Лекция прошла в 18:00 5 марта 2008 года в ИФ РАН. |
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- | [[Изображение:RMS_ifran1.png|thumb|240px|Ричард Мэттью Столлман]] | |
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| == Диктофонные записи == | | == Диктофонные записи == |
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| == Расшифровка лекции == | | == Расшифровка лекции == |
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- | (расшифровка взята с [http://rms-moscow-2008.narod.ru], счетчик времени по [[#Видеозаписи|видеозаписи]], | + | (в процессе завершения, скоро выложу сюда и [http://rms-moscow-2008.narod.ru/ сюда] --[[Участник:PavelSutyrin|PavelSutyrin]] 10:42, 20 июня 2008 (UTC)) |
- | подзаголовки добавлены после расшифровки, только для ориентации по тексту --[[Участник:PavelSutyrin|PavelSutyrin]] 07:37, 1 июля 2008 (UTC))
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- | | + | |
- | === Introduction. The extents of freedoms ===
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:00:38}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | So, in my previous speeches elsewhere I spoke about the free software
| + | |
- | movement, about software that respect the user's freedom, and I explained,
| + | |
- | why software users deserve four essential freedoms. Freedom 0, the
| + | |
- | freedom to run the program as you wish, freedom 1, the freedom to study
| + | |
- | the source code and to change it, so that the program does what you wish,
| + | |
- | freedom 2, the freedom to help you neighbor, the freedom to distribute
| + | |
- | exact copies, make and distribute exact copies, when you wish, and
| + | |
- | freedom 3, the freedom to contribute to your community, the freedom to
| + | |
- | make and distribute copies of your modified versions, when you wish. If
| + | |
- | the program gives you all four these freedoms, it is free software,
| + | |
- | freedom-respecting software, "svobodny" software. [light laughter]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:01:43}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | So, once the GNU+Linux system existed in the 90s and people started to
| + | |
- | use it, I started getting invited to give more speeches, and at the
| + | |
- | end of the speech sometimes people would ask, whether the same ideas
| + | |
- | of the free software movement -- that all software should be free and
| + | |
- | all users should have these freedoms -- do those apply to anything
| + | |
- | but software? Sometimes they would say: "what about hardware? Should
| + | |
- | computers be free or microphones, or tables, or chairs? [points at these
| + | |
- | items around] Well, that was a silly question, because it doesn't even
| + | |
- | make sense entirely.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | What would it mean, for this table to be free in the same sense? Well,
| + | |
- | it would mean that you have freedom 0, the freedom to use the table as
| + | |
- | you wish, well, if you buy the table, you pretty much can use it as you
| + | |
- | wish, so you have freedom 0. What about freedom 1, the freedom to study
| + | |
- | the source code of the table and then change it to make the table to do
| + | |
- | what you wish? Well, there is no source code. So, this freedom doesn't
| + | |
- | entirely make sense, but you can study the table and you can modify the
| + | |
- | table. This table is made of wood, I could cut an inch of every leg if
| + | |
- | I wanted to and I have a lower table, there are various modifications
| + | |
- | you can do. And the fact is: for the most part nobody will stop you,
| + | |
- | if it's your table, you can modify it. So, you have freedom 0 and you
| + | |
- | have freedom 1, partly to the extent it makes sense.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | But on the other hand, a computer, you basically can't modify very much,
| + | |
- | it's impossible. Nobody can modify the circuitry in a chip, you will
| + | |
- | just destroy it.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | (Can we open a window, it's getting hot in here?)
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:03:45}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | What about freedom 2, the freedom to copy and to distribute the
| + | |
- | copies, well there are no copiers for tables, so that's completely
| + | |
- | meaningless. And what about freedom 3, the freedom to copy and distribute
| + | |
- | copies of your modified versions of the table. Well, if you change this
| + | |
- | table, by cutting an inch of each leg, well, there is still no copiers, so
| + | |
- | you won't be able to put the modified table into a copier and distribute
| + | |
- | copies to people. So, basically, these physical objects in most cases are
| + | |
- | as free as they can possibly be, but that's a very partial extent. So,
| + | |
- | that was a silly question. He didn't really understand, the people who
| + | |
- | ask that question about hardware didn't really understand what "free"
| + | |
- | means, they didn't think careful.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | But, there are other things about which this question makes sense. And
| + | |
- | those are other works of authorship, that you may have a copy of, because
| + | |
- | those you can copy and those you can modify, and so question of whether
| + | |
- | you are permitted to do so is a real and important question. That is
| + | |
- | the question, that this speech is about.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:05:10}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | If you have a copy of something, some work, which is not software, then
| + | |
- | for the most part, the only thing that could restrict your freedom to
| + | |
- | copy or distribute or modify it is copyright law. So, the same question
| + | |
- | looked at from the other side is: what should copyright law say about
| + | |
- | those works?
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | === The history of copyright law ===
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:05:41}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Now, to think about issues of copyright law, it's useful to look at the
| + | |
- | history, and the history of copyright law is connected with the history of
| + | |
- | copying technology, for very good reasons, because changes in technology
| + | |
- | can affect our ethical judgements. Now, changes in technology cannot
| + | |
- | touch our basic ethical principles, which are too deep for mere changes
| + | |
- | in technology to reach them. But when we apply these principles to a
| + | |
- | specific question, we do it by looking at various alternative choices and
| + | |
- | look at the consequences of each one. A change in a context can alter the
| + | |
- | consequences of the same action and thus make it more good or more bad.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | For instance, if we could reliably resurrect the dead, then murder
| + | |
- | wouldn't be so bad. You would just say: "all right, you've killed him,
| + | |
- | you'll have to pay for his new body", and that's it.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== The ancient world ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:06:53}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | So, let's look at the history of copyright and copying technology.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Copying began in the ancient world, where it was done with a writing instrument
| + | |
- | on a writing surface. Now, this copying technology has some interesting
| + | |
- | consequences. First of all, there was no built-in economy of scale. Making
| + | |
- | ten copies was ten much as work as making one copy. (Excuse me, I'm
| + | |
- | looking for my clock... I thought was in here.. Ah.)
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Another consequence of ancient world copying technology was: it did
| + | |
- | not use any specialized equipment, only the ordinary equipment for
| + | |
- | writing. And it didn't require any special skill, only the skill of
| + | |
- | reading and writing. The result was a decentralized system, in which
| + | |
- | copies of any given book were made in quantity starting one. Wherever
| + | |
- | somebody had a copy and wanted another.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | As far as I can tell, there was no such thing as copyright in the ancient
| + | |
- | world. If you had a copy and you wanted to copy it, you could do so,
| + | |
- | and no one would object, except perhaps if the king didn't like what the
| + | |
- | book said, and then he may put you in prison or kill you or whatever,
| + | |
- | of course, that was censorship, not copyright, but the two are closely
| + | |
- | related.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== The age of printing press ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:08:48}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | So there was no system of copyright anywhere in the ancient world,
| + | |
- | as far as I know. But then there was a tremendous advance in copying
| + | |
- | technology: the printing press, which made copying more efficient,
| + | |
- | but not uniformly so. It made some kinds of copy a lot more efficient,
| + | |
- | and didn't help in other kinds, because the printing press has a big
| + | |
- | economy of scale. It takes a lot of work to set the type, probably the
| + | |
- | more work than writing a copy by hand, but once you have set the type,
| + | |
- | you can make many identical copies very efficiently.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:09:35}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Furthermore, the printing press and the type were expensive specialized
| + | |
- | equipment that most regular /?/ people did not have. And it took special
| + | |
- | knowledge to use them, different skills from the skills of reading and
| + | |
- | writing. So, the result was a centralized system of producing copies,
| + | |
- | where copies of any given book were made in a few places, and then they
| + | |
- | were brought to whoever wanted to buy them.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | In the first few centuries of printing, many copies were still made
| + | |
- | by hand. I recall it was a large fraction of the old copies, that were
| + | |
- | almost half. This was done either on behalf of very rich people to
| + | |
- | show how rich they were, or by poor people, because, as the song goes,
| + | |
- | "time ain't money, if all you got is time".
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:10:55}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | In the first few centuries of printing printed books were still very
| + | |
- | expensive, and there were poor people who couldn't afford printed copy,
| + | |
- | but they had the time to write the copy.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:11:17}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Copyright began in the age of the printing press. For instance, in
| + | |
- | the Italy, in the 1500s, it was commonplace that if you wrote a book,
| + | |
- | you could then ask a prince to give you a monopoly on printing it. And
| + | |
- | if he liked you and the book started by saying nice things about him,
| + | |
- | then he would probably give you this monopoly. Princes used to hand out
| + | |
- | monopolies of all sorts of things to whoever they wished to reward.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:12:00}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Copyright in England began as a system of censorship in the 1500s. If
| + | |
- | someone wanted to publish a book, he had to... someone had to apply
| + | |
- | to the government for permission, and this permission was given to one
| + | |
- | publisher, and it was permanent monopoly for that publisher.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | In the 1600s there was a revolution in England, and the system of
| + | |
- | censorship became obsolete, there was a revolution of 1688. And they began
| + | |
- | to think of getting rid of that system, and replacing it with another
| + | |
- | system, designed to be good for the public and so they established the
| + | |
- | system where copyright was given to the author for a limited period of
| + | |
- | time, at that time, I believe, that was 14 years.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:13:06}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | When the US Constitution was written, there was a proposal, that
| + | |
- | authorship be entitled to a copyright. You'd never believe it from
| + | |
- | listening to the US companies today, but that proposal was rejected. And
| + | |
- | the US Constitution says: "Congress shall have the power to promote
| + | |
- | the progress of science and the useful arts by reserving to authors
| + | |
- | and inventors for a limited time the exclusive use of their respective
| + | |
- | writings and inventions". And in US law this one sentence is the sum total
| + | |
- | of everything there is in common between copyright law and patent law,
| + | |
- | everything else is different.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | In any case, we can see a few things from this sentence. First of all,
| + | |
- | the Constitution does no require copyright to exist, in only permits
| + | |
- | the option of having a copyright system. Second, it says that if
| + | |
- | copyright exists, it's purpose is to promote progress, the purpose is
| + | |
- | not to give authors something that they deserve, it doesn't say that
| + | |
- | they deserve anything, it only allows a system of copyright as a way to
| + | |
- | promote progress. And third, it says copyright can only be for a limited
| + | |
- | time. These were wise decisions and ever since the publishers will be
| + | |
- | trying to get rid of them.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:14:55}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Copyright in the age of the printing press operated as an industrial
| + | |
- | regulation. It restricted publishers, the decisions were made by authors
| + | |
- | and all this was organized so as to benefit the general public. Because it
| + | |
- | acted as an industrial regulation, nobody ever thought about prosecuting
| + | |
- | somebody from making copies by hand, it applied to publication and
| + | |
- | printing, not hand-copying for your own use, no one would even have
| + | |
- | thought of that, because everyone understood that it was meant as an
| + | |
- | industrial regulation.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | And because of this, copyright was easy to enforce, pretty much
| + | |
- | uncontroversial, and arguably beneficial for the general public. It was
| + | |
- | easy to enforce, because it didn't require invading everybody's home and
| + | |
- | computer, it only have to be applied in cases of publication, and it's
| + | |
- | easy to find out, who is printing the books, you go to the bookstore
| + | |
- | and say: where did these copies come from?
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | It was uncontroversial, because it didn't restrict what readers could
| + | |
- | do. It only restricted what you can do as a publisher and ordinary
| + | |
- | readers were not publishers, so they haven't felt any burden from
| + | |
- | it. And it was arguably beneficial, because the public traded certain
| + | |
- | nominal freedoms, that the public was not in a position to exercise,
| + | |
- | and thus lost effectively nothing. And in exchange we see benefits of
| + | |
- | more writing, more books you could buy, more conversation about important
| + | |
- | issues that might help society decide what to do.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== The age of computer networks ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | So, in the age of the printing press copyright seemed to be beneficial,
| + | |
- | I would not be criticizing it, but the age of the printing press is
| + | |
- | giving way slowly, gradually to the age of the computer networks,
| + | |
- | another major advance in copying technology, which once again makes
| + | |
- | copying more efficient, and once again this advance is not uniform,
| + | |
- | it affect some cases more than others.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:17:47}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | In the ancient world copying was always hard and slow. The printing press
| + | |
- | made some cases a lot more efficient, and now computer networks make it
| + | |
- | all a lot more efficient, and the variation in efficiency is much less
| + | |
- | now. We don't have mass production of identical copies very efficient
| + | |
- | and everything else very painful, now everything is pretty easy and
| + | |
- | fast. This is not perfectly true, it remains the case, for instance,
| + | |
- | that mass produced CDs are cheaper and more durable than one-off CDs,
| + | |
- | but one-off CDs are cheap enough, that hundreds of millions of people
| + | |
- | can make them.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | So, we're in a situation once again, like the ancient world, where
| + | |
- | anybody, who can use the work, can copy it too.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | This completely changes the effect of copyright law, even if the law
| + | |
- | itself were unchanged, because now the freedom that we traded away
| + | |
- | because we couldn't use it, now we can use it! Now it's important to us.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:19:12}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | The result it that copyright law has changed its social role, it is no
| + | |
- | longer an industrial regulation on publishers in the hands of authors
| + | |
- | to benefit the public, now it restricts the public, it's controlled
| + | |
- | by the publishers and they do it only in the name of the authors. So
| + | |
- | everything was turned upside down by this technological change. And
| + | |
- | back in the 70s you could see that the publishers were up to no good,
| + | |
- | because they started talking about how digital technology created problems
| + | |
- | for copyright law. And that is clearly backwards, because, after all,
| + | |
- | laws are supposed to do something that good in the situation that we are
| + | |
- | in. So, I would have said: copyright law creates problems for enjoying
| + | |
- | the use of digital technology. But publishers turned it around, because
| + | |
- | their goal was the opposite of our goal. Our goal is to get the best
| + | |
- | good we can out of our computers, their goal was to stop us from doing
| + | |
- | that. Digital technology is useful, because it facilitates copying and
| + | |
- | manipulating and communicating information. They don't want that to be
| + | |
- | easy for us. They don't want us to get the full benefits of our computers.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:20:48}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | So, what would a democratic government do in a situation like this? When
| + | |
- | this democratic government trades away our freedom to get benefits from
| + | |
- | us, except that now we want to start using that freedom, what would
| + | |
- | the government say? It would say to those publishers: "Sorry, we used
| + | |
- | to trade away these freedoms on behalf of our citizens, because the
| + | |
- | didn't mind and they were happy to encourage writing, but now they want
| + | |
- | to keep these freedoms, so we can't continue the same deal that we used
| + | |
- | to make. Now we're going to reduce it, maybe we can trade you a part of
| + | |
- | this freedom, but the public wants to keep the rest, and it is our duty
| + | |
- | to represent interests of the public."
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | That, in theory, what the democratic government does, it represents
| + | |
- | the interests of the public. We can measure how undemocratic various
| + | |
- | governments are, by the extent to which they have done the exact opposite:
| + | |
- | extending copyright power, when they ought to reduce it.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:22:00}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | For instance, there is a world wide press to make copyright last
| + | |
- | longer and longer. In the 1700s copyright in the UK lasted, I think, 14
| + | |
- | years, in the US it lasted 14 years but could be renewed once. But in
| + | |
- | the US in recent decades it has been extended over and over and over.
| + | |
- | And the last time was in 1999, when they extended copyright by 20 more
| + | |
- | years for existing works and potential future works. Now, what possible
| + | |
- | justification could there be for extending copyright on works already
| + | |
- | written? Works, for instance, written in the 1920s? How could they
| + | |
- | convince, motivate, incent the now dead authors of 1920s to write more
| + | |
- | back then by extending copyright now?
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:23:09}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | They never answered that question for us, and if they had a time machine,
| + | |
- | they apparently did not use it, because our history books does not
| + | |
- | record, that there was an explosion of artistic activity in the 1920s,
| + | |
- | when authors learned that in 1998 (1999, maybe? --Pavel) they will be
| + | |
- | granted 20 more years of copyright. It is at least vaguely conceivable
| + | |
- | that extending copyright for future works could create more motivation
| + | |
- | to write them, but, practically speaking, no, and the reason is that
| + | |
- | copyright already lasted such a long time that additional time tapped
| + | |
- | on to the end of that had a discounted economic value, so small, that
| + | |
- | it wouldn't motivate anything.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:24:23}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | What really happened, the real reason for this was: companies like
| + | |
- | Disney payed for the law, you see, that's why we call it "The Mickey
| + | |
- | Mouse copyright act". You see, the character Mickey Mouse was going to
| + | |
- | go into the public domain. Mickey Mouse appeared for the first time in
| + | |
- | the movie called "Steambot Willie", in 1929, so time when its copyright
| + | |
- | was going to expire was getting close. And if that happened, others could
| + | |
- | make movies having Mickey Mouse in them, or other publications and have
| + | |
- | pictures of Mickey Mouse in them, and Disney didn't want that ever happen,
| + | |
- | so they payed for this 20 year extension and this... but they really want
| + | |
- | copyright to last forever, and, in fact the Motion Picture Association
| + | |
- | of America says it wants perpetual copyright, but even they don't have
| + | |
- | enough power yet to amend the US Constitution to permit that, so the
| + | |
- | worked out a scheme that has the same results without permitting it,
| + | |
- | which we called "The perpetual copyright on the instalment plan". The
| + | |
- | idea is: every 20 year they extend copyright 20 more years, and the
| + | |
- | will do that forever. Thus, at anywhere in the time, if you pick up
| + | |
- | a particular work, there is a certain day, where it is supposed to go
| + | |
- | into the public domain, but don't hold your breath, because by the time
| + | |
- | you get there, it will have been postponed 20 years and by the time you
| + | |
- | get there, it will be postponed 20 more years, and this way, they hope,
| + | |
- | nothing will go into the public domain again, and, in fact, nothing has
| + | |
- | gone into the public domain in the US for decades.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | === Dimensions of the copyright power. Digital Restrictions Management ===
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:26:35}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | The duration is the one dimension of copyright power, the other
| + | |
- | dimension is the extent of the power: which activities, which uses
| + | |
- | are controlled by copyright. Now. In the age of the printing press,
| + | |
- | copyright was never supposed to control every use of copyrighted work,
| + | |
- | in the broad space of what you can do with the work, copyright was an
| + | |
- | exception. The rest were unregulated uses. However, the publishers have
| + | |
- | envisioned that with digital technology they can totally control access,
| + | |
- | they hoped to establish a "pay per read" universe, when you have to get
| + | |
- | permission even to read the part of the book. This is done with Digital
| + | |
- | Restrictions Management or DRM, which means designing products so that
| + | |
- | they restrict the users, specifically, products for playing music,
| + | |
- | playing videos, reading book or accessing any sort of information,
| + | |
- | they are designed to control you, not serve you. And we have seen this
| + | |
- | problem in a broad spectrum of different kinds of works.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:28:10}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | For instance, we see it in videos. DVDs were the first widely adopted
| + | |
- | product designed to restrict the user. DVD movies are usually in an
| + | |
- | encrypted format and the format details were secret. The DVD conspiracy
| + | |
- | was set up to make sure that public would not be able to access the
| + | |
- | data on DVDs, except in limited restricted ways. Here is how it works.
| + | |
- | This conspiracy knows the format of DVDs, anybody who wants to make a
| + | |
- | DVD player has to go to the conspiracy and ask for the secret, and the
| + | |
- | conspiracy says: "we will tell you the secret, if you sign this contract
| + | |
- | where you promise that your DVD players will restrict users just like
| + | |
- | other DVD players do, we require that of all the manufactures of DVD
| + | |
- | players". This is why there is effectively no competition in the DVD
| + | |
- | players, because no matter how many different manufacturers they are,
| + | |
- | all the players restrict the users the same way.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:29:47}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Naturally, people try to escape from these restrictions. People, in fact,
| + | |
- | figured out the format of DVD encryption and wrote a free program to break
| + | |
- | the encryption. That program is censored in the US today. (Is the window
| + | |
- | is actually open?.. It is getting hotter.. Get open any more, that will
| + | |
- | help. There are lot of people in here, and we really need ventilation.)
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:30:28}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | So, the United States practices censorship of software. This was
| + | |
- | established by the law "Digital Millennium Copyright Act", also in
| + | |
- | 1998. Which says: when a work is published in encrypted form, in any form
| + | |
- | that is designed to restrict the public, then distributing anything that
| + | |
- | enables people to escape from these restrictions is a crime. In other
| + | |
- | words, instead of defending us, what the government should have done,
| + | |
- | it joined with our enemies to oppress us. So, I call it the government
| + | |
- | of occupation... [applause] ...for the corporate empire.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:31:39}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Now, people ask me how I know about this conspiracy. The answer is: it's
| + | |
- | not secret. They announced the existence of this conspiracy. They have
| + | |
- | so little fear that anything will be done to stop them from attacking
| + | |
- | the public, that they don't even see the need to hide what they're
| + | |
- | doing. I think, what they're doing ought to be a crime, any conspiracy
| + | |
- | of companies to restrict the technology available to the public should
| + | |
- | be a crime. [applause]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:32:21}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | And that would require a democratic government, and not very many of
| + | |
- | those left in the world.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:32:36}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Now. Even though that program is censored, it is widely available. You
| + | |
- | can get a copy of free software to play DVD, it's not hard. Now. In some
| + | |
- | other countries it's a crime even to have a copy, for instance, in France,
| + | |
- | you can be put in prison just for having a copy of free software to play
| + | |
- | DVD. But the fact is the software is available, so they have designed a
| + | |
- | new scheme to restrict the access to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. That scheme
| + | |
- | is called AACS, but I call it "the axe", and we should "give it the axe",
| + | |
- | so don't buy HD-DVD, don't buy Blu-Ray, don't buy any product with digital
| + | |
- | restrictions management, unless you personally have the means to break
| + | |
- | the restrictions of the product. Now, in fact, people have broken the axe,
| + | |
- | a year ago code was released that can result in a proper algorithm...
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ([looks at someone who closes window] keep it open, it's still hot in
| + | |
- | here, please keep it open, it's still hot. [someone near the window
| + | |
- | replies: "It's cold!"]. Well, how about if I stand over there?.. [reply:
| + | |
- | "It's a good idea", laughter]. [RMS makes several steps towards window]
| + | |
- | Well, it's seems inconvenient to get there, a sort of mountain is in
| + | |
- | the way. [laughter, RMS returns to his place])
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:34:35}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | And then a few months later I saw a strange photo, a friend showed it to
| + | |
- | me, it showed two very cute adorable puppies and above them there was
| + | |
- | sixteen hex numbers. And I asked myself: what in a world is this? Why
| + | |
- | put these sixteen hex digits and these two cute puppies? I wonder if
| + | |
- | it's some sort of key. And it turned out that was the key to break
| + | |
- | the axe. Somebody posted this on a site called dig [digg?], and the
| + | |
- | editors deleted it, because publishing that in they US is illegal, it's
| + | |
- | censored. And then somebody else posted it again and they took in down
| + | |
- | again, and hundreds of people posted it and then editors said: "okay,
| + | |
- | we give up, we can't stop people from circulating this information". And
| + | |
- | eventually these sixteen hex digits were posted in over 700,000 web pages
| + | |
- | in the strong show of public opposition to these conspiracies to restrict
| + | |
- | our technology. But this doesn't mean the axe is defeated, because it
| + | |
- | was designed that they can change the key, and they did. [light laughter]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:36:11}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | So perhaps the people who had found that key should have waited a year or
| + | |
- | two, because the discs that are already published those, can be decoded,
| + | |
- | but the future ones which will use a new key, those will not be decodable
| + | |
- | until someone finds that key, so the people engaged in breaking DRM
| + | |
- | has to think strategically, it's like you are breaking enemy's codes,
| + | |
- | how do you cause the enemy the most damage, and set back, how do you
| + | |
- | basically going to defeat our enemy? Because all those companies making
| + | |
- | things designed to restrict our use of our technology are our enemies.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:37:12}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | We've also seen DRM in music. Starting most of a decade ago we started
| + | |
- | to see things that looked like CDs, but they were not real CDs, because
| + | |
- | they didn't follow... it were not real Compact Discs, because the didn't
| + | |
- | follow the specifications of the CD format. So we called them Corrupt
| + | |
- | Discs. I was once invited to give a speech on this topic by one of the
| + | |
- | regions of Spain, and then they gave me a gift, some records of music of
| + | |
- | that region, and one of them I was curiously to listen to, but before I
| + | |
- | opened it I know it... instead of saying "Compact Disc" it said "Copy
| + | |
- | Control. This disc can be played on Windows and Macintosh systems.",
| + | |
- | [laughter] meaning that it can't be played with free software. It was
| + | |
- | a good thing that I haven't opened it yet, because I handed it back to
| + | |
- | my host and have said: here you can see the face of the enemy, please
| + | |
- | take this back to the store, because they shouldn't be able to keep
| + | |
- | your money. I don't want them to get money from me, they shouldn't get
| + | |
- | your money either. So, I've never heard that music, but that's okay,
| + | |
- | I'd rather not hear that music, than accept DRM.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:38:46}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Sony about 3 years ago implemented a very interesting DRM scheme on
| + | |
- | music recordings. You would put this Corrupt Disc into the computer
| + | |
- | and it would load software into the system without telling you. And
| + | |
- | that software was called a RootKit, because it's something like what
| + | |
- | security breakers do, crackers, something like what a virus might do. That
| + | |
- | software was installed deep into the system and then it modified some of
| + | |
- | the system commands, so that they would lie and disguise the presence of
| + | |
- | that software, and it modified other commands so that it would be hard
| + | |
- | to remove that software. Now, this was a crime in fact, but that's not
| + | |
- | all, because it also damaged the security of the computer, and it also
| + | |
- | committed copyright infringement, because it contained free software
| + | |
- | that have been released under the GNU GPL [light laughter] included in
| + | |
- | the combination that was not free and without giving the user a copy of
| + | |
- | GNU GPL to inform him of his rights. People got very angry of this. But,
| + | |
- | unfortunately, most of the anger focused on the other side nasty things,
| + | |
- | that Sony had done and not on the nasty purpose of that all, which was
| + | |
- | to restrict the user's access to the music that they have bought.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:40:31}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | It turns out thought, that there was a couple of things that made this
| + | |
- | scheme actually less harmful than most. First of all, it only affected
| + | |
- | Windows users [light laughter]. And second, even a Windows user could
| + | |
- | protect himself by holding down a certain key on the keyboard when
| + | |
- | putting the disc in. [light laughter] So it was actually fairly easy
| + | |
- | to bypass. But, you know, millions of people didn't know about this,
| + | |
- | so their machines got infected. They got very angry, they sued Sony,
| + | |
- | and Sony settled the suit by promising that next time they try to control
| + | |
- | your access to your copies of data, they wouldn't do the other secondary
| + | |
- | nasty things [light laughter]. But they learned their lesson. Next time
| + | |
- | the RootKit will be built in before you get the machine and it will be
| + | |
- | impossible to remove. [light laughter] And that's already the case in
| + | |
- | the PlayStation 3, it is a very nasty thing.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:41:56}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | We also see attempts to impose digital restrictions management on
| + | |
- | books. Several years ago there was a powerful campaign in some countries
| + | |
- | at least, trying to convince us to switch to e-books, and, of course,
| + | |
- | these e-book have DRM. Basically, the publishers want to take away
| + | |
- | certain traditional freedoms of readers. Freedoms to do things like
| + | |
- | selling book to the used books store, borrowing from the public library,
| + | |
- | buying anonymously by paying cash or lend it to your friend. And even the
| + | |
- | freedom to keep the book for as long as you like and read it many times
| + | |
- | and then pass it on to you children and they might read it and pass it
| + | |
- | on, all these freedoms they wanna take away from us. They want total
| + | |
- | control over what we do with our books. But there are so many people
| + | |
- | that read books and are accustomed to certain freedoms, that they will
| + | |
- | have trouble passing the law in the US taking away these freedoms from
| + | |
- | readers. So they came up with two-stage plan to achieve the same goal.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:43:20}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | The first stage was take away these freedoms for e-books and that they
| + | |
- | achieved fairly easily, that's the result of the Digital Millennium
| + | |
- | Copyright Act, which was passed in 1998 by the House of Representatives
| + | |
- | without even bothering to vote, because no one dared to say: "I demand
| + | |
- | a vote on this". The second stage was to convince people to switch from
| + | |
- | printed books to e-books. That they tried and it didn't work.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Now. There was an organized PR campaign to convince people to use e-books,
| + | |
- | I know this, because in 2001 I was in an airplane in Brazil on a domestic
| + | |
- | flight, and I pulled out the in-flight magazine, which I rarely do,
| + | |
- | an ordinary magazine would had an editorial, this one had an article:
| + | |
- | discussing the question of how many years it would take before that
| + | |
- | we all are using e-books. Now, those magazines never publish anything
| + | |
- | unless they have a specific business reason to do so. Either it convinces
| + | |
- | the people to fly more, or they pay. So I know, there was an organized
| + | |
- | campaign for this. One publisher thought it would be effective to start
| + | |
- | off it's line of e-books with my biography. [light laughter] So they
| + | |
- | found an author and sent him to me, and he asked if I would like to
| + | |
- | cooperate, and I said: sure, provided this book is published without
| + | |
- | encryption [laughter, applause]. And they said no. So I suggested he
| + | |
- | try a different publisher who said "yes", and the book was written and
| + | |
- | published and it nominally is not encrypted, it's actually free, and
| + | |
- | you can download the whole text with markup, and then you can edit it
| + | |
- | and publish your own version. [laughter, applause].
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:45:46}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Well, e-book were failure commercially, and I have been telling people
| + | |
- | for years, they will try again. Well, now they're trying again. We've
| + | |
- | seen a couple of e-book readers announced recently, there is the "Sony
| + | |
- | Shredder", which describes what it will do to our books. And there is
| + | |
- | "Amazon swindle" [light laughter]. And make sure your friends know,
| + | |
- | before they buy one of these, that buying one of these is tenth amount
| + | |
- | to saying: "I'm not gonna lend my friend's books any more", so it means
| + | |
- | being a jerk. [laughter, applause]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Make sure that your friends know, that if they buy one of these and start
| + | |
- | using it, you and, it should be a lots of people who tell him this,
| + | |
- | will interpret this basically as refusal to be friends anymore. So,
| + | |
- | across the board we have seen attempts to use digital technology in our
| + | |
- | own computers against us. To subject us, to the power of the publishers.
| + | |
- | They want to control whatever we do with our own copies, taking away
| + | |
- | rights, that legally otherwise we would still have under the copyright
| + | |
- | law. They're trying to make copyright total control. They do this because
| + | |
- | they buy the support of governments, and governments don't defend us. But
| + | |
- | what would a democratic government do?
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:47:56}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | I should mention another dimension of extending copyright power, and
| + | |
- | that is increasing the penalties for unauthorized copying. And there
| + | |
- | Russia may be the world champion [laughter] with six-year punishments
| + | |
- | for unauthorized copying. That law is a total injustice it should be
| + | |
- | eliminated. But what would democratic governments do?
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | === Reducing copyright power ===
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:48:21}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Well, they would reduce copyright power, so that we, the general public,
| + | |
- | keep some of our natural rights, instead of trading them away. But what,
| + | |
- | more specifically.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | First of all, they should reduce copyright each dimension. First of all,
| + | |
- | there is a dimension of time. While copyright has been extended and
| + | |
- | extended, the publication cycle was getting shorter and shorter. In the
| + | |
- | US today most books are remainder, which means: sold off cheap within
| + | |
- | two years, and they go out of print within three. So, they don't need
| + | |
- | copyright to last for up to a hundred and fifty years. So I propose
| + | |
- | that copyright should last for ten years starting with the date of
| + | |
- | publication. [applause]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:49:32}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | I say "starting with the date of publication", because while the
| + | |
- | work remains unpublished, we don't have copies, so we're not losing
| + | |
- | anything, it's a purely theoretical question, whether we would be
| + | |
- | allowed to copy them if we had them. We might as well let the author
| + | |
- | to wait how long it takes to find a publisher for the work, but then
| + | |
- | it should be ten years. Now. I propose this as a first adjustment, I'm
| + | |
- | not sure ten years is right, I'm saying: let's try ten years. Let's see
| + | |
- | how it works. Maybe we'll want to extend it some, maybe we'll want to
| + | |
- | shorten it even more, I don't know. Ten year seems, because ten years
| + | |
- | is three times the usual publication cycle, I'm comfortable that it's
| + | |
- | long enough. However, not everyone agrees with this. I proposed this
| + | |
- | at a panel discussion with some writers. And I expected fireworks and
| + | |
- | I got some. Because the award-winning fantasy writer, sitting next to
| + | |
- | me, said: "Ten years? Absolutely not! Anything more than five years is
| + | |
- | unacceptable." [laughter, applause].
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:50:53}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Now I was surprised when he said that, because I've been believing that
| + | |
- | publishers' propaganda, since the publishers said they were doing this
| + | |
- | for the authors. I assumed naively that the authors wanted this too. But
| + | |
- | the fact is those same publishers, that demand more power over us in
| + | |
- | the name of the authors, are grinding those authors into the ground with
| + | |
- | the ground of their heels, frequently.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | For instance, this author, the writer who objected, who didn't wanted more
| + | |
- | than five years copyright, he had a legal lawsuit with his publisher. You
| + | |
- | see, his contract said that if the book was out of print, if the books
| + | |
- | were out of print, the rights will revert to him and he would be allowed
| + | |
- | to distribute copies again. Well, practically speaking, he had found that
| + | |
- | his book was out of print, people couldn't get it, but the publisher
| + | |
- | refused to acknowledge that and was using copyright to stop him from
| + | |
- | distributing copies of his own books, which he wanted to do, so that
| + | |
- | people could read them.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:52:14}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | He knew that unless he became a superstar, more than ten years of
| + | |
- | copyright was not likely to do.. more than five years of copyright was not
| + | |
- | likely to do him much good. So he said: five years maximum. Well, we could
| + | |
- | try ten years, maybe we'll decide then to shorten it even more. I won't
| + | |
- | argue against it, I just propose ten years as a good first adjustment,
| + | |
- | which we could then further adjust.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | === Three categories of works ===
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:52:57}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | But what about the other dimension of copyright, its extent, the range
| + | |
- | of activities it covers. Well, we should reduce that too, but not the
| + | |
- | same for everything. I don't think that we should treat all works the
| + | |
- | same and I distinguish three broad categories of works that I think we
| + | |
- | should treat in different ways, each one according to way it's used.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | These categories are: first, functional, practical works, works that you
| + | |
- | use to do a job in your life; second, works of opinion and testimony,
| + | |
- | the works that express... those social contribution is they say what
| + | |
- | certain people thought; third: the works of art and entertainment,
| + | |
- | whose social contribution lies in the impact of the work itself. Three
| + | |
- | different ways that a work can contribute to society. And because these
| + | |
- | contributions work differently, I think that different copyright laws
| + | |
- | are appropriate for them.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== Practical works ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | First, the works of... functional, practical works, the works you use to
| + | |
- | do a practical job. These include software, recipes, educational works,
| + | |
- | reference works, text funds, and various other things, things that
| + | |
- | ordinary people could use to do practical jobs. These must be free. The
| + | |
- | same arguments that apply to the software, why software should be free,
| + | |
- | are applied to the other kinds of the functional works. If you're using
| + | |
- | a work to do a job in your life and you can control what the work does,
| + | |
- | then you can control your life. So you must be free to change it, and
| + | |
- | once you changed it you should be free to publish your version, because
| + | |
- | other people might have needs similar to yours, or preferences similar to
| + | |
- | yours. Your version, which you made, because it's useful to you perhaps,
| + | |
- | could be useful to other people as well. So you should be able to publish
| + | |
- | your version. And this leads to the conclusion that they have to be free.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:55:23}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Now, people might say: but if there is no way to restrict the users and
| + | |
- | interfere with their use of the works, they'll never be made. Well, we
| + | |
- | don't have to be afraid that this (...)/?/ will follow if these works
| + | |
- | are free, because now we have enough examples that show that they will
| + | |
- | be made, they are made even today, lots of these works are made and
| + | |
- | they are free. We have the example of the free software community, which
| + | |
- | has developed thousands of useful applications, we have the example of
| + | |
- | all the recipes that are circulating and it's normal for cooks to copy
| + | |
- | recipes and modify recipes, and then we have, in the area of reference
| + | |
- | works we have the example of Wikipedia and some of the other reference
| + | |
- | sites of the similar sort, which are free and have done a tremendous job.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:56:20}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | So, there is no need to be scared. We don't need to sabotage the use of
| + | |
- | these work in order to get them developed. We should make them free. And
| + | |
- | this is the answer to that question I posed in the beginning. This is
| + | |
- | how far the ideas of free software go, in my opinion.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Now. The question for other two categories of works is the same, but I
| + | |
- | don't think it's the same answer. Mean, you could apply the same answer
| + | |
- | but that's not what I think is right. I don't try to generalize every
| + | |
- | view that I've ever hold as far as it can possibly go, because even if
| + | |
- | the answer makes sense over here, it doesn't mean it's the right answer
| + | |
- | over here. We have to think about each area.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== Works of opinion and testimony ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:57:14}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Let's get to the category two, the category of works, whose social
| + | |
- | contribution is they say what certain people thought. This includes
| + | |
- | memoirs and other biographies, essays of opinion, scientific papers. After
| + | |
- | all, the real purpose of a scientific paper is it says: "we did this and
| + | |
- | we saw this", and the names of the authors on that paper are crucial. It
| + | |
- | wouldn't be the same if it just said: "somebody did this" or "somebody
| + | |
- | saw this" and we don't know who. You couldn't rely on it that way, but
| + | |
- | when their authors' names are on it, and their reputations are behind
| + | |
- | the honesty of it and the validity of it, then it's good for something.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Now. Publishing a modified version of these works is not socially useful,
| + | |
- | that is just misrepresenting somebody. There is no particular reason why
| + | |
- | we want that to be allowed. And that means we would have a compromise
| + | |
- | copyright system, where everyone is free to redistribute exact copies
| + | |
- | of the work non-commercially, but anything else requires permission,
| + | |
- | just as now. So it will still be a copyright system, and it will cover
| + | |
- | commercial use, and it will cover modification, but non-commercial
| + | |
- | redistribution of the exact copies, that freedom we would all have.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:58:54}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | And that, I believe, is the minimum freedom that we must have for all
| + | |
- | kinds of works. To take away this freedom is what makes copyright into
| + | |
- | tyranny. To take away this freedom, the freedom to share, is what requires
| + | |
- | dracony /?/ and punishments and outrageous means of enforcement. By
| + | |
- | winning back this freedom, by making these works shareable, we can turn
| + | |
- | copyright back into an industrial regulation as it ought to be. So,
| + | |
- | that's what I recommend for these works.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== Artistic and entertainment works ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {00:59:36}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | What about the third category, artistic and entertainment works? For
| + | |
- | that category it was hard for me to decide about modification, because
| + | |
- | there are various arguments on both sides. There is the argument
| + | |
- | that work can have an artistic integrity and modified versions could
| + | |
- | destroy that integrity, and I think this is sometimes true, although,
| + | |
- | most authors don't have as much integrity as they pretend to, and you
| + | |
- | can see that by the way they allow Hollywood to butcher those works
| + | |
- | in exchange for money. But there are some who won't, there are some
| + | |
- | who won't let Hollywood to butcher it, and they will say: "You have to
| + | |
- | make it faithfully, you have to do it right". Okay, those authors may
| + | |
- | have integrity, but on the other side modifying art could produce good
| + | |
- | contributions, interesting contributions to art.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:00:41}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Consider the folk process, where a series of people can transform a work
| + | |
- | and produce something very rich and beautiful. But if we want to consider
| + | |
- | only named authors, consider Shakespeare. Some of Shakespeare's plays
| + | |
- | used stories that were copied from other works published a few decades
| + | |
- | before. If today's copyright law had been in effect then, those plays of
| + | |
- | Shakespeare would not have been allowed and probably they wouldn't have
| + | |
- | been written. And surely, not published or performed. So, if Shakespeare
| + | |
- | had complained about this, which he probably wouldn't have, but if he
| + | |
- | had, then the copyright holders, who might have been perhaps the children
| + | |
- | of the authors, people not particularly artistic themselves, they might
| + | |
- | have said: "How dare you propose to make a cheap rip-off of my father's
| + | |
- | work? [light laughter] It has to be a cheap rip-off, because you want
| + | |
- | to copy from it, so why don't you go away and think of something else?"
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | We, listening to this, since we would never have seen that play of
| + | |
- | Shakespeare which would never had written it, we wouldn't know that it
| + | |
- | wasn't true. Since we have seen these plays we can say they're great
| + | |
- | works of literature, but if we hadn't seen them, we wouldn't know that.
| + | |
- | So we could easily been mislead by these arguments made by the copyright
| + | |
- | holders.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:02:23}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | For many years I wasn't sure what to do about these two valid arguments
| + | |
- | and then I realized that while modifying art work could be useful,
| + | |
- | it's not urgent. If you are using a functional work to do a job today
| + | |
- | and it's not quite right, you have to be free to change it today. And
| + | |
- | you should be free to publish your modified version today, so tomorrow
| + | |
- | other people can get the benefit. But with the work of art, we can wait,
| + | |
- | so if copyright last for ten years, makes, for ten years we can have a
| + | |
- | compromise copyright system where people are free to non-commercially
| + | |
- | redistribute exact copies, and that's all. And then after ten years it
| + | |
- | will go into the public domain and then you could publish your modified
| + | |
- | version. So that's what I propose for art.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | And that's how I propose to change copyright law, that's what I think
| + | |
- | the right solution is today. In particular this means legalizing the
| + | |
- | peer-to-peer sharing. [applause]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | === Proposed ways to support artists ===
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:03:50}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | But some people say: If we share things peer-to-peer, that's taking money
| + | |
- | out of mouths of that starving musicians [laughter], that's bullshit,
| + | |
- | the starving musicians get nothing from the present system, they can't
| + | |
- | lose what they can't get. The record companies treat musicians very
| + | |
- | badly. When I buy a commercial CD, which I do, I feel ashamed that I'm
| + | |
- | not supporting the musicians. [light laughter, applause], because unless
| + | |
- | I'm buying it from the musicians, I know that musicians are probably
| + | |
- | going to get nothing, zero.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:04:43}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | You might wonder about this: isn't that part of the price is for
| + | |
- | musicians? Well, yes, theoretically, but the production and publicity
| + | |
- | expenses are treated as an advance to the musicians, which means that when
| + | |
- | you buy the CD that share that is for the musicians comes from one account
| + | |
- | of the record company to another, and the musicians never get it, and
| + | |
- | very few records actually sell so many copies that they finish repaying
| + | |
- | the so-called advance and start actually giving the musicians money,
| + | |
- | some records can go gold and still not reach this point. The exception
| + | |
- | of course is for the long-established superstars, because they finish
| + | |
- | they first record contract, which usually covers five or seven records
| + | |
- | and then they can negotiate a new contract and since they're superstars,
| + | |
- | they can now get a decent contract, that doesn't exploit them.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:05:51}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | So, If you're buying their records, they actually get some, then,
| + | |
- | of course, they're rich anyway, so it's not crucial. So, really the
| + | |
- | musicians don't stand to lose anything, except for superstars, who are
| + | |
- | already rich, they don't stand to lose anything from peer-to-peer sharing.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Now. This does not mean that musicians don't get any benefit from their
| + | |
- | record contracts, because the publicity does have an effect, that more
| + | |
- | people go to their concerts, they have more concerts, and they make some
| + | |
- | money that way, and then at the concerts they can sell things including
| + | |
- | records, and they do make money from that, so they do benefit, but
| + | |
- | there's more than one way to give musicians publicity. In fact, this
| + | |
- | method of publicity is based on commercial planning, it's hype. It's
| + | |
- | the hype musical complex. And it distorts music, so I'd rather give
| + | |
- | musicians publicity in the way I do it, which is, by saying to people:
| + | |
- | hey, listen to that music, isn't that wonderful?..
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:07:07}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | How about e-mailing a copy of somebody's song to your friend, that's
| + | |
- | a great way to give musicians publicity, I'd rather see musicians get
| + | |
- | publicity this way. It not only means that we can get rid of this nasty
| + | |
- | record companies and have them stop them interfering with us enjoying
| + | |
- | the music, but it also healthier for music to have music publicity and
| + | |
- | popularity not be controlled by money.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:07:42}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | So, a site /?/ from a superstar musicians will not be any worse if we
| + | |
- | will legalize the peer-to-peer sharing. But we might do a better job
| + | |
- | than the current system of supporting musicians. I would like to, and
| + | |
- | I have two proposals that have to do that.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== Taxes and cube root of popularity ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:08:04}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | One method uses tax. You tax blank discs, or internet connectivity,
| + | |
- | or whatever, something that vaguely relates to enjoying music and
| + | |
- | then you distribute that money entirely to the musicians, composers and
| + | |
- | song-writers, based on their popularity, but not in linear proportion. And
| + | |
- | the reason is this: a superstar could be a thousand times as popular
| + | |
- | as somebody else, as a successful musician, and fairly popular. If
| + | |
- | you distribute the money in linear proportion [shows it by hand as
| + | |
- | a straight line], a few superstars will take almost all the money,
| + | |
- | leaving very little for all the other musicians, which means the system
| + | |
- | will work very inefficiently at supporting the activity of music, so,
| + | |
- | what I propose is take the cube root of the popularity of each artist,
| + | |
- | or maybe the fourth root, well, you could adjust this, the point is
| + | |
- | you have a mathematical formula, and it looks like this [shows it by
| + | |
- | hand as a typical root curve], so if the superstar is a thousand times
| + | |
- | as popular, if we use the cube root, well, the superstar will get ten
| + | |
- | much as money. Instead of the thousand times. Well, this way a few
| + | |
- | superstars, although each on get more than the usual amount, it still
| + | |
- | ends up to a small fraction of the money, meaning most of the money can
| + | |
- | go to supporting lots of other musicians who are fairly popular but not
| + | |
- | superstars. And the result is a system that works efficiently to support
| + | |
- | the musicians who really need it. And still gives you to whatever extent
| + | |
- | such an incentive does any good, because it could do harm instead. /?/
| + | |
- | External incentives can kill creativity, they can be quite harmful,
| + | |
- | but nonetheless, the superstars could still expect to get more, now,
| + | |
- | if you get more popular you do get more, but it's on a sliding scale,
| + | |
- | so a thousand times a popularity doesn't give you a thousand times as
| + | |
- | much money, only ten times as much, and the result is paying less than
| + | |
- | we do now to the copyright system, we can support musicians a lot better.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== Voluntary payments ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:10:47}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | But, some people don't like taxes. I don't mind taxes, I believe in
| + | |
- | a wealthier state and the wealthier state means to collect taxes. But,
| + | |
- | some people don't like taxes, so I have another approach to suggest. And
| + | |
- | that is voluntary payments. Imagine that every player has a button you
| + | |
- | can push, that would send one dollar to the artists, whether the e-book
| + | |
- | reader, or television set, or music box, whatever, push the button and
| + | |
- | send the dollar. Lots of people will do this, because.. first of all,
| + | |
- | the dollar is not that much money. Well, they are poor people in the
| + | |
- | world, they can't afford to send the dollar, and that's okay, they
| + | |
- | shouldn't. We don't need to squeeze money out of them to support the
| + | |
- | arts. They are plenty people in the world for whom one dollar is not
| + | |
- | that much, who can push the button and who wouldn't mind, they wouldn't
| + | |
- | notice the money, if the push it once a week, they won't mind. And they
| + | |
- | will do. And I expect we can convince a lot of people even to push it
| + | |
- | once a day. And if we are not satisfied with how much money people are
| + | |
- | sending to the musicians or whoever in this way, we can have a friendly,
| + | |
- | warm, loving publicity campaign: "Have you sent a dollar to the people
| + | |
- | who made this song or a movie this week? (or wrote a book?) If not --
| + | |
- | why not? Didn't you enjoy it? Send them a little bit, it's so easy,
| + | |
- | you'll never miss the money." And this would be instead of these cruel,
| + | |
- | fictitious /?/ PR propaganda campaigns saying that sharing is theft.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:13:00}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Society is based on the spirit of good will, and the practice of sharing
| + | |
- | with and cooperating with other people in your community, to attack this
| + | |
- | is to attack society. Today's copyright law is an attack on society and
| + | |
- | it is intolerable. But once we get rid of it, we'll have a system that
| + | |
- | treats us ethically, and if we wish to increase our support for those
| + | |
- | who write, we have easy ways to do it.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:13:40}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | So, at this point I will answer questions.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | (Where is the box, is it here now? So I've got some... [to person X:]
| + | |
- | Did you get the box? [X: I've sent somebody to retrieve it] He obviously
| + | |
- | didn't return, there must be a monster in that office that ate him up
| + | |
- | or something like that. [laughter, X leaves the room]. So be careful,
| + | |
- | bring someone else with you! [light laughter] Splitting up is the recipe
| + | |
- | for getting eaten.)
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | === Questions ===
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:14:14}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Anyway, questions.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== What countries are democratic? ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:14:17}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: What countries are democratic in your sense?]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | I'm not sure that they are any [laughter, applause]. New Zealand seems
| + | |
- | better than most. Certainly not the US, Bush stole the election twice
| + | |
- | and Congress just sells laws to.. ([discovers some cloth in the box
| + | |
- | just brought:] uh-oh, what's this? [laughter] Ah.) And certainly not the
| + | |
- | European Union, which keeps on adopting laws more and more nasty for the
| + | |
- | sake of publishers. Certainly not Russia, I read that in the election
| + | |
- | for Parliament the vote counts are too round, apparently somebody chose
| + | |
- | what the vote counts would be and he picked round fractions like ten
| + | |
- | percent and twenty percent, I'm sure next time they would make that
| + | |
- | mistake. [laughter, applause] But you see, democracy doesn't just mean
| + | |
- | that people vote. It means that those who are especially powerful are
| + | |
- | not allowed to have political power in proportion to their own personal
| + | |
- | influence and wealth. If you let rich people deploy their influence to
| + | |
- | make people vote for what they want, that is not democracy.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== Becoming member of the Congress ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:16:20}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: Richard, Lawrence Lessig tried... well, not tried, but
| + | |
- | he thought about becoming member of the Congress..]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | I don't know about that.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: Yes. What do you think about becoming member of
| + | |
- | Congress?]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | You mean for Lawrence Lessig?
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: Maybe for you.]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | For Lawrence Lessig I think he's honest so I guess he would be better
| + | |
- | than most of the people in Congress now. As for me, I don't think people
| + | |
- | would vote for me. [laughter] For one thing: I'm an atheist. And in the
| + | |
- | US an atheist can't get elected docash /?/. A lot of people believe that
| + | |
- | atheists are evil. [light laughter] They believe that to be an atheist is
| + | |
- | to have no ethics. And then, well, I see plenty of people who claims to be
| + | |
- | religious and in the name of their religion they do horrible things. Bush
| + | |
- | says that god told him to launch his war of conquest to Iraq [laughter,
| + | |
- | applause]. But then what would you expect from a god like that?
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== RFID chips ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:17:54}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: So, Richard, (can I ask you a question) in the beginning of
| + | |
- | your conversation you touched theme of hardware. There is a sort
| + | |
- | of restriction of human rights, it's the RFID chips, so what's your
| + | |
- | opinion on this and will you start a company like "Stop DRM"
| + | |
- | (apparently
| + | |
- | listener mispronounced 'company' for 'campaign', which has lead to a
| + | |
- | confusion. --Pavel)]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | I don't mind starting a companies, I don't mind what I will do with
| + | |
- | one, I'm so busy doing what I'm already doing, I don't see I can start
| + | |
- | anything new. But I am worried about RFIDs, well, there are some uses
| + | |
- | for RFIDs that I think are okay, when a shipment from the manufacturer
| + | |
- | to a store has an RFID on it for the sake of making sure that things
| + | |
- | don't get stolen, I see no harm in that.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:18:46}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | It's when they start putting RFIDs into the things we carry, then it
| + | |
- | becomes dangerous. Now, I have a card that I've used to pay for subway
| + | |
- | in Boston, and it has an RFID in it, the only reason I had it is because
| + | |
- | they give you discount if you use that. But I've made sure they don't
| + | |
- | know who has it and I always kept it an aluminium foil except when I
| + | |
- | actually go into the subway and then I put it right back in, so it can't
| + | |
- | be tracked anywhere else, and third, after every couple of months I get
| + | |
- | a new one and I give away the old one to somebody else and so by trying
| + | |
- | to get people going swapping them around so that they are not good for
| + | |
- | surveillance. We have to resist these things. RFIDs in passports, are
| + | |
- | very... a nasty and stupid idea. And I worry also about RFIDs in credit
| + | |
- | cards, I don't know, it's sometimes hard to tell.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:20:03}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: Implantation to...?]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Well, that's obviously nasty, but it doesn't have to go that far to be
| + | |
- | nasty. For instance, in the US a lot of people have an RFID in their
| + | |
- | cars and they use this to pay toll on the highways and bridges, and of
| + | |
- | course, this means that system keeps track of everywhere they go. So,
| + | |
- | people shouldn't use that. Well, those systems could be built a way that
| + | |
- | is anonymous way, you can make anonymous payment system, the technology
| + | |
- | is not the hard part, but our government wants to spy on people and has
| + | |
- | no respect for human rights.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:20:49}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: Usually they mention terrorists...]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Oh, yes, they always say they are protecting us from terrorists unless
| + | |
- | they say they're protecting us from child pornographers they are some
| + | |
- | kind of deem /?/ that they are protecting us from, but that's absurd
| + | |
- | because the big danger is them. [laughter]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== The era of "software as a service" ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:21:15}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: How do you see a future of free software in the era of "software as
| + | |
- | a service"?]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Well, I don't like that term, "software as a service", I think it's
| + | |
- | misleading and I do not use it. It's a confusing way to refer to two
| + | |
- | different practices, which we need to distinguish. One of them is sites
| + | |
- | that send a program to you browser to run on your machine. What I think,
| + | |
- | if I'm going to run that program, I want to get in in the usual way,
| + | |
- | I want to have it installed on my machine, and I want it to be free
| + | |
- | software,and I want to be able to change my copy of it. So I consider
| + | |
- | those things totally unacceptable. But the other thing, that this confused
| + | |
- | with, is using a server to do computation. And that may be okay or may
| + | |
- | be unacceptable depending on details of what the computation is.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:22:20}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Is it your computation that you do on your data or it is some other kind
| + | |
- | of thing? Well, on most sites are some other kind of thing. Let's suppose
| + | |
- | it's a search engine. Well, that's looking thought the company's data. You
| + | |
- | say: please look through your data for me. Okay. It's not your data, it's
| + | |
- | their data. Or suppose you're buying
| + | |
- | something, then you make a deal with the owner of the site. That's not
| + | |
- | doing your computation with your data, it's not something you can do on
| + | |
- | your own computer.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | On the other hand, look at Google Docs, basically, it's a spreadsheet
| + | |
- | and a word processor, and it's sends a large program to run in your
| + | |
- | browser and that's not good because that program is not free. But okay,
| + | |
- | suppose they make that program free, it'll still be a problem, and that
| + | |
- | is you are using their server to do your computing with your data. And
| + | |
- | you should have control of that. But if you do it on somebody else's
| + | |
- | server you don't have control. And note that it doesn't matter whether
| + | |
- | the software on the server is free. Suppose... You know, a lot
| + | |
- | of software running on that server is free software, and the rest is
| + | |
- | is probably custom software, Google is the only user, only Google has
| + | |
- | it, Google will never release it in any fashion, I would expect. Well,
| + | |
- | that's okay as far as it goes, but the point is you don't control what
| + | |
- | it does on their server. But suppose that they release all the source
| + | |
- | code for that custom software. You sill wouldn't control what it does
| + | |
- | on their server, it will all be free software, but if you run in on
| + | |
- | their server, you don't control them. If were free software, you could
| + | |
- | install it on your computer and then you would control. So the point is
| + | |
- | for doing you own computing on your data, if you want to have control,
| + | |
- | you have to do it on your computer with your copy of the program, and
| + | |
- | it has to be free software. So, some kinds of web servers are okay,
| + | |
- | some cause a problem. This is a different kind of issue, its structure
| + | |
- | is different, from the issue of free versus proprietary software, we
| + | |
- | have to think about it differently.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== Standartization committees ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:25:00}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: What is your opinion about activity of various standardization
| + | |
- | committees, especially those which pretend to regulate programming
| + | |
- | languages?]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Well, standards are useful, it is a way of achieving compatibility, for
| + | |
- | instance it's useful that there is a C standard, and that C compilers
| + | |
- | will interpret a lot of things the same way.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: But maybe... my question is about different
| + | |
- | thing. What about the case when they actually change languages, like C99?]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | It's useful, you know, people came up with ways to improve C, some of
| + | |
- | the changes in C99 came from me [laughter, applause], I implemented
| + | |
- | extensions in GCC and some of them people liked and then they were put
| + | |
- | in the C spec.. Great!
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== Licenses for scientific articles ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:26:16}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: What do you think about licenses for scientific jobs, for example
| + | |
- | articles, what exact types of license for example....]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Well, first of all, scientific articles, papers are in second category,
| + | |
- | they're works of testimony.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: And what exact type of licenses...]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Okay, let me answer please, let me answer, I'm trying to answer you,
| + | |
- | okay? [light laughter] So, I believe we should all have the freedom to
| + | |
- | at least the freedom to non-commercially redistribute the exact copies
| + | |
- | of them. So, that's what I recommend, release them under the license
| + | |
- | that permits that. Now, you could permit commercial exact copying too,
| + | |
- | that, you know, there is no reason not, if you want to. So, for instance,
| + | |
- | there are two Creative Commons licenses that would do this, and there
| + | |
- | is no-derivs-no-commercial license and there is no-derivs license,
| + | |
- | and I think they both are fine.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Now, the journal publishers try to prevent this. So right now science is
| + | |
- | faced with the obstruction of the publishers of scientific journals who
| + | |
- | are trying to interfere with the dissemination of scientific knowledge
| + | |
- | for the sake of their own profits. We have to defeat them, we have to
| + | |
- | perhaps get rid of them.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Now, they way I suggest for this is that universities should sign
| + | |
- | contracts with all their faculty and staff and students where the
| + | |
- | university reserves in advance the right of second publication on the
| + | |
- | university's website of the final version of any article that they
| + | |
- | publish, after it has been published by somebody else. So they have
| + | |
- | to look for publication in the same way they do now, and once that's
| + | |
- | done, the university can put a copy on its website under one of those CC
| + | |
- | licenses, and this way everything becomes available. The nice thing about
| + | |
- | this is that it doesn't matter, what the author signed with the journal
| + | |
- | publisher, because they can't take away the rights that the university
| + | |
- | already has. Of course, even better would be to simply put this into a
| + | |
- | law, or, for instance, funding agencies that fund research could make this
| + | |
- | a requirement, and one already has, I believe, it's called "The Welcome
| + | |
- | Trust" which funds biological research, or medical research, and they
| + | |
- | make it a requirement: if you get their fund, you have to agree to one
| + | |
- | way or another, I don't know exactly, but the theme is this, but one way
| + | |
- | or another they require the authors to publish their articles in a ways
| + | |
- | that are open to the public and allow redistribution. So, we're starting
| + | |
- | to do this, if enough funding sources do this, we will win the fight.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ([somebody says through mic: Пожалуйста,
| + | |
- | берите микрофон, чтобы в запись
| + | |
- | попало.] What? [laughter] [I just get to make a microphone to
| + | |
- | them...] I don't understand..)
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== Cooperating with occupation government ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:30:09}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: How do you understand, is it permittable for us cooperate with
| + | |
- | occupation government. I meant that a government are now neutral support
| + | |
- | of free software in some of bits /?/ aspects, but they do not agree with
| + | |
- | idea as it all.]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | We should cooperate them when they propose to do something that advances
| + | |
- | our freedom.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: But, if there is no absolute agreement, can we
| + | |
- | sacrifice anything?]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | I don't understand, it's too general, I'm sorry, I don't know to think
| + | |
- | about such a general question.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: Okay, for example, we propose some new amendments /?/
| + | |
- | to the copyright law...]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Sorry, new what?
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: Amendments.] Okay. [the same listener: And we
| + | |
- | cannot get the whole thing, and the final effect of the copyright law,
| + | |
- | remains that.]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Well, if it is a step in the right direction, we can support it, but we
| + | |
- | have to be clear and say: "it's only part, it only corrects a part of
| + | |
- | the problem".
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: I see, thank you.]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | So, we have to advocate what is needed to really solve the problem,
| + | |
- | but if we win only part of that it's still a victory, a partial victory.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== Ten years expiry for the GNU GPL ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:31:34}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: If copyright goes out of effect in ten years, then GNU GPL software
| + | |
- | will not be GNU GPL software in ten years?]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | That's right, it would not be GPL in ten years anymore. Well, what I
| + | |
- | propose for works in the first category, functional practical works,
| + | |
- | that they should all be free.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | (Did you want to ask a question? I want the guy who is standing against
| + | |
- | a wall in a brownish coat...)
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== How many people will push buttons ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:31:11}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: Mr. Stallman, you said us about the way to support musicians and
| + | |
- | writers by pressing button and sending them money. But do you really
| + | |
- | believe that lots of people will push these buttons...]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Oh, sure, we know it, for instance, a few months ago Radiohead released
| + | |
- | record and said: pay as much as you like and they didn't say what have
| + | |
- | they got, but there are estimates that they got millions of dollars. And
| + | |
- | the same record was being distributed in the same time through BitTorrent,
| + | |
- | so I think it's now proved, that it's not only possible to support
| + | |
- | musicians this way, but that they can even get rich.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [another listener: I can actually add a more recent example, just two days ago Nine Inch
| + | |
- | Nails released their latest album under the Creative Commons Share-alike
| + | |
- | license.. ]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Wow! [light laughter]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [..and they published first nine tracks of that album of thirty six
| + | |
- | tracks at the website for free, that instantly got into the Pirate Bay
| + | |
- | torrent and then you can buy for five dollars all the tracks in the
| + | |
- | FLAC or MP3 format without DRM, or you can pay ten or seventy of three
| + | |
- | hundred dollars for different packages.]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Oh, good!
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Three hundred dollars package is already sold out. (RMS and some
| + | |
- | listeners laugh) That was 4500 packages]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | What this shows: a lot of people like giving money to the musicians
| + | |
- | whose work they love. [laughter, applause]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | You know, anybody who bought a three hundred dollar package, he was not
| + | |
- | trying to save money, he was expressing his love. And the thing is art
| + | |
- | can do that, art makes people.. arouses people's intense feelings. When
| + | |
- | people love works of art, they want to support the artists, and in the
| + | |
- | past it has been too hard. You know, there were many times when I would
| + | |
- | happily sent some money to some musicians, but how in the world would
| + | |
- | I do that? It was too much work. If I all I had to do is push a button,
| + | |
- | suppose I could send ten dollars by pushing this button ten times... Well,
| + | |
- | that's so easy! Of course, I would do it.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: If they are not popular?]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:34:54}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Well, If they are not popular, they would not get so much money,
| + | |
- | obviously, but...
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: If they are unknown?]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | But what happens to unknown musicians today? For the most part, they
| + | |
- | don't get anything! Now. For the most part, unknown musicians are totally
| + | |
- | exploited by their record companies and they don't get any money if you
| + | |
- | buy their CDs, so when people who think that we would lose something
| + | |
- | important if we get rid of the present system, of even partly get rid of
| + | |
- | the present system, which is what I'm proposing, after all, they're taking
| + | |
- | for granted something that isn't true. The publishers, they always say:
| + | |
- | "we are doing this to support the musicians", it's easy to make a mistake
| + | |
- | of believing that the current system does support the artists. And the
| + | |
- | fact is that it almost always does not. They are rare exceptions, they
| + | |
- | are not zero, but they are rare, who make it big and get rich, and then
| + | |
- | they are all the others, who have some success, but the current system
| + | |
- | doesn't support them. You know, it supports the superstars.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: Oh, I can see.]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== Existing licenses for scientific works ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:36:12}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: Which of existing licenses do you mean as the best approximation to
| + | |
- | your second case...]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Second case?...
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [second case, scientific and other testimony...]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Oh, what I have said, there is Creative Commons, that is
| + | |
- | CC-no-derivs-no-commercial license...
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: Aha.]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ...that permits non-commercial redistribution of exact copies, and it
| + | |
- | is least permissive Creative Commons license, and its okay for these
| + | |
- | works but, of course, if you choose to permit more, that's okay too. So,
| + | |
- | any Creative Commons license is okay for these two categories [points
| + | |
- | by hand to second and third category as he had drawn them in the air
| + | |
- | around himself previously]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: Are you sure that these licenses are appropriate
| + | |
- | now to use it to publish student and scientific works of some university?]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Yes. [A silent pause. Laughter, applause]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | I usually permit commercial redistribution as well, when I publish
| + | |
- | something, my essays, they permit distribution of exact copies and they
| + | |
- | don't limit this to non-commercial.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== Promoting free software to business ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:37:48}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: What ways do you see in promoting the free software to
| + | |
- | business? Because, it's also... it's rather.. it gets population /?/...]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | I'm not an expert on that, I don't focus on business, I focus on teaching
| + | |
- | people about the human rights that they should have as software users,
| + | |
- | you see, part of the reason that business has so much power is that many
| + | |
- | people focus on... many people fond /fan? phone?/ on business, they say:
| + | |
- | Oh, how can I convince the business to do this, to accept this idea,
| + | |
- | but if you focus on convincing business that means you're accepting
| + | |
- | the values of business. Well, I don't accept those values and that's
| + | |
- | my most important point. So, I don't want to give these speeches as
| + | |
- | if I was talking to business. My main point is about the rest of life,
| + | |
- | about the values that business ignores.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: But not every business is evil?]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | I don't say they're all evil, what I'm saying is that I don't want
| + | |
- | to... You see, business is one narrow area of life. If you focus on
| + | |
- | business, in effect you strengthen that narrow area of life as if it were
| + | |
- | everything and ignoring everything outside that, and that is harmful. So,
| + | |
- | I'm not saying businesses should never exist, I'm not a communist,
| + | |
- | [laughter, growing applause] but I do say, that what I care about is
| + | |
- | our values.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== Implementing the button, online payments ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:39:30}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: You've got the musicians. How do you practically see,
| + | |
- | how could it be done, that button implemented?]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | I'm not an expert, but I know that technology exists, the technology
| + | |
- | for instance, for digital cash has been developed, it's not a technical
| + | |
- | problem, it's the social problem, how would you get this to put it to
| + | |
- | effect, that's our problem, but designing the algorithms is not the
| + | |
- | problem. I'm not an expert in this area, I just know that the methods
| + | |
- | exist.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: I meant to say that some people /...?/ seeing danger
| + | |
- | in online money transfers just the same as in RFID, it is being used
| + | |
- | just too much.]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Sorry, see danger in what?
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: in online payments. Tracking and so on...]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Online payments. Well, I see danger in it too, because right now
| + | |
- | e-commerce requires a credit card, it's not anonymous, so I don't do it. I
| + | |
- | don't buy things with credit card, I buy things with cash, in a store,
| + | |
- | a physical store, because I don't want to be recorded for where I was,
| + | |
- | what I bought, I see that that is dangerous, I agree, well, maybe we
| + | |
- | agree, if you are saying the same thing, then we agree.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: Yep. That was just concern.. my concern, and
| + | |
- | practicatorent.. /?/]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | I have to leave, I have to stop in two minutes. I have to get out of
| + | |
- | your... [RMS peers at previously mentioned mountain. laughter] by eight.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [points to another person who wants to ask]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:41:28}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: What whould you say to such and example /?/. If I buy table I
| + | |
- | don't have to give the manufacturer any information about me, if I buy
| + | |
- | copyrighted software, I should give give a lot of information..]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Well, actually, that's not necessarily true. You might be able to go to
| + | |
- | a store and buy a copy, and probably you can buy a copy like a book in
| + | |
- | a store and you can pay cash and they will not know who you are. But I
| + | |
- | agree, anonymity is important right and in general, non-free software
| + | |
- | tramples your rights in a lot of ways, that's what I say: don't use
| + | |
- | non-free software, protect your freedom.
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [the same listener: Thank you]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | ==== Private software, military technologies ====
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:42:09}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | [Q: All software should be free, but do you understand that always will be
| + | |
- | some fields where software can't be free, such as military technologies?]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | Well, that's different. You see, software for military use is not
| + | |
- | available to the public at all. That's different from proprietary
| + | |
- | software. Microsoft doesn't say: "You can't have Windows, it's a secret",
| + | |
- | they say: "Sure, you can have it, but you don't control it, we control
| + | |
- | you." [laughter] I'm not against private software, that you develop and
| + | |
- | use, your company might use it internally, and not release it to the
| + | |
- | public, that I don't criticize. What I do criticize is when they offer
| + | |
- | it to you but in a way that tramples your freedom. [Applause]
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | {01:43:12}
| + | |
- | | + | |
- | (So, now I will end the question period. I should point that there are
| + | |
- | stickers here, please take the stickers, and I'm sure that some of you
| + | |
- | will be able to make use of that, if these are /uneral?/, please take
| + | |
- | it to one organization or another will be able to take these, so...)
| + | |
| | | |
| {{RMS}} | | {{RMS}} |