RMS Responds To NPR File-Sharer's Blog 634
New submitter UtucXul points out that Richard Stallman has penned a lengthy response to NPR intern Emily White for her post on the organization's site about how she failed to pay for a significant amount of recorded music, acquiring it instead through Kazaa, friends, and CDs owned by the radio station at which she was employed. (We previously discussed musician David Lowery's response; quite different from RMS's, as you might expect.) Stallman wrote,
"Copying and sharing recordings was not a mistake, let alone wrong, because sharing is good. It's good to share musical recordings with friends and family; it's good for a radio station to share recordings with the staff, and it's good when strangers share through peer-to-peer networks. The wrong is in the repressive laws that try to block or punish sharing. Sharing ought to be legalized; in the mean time, please do not act ashamed of having shared — that would validate those repressive laws that claim that it is wrong. You did make a mistake when you chose Kazaa as the method of sharing. Kazaa mistreated you (and all its users) by requiring you to run a non-free program on your computer. ... However, that was in the past. It's more important to consider what you're doing now, which includes other mistakes. You're not alone — many others make them too, and that adds up to a big problem for society. The root mistake is treating a marketing buzzword, 'the cloud,' as if it meant something concrete. That term refers to so many things (different ways of using the Internet) that it really has no meaning at all. Marketing uses that term to lead people's attention away from the important questions about any given use of the network, such as, 'What companies would I depend on if I did this, and how? What trouble could they cause me, if they wanted to shaft me, or simply thought that a change in policies would gain them more money?'"
let's hear it slashtards (Score:0, Insightful)
I'll say it for you: copying is not stealing.
but, copying your GPL'd program without credit is stealing
Come on retards... get it out already:
copyright applies when you take from me. It does not apply when I take from you.
What godawful writing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Mad, but not bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
The world needs people like RMS... really. I mean, he is out there on the fringe, where rational thought breaks down into fantasy, but you also have a lot of people in power who are at the other extreme and also living in a kind of fantasy bubble.... heavily subsidized by corporate players of course to ensure they see things the "right" way.
Like so many things in life, the right way isn't always the left or the right, the blue or the red, the democrat or republican, or whatever... its the middle ground where interests from all sides are considered.
On my way home, ill be driving down the central reservation, just to make this point. :-D
Re:let's hear it slashtards (Score:5, Insightful)
copying your GPL'd program without credit and copyrighting it is stealing
there, fixed that for you
claiming copyright on stolen music would be the same thing, simple sharing is not
Re:What godawful writing. (Score:0, Insightful)
Sadly I have to agree.
RMS can quite happily say all this bullshit about morals and how some laws are just completely wrong, but he equally does nothing about it.
He is a film critic. A game critic. He sits by the sidelines now and just comments on things every so often.
Neither is preaching about open-source every damn day. Preachers don't get things done in any reasonable time scale.
Sitting around in some bunker 300 miles under a somehow uncharted ocean that probably exists on Mars with a tachyon modem doing some interviews isn't going to do a thing.
If he really wanted to make a point, he would torrent the "latest and greatest" Hollywood film and publicly announce so, then see what happens.
If he thinks he can get around that, he would do so.
But it won't happen. The reason it won't is because he knows he will be destroyed. The law doesn't give a damn about morals, hell, the law doesn't give a damn about LAW. If you have enough money, you could make someone walking on a street illegal!
It needs a reworking that will never happen because IT IS A BUSINESS LIKE EVERY OTHER PART OF SOCIETY AND YOU CANNOT CHANGE THAT. EVER. Deal. With it.
Society is broken at the core.
Re:let's hear it slashtards (Score:5, Insightful)
So then it's okay to make a derivative work from a GPL work and distribute it without the source code, as long as you do it for free and are "sharing"? Think for just a minute about why that's not the case.
The "repressive" laws that say that sharing copyrighted content that you didn't get pemission to make distributable copies of are the exact same "repressive" copyright that makes enforcing the GPL possible.
Re:Mad, but not bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
He practices what he preaches. I don't agree with him fully, but there are few espousing ideals that can claim the same.
It's funny that people attack RMS, and fail to acknowledge that the powers-that-be are pushing in, and succeeding in getting to, the polar opposite of his stance. My guess is they just feel the need to attack someone.
Re:let's hear it slashtards (Score:5, Insightful)
And RMS stance on that issue is that in the absence of copyright there would not be as significant a need for the GPL. The GPL is a way to mitigate the damage of copyright, it's not a substitute for abolishing it.
Re:Mad, but not bad. (Score:2, Insightful)
People attack RMS because routinely he says stupid shit like:
Kazaa mistreated you (and all its users) by requiring you to run a non-free program on your computer.
Yeah, because the makers of Kazaa giving away for free a program that she voluntarily decided to use that gave her access to tons of free music is totally mistreatment.
Re:RMS supports file sharing???? (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you even read her shitty little article? What this "Emily" moron did was (except for a little file sharing with Kazaa in fifth grade) is trade mix-tapes and songs with -- as she stated -- "family and friends".
That is NOT the same as file sharing. That is NOT the same as bit torrent and "piracy" and "copyright infringement" (no matter what side you fall down on in those issues). "sharing mix tapes and songs from family and with friends" has generally been considered fair-use and has been done for DECADES. I am fucking shocked at the responses I've seen all over the place -- showing the extreme fucking ignorance of idiots everywhere -- acting as if trading a mix-tape or duplicating an album for your girlfriend or your brother is the same as going to the pirate bay and uploading and seeding the latest #1 billboard album.
I mean, fucking seriously, what the fuck?!
And what makes this rambling 20 year old moron's comments even dumber is that she's convinced that she did something wrong. We now live in a world where we have children CONVINCED that SHARING MUSIC WITH AN ACTUAL FRIEND OR FAMILY MEMBER is the same thing as operating a massive piracy/duplication crime syndicate that pumps out $5 copies of DVDs and CDs on the streets of new york and that she has somehow committed some sort of crime or even some sort of copyright infringement (she hasn't).
Fuck, I completely give up. There is no more hope. The mindless idiots have let the corporations dictate to them what is and isn't appropriate and fair use and we've passed that on to an entire generation or two of children who now just accept that it's wrong, because they don't know any better and assume that corporations get to have absolute and complete control on everything, because they say so, and anything contradicting them must be theft and must be a crime.
Re:Mad, but not bad. (Score:2, Insightful)
The only difference in the "fantasy" world that RMS lives in and the "real world" of copyright is that legislation and law enforcement have made the copyright fiction a reality.
Re:Mad, but not bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because the makers of Kazaa giving away for free a program that she voluntarily decided to use that gave her access to tons of free music is totally mistreatment.
You really have no idea who RMS is at all do you? He's saying the end (the benefits of Kazaa) aren't justified by the means (Kazaa delivered in the form of a closed source binary). This isn't some new revelation from him as he's being singing this tune for over 30 years now. You don't have to agree with Stallman but when you espouse a fundamental ignorance of his positions it doesn't give any credibility to your arguing his opposite.
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:5, Insightful)
Children are starving in Africa and you give a shit about a fucking NPR File Sharer's Blog? Fuck you. Instead of shooting electron beams at a NPR File Sharer's Blog to see what happens these scientists should be in the wheat fields growing food for starving children in 3rd world countries.
The children are starving not because of a scarcity of food but because certain people in Africa are PREVENTING the food
from getting to the people who need it.
If you really truly want to make the world a better place, kill yourself.
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:5, Insightful)
RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is good
The term "giving away" implies a situation where one party is deprived of something so another person can have it. This is not an accurate representation of Stallman's views, nor is is an accurate description of copyright infringement. When a copy is made and provided to another party, both parties now have the item in question.
RMS believes the above described behavior is morally correct, and should be universally allowed. Furthermore, he believes software is an entity unto itself that has rights, just as a person has rights. I happen to disagree with him on these points, but regardless of your position on such matters, it is very important to describe them correctly. Much as RMS has a long history of attempting to redefine the word "freedom" to suit his sociopolitical agenda, I must disagree with those who attempt to make statements on important matters such as these without getting their definitions right.
Re:What godawful writing. (Score:0, Insightful)
How do song-writers earn a living? (Score:5, Insightful)
I respect RMS' position on software, even if I don't fully agree with it. As I understand it, he says that a software developer should be able to make money by selling services, e.g. maintaining/customizing software, and there are people out there who do just that.
But I think the argument falls down for music. Sure, following the 'services' argument, performers can make a living (in theory) by performing the music. But not all song-writers are also performers. So in this case, how would RMS propose that a songwriter get reimbursed? What about the people involved in the production of music, e.g. sound engineers.
I think the "music is like software and should be just as free" analogy does no't work.
(This is not to support the RIAA's unacceptable use of the the courts to prosecute the token file-sharing user with outrageous and probably unconstitutional damage judgements.)
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:1, Insightful)
RMS also believes that he should be given money from one place or another for the work he does... This is strange. Why should he be paid for anything? Any work he does should belong to everyone. I will mail him and ask if he could send half his money to me, I have a right to any profit he makes from his work... Or so he claims.
Anyone who creates anything must own that thing and decide what is to be done with it. If you believe that sharing is correct and must be allowed, make some music and share that. Sharing your own work IS good! Forcing other to share their is not.
Unjust laws (Score:5, Insightful)
RMS seems to be embracing a self-contradictory position.
He's all for ignoring the unjust copyright laws when they don't suit his position.
But the FSF goes after people for violation of their license which is based on the same unjust copyright laws.
http://www.fsf.org/news/2008-12-cisco-suit/ [fsf.org]
Re:What godawful writing. (Score:5, Insightful)
We should be praising Stalin, after all, the vast majority of the things he did once in power were perfectly legal, same with every other tyrant with legal power.
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:5, Insightful)
In fairness to the GP, describing those view accurately makes it much harder to undermine them. Therefore it's actually important to the opponents to NOT describe them accurately.
Re:Unjust laws (Score:5, Insightful)
GPL itself is a protest of copyright laws, that depends on copyright laws for its existence. If there was no copyright law, GPL would not exists, and RMS would be happy about it (Well EULA should go too, but that is a different topic). But until copyright law exists, RMS would like to defend the free rights of GPL using copyright laws.
This has been repeated on every RMS and GPL post, and still someone has to write this. Sigh.
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:5, Insightful)
Give away doesn't necessarily mean anyone is deprived of anything. It often does, but not always.
If I watch your prize dog while you are on vacation, a pedigreed breeding dog and I give away his sperm to someone, I have given something of value away. But you aren't deprived of it, that sperm would have been dead by the time you got back from vacation and it would have been replaced by then with new live sperm anyway.
You'd do well to stick to the point at hand instead of trying to put up a semantic front.
Re:RMS supports file sharing???? (Score:5, Insightful)
So my takeaway from today is it's obviously okay to take GPL software and use it however I want, regardless of whether or not my use violates the terms defined within the GPL. RMS doesn't feel other licenses need to be honored, so there's no compelling reason to follow the terms of his licenses. So lets start using it in our commercial devices, modify it however we want and not bother releasing the source.
I don't think that that reasoning holds water. It's not about copyright law. Copyright is just a tool. RMS' key idea (as I interpret it) is that technology has given us the ability to copy information and knowledge and art and records (as in recordings of historical events), and that this copying allows us to share these things with everyone. He believes that the potential benefit of this sharing to humanity is so large that it outweighs anything else. After all, knowledge is power, and knowledge increases freedom. So, we must share as much information and knowledge and art and records as we can for the betterment of us all.
So what about software? Is taking a piece of software and distributing it in binary form sharing of information and knowledge? Well, what happens is that, if it's well-written software that fits the user's needs, it lets the user do something with less effort. It doesn't communicate anything about how it's done though, so that the user learns nothing, and it creates a dependency of the user on the software manufacturer. Once the user has chosen to use the binary-only software, they are no longer free to arbitrary change what they're doing, they have to ask the manufacturer to change the software.
Contrariwise, if the software is distributed with source code included, then this is a case of sharing information and knowledge. The user can learn how the software does things on their behalf, and is free to change how the software does things on their behalf. And that makes the world a little better. Again, this is not an opinion about copyright law. In one case following this ideal happens to entail violating copyright laws, while in another it doesn't. That just means that current copyright laws have some good and some bad effects, nothing more.
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:5, Insightful)
"Let me try to explain: File sharing undermines somebody else's business model."
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Robert A. Heinlein
I think that says it all.
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:5, Insightful)
we all know that
Do we now? I've personally seen a fair number of people who really do believe it's theft. I've also seen people who didn't know what copyright infringement was and believed that it's actually theft in the most literal sense simply because many people happen to call it that. Calling what may be a crime in some places "theft" really can confuse people.
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, there will always be artists willing to hold part-time jobs to subsidise their art. And corporate-produced junk designed to sell shoes.
I'd simply prefer a society where people could make an honest living selling high-quality digital artefacts without having every ass-hat on the internet deciding that it's their universal right to copy any data they can get their hands on. This is clearly impossible though, so that's why I'm working on a plague of self-replicating robot spiders with which to take over the world and enforce my will.
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:4, Insightful)
We refer to illegally making a copy of copyrighted material as "stealing" and we also refer to illegally taking possession of physical property as "stealing" - in neither case do we typically use the full explanatory sentence, instead we use words that represent the more complex idea.
That's how language works.
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:2, Insightful)
Which is exactly the same with music (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not confusing anything (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright is an agreement
No, it isn't. Copyright is a government monopoly, which is theoretically, given to authors
It is not morally correct to break this rationale, yet it has already been broken by the copyright holders many times. Unfortunately, corrective action has not happened, because the economic incentives happen to be asymmetrically distributed. The large harm the violations by the copyright holders have caused is spread over many people, while the huge benefits have accrued to very few, who make a lot of extra profits and engage in all sorts of rent-seeking activities that extend and defend the violations of the original agreement.
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:4, Insightful)
You missed one:
c) release to the public domain so the work is not lost when you die.
After all, the public domain is the entire reason for copyright's existence.
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:4, Insightful)
Incidentally, I do fall on the side of supporting file sharing, as long as a person does not try to resell a person's music/software/etc for monetary gain.
So if the person watching your dog gave the sperm away for free, they didn't do it for monetary gain. So why not support the giving away of your dogs sperm? By participating in unauthorized file sharing, you are depriving the owners of that content from the market that desires what they have. There may only be a handful of people in this word interested in buying their content, but you still are affecting their ability to make money off of that content.
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:5, Insightful)
And by this argument, as the creator of a book, song, or film, I have been deprived of the market for my movie/film/song by your giving copies to other people for free.
So I'm not clear - you say you support sharing as long as it's not for financial gain... but then you say that giving something away (or providing a free copy of something) is depriving the creator/original owner of that item a market for their product.
You seem to be arguing that filesharing is okay, but you're trying to paint that the scenario above, where you're "deprived of a market for your product," is somehow injurious to you. So if someone's sharing activity is damaging to you... then how can it be morally correct? Whether they do it for a profit, or do it for free, it's simply a matter of how MUCH they've harmed you, not a question of whether or not they're harming you.
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:5, Insightful)
So what you're saying is that RMS has the simplistic world view of a toddler, where everything is black and white, and no middle ground exists - say, where a person creating a book, or film, or song, is happy to share his creation with the world, but stipulates that anybody wanting to take a copy of that work should give him $2 as compensation? In this world view, either you share everything with everybody, or you share nothing and exist in isolation.
Any "forced" sharing or "forced" compensation is morally wrong. If a musician says, "I have created this song. If you want a copy, I want $1 from you," then there are three possible scenarios:
1) Is the song valuable to you? Do you enjoy it? Do you believe that $1 is an reasonable trade for the value that song represents to you, and are you okay with the "don't share with other people" restriction? If so, then conclude the transaction.
2) Is the song not valuable to you? Why would you want to take a copy at all, then? Patronize musicians whose business model and asking price are more palatable to you.
3) Is the song of some value to you, but you either disagree with the price or the "no redistribution" stipulation? Then open a negotiation with the musician - if you reach an agreement that both of you are happy with, conclude your transaction. If you can't reach a mutually agreeable plan, then the song is not worth the price, and you walk away from the transaction.
That is it - there is no "right" for you to take whatever you want whenever you want it. There is no "right" for the musician to take money from you if you don't want to give it - any answer to this "problem" that does not involve a mutually agreeable voluntary transaction between the purchaser and the seller is immoral.
Incidentally - why is it that people who hold this simplistic world view are also some of the most vocal critics of social media? If sharing is always ethical, shouldn't anything that encourages more sharing be an unequivocally ethical thing as well? And why do you care if somebody else gets value out of what you've shared? Sharing shouldn't have a price tag associated with it, right?
Re:RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is g (Score:5, Insightful)
RMS' concept of sharing here is about that of a spoiled brat 10 year old.
Anyway, your last paragraph is a PERFECT way to illustrate how dumb this is.
Let's replace ARTIST with his GNU organization. Let's replace the copyrighted MUSIC where the 'right' to distribute is controlled through a purchased license with GPL'd GNU SOFTWARE where the 'right' distribute it is controlled through the GPL license.
By your logic (and possibly his), a person that happens to find GNU software on a torrent someplace with all the licenses stripped out is perfectly entitled to 'share' and take that copy and use it however they see fit (perhaps in their closed-source products?). There's no reason they'd then be bound by the distribution terms on the GPL at that point, would there? After all, if you find some music on a server someplace, you're no longer bound to respect the distribution terms of THAT, so why so with software?
Record companies are (almost all) horrible, horrible things that scam (almost all) artists out of their hard work without paying them a dime... but this is just stupid.
RMS should stick to fighting to convince the creators of things to make them free to share. The terms that makers (and their agents) apply to their creations' use should be respected. The fight is to convince people to change the terms, not to selectively ignore the ones you don't like.
I have used free software, and I've shared code back out of a sense of reciprosity. That's a good thing. However, I totally reserve the right to decide on a case-by-case basis what products of my labor are free to share and what I might decide to charge money for.
"The cost to copy is nothing, so it must be free" is BULLSHIT. Products are not 100% production costs. There's the initial development cost, sometimes advertising costs, office space costs, etc. The decision a person or company makes to produce something is based on looking at all of these costs together and trying to see if the sales will be worth ALL the costs.
Just saying "obviously by copying this so easily your business model sucks, so free music for me and you totally deserve to go broke, fool" is not much different than "your front door was open, and it was TOTALLY easy to just walk in and take your stuff... your ownership of things model sucks... so you totally deserve to lose everything, fool". Both things very well could be foolish, given the environment... but that doesn't make actively taking advantage of that person and enriching yourself at their expense right.
What RMS should be arguing for is a boycott of old-school record companies and an embracing of music from artists who promote sharing of their music and aren't represented by bags of slime. Only, there's a lot of good music out there you can only get from record companies... and most people wouldn't know where to start to find the other kinds of artists... and all their friends are listening to the record company music... so that's hard.
Emily DID WRONG in going the easy route and just taking music that should have been bought. Not a lot of wrong, in the scheme of things (especially given the victims).... but wrong nonetheless.
It feels good to give... and it feels GREAT to give something that doesn't cost anything to give. That doesn't make it universally right. The world is more complex than "it feels good so it must be right". Grow up, RMS.