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Richard Stallman on Copyright 25

Posted by michael from the hellfire-and-brimstone dept.
A couple of people submitted links to a transcript and .ogg of a recent Stallman talk at MIT. Stallman is in his usual fine form.
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Richard Stallman on Copyright More

Richard Stallman on Copyright

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  • He has a very balanced view on issues, and, what's more, he communicates it very clearly.

    Exactly.

    RMS simply spouts common sense. Of course, as the old cliche goes, common sense ain't so common, and therefore he gets labelled as extremist.

    We desperately need more geeks like RMS who can argue a political case so well.

    Or can spout more of that rare common sense. :)

    Ryan T. Sammartino

  • Well, Stallman is an extremist. He takes a position that is most certainly at the extreme range of opinions about the desirability of Free Software, and that classifies him as an extremist. I'm not sure, though, that he's necessarily a fanatic, i.e. a person who can't be convinced of the wrongness of his beliefs. It's just that the ideas of extremism and fanaticism are so closely linked in peoples' minds that they can't handle the idea that somebody might hold extreme positions without being a fanatic.

    I think that RMS has reached his opinions after careful consideration of the issues, and he can be convinced to change his mind if presented with convincing evidence. He was convinced, for instance, that it was reasonable to release OggVorbis under a BSD license rather than LGPL or GPL because it better served the purpose of releasing it. A lot of people were surprised by that, but IMO it's just proof that he's not some mindless ideologue but rather a man who carefully considers the consequences of his actions. More generally, while he obviously thinks that BSD-style (err X11-style) licenses are not generally the best way to go, he's not so fanatically attached to copyleft that he denies their utility, others' right to use them, or that they can be a good choice in some circumstances.

  • RMS rulez (Score:3)

    by Cardinal Biggles ( 6685 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2001 @12:36PM (#235086)

    RMS once more makes fools out of those who call him an extremist (or even communist).

    He has a very balanced view on issues, and, what's more, he communicates it very clearly. I especially like his comparison of the present government attitude to copying to that of the Soviet Union.

    We desperately need more geeks like RMS who can argue a political case so well.

  • So, copyright is a bad thing. Copyleft is a good thing. Nothing new here.

    If you read the article you might have noticed that he didn't say that at all. In fact he supported copyright in a form that is arguably more in line with the USA's constitution.

    But, what about this FSF response. Why does it have a copyright? Shouldn't it be copyleft?

    It looks like RMS is going over to the other side. I'm sure that Microsoft has something to do with this.

    The response is copyright because modifying it served no purpose. Modifying it would allow people like you to try and distort the position the FSF is taking on the issue. Instead it says:

    Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
    If you learnt to read and then actually read the transcript you might find the following in it:
    The second class of work is works whose purpose is to say what certain people think. Talking about those people is their purpose. This includes, say, memoirs, essays of opinion, scientific papers, offers to buy and sell, catalogues of goods for sale. The whole point of those works is that they tell you what somebody thinks or what somebody saw or what somebody believes. To modify them is to misrepresent the authors; so modifying these works is not a socially useful activity. And so verbatim copying is the only thing that people really need to be allowed to do.
    So RMS actually practices what he preaches. In my book that is a good (and even rare) thing. You don't have to agree with what he preaches, but you should at least try and get your facts straight.
    • I especially like his comparison of the present government attitude to copying to that of the Soviet Union.

    Personally, I find Stallman repetitive and over wordy and repetitive, but that's probably because I read so much of his stuff. But he can still occasionally send a shudder down my spine, and that comparison was spot on.

    Ideally, I'd like to see him become a proper media whore and push more emotive issues like that. He's talking sense, but he needs to dumb it down a lot and come up with some bullet points that Joe Sixpack can understand.

    He has a clear grasp of the language of propaganda, so instead of berating Big Business for abusing it (like they'll care), why doesn't he use it? Publishers lie about "losing" money to fair use music/video sharing (they never had it in the first place, so how did they "lose" it?), so it's equally (non)sensical to say that DMCA et al will "lose" the public X jillion credits by stopping them performing (legal) fair use sharing.

    Basically, I appreciate what Stallman says, but I feel that if he really wants to make a difference, he needs to stop preaching to the choir and fight dirty.

  • My BS alarm is going off. How about a pointer to the article you're talking about? You're making a claim, and you need to provide the evidence.
  • Generally, "extremist" is a label used by extremists for their opposition. Most people who are't themselves extremists don't usually perceive other people, even people with opposing opinions, as being "extreme", just different.

    --

  • If *you* can create any "intellectual property" in a vacuum, with neither precedents nor a critical audience, you are welcome to try. However, I doubt you could invent the whole of literature in your head and write a completely original novel from scratch. In fact, I would categorically state that such a thing is impossible. It's also categorically impossible for anyone to write a wholly original song. One only learns to create intellectual property by first imitating that which has come before. Let's think about how many Disney movies, for example, were based on 17th or 18th century fairy tales? Hmm?

    One of the points he makes in his talk (which *you* clearly did not read) was that the ever-increasing lifetime of copyright means that starting with the 20th century, some works will never enter the public domain. The interesting outcome of this, which Stallman didn't explore, but which I think would change some peoples' minds, is the "black hole" of our culture. Simply put, authors and songwriters have an expectation of semi-immortality. Once their career ends, their nostalgic audience will pass down their works to children, who will eventually write it into its proper place in history books. Thus the hue and clamor over the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame, and who does and does not belong in it.

    The problem is that in order to survive a work has to be copied. A large business concern (for example, whoever holds the legal right to copy the Beatles' albums) will continue issuing copies as long as its economically feasible. But after the interest dies down, they won't have a reason to continue issuing CD's or vinyl. History has proven (with the example of abandonware in particular) that a publisher or copyright holder will squat on a piece of property that no longer makes money, rather than release it to the public domain.

    So set our wayforward machine to 2062. The Beatles are surely dead by this time, and their works, by US and European retroactive copyright laws, are locked in vaults and no longer available in stores. The only people who would want to copy their music would be fans who were alive during the group's career. I was born just exactly at the period that the Beatles' career was ending, and I am probably one of the youngest people who maintains an active interest in collecting their recordings. I will surely be dead and gone by 2062, and I doubt I'll be able to transfer my interest to my son. So the mouldy old CD's in the attic of my house will probably be thrown out, or get left in the heat and melted, or in some other way be destroyed. And the warehoused copies that some enormous conglomerate record company owns? Well, suppose they are just costing storage money, and the company decides to throw them out?

    This is a long-drawn out scenario but it's too easy to see it happening. In the case of literature, one of the real problems in studying the history of literature, or the language it's written in, is the accuracy of the source text. It's generally determined that we do not have an original copy of the Cantebury Tales in Chaucer's own hand. So there is some doubt that maybe Chaucer was someone else, or didn't write what we thought he did, or didn't do it as well. The same kind of confusion exists for Shakespeare's works. We don't have the originals in many cases, and we doubt that we are looking at the authentic thing. Maybe we read an "improved" copy.

    It's pathetic that in one hundred years, despite the ready availability and incredibly low cost of duplication, that we may be wondering what the hell happened to the great works of the 20th century. Even worse, we won't have great works of the 20th century. We'll just have the bubble-gum dreck of the current moment. This is a distinctly frightening, orwellian concept. As restricted-use schemes become the norm, it may be impossible for us to rewind our tapes, or books, or music, to capture them. We may only have access to machine-generated drivel, and our art and music will have no cultural meaning except as advertising and propaganda.

    as you sit in front of your pentium class computer system that was made possible only by a long series of intellectual property defended by law,
    I would defy you to prove that patent law protections were required for our technology to exist. Most especially in the case of Intel, they have a physical product they are selling. Yeah, ripoffs can be made, but Intel can always fight the ripoffs by making their product more efficiently, of higher quality, and cheaper. This is the essence of competition. A company that cannot survive by making a better product than their competition doesn't deserve to.

    I would also defy you to prove that literature, music, and art require copyright to exist. The converse is quite easy to prove, since without literature and music, there would be nothing to protect. But artists and authors and musicians have demonstrated throughout history that not only will they create their works for free, they will often do so under highly adverse circumstances, even risking their lives to express their opinions. An artist or author incapable of viewing their output as anything but a monetary investment is likely not a very good one.

  • the Free Encyclopedia Project: http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia [gnu.org]
  • I think a lot of the extreme people are much too extreme, like Richard Stallman; He's a very extreme person, and while I admire a lot of his ideals, I don't admire him because he is so extreme that he can't relate to other people; and that's a limitation.
    .

  • A place to start on free text books. (Score:3)

    by KyleHa ( 148254 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2001 @12:25PM (#235094) Homepage

    There must be some old text books whose copyrights have expired. They're probably out of date (unless they're arithematic books), but they might be a good starting point for someone who knows the subject. Rather than compile a new one from scratch, why not start with one of those and bring it up to date?

  • I don't know that he really does have a balanced view of the issues. He's rewritten a bit of history much the way Hollywood does to prove their point, sell their causes or sell movies. Read some of James Burke's essays to learn a bit about the history of writing and publication. Copying really wasn't unencumbered when it was done by hand, in fact this is where the church started aquiring a lot of power. Monks would transcribe books, of course quite possibly filtering out any objectionable content. The common man didn't copy books because they were kept illiterate. These books were sold to the wealthy, having a nice library was a status symbol.
  • I'd just like to add, I'm not against his views. I just hate feeling like somebodies trying to manipulate me through false facts. It's a huge part of why I've given up on local papers for instance. I average information from a number of sources - hoping they're not all skewed the same way, though unfortunately on a lot of issues they are.

  • RMS is Why I use Linux (GNU/Linux to RMS) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'd much rather be frying brain cells on Windows 2000 'mindslave edition', with its little swooshy menus and patented e-z clik technology, but I can no longer ethically support the M$ proprietary closed-source, no freedom, no respect regime.

    How many of you still use RealPlayer, even after they got caught stealing info off your PC? Doesn't anyone care? Jeez. We get what we deserve and what we FIGHT for. If you don't fight, don't complain. Most people say they can't dump Windows because they NEED proprietary feature X. RMS and others are willing to sacrifice feature X forever in order to (hopefully) ensure future freedoms. I respect that immensely.
    I'm just amazed that so few (even Slashdotters) see the dangers of passively following our current system to its logical unstated conclusion, and the changes that the multinationals and governments are pushing for and implementing right before our eyes. The wall of freedom is being torn down, brick by brick. And nobody seems to care.

    Thank you RMS. You've convinced me.

    OT ALERT: Oh, by the way, I'm from Canada, and today the government requested everyone at work collect and submit samples of their childrens DNA in the form of saliva and hair samples "for their protection". This is not a joke. Where this will lead is beyond me, but it can't be good.

    Bitterman
  • You insult communists when you call Stallman a communist. His opinions are entirely centered around the individual. He talks about freedom and "rights" way too much to have any valid communist opinion. All his opinions deal with things that are copiable and as such are inately incompatible with the notion of property. Please, read something about communism before your criticize. There are strong arguments against communism, but you are not even close to stating them.
  • People confuse those two concepts. RMS's positions are not really that extreme (lots of people would have copyright abolished; he wouldn't); but he is inflexible in those positions, as in "not giving an inch". Big difference.
  • How many of you still use RealPlayer, even after they got caught stealing info off your PC?

    And notice that RMS not only refrained from using Real Player but also refused to use the very popular MP3 format; he used OggVorbis instead. Why? Because MP3 has patent problems so that it's questionable if it's legal to make a Free encoder/decoder; Vorbis is free from such constraints.

    It's also interesting that, unlike some /.ers, Stallman doesn't advocate simply refusing to accept patents that he doesn't think should be granted. He doesn't say, "The MP3 patents shouldn't have been granted in the first place, so it's fine to create and use Free programs that violate those patents." Instead he's strongly advocated working around the patents by using other technologies (e.g. OggVorbis, Gzip, etc.) that aren't encumbered. His attitude seems to be that we need to change bad laws instead of breaking them willy-nilly. That's a very refreshing attitude.

  • I think this was a great speech by Stallman--interesting timing, too. Today a delegation from the EU that came to Washington with some questions about just how much the US spies on its European "allies" was basically snubbed by the CIA and the NSA. They eventually gave up on getting any straight answers and went home.

    The article I read about this contains the following:

    Coelho and his team also met with former CIA director James Woolsey, as well as civil liberties groups.

    In interviews last year, Woolsey acknowledged the United States collects information on European companies. But he insisted it did so only in cases where companies were suspected of violating U.N. or U.S. sanctions, of offering bribes to win contracts, or to keep tabs on technologies that have civilian and military applications.

    Does this information collection include looking for "intellectual property" violations? Imagine if, in addition to the MPAA, you had the NSA on your back!

  • Anyone who makes such a claim has likely never created a damned thing in their life,

    You know, you're so right. Besides three full-length novels, about a hundred songs, and two hundred or so programs, I haven't written a thing.

    they would know what sort of effort it takes

    Yeah, the novels didn't take more than about four months to a year of concentrated effort to research and write. The songs I just tossed off over a period of seven or eight years. The programs I do in a month or more. I don't know what these guys are whining about.

    Slathering Marxist all over an argument is a good way to make it look bad without really explaining why. As far as I can tell, your feeble rebuttal has been nothing more than an attack on what you think I don't know.

  • QUESTION: ...That's what I do - educational, electronic media projects. I couldn't find an example [of a free one]. Do you know of one?

    STALLMAN: No, I don't.

    That was really bizarre. There are tons of free textbooks on the web. Check out The Assayer [theassayer.org] and Andamooka [andamooka.org] as starting places. It's particularly strange that Stallman would say this, since he's a computer scientist, and computer textbooks (and manuals) are the biggest single category of free books.

    Continuing on the same topic, Stallman says

    I started proposing this free encyclopedia and learning resource a couple of years ago, and I thought it would probably take a decade to get things rolling. Now we already have an encyclopedia that is rolling.

    The most charitable way to describe this statement is that Stallman must have a horrible memory. As discussed [slashdot.org] ad nauseum on Slashdot a few months ago, Nupedia came first, then Stallman contacted them, then they agreed to GFDL it, then Stallman went ahead and tried to muscle his way in anyway with the confusingly named "Gnupedia."


    The Assayer [theassayer.org] - free-information book reviews

  • Marxist? In what way?
  • You did not pay attention. He did not say "copying wasn't unencombered". What he did say was that "copyright was not existent". He is arguing about the LAW of COPYRIGHT and why it should be diminished.

    The fact that the Church was controlling copying through other means is quite irrelevant. As RMS shows, he lives in the present. Copyright is the unjust law that is being extended as a means of control. Just like the Church used illiteracy to control people. Perhaps in those times, RMS would be exhorting us to learn to read?

  • The person whose name comes out as Dick Stallman isn't me (I never use any of the nicknames of "Richard"). But he seems to be trying say what I would have said, and doing a pretty good job of it. I wonder, is he my twin who was given up dor adoption and that I never heard about before now?

    Dick Stallman, if you are reading this, would you please send me mail that I can answer?

  • I agree with Stallman's plan to produce legislature that treats different types of work differently. For example, recipies, technical manuals, etc, might be freely traded, while artistic works maybe copylefted, or something similar, which would allow authors to have a type of revenue stream, while still allowing the public to use the works for public domain purposes.

    One thing is for sure: Artists don't get the fruits of their labor! Publishers and Record Companies do!

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