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Rob Myers |
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www/philosophy copyright-versus-community.html ... |
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Date: |
Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:44:05 +0000 |
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<h2>Copyright versus Community in the Age of Computer Networks</h2>
-<pre>
-This is a transcription from an audio recording, prepared by Douglas
-Carnall, July 2000.
-<!-- It seems this location is no longer accessible
-The original version is hosted at <a
-href="http://carnall.org/stallman/index.html";><http://carnall.org/stallman/index.html></a>
-yavor, Apr 3, 2007 -->
-</pre>
-
-<p><em> Mr Stallman arrives a few minutes after the appointed hour
-of commencement of his talk to address a hushed and respectful
-audience. He speaks with great precision and almost no hesitation in a
-pronounced Boston accent.</em></p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: This is made for someone who wears a strangler. </p>
-
-<p><em>[indicates clip-on microphone for lecture theatre amplification
system]</em> </p>
-
-<p>I don't wear stranglers, so there is no place for it to go.</p>
-
-<p><em>[clips it to his T-shirt]</em></p>
-
-<p><strong>Me</strong>: Are you OK with the recording?</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Yes! <em>[testy]</em> How many people have to ask
me?</p>
-
-<p>Well, I'm supposed to speak today </p>
-
-<p><em>[long pause]</em></p>
-
-<p>about copyright versus community. This is too loud. </p>
-
-<p><em>[indicates clip-on microphone]</em> </p>
-
-<p>What can I do? </p>
-
-<p>Let's see… there's no volume control… </p>
-
-<p><em>[finds volume control on radio microphone box]</em> </p>
-
-<p>this seems better</p>
-
-<p>OK. Copyright versus community in the age of computer networks. The
-principles of ethics can't change. They are the same for all
-situations, but to apply them to any question or situation you have to
-look at the facts of the situation to compare alternatives, you have to
-see what their consequences are, a change in technology never changes
-the principles of ethics, but a change in technology can alter the
-consequences of the same choices, so it can make a difference for the
-outcome of the question, and that has happened in the area of copyright
-law. We have a situation where changes in technology have affected the
-ethical factors that weigh on decisions about copyright law and change
-the right policy for society. </p>
-<p>Laws that in the past may have been a good idea, now are harmful
-because they are in a different context. But to explain this, I should
-go back to the beginning to the ancient world where books were made by
-writing them out by hand. That was the only way to do it, and anybody
-who could read could also write a copy of a book. To be sure a slave
-who spent all day writing copies could probably do it somewhat better
-than someone who didn't ordinarily do that but it didn't make a
-tremendous difference. Essentially, anyone who could read, could copy
-books, about as well as they could be copied in any fashion.</p>
-<p>In the ancient world, there wasn't the sharp distinction between
-authorship and copying that there tends to be today. </p>
-
-<p>There was a continuum. On the one hand you might have somebody,
-say, writing a play. Then you might have, on the other extreme, just
-somebody making copies of books, but in between you might have say,
-somebody, who say, copies part of a book, but writes some words of his
-own, or writing a commentary, and this was very common, and definitely
-respected. Other people would copy some bits from one book, and then
-some bits from another book, and write something of their own words,
-and then copy from another book, quoting passages of various lengths
-from many different works, and then writing some other works to talk
-about them more, or relate them. And there are many ancient
-works—now lost—in which part of them survived in these
-quotations in other books that became more popular than the book that
-the original quote <em>[came from]</em>.</p>
-
-<p>There was a spectrum between writing an original work, and copying.
-There were many books that were partly copied, but mixed with original
-writing. I don't believe there was any idea of copyright in the ancient
-world and it would have been rather difficult to enforce one, because
-books could be copied by anyone who could read anywhere, anyone who
-could get some writing materials, and a feather to write with. So, that
-was a rather clear simple situation.</p>
-
-<p>Later on, printing was developed and printing changed the situation
-greatly. It provided a much more efficient way to make copies of books,
-provided that they were all identical. And it required specialised,
-fairly expensive equipment that an ordinary reader would not have. So
-in effect it created a situation in which copies could only feasibly be
-made by specialised businesses, of which the number was not that large.
-There might have been hundreds of printing presses in a country and
-hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of actually people who
-could read. So the decrease in the number of places in which copies
-could be made was tremendous.</p>
-
-<p>Now the idea of copyright developed along with the printing
-press. I think that there may be… I think I remember reading
-that Venice, which was a major centre of printing in the 1500s also
-had a kind of copyright but I can't find that: I couldn't find that
-reference again. But the system of copyright fitted in naturally with
-the printing press because it became rare for ordinary readers to make
-copies. It still happen. People who were very poor or very rich had
-handmade copies of books. The very rich people did this to show off
-their wealth: they had beautiful illuminated wealth to show that they
-could afford this. And poor people still sometimes copied books by
-hand because they couldn't afford printed copies. As the song goes
-“Time ain't money when all you got is time.” So some poor
-people copied books with a pen. But for the most part the books were
-all made on printing presses by publishers and copyright as a system
-fitted in very well with the technical system. For one thing it was
-painless for readers, because the readers weren't going to make copies
-anyway, except for the very rich ones who could presumably legitimise
-it, or the very poor ones who were making just individual copies and
-no one was going to go after them with lawyers. And the system was
-fairly easy to enforce again because there were only a small number of
-places where it had to be enforced: only the printing presses, and
-because of this it didn't require, it didn't involve, a struggle
-against the public. You didn't find just about everybody trying to
-copy books and being threatened with arrest for doing it.</p>
-
-<p>And in fact, in addition to not restricting the reader's directly,
-it didn't cause much of a problem for readers, because it might have
-added a small fraction to the price of books but it didn't double the
-price, so that small extra addition to the price was a very small
-burden for the readers. The actions restricted by copyright were
-actions that you couldn't do, as an ordinary reader, and therefore, it
-didn't cause a problem. And because of this there was no need for harsh
-punishments to convince readers to tolerate it and to obey.</p>
-
-<p>So copyright effectively was an industrial regulation. It restricted
-publishers and writers but it didn't restrict the general public. It
-was somewhat like charging a fee for going on a boat ride across the
-Atlantic. You know, it's easy to collect the fee when people are
-getting on a boat for weeks or months. </p>
-
-<p>Well, as time went on, printing got more efficient. Eventually even
-poor people didn't have to bother copying books by hand and the idea
-sort of got forgotten. I think it's in the 1800s that essentially
-printing got cheap enough so that essentially everyone could afford
-printed books, so to some extent the idea of poor people copying books
-by hand was lost from memory. I heard about this about ten years ago
-when I started talking about the subject to people.</p>
-
-<p>So originally in England copyright was partly intended as a measure
-of censorship. People who wanted to publish books were required to get
-approval from the government but the idea began to change and it a
-different idea was expressed explicitly in the US constitution. When
-the US constitution was written there was a proposal that authors
-should be entitled to a monopoly on copying their books. This idea was
-rejected. Instead, a different idea of the philosophy of copyright was
-put into the constitution. The idea that a copyright system could
-be… well, the idea is that people have the natural right to
-copy things but copyright as an artificial restriction on copying can
-be authorised for the sake of promoting progress.</p>
-
-<p>So the system of copyright would have been the same more or less
-either way, but this was a statement about the purpose which is said
-to justify copyright. It is explicitly justified as a means to promote
-progress, not as an entitlement for copyright owners. So the system is
-meant to modify the behaviour of copyright owners so as to benefit the
-public. The benefit consists of more books being written and published
-and this is intended to contribute to the progress of civilisation, to
-spreading ideas, and as a means to this end… in other words as
-a means to this end copyright exists. So this also thought of as a
-bargain between the public and authors; that the public gives up its
-natural right to make copies of anything in exchange for the progress
-that is brought about indirectly, by encouraging more people to
-write. </p>
-
-<p>Now it may seem like an obscure question to ask “What's the
-purpose of copyright?” But the purpose of any activity is the
-most important thing for deciding when an activity needs to be changed
-and how. If you forget about the purpose you are sure to get things
-wrong, so ever since that decision was made, the authors and
-especially the publishers most recently have been trying to
-misrepresent it and sweep it under the rug. There has been a campaign
-for decades to try to spread the idea that was rejected in the US
-constitution. The idea that copyright exists as an entitlement for
-copyright owners. And you can that expressed in almost everything they
-say about it starting and ending with the word “pirate”
-which is used to give the impression that making an unauthorised copy
-is the moral equivalent of attacking a ship and kidnapping or killing
-the people on board.</p>
-
-<p>So if you look at the statements being made by publishers you find
-lots of implicit assumptions of this sort which you have to drag into
-the open and then start questioning.</p>
-
-<h3>Recent events and problems</h3>
-<p><em>[brightens]</em></p>
-
-<p>Anyway, as long as the age of the printing press continued,
-copyright was painless, easy to enforce, and probably a good idea. But
-the age of the printing press began changing a few decades ago when
-things like Xerox machines and tape recorders started to be available,
-and more recently as computer networks have come into use the situation
-has changed drastically. We are now in a situation technologically more
-like the ancient world, where anybody who could read something could
-also make a copy of it that was essentially as good as the best copies
-anyone could make.</p>
-
-<p><em>[murmuring in the audience]</em></p>
-
-<p>A situation now where once again, ordinary readers can make copies
-themselves. It doesn't have to be done through centralised mass
-production, as in the printing press. Now this change in technology
-changes the situation in which copyright law operates. The idea of the
-bargain was that the public trades away its natural right to make
-copies, and in exchange gets a benefit. Well, a bargain could be a good
-one or a bad one. It depends on the worth of what you are giving up.
-And the worth of what you are getting. In the age of the printing press
-the public traded away a freedom that it was unable to use.</p>
-
-<p>It's like finding a way of selling shit: what have you got to lose?
-You've got it on hand anyway, if you get something for it, it can
-hardly be a bad deal.</p>
-
-<p><em>[faint laughter]</em></p>
-
-<p>It's like accepting money for promising not to travel to another
-star. You're not going to do it anyway</p>
-
-<p><em>[hearty laughter]</em></p>
-
-<p>at least not in our lifetime so you might as well, if someone's
-going to pay you to promise not to travel to another star, you might
-as well take the deal. But if I presented you with a starship, then
-you might not think that deal was such a good deal any more. When the
-thing you used to sell because it was useless, you discover a use for
-it, then you have to reconsider the desirability of those old deals
-that used to be advantageous. Typically in a such a situation you
-decide that “I'm not going to sell all of this any more; I'm
-going to keep some of it and use it.” So if you were giving up a
-freedom that you couldn't exercise and now you can exercise it, you
-probably want to start retaining the right to exercise it at least
-partially. You might still trade part of the freedom: and there are
-many alternatives of different bargains which trade parts of the
-freedom and keep other parts. So, precisely what you want to do
-requires thought, but in any case you want to reconsider the old
-bargain, and you probably want to sell less of what you sold in the
-past.</p>
-
-<p>But the publishers are trying to do exactly the opposite. At exactly
-the time when the public's interest is to keep part of the freedom to
-use it, the publishers are passing laws which make us give up more
-freedom. You see copyright was never intended to be an absolute
-monopoly on all the uses of a copyright work. It covered some uses and
-not others, but in recent times the publishers have been pushing to
-extend it further and further. Ending up most recently with things like
-the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US which they are also
-trying to turn into a treaty through the World Intellectual Property
-Organisation which is essentially an organisation representing the
-owners of copyrights and patents and which works to try to increase
-their power, and pretends to be doing so in the name of humanity rather
-than in the name of these particular companies.</p>
-
-<p>Now, what are the consequences when copyright starts restricting
-activities that ordinary readers can do. Well, for one thing it's no
-longer an industrial regulation. It becomes an imposition on the
-public. For another, because of this, you find the public's starting to
-object to it You know, when it is stopping ordinary people from doing
-things that are natural in their lives you find ordinary people
-refusing to obey. Which means that copyright is no longer easy to
-enforce and that's why you see harsher and harsher punishments being
-adopted by governments that are basically serving the publishers rather
-than the public. </p>
-
-<p>Also, you have to question whether a copyright system is still
-beneficial. Basically, the thing that we have been paying is now
-valuable for us. Maybe the deal is a bad deal now. So all the things
-that made technology fit in well with the technology of the printing
-press make it fit badly with digital information technology. So,
-instead of like, charging the fee to cross the Atlantic in a boat, it's
-like charging a fee to cross a street. It's a big nuisance, because
-people cross the street all along the street, and making them pay is a
-pain in the neck.</p>
-
-<h3>New kinds of copyright</h3>
-
-<p>Now what are some of the changes we might want to make in copyright
-law in order to adapt it to the situation that the public finds itself
-in? Well the extreme change might be to abolish copyright law but that
-isn't the only possible choice. There are various situations in which
-we could reduce the power of copyright without abolishing it entirely
-because there are various different actions that can be done with a
-copyright and there are various situations in which you might do them,
-and each of those is an independent question. Should copyright cover
-this or not? In addition, there is a question of “How
-long?”. Copyright used to be much shorter in its period or
-duration, and it's been extended over and over again in the past fifty
-years or so and in fact in now appears that the owners of copyrights
-are planning to keep on extending copyrights so that they will never
-expire again. The US constitution says that “copyright must
-exist for a limited time” but the publishers have found a way
-around this: every twenty years they make copyright twenty years
-longer, and this way, no copyright will ever expire again. Now a
-thousand years from now, copyright might last for 1200 years, just
-basically enough so that copyright on Mickey Mouse can not expire.</p>
-
-<p>Because that's why, people believe that US Congress passed a law to
-extend copyright for twenty years. Disney was paying them, and paying
-the President too, with campaign funds of course, to make it lawful.
-See, if they just gave them cash it would be a crime, but contributing
-indirectly to campaigns is legal and that's what they do: to buy the
-legislators. So they passed the Sunny Bono copyright act. Now this is
-interesting: Sunny Bono was a congressman and a member of the Church of
-Scientology, which uses copyrights to suppress knowledge of its
-activities. So they have their pet congressman and they pushed very
-hard for increased copyright powers.</p>
-
-<p>Anyway, we were fortunate that Sunny Bono died but in his name they
-passed the Mickey Mouse Copyright Act of 1998 I believe. It's being
-challenged by the way, on the grounds that, there is a legal case that
-people hope to go to the Supreme Court and have the extension of old
-copyrights tossed out. In any case, there are all these different
-situations and questions where we could reduce the scope of copyright.</p>
-
-<p>So what are some of them? Well, first of all there are various
-different contexts for copying. There is commercial sale of copies in
-the stores at one extreme and at the other there is privately making a
-copy for your friend once in a while, and in between there are other
-things, like, there's broadcasting on TV or the radio, there's posting
-it on the website, there's handing it out to all the people in an
-organisation, and some of these things could be done either
-commercially or non-commercially. You know, you could imagine a
-company handing out copies to its staff or you could imagine a school
-doing it, or some private, non-profit organisation doing it. Different
-situations, and we don't have to treat them all the same. So one way
-in we could reclaim the… in general though, the activities that
-are the most private are those that are most crucial to our freedom
-and our way of life, whereas the most public and commercial are those
-that are most useful for providing some sort of income for authors so
-it's a natural situation for a compromise in which the limits of
-copyright are put somewhere in the middle so that a substantial part
-of the activity still is covered and provides an income for authors,
-while the activities that are most directly relevant to peoples'
-private lives become free again. And this is the sort of thing that I
-propose doing with copyright for things such as novels and biographies
-and memoires and essays and so on. That at the very minimum, people
-should always have a right to share a copy with a friend. It's when
-governments have to prevent that kind of activity that they have to
-start intruding into everyone's lives and using harsh punishments. The
-only way basically to stop people in their private lives from sharing
-is with a police state, but public commercial activities can be
-regulated much more easily and much more painlessly. </p>
-
-<p>Now, where we should draw these lines depends, I believe, on the
-kind of work. Different works serve different purposes for their users.
-Until today we've had a copyright system that treats almost everything
-exactly alike except for music: there are a lot of legal exceptions for
-music. But there's no reason why we have to elevate simplicity above
-the practical consequences. We can treat different kinds of works
-differently. I propose a classification broadly into three kinds of
-works: functional works, works that express personal position, and
-works that are fundamentally aesthetic.</p>
-
-<p>Functional works include: computer software; recipes; textbooks;
-dictionaries and other reference works; anything that you use to get
-jobs done. For functional works I believe that people need very broad
-freedom, including the freedom to publish modified versions. So
-everything I am going to say tomorrow about computer software applies
-to other kinds of functional works in the same way. So, this criterion
-of free… because it necessary to have the freedom to publish a
-modified version this means we have to almost completely get rid of
-copyright but the free software movement is showing that the progress
-that society wants that is supposedly the justification for society
-having copyright can happen in other ways. We don't have to give up
-these important freedoms to have progress. Now the publishers are
-always asking us to presuppose that their there is no way to get
-progress without giving up our crucial freedoms and the most important
-thing I think about the free software movement is to show them that
-their pre-supposition is unjustified.</p>
-
-<p>I can't say I'm sure that in all of these areas we can't produce
-progress without copyright restrictions stopping people, but what we've
-shown is that we've got a chance: it's not a ridiculous idea. It
-shouldn't be dismissed. The public should not suppose that the only way
-to get progress is to have copyright but even for these kinds of works
-there can be some kinds of compromise copyright systems that are
-consistent with giving people the freedom to publish modified versions.
-Look, for example, at the GNU free documentation license, which is used
-to make a book free. It allows anyone to make and sell copies of a
-modified version, but it requires giving credit in certain ways to the
-original authors and publishers in a way that can give them a
-commercial advantage and thus I believe make it possible to have
-commercial publishing of free textbooks, and if this works people are
-just beginning to try it commercially. The Free Software Foundation
-has been selling lots of copies of various free books for almost
-fifteen years now and it's been successful for us. At this point
-though, commercial publishers are just beginning to try this particular
-approach, but I think that even for functional works where the freedom
-to publish modified works is essential, some kind of compromise
-copyright system can be worked out, which permits everyone that
-freedom. </p>
-
-<p>For other kinds of works, the ethical questions apply differently,
-because the works are used differently. The second category of works is
-works that express someone's positions or views or experiences. For
-example, essays, offers to do business with people, statements of one's
-legal position, memoirs, anything that says, whose point is to say what
-you think or you want or what you like. Book reviews and restaurant
-reviews are also in this category: it's expressing a personal opinion
-or position. Now for these kinds of works, making a modified version is
-not a useful thing to do. So I see no reason why people should need to
-have the freedom to publish modified versions of these works. Verbatim
-copying is the only thing that people need to have the freedom to do
-and because of this we can consider the idea that the freedom to
-distribute copies should only apply in some situations, for example if
-it were limited to non-commercial distribution that would be OK I
-think. Ordinary citizen's lives would no longer be restricted but
-publishers would still be covered by copyright for these things.</p>
-
-<p><em>[drinks water]</em></p>
-
-<p>Now, I used to think that maybe it would be good enough to allow
-people to privately redistribute copies occasionally. I used to think
-that maybe it would be OK if all public redistribution were still
-restricted by copyright for these works but the experience with
-Napster has convinced me that that's not so. And the reason is that it
-shows that lots and lots of people both want to publicly
-redistribute—publicly but not commercially
-redistribute—and it's very useful. And if it's so useful, then
-it's wrong to stop people from doing it. But it would still be
-acceptable I think, to restrict commercial redistribution of this
-work, because that would just be an industrial regulation and it
-wouldn't block the useful activities that people should be doing with
-these works.</p>
-
-<p>Oh, also, scientific papers. Or scholarly papers in general fall
-into this category because publishing modified versions of them is not
-a good thing to do: it's falsifying the record so they should only be
-distributed verbatim, so scientific papers should be freely
-redistributable by anyone because we should be encouraging their
-redistribution, and I hope you will never agree to publish a scientific
-paper in a way that restricts verbatim redistribution on the net. Tell
-the journal that you won't do that.</p>
-
-<p>Because scientific journals have become an obstacle to the
-dissemination of scientific results. They used to be a necessary
-mechanism. Now they are nothing but an obstruction, and those journals
-that restrict access and restrict redistribution <em>[emphasis]</em> must be
-abolished. They are the enemies of the dissemination of knowledge; they
-are the enemies of science, and this practice must come to an end.</p>
-
-<p>Now there is a third category of works, which is aesthetic works,
-whose main use is to be appreciated; novels, plays, poems, drawings in
-many cases, typically and most music. Typically it's made to be
-appreciated. Now, they're not functional people don't have the need to
-modify and improve them, the way people have the need to do that with
-functional works. So it's a difficult question: is it vital for people
-to have the freedom to publish modified versions of an aesthetic work.
-On the one hand you have authors with a lot of ego attachment saying </p>
-
-<p><em>[English accent, dramatic gesture]</em> </p>
-
-<p>“Oh this is my creation.”</p>
-
-<p><em>[Back to Boston]</em> </p>
-
-<p>“How dare anyone change a line of this?” On the other
-hand you have the folk process which shows that a series of people
-sequentially modifying the work or maybe even in parallel and then
-comparing versions can produce something tremendously rich, and not
-only beautiful songs and short poems, but even long epics have been
-produced in this way, and there was a time back before the mystique of
-the artist as creator, semi-divine figure was so powerful when even
-great writers reworked stories that had been written by others. Some
-of the plays of Shakespeare involve stories that were taken from other
-plays written often a few decades before. If today's copyright laws
-had been in effect they would have called Shakespeare a quote pirate
-unquote for writing some of his great work and so of course you would
-have had the other authors saying</p>
-
-<p><em>[English accent]</em></p>
-
-<p>“How dare he change one line of my creation. He couldn't
-possibly make it better.“</p>
-
-<p><em>[faint audience chuckle]</em></p>
-
-<p>You'll hear people ridiculing this idea in exactly those terms.
-Well, I am not sure what we should do about publishing modified
-versions of these aesthetic works. One possibility is to do something
-like what is done in music, which is anyone's allowed to rearranged and
-play a piece of music, but they may have to pay for doing so, but they
-don't have to ask permission to perform it. Perhaps for commercial
-publication of these works, either modified or unmodified, if they're
-making money they might have to pay some money, that's one possibility.
-It's a difficult question what to do about publishing modified versions
-of these aesthetic works and I don't have an answer that I'm fully
-satisfied with.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Audience member 1 (AM1)</strong>, question, inaudible</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Let me repeat the question because he said it
-so fast you couldn't possibly have understood it. He said “What
-kind of category should computer games go in?” Well, I would say
-that the game engine is functional and the game scenario is
-aesthetic. </p>
-
-<p><strong>AM1</strong>: Graphics?</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Those are part of the scenario probably. The
-specific pictures are part of the scenario; they are aesthetic,
-whereas the software for displaying the scenes is functional. So I
-would say that if they combine the aesthetic and the functional into
-one seamless thing then the software should be treated as functional,
-but if they're willing to separate the engine and the scenario then it
-would be legitimate to say, well the engine is functional but the
-scenario is aesthetic.</p>
-
-<h3>Copyright: possible solutions</h3>
-
-<p>Now, how long should copyright last? Well, nowadays the tendency in
-publishing is for books to go out of copyright faster and faster. Today
-in the US most books that are published are out of print within three
-years. They've been remaindered and they're gone. So it's clear that
-there's not real need for copyright to last for say 95 years: it's
-ridiculous. In fact, it's clear that ten year copyright would be
-sufficient to keep the activity of publishing going. But it should be
-ten years from date of publication, but it would make sense to allow an
-additional period before publication which could even be longer than
-ten years which as you see, as long as the book has not been published
-the copyright on it is not restricting the public. It's basically just
-giving the author to have it published eventually but I think that once
-the book is published copyright should run for some ten years or so,
-then that's it.</p>
-
-<p>Now, I once proposed this in a panel where the other people were
-all writers. And one of them said: “Ten year copyright? Why
-that's ridiculous! Anything more than five years is
-intolerable.” He was an awardwinning science fiction writer who
-was complaining about the difficulty of retrouving, of pulling back,
-this is funny, French words are leaking into my English, of, of
-regaining the rights from the publisher who'd let his books go out of
-print for practical purposes but was dragging his heels about obeying
-the contract, which says that when the book is out of print the rights
-revert to the author.</p>
-
-<p>The publishers treat authors terribly you have to realise. They're
-always demanding more power in the name of the authors and they will
-bring along a few very famous very successful writers who have so much
-clout that they can get contracts that treat them very well to testify
-saying that the power is really for their sake. Meanwhile most writers
-who are not famous and are not rich and have no particular clout are
-being treated horribly by the publishing industry, and it's even worse
-in music. I recommend all of you to read Courtney Love's article: it's
-in Salon magazine right? </p>
-
-<p><strong>AM2</strong> (Audience member 2) Yes</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: She started out by calling the record
-companies quote pirates unquotes because of the way they treat the
-musicians. In any case we can shorten copyright more or less. We could
-try various lengths, we could see, we could find out empirically what
-length of copyright is needed to keep publication vigourous. I would
-say that since almost books are out of print by ten years, clearly ten
-years should be long enough. But it doesn't have to be the same for
-every kind of work. For example, maybe some aspects of copyright for
-movies should last for longer, like the rights to sell all the
-paraphernalia with the pictures and characters on them. You know,
-that's so crassly commercial it hardly matters if that is limited to
-one company in most cases. Maybe the copyright on the movies
-themselves, maybe that's legitimate for that to last twenty
-years. Meanwhile for software, I suspect that a three year copyright
-would be enough. you see if each version of the programme remains
-copyrighted for three years after its release well, unless the company
-is in real bad trouble they should have a new version before those
-three years are up and there will be a lot of people who will want to
-use the newer version, so if older versions are all becoming free
-software automatically, the company would still have a business with
-the newer version. Now this is a compromise as I see it, because it is
-a system in which not all software is free, but it might be an
-acceptable compromise, after all, if we had to wait three years in
-some cases for programs to become free… well, that's no
-disaster. To be using three years old software is not a disaster.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM3</strong>: Don't you think this is a system that would
-favour feature creep?</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: <em>[airily]</em> Ah that's OK. That's a
-minor side issue, compared with these issues of freedom encouraging,
-every system encourages some artificial distortions in what people,
-and our present system certainly encourages various kinds of
-artificial distortions in activity that is covered by copyright so if
-a changed system also encourages a few of these secondary distortions
-it's not a big deal I would say.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM4</strong>: The problem with this change in the copyright
-laws for three would be that you wouldn't get the sources.</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Right. There would have also to be a
-condition, a law that to sell copies of the software to the public the
-source code must be deposited somewhere so that three years later it
-can be released. So it could be deposited say, with the library of
-congress in the US, and I think other countries have similar
-institutions where copies of published books get placed, and they
-could also received the source code and after three years, publish
-it. And of course, if the source code didn't correspond to the
-executable that would be fraud, and in fact if it really corresponds
-then they ought to be able to check that very easily when the work is
-published initially so you're publishing the source code and somebody
-there says alright “dot slash configure dot slash make”
-and sees if produces the same executables and uh.</p>
-
-<p>So you're right, just eliminating copyright would not make software
-free.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM5</strong>: Um libre</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Right. That's the only sense I use the
-term. It wouldn't do that because the source code might not be
-available or they might try to use contracts to restrict the users
-instead. So making software free is not as simple as ending copyright
-on software: it's a more complex situation than that. In fact, if
-copyright were simply abolished from software then we would no longer
-be able to use copyleft to protect the free status of a program but
-meanwhile the software privateers could use other
-methods—contracts or withholding the source to make software
-proprietary. So what would mean is, if we release a free program some
-greedy bastard could make a modified version and publish just the
-binaries and make people sign non-disclosure agreements for them. We
-would no longer have a way to stop them. So if we wanted to change the
-law that all software that was published had to be free we would have
-to do it in some more complex way, not just by turning copyright for
-software. </p>
-
-<p>So, overall I would recommend we look at the various kinds of works
-and the various different kinds of uses and then look for a new place
-to draw the line: one that gives the public the most important
-freedoms for making use of each new kind of work while when possible
-retaining some kind of fairly painless kind of copyright for general
-public that is still of benefit to authors. In this way we can adapt
-the copyright system to the circumstances where we find it we find
-ourselves and have a system that doesn't require putting people in
-prison for years because they shared with their friends, but still
-does in various ways encourage people to write more. We can also I
-believe look for other ways of encouraging writing other ways of
-facilitating authors making money. For example, suppose that verbatim
-redistribution of a work is permitted and suppose that the work comes
-with something, so that when you are playing with it or reading it,
-there is a box on the side that says “click here to send one
-dollar to the authors or the musicians or whatever” I think that
-in the wealthier parts of the world a lot of people will send it
-because people often really love the authors and musicians that made
-the things that they like to read and listen to. And the interesting
-thing is that the royalty that they get now is such a small fraction
-that if you pay twenty dollars for something they're probably not
-getting more than one anyway.</p>
-
-<p>So this will be a far more efficient system. And the interesting
-thing will be that when people redistribute these copies they will be
-helping the author. Essentially advertising them, spreading around
-these reasons to send them a dollar. Now right now the biggest reason
-why more people don't just send some money to the authors is that it's
-a pain in the neck to do it. What are you going to do? Write a cheque?
-Then who are you going to mail the cheque to? You'd have to dig up
-their address, which might not be easy. But with a convenient internet
-payment system which makes it efficient to pay someone one dollar, then
-we could put this into all the copies, and then I think you'd find the
-mechanism starting to work well. It may take five of ten years for the
-ideas to spread around, because it's a cultural thing, you know, at
-first people might find it a little surprising but once it gets normal
-people would become accustomed to sending the money, and it wouldn't be
-a lot of money compared to what it costs to buy books today.</p>
-
-<p><em>[drinks]</em></p>
-
-<p>So I think that in this way, for the works of expression, and maybe
-aesthetic works, maybe this could a successful method. But it won't
-work for the functional works, and the reason for that is that as one
-person after another makes a modified version and publishes it, who
-should the boxes point to, and how much money should they send, and you
-know, it's easy to do this when the work was published just once, by a
-certain author, or certain group of authors, and they can just agree
-together what they're going to do and click on the box, if no-one is
-publishing modified versions then every copy will contain the same box
-with the same URL directing money to the same people but when you have
-different version which have been worked on by different people there's
-no simple automatic way of working out who ought to get what fraction
-of what users donate for this version or that version. It's
-philosophically hard to decide how important each contribution is, and
-all the obvious ways of trying to measure it are <em>[emphasis]</em> obviously
-<em>[/emphasis]</em> wrong in some cases, they're obviously closing their eyes
-to some important part of the facts so I think that this kind of
-solution is probably not feasible when everybody is free to publish
-modified versions. But for those kinds of works where it is not crucial
-to have the freedom to publish modified versions then this solution can
-be applied very simply once we have the convenient internet payment
-system to base it on.</p>
-
-<p>With regard to the aesthetic works. If there is a system where those
-who commercially redistribute or maybe even those who are publishing a
-modified version might have to negotiate the sharing of the payments
-with the original developers and then this kind of scheme could be
-extended to those works too even if modified versions are permitted
-there could be some standard formula which could be in some cases
-renegotiated, so I think in some cases probably possible even with a
-system of permitting in some way publishing modified versions of the
-aesthetic works it may be possible still to have this kind of voluntary
-payment system.</p>
-
-<p>Now I believe there a people who are trying to set up such
-voluntary payment systems. I heard of something called the street
-performer's protocol. I don't know the details of it. And I believe
-there is something called GreenWitch.com <em>[transcriber's note: URL
-uncertain]</em> I believe the people there are trying to set up
-something more or less like this. I think that what they are hoping to
-do is collect a bunch of payments that you make to various different
-people, and eventually charge your credit card once it gets to be big
-enough so that it's efficient. Whether those kind of systems work
-smoothly enough in practice that they'll get going is not clear, and
-whether they will become adopted widely enough for them to become a
-normal cultural practice is not clear. It may be that in order for
-these voluntary payments to truly catch on we need to have some kind
-of… you need to see the idea everywhere in order to…
-“Yeah, I outta pay“ once in a while. We'll see.</p>
-
-<p>There is evidence ideas like this are not unreasonable. If you look
-at for example public radio in the US, which is mostly supported by
-donations from listeners, you have I believe, millions of people
-donating, I'm not sure how many exactly but there are many public
-radio stations which are supported by their listeners and they seem to
-be finding it easier to get donations as time goes on. Ten years ago
-they would have maybe six weeks of the year when they were spending
-most of their time asking people “Please send some money, don't
-you think we're important enough” and so on 24 hours a day, and
-now a lot of them have found that they can raise the contributions by
-sending people mail who sent them donations in the past, and they
-don't have to spend their airtime drumming up the donations.</p>
-
-<p>Fundamentally, the stated purpose of copyright: to encourage
-righting is a worthwhile purpose, but we have to look at ways of ways
-to achieve it that are not so harsh, and not so constricting of the use
-of the works whose developments we have encouraged and I believe that
-digital technology is providing us with solutions to the problem as
-well as creating a context where we need to solve the problem. So
-that's the end of this talk, and are there questions?</p>
-
-<h3>Questions and discussion</h3>
-<p>First of all, what time is the next talk? What time is it now?</p>
-
-<p><strong>Me</strong>: The time is quarter past three.</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Oh really? So I'm late already? Well I hope
-Melanie will permit me to accept a few questions.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM6</strong> (Audience member 6): Who will decide in which
-of your three categories will a work fit?</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: I don't know. I'm sure there are various ways
-of deciding. You can probably tell a novel when you see one. I suspect
-judges can tell a novel when they see one too.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM7</strong>: Any comment on encryption? And the
-interaction of encryption devices with copyrighted materials?</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well, encryption is being used as a means of
-controlling the public. The publishers are trying to impose various
-encryption systems on the public so that they can block the public
-from copying. Now they call these things technological methods, but
-really they all rest on laws prohibiting people from by-passing them,
-and without those laws none of these methods would accomplish its
-purpose, so they are all based on direct government intervention to
-stop people from copying and I object to them very strongly, and I
-will not accept those media. If as a practical matter the means to
-copy something are not available to me I won't buy it, and I hope you
-won't buy it either.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM8</strong>: In France we have a law that says that even
-if the media is protected you have the right to copy again for backup
-purpose</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Yes it used to be that way in the US as well
-until 2 years ago.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM8</strong>: Very often you sign an agreement that is
-illegal in France… the contract you are supposed to sign with a
-mouse…</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well, maybe they're not.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM8</strong>: How can we get it challenged?</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: <em>[rhetorically]</em> Well are you going to
-challenge them? It costs money, it takes trouble, and not only that,
-how would you do it? Well, you could either try to go to a court and
-say, “They have no right to ask people to sign this contract
-because it is an invalid contract” but that might be difficult
-if the distributor is in the US. French law about what is a valid
-contract couldn't be used to stop them in the US. On the other hand
-you could also say “I signed this contract but it's not valid in
-France so I am publicly disobeying, and I challenge them to sue
-me.” Now that you might consider doing, and if you're right and
-the laws are not valid in France then the case would get thrown out. I
-don't know. Maybe that is a good idea to do, I don't know whether,
-what its effects politically would be. I know that there was just a
-couple of years ago a law was passed in Europe to prohibit some kind
-of private copying of music, and the record companies trotted out some
-famous very popular musicians to push for this law and they got it, so
-it's clear that they have a lot of influence here too, and it's
-possible that they will get more, just pass another law to change
-this. We have to think about the political strategy for building the
-constituency to resist such changes and the actions we take should be
-designed to accomplish that. Now, I'm no expert on how to accomplish
-that in Europe but that's what people should think about.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM6</strong>: What about protection of private correspondence?</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well, if you're not <em>[emphasis]</em>
-publishing <em>[/emphasis]</em> it that's a completely different
-issue.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM6</strong>: No, but if I send an email to somebody,
-that's automatically under my copyright.</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: <em>[forcefully]</em> That's entirely
-irrelevant actually.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM6</strong>: No, I don't accept that. If they're going to
-publish it in a newspaper. At the moment my redress is my
-copyright.</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well, you can't make him keep secret the
-contents and I'm not sure actually. I mean to me, I think there's some
-injustice in that. If you for example, send a letter to somebody
-threatening to sue him and then you tell him you can't tell anybody I
-did this because my threat is copyrighted, that's pretty obnoxious,
-and I'm not sure that it would even be upheld.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM6</strong>: Well, there are circumstances where I want to
-correspond with someone and keep my (and their) reply, entirely
-private. </p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well if you and they agree to keep it
-private, then that's a different matter entirely. I'm sorry the two
-issues can not be linked, and I don't have time to consider that issue
-today. There's another talk scheduled to start soon. But I think it is
-a total mistake for copyright to apply to such situations. The ethics
-of those situations are completely different from the ethics of
-published works and so they should be treated in an appropriate way,
-which is completely different.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM6</strong>: That's fair enough, but at the moment the
-only redress one has is copyright…</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: <em>[interrupts]</em> No you're wrong. If
-people have agreed to keep something private then you have other
-redress. In Europe there are privacy laws, and the other thing is, you
-don't have a right to force someone to keep secrets for you. At most,
-you could force him to paraphrase it, because he has a right to tell
-people what you did.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM6</strong>: Yes, but I assuming that the two people at
-either end are both in reasonable agreement.</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well then, don't say that copyright is your
-only recourse. If he's in agreement he isn't going to give it to a
-newspaper is he?</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM6</strong>: No, er, you're sidestepping my question about
-interception.</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Oh interception. That's a totally
-different… <em>[heatedly]</em> no you didn't ask about
-interception. This is the first time you mentioned
-interception…</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM6</strong>: No it's the second time.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM9</strong>: <em>[murmurs assent to AM6]</em></p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: <em>[still heated]</em> Well I didn't hear
-you before… it's totally silly… it's like trying
-to… oh how can I compare?… it's like trying to kill an
-elephant with a waffle iron I mean they have nothing to do with each
-other.</p>
-
-<p><em>[uninterpretable silence falls]</em></p>
-
-<p><strong>AM10</strong>: Have you thought about
-changes <em>[inaudible, in trade secrets?]</em></p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Uh yes: Trade secrets has developed in a very
-ominous and menacing direction. It used to be that trade secrecy meant
-that you wanted to keep something secret so you didn't tell anybody,
-and later on it was something that was done within a business telling
-just a few people something and they would agree to keep it
-secret. But now, it's turning into something where the public in
-general is becoming conscripted into keeping secrets for business even
-if they have never agreed in any way to keep these secrets and that's
-a pressure. So those who pretend that trade secrecy is just carrying
-out some natural right of theirs; that's just not true any
-more. They're getting explicit government help in forcing other people
-to keep their secrets. And we might want to consider whether
-non-disclosure agreements should in general be considered legitimate
-contracts because of the anti-social nature of trade secrecy it
-shouldn't be considered automatic that just because somebody has
-promised to keep a secret that that means it's binding.</p>
-
-<p>Maybe in some cases it should be and in some cases it should not be.
-If there's a clear public benefit from knowing then maybe that should
-invalidate the contract, or maybe it should be valid when it is signed
-with customers or maybe between a business and a, maybe when a business
-supplies secrets to its suppliers that should be legitimate, but to its
-customers, no.</p>
-
-<p>There are various possibilities one can think of, but at the very
-start anybody who hasn't voluntarily agreed to keep the secrets should
-not be bound by trade secrecy. That's the way it was until not long
-ago. Maybe it still is that way in Europe, I'm not sure.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM11</strong>: Is is OK for a company to ask say its…</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: employees?</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM11</strong>: No no</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: suppliers?</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM11</strong>: yes, suppliers. What if the customer is
-another supplier?</p>
-
-<p><em>[gap as minidisk changed]</em></p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Let's start by not encouraging it.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM12</strong>: I have a question regarding your opinion on
-the scientific work on journals and textbooks. In my profession at
-least one official journal and textbook are available on-line, but
-they retain copyright, but there is free access to the resources
-provided they have internet access.</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well, that's good. But there are many
-journals where it is not like that. For example, the ACM journals you
-can't access unless you are a subscriber: they're blocked. So I think
-journals should all start opening up access on the web.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM12</strong>: So what impact does that have on the
-significance of copyright on the public when you basically don't
-interfere with providing free access on the web.</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well, first of all, I disagree. Mirror sites
-are essential, so the journal should only provide open access but they
-should also give everyone the freedom to set up mirror sites with
-verbatim copies of these papers. If not then there is a danger that
-they will get lost. Various kinds of calamities could cause them to
-be lost, you know, natural disasters, political disasters, technical
-disasters, bureaucratic disasters, fiscal disasters… All sorts
-of things could cause that one site to disappear. So really what the
-scholarly community should logically be doing is carefully arranging
-to have a wide network of mirror sites making sure that every paper is
-available on every continent, from places near the ocean to places
-that are far inland and you know this is exactly the kind of thing
-that major libraries will feel is their mission if only they were not
-being stopped.</p>
-
-<p>So what should be done, is that these journals should go one step
-further. In addition to saying everybody can access the site they
-should be saying, everyone can set up a mirror site. Even if they said,
-you have to do the whole publication of this journal, together with our
-advertisements, now that would still at least do the job of making the
-availability redundant so that it's not in danger, and other
-institutions would set up mirror sites, and I predict that you would
-find ten years down the road, a very well organised unofficial system
-of co-ordinating the mirroring to make sure that nothing was getting
-left out. At this point the amount that it costs to set up the mirror
-site for years of a journal is so little that it doesn't require any
-special funding; nobody has to work very hard: just let librarians do
-it. Anyway, oh there was some other thing that this raised and I can't
-remember what it is. Oh well, I'll just have to let it go.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM13</strong>: The financing problem for the aesthetical
-works… do you think the dynamics could
-be… <em>[inaudible]</em> although I understand the problems
-of… I mean who's contributing? and who will be rewarded? Does
-the spirit of free software <em>[inaudible]</em></p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: I don't know. It's certainly suggesting the
-idea to people. We'll see. I don't the answers, I don't know how
-we're going to get there, I'm trying to think about where we should
-get to. I know know how we can get there. The publishers are so
-powerful, and can get governments to do their bidding. How we're going
-to build up the kind of world where the public refuses to tolerate
-this any more I don't know. I think the first thing we have to do is
-to clearly reject the term pirate and the views that go with it. Every
-time we hear that we have to speak out and say this is propaganda,
-it's not wrong for people to share these published works with each
-other, it's sharing with you friend, it's good. And sharing with your
-friend is more important than how much money these companies get. The
-society shouldn't be shaped for the sake of these companies. We have
-to keep on… because you see the idea that they've
-spread—that anything that reduces their income is immoral and
-therefore people must be restricted in any way it takes to guarantee
-for them to be paid for everything… that is the fundamental
-thing that we have to start attacking directly. People have mostly
-tried tactics of concentrating on secondary issues, you know, to when
-people, you know when the publishers demand increased power usually
-people saying it will cause some secondary kind of harm and arguing
-based on that but you rarely find anybody (except me) saying that the
-whole point of the change is wrong, that it's wrong to restrict it in
-that way, that it's legitimate for people to want to change copies and
-that they should be allowed to. We have to have more of this. We have
-to start cutting the root of their dominion not just hacking away at a
-few leaves.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM14</strong>: <em>[inaudible]</em> this is important is to
-concentrate on the donations system for music.</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Yes. Unfortunately though there are patents
-covering the technique that seems most likely to be usable.</p>
-
-<p><em>[laughs, cries of “no” from audience]</em></p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: So it may take ten years before we can do it.</p>
-
-<p><strong>AM15</strong>: We only take French laws</p>
-
-<p><strong>RMS</strong>: I don't know. I think I'd better hand the
-floor over to Melanie whose talk was supposed to start at 3. and uh
-so</p>
-
-<p>RMS stands in silence. There is a pause before the outbreak of
-applause. RMS turns to applaud the stuffed fabric gnu he placed on the
-overhead projector at the beginning of the talk.</p>
+<p><b>Keynote speech at LIANZA conference, Christchurch Convention Centre, 12
+October 2009</b><p>
+
+<dl>
+<dt>BC:</dt>
+<dd><p>Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa. Today I have the privilege
+of introducing Richard Stallman, whose keynote speech is being sponsored by
+the School of Information Management at Victoria University of Wellington.</p>
+
+<p>Richard has been working to promote software freedom for over 25
+years. In 1983 he started the GNU project to develop a free operating
+system [the GNU system], and in 1985 he set up the Free Software
+Foundation. Every time you read or send a message to nz-libs, you use
+the Mailman software which is part of the GNU project. So whether you
+realize it or not, Richard's work has touched all of your lives.</p>
+
+<p>I like to describe him as the most influential person most people have never
+heard of, although he tells me that that cannot possibly be true because it
+cannot be tested.</p></dd>
+
+<dt>RMS:</dt>
+<dd>We can't tell.</dd>
+
+<dt>BC:</dt>
+<dd>I said that—I still like it. His ideas about software freedom and
free
+access to information were used by Tim Berners-Lee when he created the
+world's first web server, and in 1999 his musings about a free online
+encyclopedia inspired Jimmy Wales to set up what is now Wikipedia.</p>
+
+<p>Today Richard will be talking to us about copyright vs community in the age
+of computer networks, and their implications for libraries. Richard.</p></dd>
+
+<dt>RMS:</dt>
+<dd>I've been in New Zealand for a couple of weeks, and in the North Island
+it was raining most of the time. Now I know why they call gumboots
+“Wellingtons”. And then I saw somebody who was making chairs and
tables out of
+ponga wood, and he called it fern-iture. Then we took the ferry to get here,
+and as soon as we got off, people started mocking and insulting us; but there
+were no hard feelings, they just wanted to make us really feel Picton.</p>
+
+<p>The reason people usually invite me to give speeches is because of my work
+on free software. This is not a talk about free software; this talk answers
+the question whether the ideas of free software extend to other kinds of
+works. But in order for that to make sense, I'd better tell you briefly what
+free software means.</p>
+
+<p>Free software is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free
speech”,
+not “free beer”. Free software is software that respects the
user's freedom,
+and there are four specific freedoms that the user deserves always to have.
+<ul>
+<li>Freedom 0 is the freedom to run the program as you wish.</li>
+
+<li>Freedom 1 is the freedom to study the source code of the program and
+change it to make the program do what you wish.</li>
+
+<li>Freedom 2 is the freedom to help your neighbour; that is, the freedom to
+redistribute copies of the program, exact copies when you wish.</li>
+
+<li>And Freedom 3 is the freedom to contribute to your community. That's the
+freedom to publish your modified versions when you wish.</li>
+<ul>
+</p>
+
+<p>If the program gives you these four freedoms then it's free software, which
+means the social system of its distribution and use is an ethical system,
+one which respects the user's freedom and the social solidarity of the
+user's community. But if one of these freedoms is missing or insufficient,
+then it's proprietary software, nonfree software, user-subjugating
+software. It's unethical. It's not a contribution to society, it's a power
+grab. This unethical practice should not exist; the goal of the free
+software movement is to put an end to it. All software should be free, so
+that all users can be free.</p>
+
+<p>Proprietary software keeps the users divided and helpless: divided, because
+they're forbidden to share it, and helpless, because they don't have the
+source code so they can't change it. They can't even study it to verify what
+it's really doing to them, and many proprietary programs have malicious
+features which spy on the user, restrict the user, even back doors to attack
+the user.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, Microsoft Windows has a back door with which Microsoft can
+forcibly install software changes, without getting permission from the
+supposed owner of the computer. You may think it's your computer, but if
+you've made the mistake of having Windows running in it, then really
+Microsoft has owned your computer. Computers need to be defenestrated, which
+means either throw Windows out of the computer, or throw the computer out
+the window.</p>
+
+<p>But any proprietary software gives the developers unjust power over the
+users. Some of the developers abuse this power more, and some abuse it less,
+but none of them ought to have it. You deserve to have control of your
+computing, and not be forcibly dependent on a particular company. So you
+deserve free software.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of speeches about free software, people sometimes ask whether
+these same freedoms and ideas apply to other things. If you have a copy of a
+published work on your computer, it makes sense to ask whether you should
+have the same four freedoms—whether it's ethically essential that you
have
+them or not. And that's the question that I'm going to address today.</p>
+
+<p>If you have a copy of something that's not software, for the most part, the
+only thing that might deny you any of these freedoms is copyright law. With
+software that's not so. The main ways of making software non-free are
+contracts and withholding the source code from the users. Copyright is a
+sort of secondary, back up method. For other things there's no such
+distinction as between source code and executable code.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, if we're talking about a text, if you can see the text to read
+it, there's nothing in the text that you can't see. So it's not the same
+kind of issue exactly as software. It's for the most part only copyright
+that might deny you these freedoms.</p>
+
+<p>So the question can be restated: “What should copyright law allow you
to do
+with published works? What should copyright law say?”</p>
+
+<p>Copyright has developed along with copying technology, so it's useful to
+review the history of copying technology. Copying developed in the ancient
+world, where you'd use a writing instrument on a writing surface. You'd read
+one copy and write another.</p>
+
+<p>This technology was rather inefficient, but
+another interesting characteristic was that it had no economy of scale.
+To write ten copies would take ten times as long as to write one copy. It
+required no special equipment other than the equipment for writing, and it
+required no special skill other than literacy itself. The result was that
+copies of any particular book were made in a decentralized manner. Wherever
+there was a copy, if someone wanted to copy it, he could.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing like copyright in the ancient world. If you had a copy
and
+wanted to copy it, nobody was going to tell you you weren't
allowed—except
+if the local prince didn't like what the book said, in which case he might
+punish you for copying it. But that's not copyright, but rather something
+closely related, namely censorship. To this day, copyright is often used in
+attempts to censor people.</p>
+
+<p>That went on for thousands of years, but then there was a big advance in
+copying technology, namely the printing press. The printing press made
+copying more efficient, but not uniformly. [This was] because mass
+production copying became a lot more efficient, but making one copy at a
+time didn't benefit from the printing press. In fact, you were better off
+just writing it by hand; that would be faster than trying to print one
copy.</p>
+
+<p>The printing press has an economy of scale: it takes a lot of work to
+set the type, but then you can make many copies very fast. Also, the
+printing press and the type were expensive equipment that most people
+didn't own; and the ability to use them, most literate people didn't
+know. Using a press was a different skill from writing. The result
+was a centralized manner of producing copies: the copies of any given
+book would be made in a few places, and then they would be transported
+to wherever someone wanted to buy copies.</p>
+
+<p>Copyright began in the age of the printing press. Copyright in England
began
+as a system of censorship in the 1500s. I believe it was originally meant to
+censor Protestants, but it was turned around and used to censor Catholics
+and presumably lots of others as well. According to this law, in order to
+publish a book you had to get permission from the Crown, and this permission
+was granted in the form of a perpetual monopoly to publish it. This was
+allowed to lapse in the 1680s, I believe [it expired in 1695 according to
+the Wikipedia entry]. The publishers wanted it back again, but what they got
+was something somewhat different. The Statute of Anne gave authors a
+copyright, and only for 14 years, although the author could renew it once.</p>
+
+<p>This was a totally different idea—a temporary monopoly for the author,
+instead of a perpetual monopoly for the publisher. The idea developed that
+copyright was a means of promoting writing.</p>
+
+<p>When the US constitution was written, some people wanted authors to be
+entitled to a copyright, but that was rejected. Instead, the US Constitution
+says that Congress can optionally adopt a copyright law, and if there is a
+copyright law, its purpose is to promote progress. In other words, the
+purpose is not benefits for copyright holders or anybody they do business
+with, but for the general public. Copyright has to last a limited time;
+publishers keep hoping for us to forget about this.</p>
+
+<p>Here we have an idea of copyright which is an industrial regulation on
+publishers, controlled by authors, and designed to provide benefits to the
+public at large. It functioned this way because it didn't restrict the
+readers.</p>
+
+<p>Now in the early centuries of printing, and still I believe in the 1790s,
+lots of readers wrote copies by hand because they couldn't afford printed
+copies. Nobody ever expected copyright law to be something other than an
+industrial regulation. It wasn't meant to stop people from writing copies,
+it was meant to regulate the publishers. Because of this it was easy to
+enforce, uncontroversial, and arguably beneficial for society.</p>
+
+<p>It was easy to enforce, because it only had to be enforced against
+publishers. And it's easy to find the unauthorized publishers of a
book—you
+go to a bookstore and say 'where do these copies come from?'. You don't have
+to invade everybody's home and everybody's computer to do that.</p>
+
+<p>It was uncontroversial because, as the readers were not restricted, they had
+nothing to complain about. Theoretically they were restricted from
+publishing, but not being publishers and not having printing presses, they
+couldn't do that anyway. In what they actually could do, they were not
+restricted.</p>
+
+<p>It was arguably beneficial because the general public, according to the
+concepts of copyright law, traded away a theoretical right they were not in
+a position to exercise. In exchange, they got the benefits of more
writing.</p>
+
+<p>Now if you trade away something you have no possible use for, and you get
+something you can use in exchange, it's a positive trade. Whether or not
+you could have gotten a better deal some other way, that's a different
+question, but at least it's positive.</p>
+
+<p>So if this were still in the age of the printing press, I don't think I'd be
+complaining about copyright law. But the age of the printing press is
+gradually giving way to the age of the computer networks—another advance
in
+copying technology that makes copying more efficient, and once again not
+uniformly so.</p>
+
+<p>Here's what we had in the age of the printing press: mass production very
+efficient, one at a time copying still just as slow as the ancient world.
+Digital technology gets us here: they've both benefited, but one-off copying
+has benefited the most.</p>
+
+<p>We get to a situation much more like the ancient world, where one at a
+time copying is not so much worse [i.e., harder] than mass production
+copying. It's a little bit less efficient, a little bit less good,
+but it's perfectly cheap enough that hundreds of millions of people do
+it. Consider how many people write CDs once in a while, even in poor
+countries. You may not have a CD-writer yourself, so you go to a
+store where you can do it.</p>
+
+<p>This means that copyright no longer fits in with the technology as it used
+to. Even if the words of copyright law had not changed, they wouldn't have
+the same effect. Instead of an industrial regulation on publishers
+controlled by authors, with the benefits set up to go to the public, it is
+now a restriction on the general public, controlled mainly by the publishers,
+in the name of the authors.</p>
+
+<p>In other words, it's tyranny. It's intolerable and we can't allow it to
+continue this way.</p>
+
+<p>As a result of this change, [copyright] is no longer easy to
+enforce, no longer uncontroversial, and no longer beneficial.</p>
+
+<p>It's no longer easy to enforce because now the publishers want to enforce it
+against each and every person, and to do this requires cruel measures,
+draconian punishments, invasions of privacy, abolition of our basic ideas of
+justice. There's almost no limit to how far they will propose to go to
+prosecute the War on Sharing.</p>
+
+<p>It's no longer uncontroversial. There are political parties in several
+countries whose basic platform is 'freedom to share'.</p>
+
+<p>It's no longer beneficial because the freedoms that we conceptually traded
+away (because we couldn't exercise them), we now can exercise. They're
+tremendously useful, and we want to exercise them.</p>
+
+<p>What would a democratic government do in this situation?</p>
+
+<p>It would reduce copyright power. It would say: “The trade we made on
behalf
+of our citizens, trading away some of their freedom which now they need, is
+intolerable. We have to change this; we can't trade away the freedom that is
+important.” We can measure the sickness of democracy by the tendency of
+governments to do the exact opposite around the world, extending copyright
+power when they should reduce it.</p>
+
+<p>One example is in the dimension of time. Around the world we see pressure
to
+make copyright last longer and longer and longer.</p>
+
+<p>A wave of this started in the US in 1998. Copyright was extended by 20
years
+on both past and future works. I do not understand how they hope to convince
+the now dead or senile writers of the 20s and 30s to write more back then by
+extending copyright on their works now. If they have a time machine with
+which to inform them, they haven't used it. Our history books don't say that
+there was a burst of vigor in the arts in the 20s when all the artists
+found out that their copyrights would be extended in 1998.</p>
+
+<p>It's theoretically conceivable that 20 years more copyright on future works
+would convince people to make more effort in producing those works. But not
+anyone rational, because the discounted present value of 20 more years of
+copyright starting 75 years in the future—if it's a work made for
hire—and
+probably even longer if it's a work with an individual copyright holder, is
+so small it couldn't persuade any rational person to do anything different.
+Any business that wants to claim otherwise ought to present its projected
+balance sheets for 75 years in the future, which of course they can't do
+because none of them really looks that far ahead.</p>
+
+<p>The real reason for this law, the desire that prompted various companies to
+purchase this law in the US Congress, which is how laws are decided on for
+the most part, was they had lucrative monopolies and they wanted those
+monopolies to continue.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, Disney was aware that the first film in which Mickey Mouse
+appeared would go into the public domain in a few years, and then anybody
+would be free to draw that same character as part of other works. Disney
+didn't want that to happen. Disney borrows a lot from the public domain, but
+is determined never to give the slightest thing back. So Disney paid for
+this law, which we refer to as the Mickey Mouse Copyright Act.</p>
+
+<p>The movie companies say they want perpetual copyright, but the US
+Constitution won't let them get that officially. So they came up with a way
+to get the same result unofficially: “perpetual copyright on the
installment
+plan”. Every 20 years they extend copyright for 20 more years. So that
at any
+given time, any given work has a date when it will supposedly fall into the
+public domain. But that date is like tomorrow, it never comes. By the time
+you get there they will have postponed it, unless we stop them next time.</p>
+
+<p>That's one dimension, the dimension of duration.
+But even more important is the dimension of breadth: which uses of the work
+does copyright cover?</p>
+
+<p>In the age of the printing press, copyright wasn't
+supposed to cover all uses of a copyrighted work, because copyright
+regulated certain uses that were the exceptions in a broader space of
+unregulated uses. There were certain things you were simply allowed to do
+with your copy of a book.</p>
+
+<p>Now the publishers have got the idea that they can turn our computers
+against us, and use them to seize total power over all use of published
+works. They want to set up a pay-per-view universe. They're doing it with
+DRM (Digital Restrictions Management)—the intentional features of
software
+that's designed to restrict the user. And often the computer itself is
+designed to restrict the user.</p>
+
+<p>The first way in which the general public saw this was in DVDs. A movie on
a
+DVD was usually encrypted, and the format was secret. The DVD conspiracy
+kept this secret because they said anyone that wants to make DVD players has
+to join the conspiracy, promise to keep the format secret, and
+promise to design the DVD players to restrict the users according to the
+rules, which say it has to stop the user from doing this, from doing that,
+from doing that—a precise set of requirements, all of which are malicious
+towards us.</p>
+
+<p>It worked for a while, but then some people figured out the secret format,
+and published free software capable of reading the movie on a DVD and
+playing it. Then the publishers said “since we can't actually stop
them, we
+have to make it a crime”. And they started that in the US in 1998 with
the
+Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which imposed censorship on software
+capable of doing such jobs.</p>
+
+<p>So that particular piece of free software was the subject of a court case.
+Its distribution in the US is forbidden; the US practices censorship of
+software.</p>
+
+<p>The movie companies are well aware that they can't really make
+that program disappear—it's easy enough to find it. So they designed
+another encryption system, which they hoped would be harder to break, and
+it's called AACS, or the axe.</p>
+
+<p>The AACS conspiracy makes precise rules about all players. For
+instance, in 2011 it's going to be forbidden to make analog video
+outputs. So all video outputs will have to be digital, and they will
+carry the signal encrypted into a monitor specially designed to keep
+secrets from the user. That is malicious hardware. They say that the
+purpose of this is to “close the analog hole”. I'll show you a
couple
+of analog holes (Stallman takes off his glasses): here's one and
+here's another, that they'd like to poke out permanently.</p>
+
+<p>How do I know about these conspiracies? The reason is they're not
+secret—they have websites. The AACS website proudly describes the
contracts
+that manufacturers have to sign, which is how I know about this requirement.
+It proudly states the names of the companies that have established this
+conspiracy, which include Microsoft and Apple, and Intel, and Sony, and
+Disney, and IBM.</p>
+
+<p>A conspiracy of companies designed to restrict the public's access to
+technology ought to be prosecuted as a serious crime, like a conspiracy to
+fix prices, except it's worse, so the prison sentences for this should be
+longer. But these companies are quite confident that our governments are on
+their side against us. They have no fear against being prosecuted for these
+conspiracies, which is why they don't bother to hide them.</p>
+
+<p>In general DRM is set up by a conspiracy of companies. Once in a while a
+single company can do it, but generally it requires a conspiracy between
+technology companies and publishers, so [it's] almost always a conspiracy.</p>
+
+<p>They thought that nobody would ever be able to break the AACS, but about
+three and a half years ago someone released a free program capable of
+decrypting that format. However, it was totally useless, because in order to
+run it you need to know the key.</p>
+
+<p>And then, six months later, I saw a photo of two adorable puppies, with 32
+hex digits above them, and I wondered: “Why put those two things
together? I
+wonder if those numbers are some important key, and someone could have put
+the numbers together with the puppies, figuring people would copy the photo
+of the puppies because they were so cute. This would protect the key from
+being wiped out.”</p>
+
+<p>And that's what it was—that was the key to break the axe. People
posted
+it, and editors deleted it, because laws in many countries now conscript
+them to censor this information. It was posted again, they deleted it;
+eventually they gave up, and in two weeks this number was posted in over
+700,000 web sites.</p>
+
+<p>That's a big outpouring of public disgust with DRM. But it didn't win the
+war, because the publishers changed the key. Not only that: with HD DVD,
+this was adequate to break the DRM, but not with Blu-ray.
+Blu-ray has an additional level of DRM and so far there is no free software
+that can break it, which means that you must regard Blu-ray disks as
+something incompatible with your own freedom. They are an enemy with which
+no accommodation is possible, at least not with our present level of
+knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Never accept any product designed to attack your freedom. If you don't have
+the free software to play a DVD, you mustn't buy or rent any DVDs, or accept
+them even as gifts, except for the rare non-encrypted DVDs, which there are
+a few of. I actually have a few [of these]—I don't have any encrypted
DVDs,
+I won't take them.</p>
+
+<p>So this is how things stand in video, but we've also seen DRM in music.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, about ten years ago we started to see things that looked like
+compact disks, but they weren't written quite like compact disks. They
+didn't follow the standard. We called them 'corrupt disks', and the idea of
+them was that they would play in an audio player, but it was impossible to
+read them on a computer. These different methods had various problems.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually Sony came up with a clever idea. They put a program on the disk,
+so that if you stuck the disk into a computer, the disk would install the
+program. This program was designed like a virus to take control of the
+system. It's called a 'root kit', meaning that it has things in it to break
+the security of the system so that it can install the software deep inside
+the system, and modify various parts of the system.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, it modified the command you could use to examine the system to
+see if the software was present, so as to disguise itself. It modified the
+command you could use to delete some of these files, so that it wouldn't
+really delete them. Now all of this is a serious crime, but it's not the
+only one Sony committed, because the software also included free software
+code—code that had been released under the GNU General Public
License.</p>
+
+<p>Now the GNU GPL is a copyleft license, and that means it says “Yes,
you're
+free to put this code into other things, but when you do, the entire program
+that you put things into you must release as free software under the same
+license. And you must make the source code available to users, and to inform
+them of their rights you must give them a copy of this license when they get
+the software.”</p>
+
+<p>Sony didn't comply with all that. That's commercial copyright infringement,
+which is a felony. They're both felonies, but Sony wasn't prosecuted because
+the government understands that the purpose of the government and the law is
+to maintain the power of those companies over us, not to help defend our
+freedom in any way.</p>
+
+<p>People got angry and they sued Sony. However, they made a mistake. They
+focused their condemnation not on the evil purpose of this scheme, but only
+on the secondary evils of the various methods that Sony used. So Sony
+settled the lawsuits and promised that in the future, when it attacks our
+freedom, it will not do those other things.</p>
+
+<p>Actually, that particular corrupt disk scheme was not so bad, because if you
+were not using Windows it would not affect you at all. Even if you were
+using Windows, there's a key on the keyboard—if you remembered every time
+to hold it down, then the disk wouldn't install the software. But of course
+it's hard to remember that every time; you're going to slip up some day.
+This shows the kind of thing we've had to deal with.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately music DRM is receding. Even the main record companies sell
+downloads without DRM. But we see a renewed effort to impose DRM on books.</p>
+
+<p>You see, the publishers want to take away the traditional freedoms of
+book readers—freedom to do things such as borrow a book from the
+public library, or lend it to a friend; to sell a book to a used book
+store, or buy it anonymously paying cash (which is the only way I buy
+books—we've got to resist the temptations to let Big Brother know
everything that
+we're doing.)</p>
+
+<p>Even the freedom to keep the book as long as you wish, and read it as
+many times as you wish, they plan to get rid of.</p>
+
+<p>The way they do it is with DRM. They knew that so many people read books
and
+would get angry if these freedoms were taken away that they didn't believe
+they could buy a law specifically to abolish these freedoms—there would
be
+too much opposition. Democracy is sick, but once in a while people manage to
+demand something. So they came up with a two-stage plan.</p>
+
+<p>First, take away these freedoms from ebooks, and second, convince people to
+switch from paper books to ebooks. They've succeeded with stage 1.</p>
+
+<p>In the US they did it with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and in New
+Zealand, that was part of the year-ago Copyright Act; censorship on software
+that can break DRM was part of that law. That's an unjust provision; it's
+got to be repealed.</p>
+
+<p>The second stage is convince people to switch from printed books to ebooks;
+that didn't go so well.</p>
+
+<p>One publisher in 2001 had the idea they would make their line of ebooks
+really popular if they started it with my biography. So they found an author
+and the author asked me if I'd cooperate, and I said “Only if this ebook
is
+published without encryption, without DRM”. The publisher wouldn't go
along
+with that, and I just stuck to it—I said no. Eventually we found another
+publisher who was willing to do this—in fact willing to publish the book
+under a free license giving you the four freedoms—so the book was then
+published, and sold a lot of copies on paper.</p>
+
+<p>But in any case, ebooks failed at the beginning of this decade. People just
+didn't want to read them very much. And I said, “they will try
again”. We saw
+an amazing number of news articles about electronic ink (or is it electronic
+paper, I can never remember which), and it occurred to me probably the
+reason there's so many is the publishers want us to think about this. They
+want us to be eager for the next generation of ebook readers.</p>
+
+<p>Now they're upon us. Things like the Sony Shreader (its official name is
the
+Sony Reader, but if you put on 'sh' it explains what it's designed to do to
+your books), and the Amazon Swindle, designed to swindle you out of your
+traditional freedoms without your noticing. Of course, they call it the
+Kindle which is what it's going to do to your books.</p>
+
+<p>The Kindle is an extremely malicious product, almost as malicious as
+Microsoft Windows. They both have spy features, they both have Digital
+Restrictions Management, and they both have back doors.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of the Kindle, the only way you can buy a book is to buy it from
+Amazon, and Amazon requires you to identify yourself, so they know
+everything that you've bought.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is Digital Restrictions Management, so you can't lend the book or
+sell it to a used bookstore, and the library can't lend it either.</p>
+
+<p>And then there's the back door, which we found out about about three months
+ago, because Amazon used it. Amazon sent a command to all the Kindles to
+erase a particular book, namely 1984 by George Orwell. Yes, they couldn't
+have picked a more ironic book to erase. So that's how we know that Amazon
+has a back door with which it can erase books remotely.</p>
+
+<p>What else it can do, who knows? Maybe it's like Microsoft Windows. Maybe
+Amazon can remotely upgrade the software, which means that whatever
+malicious things are not in it now, they could put them in it tomorrow.</p>
+
+<p>This is intolerable—any one of these restrictions is intolerable.
They want
+to create a world where nobody lends books to anybody anymore.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine that you visit a friend and there are no books on the shelf. It's
+not that your friend doesn't read, but his books are all inside a device,
+and of course he can't lend you those books. The only way he could lend you
+any one of those books is to lend you his whole library, which is obviously
+a ridiculous thing to ask anybody to do. So there goes friendship for people
+who love books.</p>
+
+<p>Make sure that you inform people what this device implies. It means other
+readers will no longer be your friends, because you will be acting like a
+jerk toward them. Spread the word preemptively. This device is your enemy.
+It's the enemy of everyone who reads. The people who don't recognize that
+are the people who are thinking so short-term that they don't see it. It's
+our job to help them see beyond the momentary convenience to the
+implications of this device.</p>
+
+<p>I have nothing against distributing books in digital form, if they are not
+designed to take away our freedom. Strictly speaking, it is possible to have
+an ebook reader:
+<ul>
+<li>that is not designed to attack you,</li>
+
+<li>which runs free software and not proprietary software,</li>
+
+<li>which doesn't have DRM,</li>
+
+<li>which doesn't make people identify yourself to get a book,</li>
+
+<li>which doesn't have a back door, [and]</li>
+
+<li>which doesn't restrict what you can do with the files on your machine.</li>
+</ul></p>
+
+<p>It's possible, but the big companies really pushing ebooks are doing it to
+attack our freedom, and we mustn't stand for that. This is what governments
+are doing in cahoots with big business to attack our freedom, by making
+copyright harsher and nastier, more restrictive than ever before.</p>
+
+<p>But what should they do? Governments should make copyright power less.
Here
+are my specific proposals.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, there is the dimension of time. I propose copyright should
+last ten years, starting from the date of publication of a work.</p>
+
+<p>Why from the date of publication? Because before that, we
+don't have copies. It doesn't matter to us whether we would have been
+allowed to copy our copies that we don't have, so I figure we might as well
+let the authors have as much time as it takes to arrange publication, and
+then start the clock.</p>
+
+<p>But why ten years? I don't know about in this country, but in the US, the
+publication cycle has got shorter and shorter. Nowadays almost all books are
+remaindered within two years and out-of-print within three. So ten years is
+more than three times the usual publication cycle—that should be plenty
+comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>But not everybody agrees. I once proposed this in a panel discussion with
+fiction writers, and the award-winning fantasy writer next to me said
“Ten
+years? No way. Anything more than five years is intolerable.” You
see, he
+had a legal dispute with his publisher. His books seemed to be out of print,
+but the publisher wouldn't admit it. The publisher was using the copyright
+on his own book to stop him from distributing copies himself, which he
+wanted to do so people could read it.</p>
+
+<p>This is what every artist starts out wanting—wanting to distribute
her work
+so it will get read and appreciated. Very few make a lot of money. That tiny
+fraction face the danger of being morally corrupted, like J.K. Rowling.</p>
+
+<p>J.K. Rowling, in Canada, got an injunction against people who had bought her
+book in a bookstore, ordering them not to read it. So in response I call for
+a boycott of Harry Potter books. But I don't say you shouldn't read them; I
+leave that to the author and the publisher. I just say you shouldn't buy
+them.</p>
+
+<p>It's few authors that make enough money that they can be corrupted in
+this way. Most of them don't get anywhere near that, and continue wanting the
+same thing they wanted at the outset: they want their work to be
+appreciated.</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to distribute his own book, and copyright was stopping him. He
+realized that more than five years of copyright was unlikely to ever do him
+any good.</p>
+
+<p>If people would rather have copyright last five years, I won't be
+against it. I propose ten as a first stab at the problem. Let's
+reduce it to ten years and then take stock for a while, and we could
+adjust it after that. I don't say I think ten years is the exact
+right number—I don't know.</p>
+
+<p>What about the dimension of breadth? Which activities should copyright
+cover? I distinguish three broad categories of works.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, there are the functional works that you use to do a practical
+job in your life. This includes software, recipes, educational works,
+reference works, text fonts, and other things you can think of. These works
+should be free.</p>
+
+<p>If you use the work to do a job in your life, then if you can't change the
+work to suit you, you don't control your life. Once you have changed the
+work to suit you, then you've got to be free to publish it—publish your
+version—because there will be others who will want the changes you've
made.</p>
+
+<p>This leads quickly to the conclusion that users have to have the same
+four freedoms [for all functional works], not just for software. And
+you'll notice that for recipes, practically speaking, cooks are always
+sharing and changing recipes just as if the recipes were free.
+Imagine how people would react if the government tried to stamp out
+so-called 'recipe piracy'.</p>
+
+<p>The term 'pirate' is pure propaganda. When people ask me what I think
+of music piracy, I say “As far as I know, when pirates attack they
+don't do it by playing instruments badly, they do it with arms. So
+it's not music 'piracy', because piracy is attacking ships, and
+sharing is as far as you get from being the moral equivalent of
+attacking ships”. Attacking ships is bad, sharing with other people
+is good, so we should firmly denounce that propaganda term 'piracy'
+whenever we hear it.</p>
+
+<p>People might have objected twenty years ago: “If we don't give up our
+freedom, if we don't let the publishers of these works control us, the
+works won't get made and that will be a horrible disaster.” Now,
+looking at the free software community, and all the recipes that
+circulate, and reference works like Wikipedia—we are even starting to
+see free textbooks being published—we know that that fear is
+misguided.</p>
+
+<p>There is no need to despair and give up our freedom thinking that otherwise
+the works won't get made. There are lots of ways to encourage them to get
+made if we want more—lots of ways that are consistent with and respect
our
+freedom. In this category, they should all be free.</p>
+
+<p>But what about the second category, of works that say what certain people
+thought, like memoirs, essays of opinion, scientific papers, and various
+other things? To publish a modified version of somebody else's statement of
+what he thought is misrepresenting [that] somebody. That's not particularly
+a contribution to society.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore it is workable and acceptable to have a somewhat reduced copyright
+system where all commercial use is covered by copyright, all modification is
+covered by copyright, but everyone is free to non-commercially redistribute
+exact copies.</p>
+
+<p>That freedom is the minimum freedom we must establish for all
+published works, because the denial of that freedom is what creates
+the War on Sharing—what creates the vicious propaganda that sharing
+is theft, that sharing is like being a pirate and attacking ships.
+Absurdities, but absurdities backed by a lot of money that has
+corrupted our governments. We need to end the War on Sharing; we need
+to legalize sharing exact copies of any published work.</p>
+
+<p>In the second category of works, that's all we need; we don't need to make
+them free. Therefore I think it's OK to have a reduced copyright system
+which covers commercial use and all modifications. And this will provide a
+revenue stream to the authors in more or less the same (usually inadequate)
+way as the present system. You've got to keep in mind [that] the present
+system, except for superstars, is usually totally inadequate.</p>
+
+<p>What about works of art and entertainment? Here it took me a while to
decide
+what to think about modifications.</p>
+
+<p>You see, on one hand, a work of art can have an artistic integrity and
+modifying it could destroy that. Of course, copyright doesn't necessarily
+stop works from being butchered that way. Hollywood does it all the time. On
+the other hand, modifying the work can be a contribution to art. It makes
+possible the folk process which leads to things which are beautiful and
+rich.</p>
+
+<p>Even if we look at named authors only: consider Shakespeare, who borrowed
+stories from other works only a few decades old, and did them in different
+ways, and made important works of literature. If today's copyright law had
+existed then, that would have been forbidden and those plays wouldn't have
+been written.</p>
+
+<p>But eventually I realized that modifying a work of art can be a
+contribution to art, but it's not desperately urgent in most cases.
+If you had to wait ten years for the copyright to expire, you could
+wait that long. Not like the present-day copyright that makes you
+wait maybe 75 years, or 95 years. In Mexico you might have to wait
+almost 200 years in some cases, because copyright in Mexico expires a
+hundred years after the author dies. This is insane, but ten years,
+as I've proposed copyright should last, that people can wait.</p>
+
+<p>So I propose the same partly reduced copyright that covers commercial use
+and modification, but everyone's got to be free to non-commercially
+redistribute exact copies. After ten years it goes into the public domain,
+and people can contribute to art by publishing their modified versions.</p>
+
+<p>One other thing: if you're going to take little pieces out of a bunch of
+works and rearrange them into something totally different, that should just
+be legal, because the purpose of copyright is to promote art, not to
+obstruct art. It's stupid to apply copyright to using snippets like
+that—it's self-defeating. It's a kind of distortion that you'd only get
+when the government is under the control of the publishers of the existing
+successful works, and has totally lost sight of its intended purpose.</p>
+
+<p>That's what I propose, and in particular, this means that sharing copies on
+the Internet must be legal. Sharing is good. Sharing builds the bonds of
+society. To attack sharing is to attack society.</p>
+
+<p>So any time the government proposes some new means to attack people who
+share, to stop them from sharing, we have to recognize that this is evil,
+not just because the means proposed almost invariably offend basic ideas of
+justice (but that's not a coincidence). The reason is because the purpose is
+evil. Sharing is good and the government should encourage sharing.</p>
+
+<p>But copyright did after all have a useful purpose. Copyright as a means to
+carry out that purpose has a problem now, because it doesn't fit in with the
+technology we use. It interferes with all the vital freedoms for all the
+readers, listeners, viewers, and whatever, but the goal of promoting the
+arts is still desirable. So in addition to the partly reduced copyright
+system, which would continue to be a copyright system, I propose two other
+methods.</p>
+
+<p>One is taxes—distribute tax money directly to artists. This could be
a
+special tax, perhaps on Internet connectivity, or it could come from general
+revenue, because it won't be that much money in total, not if it's
+distributed in an efficient way. To distribute it efficiently to promote the
+arts means not in linear proportion to popularity. It should be based on
+popularity, because we don't want bureaucrats to have the discretion to
+decide which artists to support and which to ignore, but based on popularity
+does not imply linear proportion.</p>
+
+<p>What I propose is measure the popularity of the various artists, which you
+could do through polling (samples) in which nobody is required to
+participate, and then take the cube root. The cube root looks like this: it
+means basically that [the payment] tapers off after a while.</p>
+
+<p>If superstar A is a thousand times as popular as successful artist B, with
+this system A would get ten times as much money as B, not a thousand times.</p>
+
+<p>Linearly would give A a thousand times as much as B, which means that
+if we wanted B to get enough to live on we're going to have to make A
+tremendously rich. This is wasteful use of the tax money—it
+shouldn't be done.</p>
+
+<p>But if we make it taper off, then yes, each superstar will get
+handsomely more than an ordinary successful artist, but the total of
+all the superstars will be a small fraction of the [total] money.
+Most of the money will go to support a large number of fairly successful
+artists, fairly appreciated artists, fairly popular artists. Thus the system
+will use money a lot more efficiently than the existing system.</p>
+
+<p>The existing system is regressive. It actually gives far, far more per
+record, for instance, to a superstar than to anybody else. The money is
+extremely badly used. The result is we'd actually be paying a lot less this
+way. I hope that's enough to mollify some of these people who have a
+knee-jerk hostile reaction to taxes—one that I don't share, because I
+believe in a welfare state.</p>
+
+<p>I have another suggestion which is voluntary payments. Suppose every player
+had a button you could push to send a dollar to the artist who made the work
+you're currently playing or the last one you played. This money would be
+delivered anonymously to those artists. I think a lot of people would push
+that button fairly often.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, all of us could afford to push that button once every day, and
+we wouldn't miss that much money. It's not that much money for us, I'm
+pretty sure. Of course, there are poor people who couldn't afford to push it
+ever, and it's OK if they don't. We don't need to squeeze money out of poor
+people to support the artists. There are enough people who are not poor to
+do the job just fine. I'm sure you're aware that a lot of people really love
+certain art and are really happy to support the artists.</p>
+
+<p>An idea just came to me. The player could also give you a certificate of
+having supported so-and-so, and it could even count up how many times you
+had done it and give you a certificate that says “I sent so much to these
+artists”. There are various ways we could encourage people who want to
do
+it.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, we could have a PR campaign which is friendly and kind:
“Have
+you sent a dollar to some artists today? Why not? It's only a
dollar—you'll
+never miss it and don't you love what they're doing? Push the button!”
It
+will make people feel good, and they'll think “Yeah, I love what I just
+watched. I'll send a dollar.”</p>
+
+<p>This is already starting to work to some extent. There's a Canadian singer
+who used to be called Jane Siberry. She put her music on her website and
+invited people to download it and pay whatever amount they wished. She
+reported getting an average of more than a dollar per copy, which is
+interesting because the major record companies charge just under a dollar
+per copy. By letting people decide whether and how much to pay, she got
+more—she got even more per visitor who was actually downloading
something.
+But this might not even count whether there was an effect of bringing more
+people to come, and [thus] increasing the total number that this average was
+against.</p>
+
+<p>So it can work, but it's a pain in the neck under present circumstances.
+You've got to have a credit card to do it, and that means you can't do it
+anonymously. And you've got to go find where you're going to pay, and the
+payment systems for small amounts, they're not very efficient, so the
+artists are only getting half of it. If we set up a good system for this, it
+would work far, far better.</p>
+
+<p>So these are my two suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>And in mecenatglobal.org, you can find another scheme that combines
+aspects of the two, which was invented by Francis Muguet and designed
+to fit in with existing legal systems better to make it easier to
+enact.</p>
+
+<p>Be careful of proposals to “compensate the rights holders”,
because when
+they say 'compensate', they're trying to presume that if you have
+appreciated a work, you now have a specific debt to somebody, and that you
+have to “compensate” that somebody. When they say 'rights
holders', it's
+supposed to make you think it's supporting artists while in fact it's going
+to the publishers—the same publishers who basically exploit all the
artists
+(except the few that you've all heard of, who are so popular that they have
+clout).</p>
+
+<p>We don't owe a debt; we have nobody that we have to
“compensate”.
+[But] supporting the arts is still a useful thing to do. That was the
+motivation for copyright back when copyright fit in with the
+technology of the day. Today copyright is a bad way to do it, but
+it's still good to do it other ways that respect our freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Demand that they change the two evil parts of the New Zealand Copyright Act.
+They shouldn't replace the three strikes punishment, because sharing is
+good, and they've got to get rid of the censorship for the software to break
+DRM. Beware of ACTA—they're trying to negotiate a treaty between various
+countries, for all of these countries to attack their citizens, and we don't
+know how because they won't tell us.</p></dd>
+
+</dl>
+
+<p><a href="/philosophy/copyright-versus-community-2000.html">Click here</a>
+for an older version of this talk from 2000.</p>
</div>
@@ -1066,7 +890,7 @@
<p>
Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2009/03/24 23:45:42 $
+$Date: 2009/11/30 22:43:59 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>
@@ -1090,8 +914,6 @@
<ul class="translations-list">
<!-- English -->
<li><a
href="/philosophy/copyright-versus-community.html">English</a> [en]</li>
-<!-- French -->
-<li><a
href="/philosophy/copyright-versus-community.fr.html">Français</a> [fr]</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
Index: copyright-versus-community-2000.html
===================================================================
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diff -N copyright-versus-community-2000.html
--- /dev/null 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 -0000
+++ copyright-versus-community-2000.html 30 Nov 2009 22:44:00 -0000
1.1
@@ -0,0 +1,1097 @@
+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
+<title>Copyright versus Community in the Age of Computer Networks -
+GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)</title>
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+<h2>Copyright versus Community in the Age of Computer Networks</h2>
+
+<pre>
+This is a transcription from an audio recording, prepared by Douglas
+Carnall, July 2000.
+<!-- It seems this location is no longer accessible
+The original version is hosted at <a
+href="http://carnall.org/stallman/index.html";><http://carnall.org/stallman/index.html></a>
+yavor, Apr 3, 2007 -->
+</pre>
+
+<p><em> Mr Stallman arrives a few minutes after the appointed hour
+of commencement of his talk to address a hushed and respectful
+audience. He speaks with great precision and almost no hesitation in a
+pronounced Boston accent.</em></p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: This is made for someone who wears a strangler. </p>
+
+<p><em>[indicates clip-on microphone for lecture theatre amplification
system]</em> </p>
+
+<p>I don't wear stranglers, so there is no place for it to go.</p>
+
+<p><em>[clips it to his T-shirt]</em></p>
+
+<p><strong>Me</strong>: Are you OK with the recording?</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Yes! <em>[testy]</em> How many people have to ask
me?</p>
+
+<p>Well, I'm supposed to speak today </p>
+
+<p><em>[long pause]</em></p>
+
+<p>about copyright versus community. This is too loud. </p>
+
+<p><em>[indicates clip-on microphone]</em> </p>
+
+<p>What can I do? </p>
+
+<p>Let's see… there's no volume control… </p>
+
+<p><em>[finds volume control on radio microphone box]</em> </p>
+
+<p>this seems better</p>
+
+<p>OK. Copyright versus community in the age of computer networks. The
+principles of ethics can't change. They are the same for all
+situations, but to apply them to any question or situation you have to
+look at the facts of the situation to compare alternatives, you have to
+see what their consequences are, a change in technology never changes
+the principles of ethics, but a change in technology can alter the
+consequences of the same choices, so it can make a difference for the
+outcome of the question, and that has happened in the area of copyright
+law. We have a situation where changes in technology have affected the
+ethical factors that weigh on decisions about copyright law and change
+the right policy for society. </p>
+<p>Laws that in the past may have been a good idea, now are harmful
+because they are in a different context. But to explain this, I should
+go back to the beginning to the ancient world where books were made by
+writing them out by hand. That was the only way to do it, and anybody
+who could read could also write a copy of a book. To be sure a slave
+who spent all day writing copies could probably do it somewhat better
+than someone who didn't ordinarily do that but it didn't make a
+tremendous difference. Essentially, anyone who could read, could copy
+books, about as well as they could be copied in any fashion.</p>
+<p>In the ancient world, there wasn't the sharp distinction between
+authorship and copying that there tends to be today. </p>
+
+<p>There was a continuum. On the one hand you might have somebody,
+say, writing a play. Then you might have, on the other extreme, just
+somebody making copies of books, but in between you might have say,
+somebody, who say, copies part of a book, but writes some words of his
+own, or writing a commentary, and this was very common, and definitely
+respected. Other people would copy some bits from one book, and then
+some bits from another book, and write something of their own words,
+and then copy from another book, quoting passages of various lengths
+from many different works, and then writing some other works to talk
+about them more, or relate them. And there are many ancient
+works—now lost—in which part of them survived in these
+quotations in other books that became more popular than the book that
+the original quote <em>[came from]</em>.</p>
+
+<p>There was a spectrum between writing an original work, and copying.
+There were many books that were partly copied, but mixed with original
+writing. I don't believe there was any idea of copyright in the ancient
+world and it would have been rather difficult to enforce one, because
+books could be copied by anyone who could read anywhere, anyone who
+could get some writing materials, and a feather to write with. So, that
+was a rather clear simple situation.</p>
+
+<p>Later on, printing was developed and printing changed the situation
+greatly. It provided a much more efficient way to make copies of books,
+provided that they were all identical. And it required specialised,
+fairly expensive equipment that an ordinary reader would not have. So
+in effect it created a situation in which copies could only feasibly be
+made by specialised businesses, of which the number was not that large.
+There might have been hundreds of printing presses in a country and
+hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of actually people who
+could read. So the decrease in the number of places in which copies
+could be made was tremendous.</p>
+
+<p>Now the idea of copyright developed along with the printing
+press. I think that there may be… I think I remember reading
+that Venice, which was a major centre of printing in the 1500s also
+had a kind of copyright but I can't find that: I couldn't find that
+reference again. But the system of copyright fitted in naturally with
+the printing press because it became rare for ordinary readers to make
+copies. It still happen. People who were very poor or very rich had
+handmade copies of books. The very rich people did this to show off
+their wealth: they had beautiful illuminated wealth to show that they
+could afford this. And poor people still sometimes copied books by
+hand because they couldn't afford printed copies. As the song goes
+“Time ain't money when all you got is time.” So some poor
+people copied books with a pen. But for the most part the books were
+all made on printing presses by publishers and copyright as a system
+fitted in very well with the technical system. For one thing it was
+painless for readers, because the readers weren't going to make copies
+anyway, except for the very rich ones who could presumably legitimise
+it, or the very poor ones who were making just individual copies and
+no one was going to go after them with lawyers. And the system was
+fairly easy to enforce again because there were only a small number of
+places where it had to be enforced: only the printing presses, and
+because of this it didn't require, it didn't involve, a struggle
+against the public. You didn't find just about everybody trying to
+copy books and being threatened with arrest for doing it.</p>
+
+<p>And in fact, in addition to not restricting the reader's directly,
+it didn't cause much of a problem for readers, because it might have
+added a small fraction to the price of books but it didn't double the
+price, so that small extra addition to the price was a very small
+burden for the readers. The actions restricted by copyright were
+actions that you couldn't do, as an ordinary reader, and therefore, it
+didn't cause a problem. And because of this there was no need for harsh
+punishments to convince readers to tolerate it and to obey.</p>
+
+<p>So copyright effectively was an industrial regulation. It restricted
+publishers and writers but it didn't restrict the general public. It
+was somewhat like charging a fee for going on a boat ride across the
+Atlantic. You know, it's easy to collect the fee when people are
+getting on a boat for weeks or months. </p>
+
+<p>Well, as time went on, printing got more efficient. Eventually even
+poor people didn't have to bother copying books by hand and the idea
+sort of got forgotten. I think it's in the 1800s that essentially
+printing got cheap enough so that essentially everyone could afford
+printed books, so to some extent the idea of poor people copying books
+by hand was lost from memory. I heard about this about ten years ago
+when I started talking about the subject to people.</p>
+
+<p>So originally in England copyright was partly intended as a measure
+of censorship. People who wanted to publish books were required to get
+approval from the government but the idea began to change and it a
+different idea was expressed explicitly in the US constitution. When
+the US constitution was written there was a proposal that authors
+should be entitled to a monopoly on copying their books. This idea was
+rejected. Instead, a different idea of the philosophy of copyright was
+put into the constitution. The idea that a copyright system could
+be… well, the idea is that people have the natural right to
+copy things but copyright as an artificial restriction on copying can
+be authorised for the sake of promoting progress.</p>
+
+<p>So the system of copyright would have been the same more or less
+either way, but this was a statement about the purpose which is said
+to justify copyright. It is explicitly justified as a means to promote
+progress, not as an entitlement for copyright owners. So the system is
+meant to modify the behaviour of copyright owners so as to benefit the
+public. The benefit consists of more books being written and published
+and this is intended to contribute to the progress of civilisation, to
+spreading ideas, and as a means to this end… in other words as
+a means to this end copyright exists. So this also thought of as a
+bargain between the public and authors; that the public gives up its
+natural right to make copies of anything in exchange for the progress
+that is brought about indirectly, by encouraging more people to
+write. </p>
+
+<p>Now it may seem like an obscure question to ask “What's the
+purpose of copyright?” But the purpose of any activity is the
+most important thing for deciding when an activity needs to be changed
+and how. If you forget about the purpose you are sure to get things
+wrong, so ever since that decision was made, the authors and
+especially the publishers most recently have been trying to
+misrepresent it and sweep it under the rug. There has been a campaign
+for decades to try to spread the idea that was rejected in the US
+constitution. The idea that copyright exists as an entitlement for
+copyright owners. And you can that expressed in almost everything they
+say about it starting and ending with the word “pirate”
+which is used to give the impression that making an unauthorised copy
+is the moral equivalent of attacking a ship and kidnapping or killing
+the people on board.</p>
+
+<p>So if you look at the statements being made by publishers you find
+lots of implicit assumptions of this sort which you have to drag into
+the open and then start questioning.</p>
+
+<h3>Recent events and problems</h3>
+<p><em>[brightens]</em></p>
+
+<p>Anyway, as long as the age of the printing press continued,
+copyright was painless, easy to enforce, and probably a good idea. But
+the age of the printing press began changing a few decades ago when
+things like Xerox machines and tape recorders started to be available,
+and more recently as computer networks have come into use the situation
+has changed drastically. We are now in a situation technologically more
+like the ancient world, where anybody who could read something could
+also make a copy of it that was essentially as good as the best copies
+anyone could make.</p>
+
+<p><em>[murmuring in the audience]</em></p>
+
+<p>A situation now where once again, ordinary readers can make copies
+themselves. It doesn't have to be done through centralised mass
+production, as in the printing press. Now this change in technology
+changes the situation in which copyright law operates. The idea of the
+bargain was that the public trades away its natural right to make
+copies, and in exchange gets a benefit. Well, a bargain could be a good
+one or a bad one. It depends on the worth of what you are giving up.
+And the worth of what you are getting. In the age of the printing press
+the public traded away a freedom that it was unable to use.</p>
+
+<p>It's like finding a way of selling shit: what have you got to lose?
+You've got it on hand anyway, if you get something for it, it can
+hardly be a bad deal.</p>
+
+<p><em>[faint laughter]</em></p>
+
+<p>It's like accepting money for promising not to travel to another
+star. You're not going to do it anyway</p>
+
+<p><em>[hearty laughter]</em></p>
+
+<p>at least not in our lifetime so you might as well, if someone's
+going to pay you to promise not to travel to another star, you might
+as well take the deal. But if I presented you with a starship, then
+you might not think that deal was such a good deal any more. When the
+thing you used to sell because it was useless, you discover a use for
+it, then you have to reconsider the desirability of those old deals
+that used to be advantageous. Typically in a such a situation you
+decide that “I'm not going to sell all of this any more; I'm
+going to keep some of it and use it.” So if you were giving up a
+freedom that you couldn't exercise and now you can exercise it, you
+probably want to start retaining the right to exercise it at least
+partially. You might still trade part of the freedom: and there are
+many alternatives of different bargains which trade parts of the
+freedom and keep other parts. So, precisely what you want to do
+requires thought, but in any case you want to reconsider the old
+bargain, and you probably want to sell less of what you sold in the
+past.</p>
+
+<p>But the publishers are trying to do exactly the opposite. At exactly
+the time when the public's interest is to keep part of the freedom to
+use it, the publishers are passing laws which make us give up more
+freedom. You see copyright was never intended to be an absolute
+monopoly on all the uses of a copyright work. It covered some uses and
+not others, but in recent times the publishers have been pushing to
+extend it further and further. Ending up most recently with things like
+the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US which they are also
+trying to turn into a treaty through the World Intellectual Property
+Organisation which is essentially an organisation representing the
+owners of copyrights and patents and which works to try to increase
+their power, and pretends to be doing so in the name of humanity rather
+than in the name of these particular companies.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what are the consequences when copyright starts restricting
+activities that ordinary readers can do. Well, for one thing it's no
+longer an industrial regulation. It becomes an imposition on the
+public. For another, because of this, you find the public's starting to
+object to it You know, when it is stopping ordinary people from doing
+things that are natural in their lives you find ordinary people
+refusing to obey. Which means that copyright is no longer easy to
+enforce and that's why you see harsher and harsher punishments being
+adopted by governments that are basically serving the publishers rather
+than the public. </p>
+
+<p>Also, you have to question whether a copyright system is still
+beneficial. Basically, the thing that we have been paying is now
+valuable for us. Maybe the deal is a bad deal now. So all the things
+that made technology fit in well with the technology of the printing
+press make it fit badly with digital information technology. So,
+instead of like, charging the fee to cross the Atlantic in a boat, it's
+like charging a fee to cross a street. It's a big nuisance, because
+people cross the street all along the street, and making them pay is a
+pain in the neck.</p>
+
+<h3>New kinds of copyright</h3>
+
+<p>Now what are some of the changes we might want to make in copyright
+law in order to adapt it to the situation that the public finds itself
+in? Well the extreme change might be to abolish copyright law but that
+isn't the only possible choice. There are various situations in which
+we could reduce the power of copyright without abolishing it entirely
+because there are various different actions that can be done with a
+copyright and there are various situations in which you might do them,
+and each of those is an independent question. Should copyright cover
+this or not? In addition, there is a question of “How
+long?”. Copyright used to be much shorter in its period or
+duration, and it's been extended over and over again in the past fifty
+years or so and in fact in now appears that the owners of copyrights
+are planning to keep on extending copyrights so that they will never
+expire again. The US constitution says that “copyright must
+exist for a limited time” but the publishers have found a way
+around this: every twenty years they make copyright twenty years
+longer, and this way, no copyright will ever expire again. Now a
+thousand years from now, copyright might last for 1200 years, just
+basically enough so that copyright on Mickey Mouse can not expire.</p>
+
+<p>Because that's why, people believe that US Congress passed a law to
+extend copyright for twenty years. Disney was paying them, and paying
+the President too, with campaign funds of course, to make it lawful.
+See, if they just gave them cash it would be a crime, but contributing
+indirectly to campaigns is legal and that's what they do: to buy the
+legislators. So they passed the Sunny Bono copyright act. Now this is
+interesting: Sunny Bono was a congressman and a member of the Church of
+Scientology, which uses copyrights to suppress knowledge of its
+activities. So they have their pet congressman and they pushed very
+hard for increased copyright powers.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, we were fortunate that Sunny Bono died but in his name they
+passed the Mickey Mouse Copyright Act of 1998 I believe. It's being
+challenged by the way, on the grounds that, there is a legal case that
+people hope to go to the Supreme Court and have the extension of old
+copyrights tossed out. In any case, there are all these different
+situations and questions where we could reduce the scope of copyright.</p>
+
+<p>So what are some of them? Well, first of all there are various
+different contexts for copying. There is commercial sale of copies in
+the stores at one extreme and at the other there is privately making a
+copy for your friend once in a while, and in between there are other
+things, like, there's broadcasting on TV or the radio, there's posting
+it on the website, there's handing it out to all the people in an
+organisation, and some of these things could be done either
+commercially or non-commercially. You know, you could imagine a
+company handing out copies to its staff or you could imagine a school
+doing it, or some private, non-profit organisation doing it. Different
+situations, and we don't have to treat them all the same. So one way
+in we could reclaim the… in general though, the activities that
+are the most private are those that are most crucial to our freedom
+and our way of life, whereas the most public and commercial are those
+that are most useful for providing some sort of income for authors so
+it's a natural situation for a compromise in which the limits of
+copyright are put somewhere in the middle so that a substantial part
+of the activity still is covered and provides an income for authors,
+while the activities that are most directly relevant to peoples'
+private lives become free again. And this is the sort of thing that I
+propose doing with copyright for things such as novels and biographies
+and memoires and essays and so on. That at the very minimum, people
+should always have a right to share a copy with a friend. It's when
+governments have to prevent that kind of activity that they have to
+start intruding into everyone's lives and using harsh punishments. The
+only way basically to stop people in their private lives from sharing
+is with a police state, but public commercial activities can be
+regulated much more easily and much more painlessly. </p>
+
+<p>Now, where we should draw these lines depends, I believe, on the
+kind of work. Different works serve different purposes for their users.
+Until today we've had a copyright system that treats almost everything
+exactly alike except for music: there are a lot of legal exceptions for
+music. But there's no reason why we have to elevate simplicity above
+the practical consequences. We can treat different kinds of works
+differently. I propose a classification broadly into three kinds of
+works: functional works, works that express personal position, and
+works that are fundamentally aesthetic.</p>
+
+<p>Functional works include: computer software; recipes; textbooks;
+dictionaries and other reference works; anything that you use to get
+jobs done. For functional works I believe that people need very broad
+freedom, including the freedom to publish modified versions. So
+everything I am going to say tomorrow about computer software applies
+to other kinds of functional works in the same way. So, this criterion
+of free… because it necessary to have the freedom to publish a
+modified version this means we have to almost completely get rid of
+copyright but the free software movement is showing that the progress
+that society wants that is supposedly the justification for society
+having copyright can happen in other ways. We don't have to give up
+these important freedoms to have progress. Now the publishers are
+always asking us to presuppose that their there is no way to get
+progress without giving up our crucial freedoms and the most important
+thing I think about the free software movement is to show them that
+their pre-supposition is unjustified.</p>
+
+<p>I can't say I'm sure that in all of these areas we can't produce
+progress without copyright restrictions stopping people, but what we've
+shown is that we've got a chance: it's not a ridiculous idea. It
+shouldn't be dismissed. The public should not suppose that the only way
+to get progress is to have copyright but even for these kinds of works
+there can be some kinds of compromise copyright systems that are
+consistent with giving people the freedom to publish modified versions.
+Look, for example, at the GNU free documentation license, which is used
+to make a book free. It allows anyone to make and sell copies of a
+modified version, but it requires giving credit in certain ways to the
+original authors and publishers in a way that can give them a
+commercial advantage and thus I believe make it possible to have
+commercial publishing of free textbooks, and if this works people are
+just beginning to try it commercially. The Free Software Foundation
+has been selling lots of copies of various free books for almost
+fifteen years now and it's been successful for us. At this point
+though, commercial publishers are just beginning to try this particular
+approach, but I think that even for functional works where the freedom
+to publish modified works is essential, some kind of compromise
+copyright system can be worked out, which permits everyone that
+freedom. </p>
+
+<p>For other kinds of works, the ethical questions apply differently,
+because the works are used differently. The second category of works is
+works that express someone's positions or views or experiences. For
+example, essays, offers to do business with people, statements of one's
+legal position, memoirs, anything that says, whose point is to say what
+you think or you want or what you like. Book reviews and restaurant
+reviews are also in this category: it's expressing a personal opinion
+or position. Now for these kinds of works, making a modified version is
+not a useful thing to do. So I see no reason why people should need to
+have the freedom to publish modified versions of these works. Verbatim
+copying is the only thing that people need to have the freedom to do
+and because of this we can consider the idea that the freedom to
+distribute copies should only apply in some situations, for example if
+it were limited to non-commercial distribution that would be OK I
+think. Ordinary citizen's lives would no longer be restricted but
+publishers would still be covered by copyright for these things.</p>
+
+<p><em>[drinks water]</em></p>
+
+<p>Now, I used to think that maybe it would be good enough to allow
+people to privately redistribute copies occasionally. I used to think
+that maybe it would be OK if all public redistribution were still
+restricted by copyright for these works but the experience with
+Napster has convinced me that that's not so. And the reason is that it
+shows that lots and lots of people both want to publicly
+redistribute—publicly but not commercially
+redistribute—and it's very useful. And if it's so useful, then
+it's wrong to stop people from doing it. But it would still be
+acceptable I think, to restrict commercial redistribution of this
+work, because that would just be an industrial regulation and it
+wouldn't block the useful activities that people should be doing with
+these works.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, also, scientific papers. Or scholarly papers in general fall
+into this category because publishing modified versions of them is not
+a good thing to do: it's falsifying the record so they should only be
+distributed verbatim, so scientific papers should be freely
+redistributable by anyone because we should be encouraging their
+redistribution, and I hope you will never agree to publish a scientific
+paper in a way that restricts verbatim redistribution on the net. Tell
+the journal that you won't do that.</p>
+
+<p>Because scientific journals have become an obstacle to the
+dissemination of scientific results. They used to be a necessary
+mechanism. Now they are nothing but an obstruction, and those journals
+that restrict access and restrict redistribution <em>[emphasis]</em> must be
+abolished. They are the enemies of the dissemination of knowledge; they
+are the enemies of science, and this practice must come to an end.</p>
+
+<p>Now there is a third category of works, which is aesthetic works,
+whose main use is to be appreciated; novels, plays, poems, drawings in
+many cases, typically and most music. Typically it's made to be
+appreciated. Now, they're not functional people don't have the need to
+modify and improve them, the way people have the need to do that with
+functional works. So it's a difficult question: is it vital for people
+to have the freedom to publish modified versions of an aesthetic work.
+On the one hand you have authors with a lot of ego attachment saying </p>
+
+<p><em>[English accent, dramatic gesture]</em> </p>
+
+<p>“Oh this is my creation.”</p>
+
+<p><em>[Back to Boston]</em> </p>
+
+<p>“How dare anyone change a line of this?” On the other
+hand you have the folk process which shows that a series of people
+sequentially modifying the work or maybe even in parallel and then
+comparing versions can produce something tremendously rich, and not
+only beautiful songs and short poems, but even long epics have been
+produced in this way, and there was a time back before the mystique of
+the artist as creator, semi-divine figure was so powerful when even
+great writers reworked stories that had been written by others. Some
+of the plays of Shakespeare involve stories that were taken from other
+plays written often a few decades before. If today's copyright laws
+had been in effect they would have called Shakespeare a quote pirate
+unquote for writing some of his great work and so of course you would
+have had the other authors saying</p>
+
+<p><em>[English accent]</em></p>
+
+<p>“How dare he change one line of my creation. He couldn't
+possibly make it better.“</p>
+
+<p><em>[faint audience chuckle]</em></p>
+
+<p>You'll hear people ridiculing this idea in exactly those terms.
+Well, I am not sure what we should do about publishing modified
+versions of these aesthetic works. One possibility is to do something
+like what is done in music, which is anyone's allowed to rearranged and
+play a piece of music, but they may have to pay for doing so, but they
+don't have to ask permission to perform it. Perhaps for commercial
+publication of these works, either modified or unmodified, if they're
+making money they might have to pay some money, that's one possibility.
+It's a difficult question what to do about publishing modified versions
+of these aesthetic works and I don't have an answer that I'm fully
+satisfied with.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Audience member 1 (AM1)</strong>, question, inaudible</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Let me repeat the question because he said it
+so fast you couldn't possibly have understood it. He said “What
+kind of category should computer games go in?” Well, I would say
+that the game engine is functional and the game scenario is
+aesthetic. </p>
+
+<p><strong>AM1</strong>: Graphics?</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Those are part of the scenario probably. The
+specific pictures are part of the scenario; they are aesthetic,
+whereas the software for displaying the scenes is functional. So I
+would say that if they combine the aesthetic and the functional into
+one seamless thing then the software should be treated as functional,
+but if they're willing to separate the engine and the scenario then it
+would be legitimate to say, well the engine is functional but the
+scenario is aesthetic.</p>
+
+<h3>Copyright: possible solutions</h3>
+
+<p>Now, how long should copyright last? Well, nowadays the tendency in
+publishing is for books to go out of copyright faster and faster. Today
+in the US most books that are published are out of print within three
+years. They've been remaindered and they're gone. So it's clear that
+there's not real need for copyright to last for say 95 years: it's
+ridiculous. In fact, it's clear that ten year copyright would be
+sufficient to keep the activity of publishing going. But it should be
+ten years from date of publication, but it would make sense to allow an
+additional period before publication which could even be longer than
+ten years which as you see, as long as the book has not been published
+the copyright on it is not restricting the public. It's basically just
+giving the author to have it published eventually but I think that once
+the book is published copyright should run for some ten years or so,
+then that's it.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I once proposed this in a panel where the other people were
+all writers. And one of them said: “Ten year copyright? Why
+that's ridiculous! Anything more than five years is
+intolerable.” He was an awardwinning science fiction writer who
+was complaining about the difficulty of retrouving, of pulling back,
+this is funny, French words are leaking into my English, of, of
+regaining the rights from the publisher who'd let his books go out of
+print for practical purposes but was dragging his heels about obeying
+the contract, which says that when the book is out of print the rights
+revert to the author.</p>
+
+<p>The publishers treat authors terribly you have to realise. They're
+always demanding more power in the name of the authors and they will
+bring along a few very famous very successful writers who have so much
+clout that they can get contracts that treat them very well to testify
+saying that the power is really for their sake. Meanwhile most writers
+who are not famous and are not rich and have no particular clout are
+being treated horribly by the publishing industry, and it's even worse
+in music. I recommend all of you to read Courtney Love's article: it's
+in Salon magazine right? </p>
+
+<p><strong>AM2</strong> (Audience member 2) Yes</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: She started out by calling the record
+companies quote pirates unquotes because of the way they treat the
+musicians. In any case we can shorten copyright more or less. We could
+try various lengths, we could see, we could find out empirically what
+length of copyright is needed to keep publication vigourous. I would
+say that since almost books are out of print by ten years, clearly ten
+years should be long enough. But it doesn't have to be the same for
+every kind of work. For example, maybe some aspects of copyright for
+movies should last for longer, like the rights to sell all the
+paraphernalia with the pictures and characters on them. You know,
+that's so crassly commercial it hardly matters if that is limited to
+one company in most cases. Maybe the copyright on the movies
+themselves, maybe that's legitimate for that to last twenty
+years. Meanwhile for software, I suspect that a three year copyright
+would be enough. you see if each version of the programme remains
+copyrighted for three years after its release well, unless the company
+is in real bad trouble they should have a new version before those
+three years are up and there will be a lot of people who will want to
+use the newer version, so if older versions are all becoming free
+software automatically, the company would still have a business with
+the newer version. Now this is a compromise as I see it, because it is
+a system in which not all software is free, but it might be an
+acceptable compromise, after all, if we had to wait three years in
+some cases for programs to become free… well, that's no
+disaster. To be using three years old software is not a disaster.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM3</strong>: Don't you think this is a system that would
+favour feature creep?</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: <em>[airily]</em> Ah that's OK. That's a
+minor side issue, compared with these issues of freedom encouraging,
+every system encourages some artificial distortions in what people,
+and our present system certainly encourages various kinds of
+artificial distortions in activity that is covered by copyright so if
+a changed system also encourages a few of these secondary distortions
+it's not a big deal I would say.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM4</strong>: The problem with this change in the copyright
+laws for three would be that you wouldn't get the sources.</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Right. There would have also to be a
+condition, a law that to sell copies of the software to the public the
+source code must be deposited somewhere so that three years later it
+can be released. So it could be deposited say, with the library of
+congress in the US, and I think other countries have similar
+institutions where copies of published books get placed, and they
+could also received the source code and after three years, publish
+it. And of course, if the source code didn't correspond to the
+executable that would be fraud, and in fact if it really corresponds
+then they ought to be able to check that very easily when the work is
+published initially so you're publishing the source code and somebody
+there says alright “dot slash configure dot slash make”
+and sees if produces the same executables and uh.</p>
+
+<p>So you're right, just eliminating copyright would not make software
+free.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM5</strong>: Um libre</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Right. That's the only sense I use the
+term. It wouldn't do that because the source code might not be
+available or they might try to use contracts to restrict the users
+instead. So making software free is not as simple as ending copyright
+on software: it's a more complex situation than that. In fact, if
+copyright were simply abolished from software then we would no longer
+be able to use copyleft to protect the free status of a program but
+meanwhile the software privateers could use other
+methods—contracts or withholding the source to make software
+proprietary. So what would mean is, if we release a free program some
+greedy bastard could make a modified version and publish just the
+binaries and make people sign non-disclosure agreements for them. We
+would no longer have a way to stop them. So if we wanted to change the
+law that all software that was published had to be free we would have
+to do it in some more complex way, not just by turning copyright for
+software. </p>
+
+<p>So, overall I would recommend we look at the various kinds of works
+and the various different kinds of uses and then look for a new place
+to draw the line: one that gives the public the most important
+freedoms for making use of each new kind of work while when possible
+retaining some kind of fairly painless kind of copyright for general
+public that is still of benefit to authors. In this way we can adapt
+the copyright system to the circumstances where we find it we find
+ourselves and have a system that doesn't require putting people in
+prison for years because they shared with their friends, but still
+does in various ways encourage people to write more. We can also I
+believe look for other ways of encouraging writing other ways of
+facilitating authors making money. For example, suppose that verbatim
+redistribution of a work is permitted and suppose that the work comes
+with something, so that when you are playing with it or reading it,
+there is a box on the side that says “click here to send one
+dollar to the authors or the musicians or whatever” I think that
+in the wealthier parts of the world a lot of people will send it
+because people often really love the authors and musicians that made
+the things that they like to read and listen to. And the interesting
+thing is that the royalty that they get now is such a small fraction
+that if you pay twenty dollars for something they're probably not
+getting more than one anyway.</p>
+
+<p>So this will be a far more efficient system. And the interesting
+thing will be that when people redistribute these copies they will be
+helping the author. Essentially advertising them, spreading around
+these reasons to send them a dollar. Now right now the biggest reason
+why more people don't just send some money to the authors is that it's
+a pain in the neck to do it. What are you going to do? Write a cheque?
+Then who are you going to mail the cheque to? You'd have to dig up
+their address, which might not be easy. But with a convenient internet
+payment system which makes it efficient to pay someone one dollar, then
+we could put this into all the copies, and then I think you'd find the
+mechanism starting to work well. It may take five of ten years for the
+ideas to spread around, because it's a cultural thing, you know, at
+first people might find it a little surprising but once it gets normal
+people would become accustomed to sending the money, and it wouldn't be
+a lot of money compared to what it costs to buy books today.</p>
+
+<p><em>[drinks]</em></p>
+
+<p>So I think that in this way, for the works of expression, and maybe
+aesthetic works, maybe this could a successful method. But it won't
+work for the functional works, and the reason for that is that as one
+person after another makes a modified version and publishes it, who
+should the boxes point to, and how much money should they send, and you
+know, it's easy to do this when the work was published just once, by a
+certain author, or certain group of authors, and they can just agree
+together what they're going to do and click on the box, if no-one is
+publishing modified versions then every copy will contain the same box
+with the same URL directing money to the same people but when you have
+different version which have been worked on by different people there's
+no simple automatic way of working out who ought to get what fraction
+of what users donate for this version or that version. It's
+philosophically hard to decide how important each contribution is, and
+all the obvious ways of trying to measure it are <em>[emphasis]</em> obviously
+<em>[/emphasis]</em> wrong in some cases, they're obviously closing their eyes
+to some important part of the facts so I think that this kind of
+solution is probably not feasible when everybody is free to publish
+modified versions. But for those kinds of works where it is not crucial
+to have the freedom to publish modified versions then this solution can
+be applied very simply once we have the convenient internet payment
+system to base it on.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the aesthetic works. If there is a system where those
+who commercially redistribute or maybe even those who are publishing a
+modified version might have to negotiate the sharing of the payments
+with the original developers and then this kind of scheme could be
+extended to those works too even if modified versions are permitted
+there could be some standard formula which could be in some cases
+renegotiated, so I think in some cases probably possible even with a
+system of permitting in some way publishing modified versions of the
+aesthetic works it may be possible still to have this kind of voluntary
+payment system.</p>
+
+<p>Now I believe there a people who are trying to set up such
+voluntary payment systems. I heard of something called the street
+performer's protocol. I don't know the details of it. And I believe
+there is something called GreenWitch.com <em>[transcriber's note: URL
+uncertain]</em> I believe the people there are trying to set up
+something more or less like this. I think that what they are hoping to
+do is collect a bunch of payments that you make to various different
+people, and eventually charge your credit card once it gets to be big
+enough so that it's efficient. Whether those kind of systems work
+smoothly enough in practice that they'll get going is not clear, and
+whether they will become adopted widely enough for them to become a
+normal cultural practice is not clear. It may be that in order for
+these voluntary payments to truly catch on we need to have some kind
+of… you need to see the idea everywhere in order to…
+“Yeah, I outta pay“ once in a while. We'll see.</p>
+
+<p>There is evidence ideas like this are not unreasonable. If you look
+at for example public radio in the US, which is mostly supported by
+donations from listeners, you have I believe, millions of people
+donating, I'm not sure how many exactly but there are many public
+radio stations which are supported by their listeners and they seem to
+be finding it easier to get donations as time goes on. Ten years ago
+they would have maybe six weeks of the year when they were spending
+most of their time asking people “Please send some money, don't
+you think we're important enough” and so on 24 hours a day, and
+now a lot of them have found that they can raise the contributions by
+sending people mail who sent them donations in the past, and they
+don't have to spend their airtime drumming up the donations.</p>
+
+<p>Fundamentally, the stated purpose of copyright: to encourage
+righting is a worthwhile purpose, but we have to look at ways of ways
+to achieve it that are not so harsh, and not so constricting of the use
+of the works whose developments we have encouraged and I believe that
+digital technology is providing us with solutions to the problem as
+well as creating a context where we need to solve the problem. So
+that's the end of this talk, and are there questions?</p>
+
+<h3>Questions and discussion</h3>
+<p>First of all, what time is the next talk? What time is it now?</p>
+
+<p><strong>Me</strong>: The time is quarter past three.</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Oh really? So I'm late already? Well I hope
+Melanie will permit me to accept a few questions.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM6</strong> (Audience member 6): Who will decide in which
+of your three categories will a work fit?</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: I don't know. I'm sure there are various ways
+of deciding. You can probably tell a novel when you see one. I suspect
+judges can tell a novel when they see one too.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM7</strong>: Any comment on encryption? And the
+interaction of encryption devices with copyrighted materials?</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well, encryption is being used as a means of
+controlling the public. The publishers are trying to impose various
+encryption systems on the public so that they can block the public
+from copying. Now they call these things technological methods, but
+really they all rest on laws prohibiting people from by-passing them,
+and without those laws none of these methods would accomplish its
+purpose, so they are all based on direct government intervention to
+stop people from copying and I object to them very strongly, and I
+will not accept those media. If as a practical matter the means to
+copy something are not available to me I won't buy it, and I hope you
+won't buy it either.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM8</strong>: In France we have a law that says that even
+if the media is protected you have the right to copy again for backup
+purpose</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Yes it used to be that way in the US as well
+until 2 years ago.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM8</strong>: Very often you sign an agreement that is
+illegal in France… the contract you are supposed to sign with a
+mouse…</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well, maybe they're not.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM8</strong>: How can we get it challenged?</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: <em>[rhetorically]</em> Well are you going to
+challenge them? It costs money, it takes trouble, and not only that,
+how would you do it? Well, you could either try to go to a court and
+say, “They have no right to ask people to sign this contract
+because it is an invalid contract” but that might be difficult
+if the distributor is in the US. French law about what is a valid
+contract couldn't be used to stop them in the US. On the other hand
+you could also say “I signed this contract but it's not valid in
+France so I am publicly disobeying, and I challenge them to sue
+me.” Now that you might consider doing, and if you're right and
+the laws are not valid in France then the case would get thrown out. I
+don't know. Maybe that is a good idea to do, I don't know whether,
+what its effects politically would be. I know that there was just a
+couple of years ago a law was passed in Europe to prohibit some kind
+of private copying of music, and the record companies trotted out some
+famous very popular musicians to push for this law and they got it, so
+it's clear that they have a lot of influence here too, and it's
+possible that they will get more, just pass another law to change
+this. We have to think about the political strategy for building the
+constituency to resist such changes and the actions we take should be
+designed to accomplish that. Now, I'm no expert on how to accomplish
+that in Europe but that's what people should think about.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM6</strong>: What about protection of private correspondence?</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well, if you're not <em>[emphasis]</em>
+publishing <em>[/emphasis]</em> it that's a completely different
+issue.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM6</strong>: No, but if I send an email to somebody,
+that's automatically under my copyright.</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: <em>[forcefully]</em> That's entirely
+irrelevant actually.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM6</strong>: No, I don't accept that. If they're going to
+publish it in a newspaper. At the moment my redress is my
+copyright.</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well, you can't make him keep secret the
+contents and I'm not sure actually. I mean to me, I think there's some
+injustice in that. If you for example, send a letter to somebody
+threatening to sue him and then you tell him you can't tell anybody I
+did this because my threat is copyrighted, that's pretty obnoxious,
+and I'm not sure that it would even be upheld.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM6</strong>: Well, there are circumstances where I want to
+correspond with someone and keep my (and their) reply, entirely
+private. </p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well if you and they agree to keep it
+private, then that's a different matter entirely. I'm sorry the two
+issues can not be linked, and I don't have time to consider that issue
+today. There's another talk scheduled to start soon. But I think it is
+a total mistake for copyright to apply to such situations. The ethics
+of those situations are completely different from the ethics of
+published works and so they should be treated in an appropriate way,
+which is completely different.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM6</strong>: That's fair enough, but at the moment the
+only redress one has is copyright…</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: <em>[interrupts]</em> No you're wrong. If
+people have agreed to keep something private then you have other
+redress. In Europe there are privacy laws, and the other thing is, you
+don't have a right to force someone to keep secrets for you. At most,
+you could force him to paraphrase it, because he has a right to tell
+people what you did.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM6</strong>: Yes, but I assuming that the two people at
+either end are both in reasonable agreement.</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well then, don't say that copyright is your
+only recourse. If he's in agreement he isn't going to give it to a
+newspaper is he?</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM6</strong>: No, er, you're sidestepping my question about
+interception.</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Oh interception. That's a totally
+different… <em>[heatedly]</em> no you didn't ask about
+interception. This is the first time you mentioned
+interception…</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM6</strong>: No it's the second time.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM9</strong>: <em>[murmurs assent to AM6]</em></p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: <em>[still heated]</em> Well I didn't hear
+you before… it's totally silly… it's like trying
+to… oh how can I compare?… it's like trying to kill an
+elephant with a waffle iron I mean they have nothing to do with each
+other.</p>
+
+<p><em>[uninterpretable silence falls]</em></p>
+
+<p><strong>AM10</strong>: Have you thought about
+changes <em>[inaudible, in trade secrets?]</em></p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Uh yes: Trade secrets has developed in a very
+ominous and menacing direction. It used to be that trade secrecy meant
+that you wanted to keep something secret so you didn't tell anybody,
+and later on it was something that was done within a business telling
+just a few people something and they would agree to keep it
+secret. But now, it's turning into something where the public in
+general is becoming conscripted into keeping secrets for business even
+if they have never agreed in any way to keep these secrets and that's
+a pressure. So those who pretend that trade secrecy is just carrying
+out some natural right of theirs; that's just not true any
+more. They're getting explicit government help in forcing other people
+to keep their secrets. And we might want to consider whether
+non-disclosure agreements should in general be considered legitimate
+contracts because of the anti-social nature of trade secrecy it
+shouldn't be considered automatic that just because somebody has
+promised to keep a secret that that means it's binding.</p>
+
+<p>Maybe in some cases it should be and in some cases it should not be.
+If there's a clear public benefit from knowing then maybe that should
+invalidate the contract, or maybe it should be valid when it is signed
+with customers or maybe between a business and a, maybe when a business
+supplies secrets to its suppliers that should be legitimate, but to its
+customers, no.</p>
+
+<p>There are various possibilities one can think of, but at the very
+start anybody who hasn't voluntarily agreed to keep the secrets should
+not be bound by trade secrecy. That's the way it was until not long
+ago. Maybe it still is that way in Europe, I'm not sure.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM11</strong>: Is is OK for a company to ask say its…</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: employees?</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM11</strong>: No no</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: suppliers?</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM11</strong>: yes, suppliers. What if the customer is
+another supplier?</p>
+
+<p><em>[gap as minidisk changed]</em></p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Let's start by not encouraging it.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM12</strong>: I have a question regarding your opinion on
+the scientific work on journals and textbooks. In my profession at
+least one official journal and textbook are available on-line, but
+they retain copyright, but there is free access to the resources
+provided they have internet access.</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well, that's good. But there are many
+journals where it is not like that. For example, the ACM journals you
+can't access unless you are a subscriber: they're blocked. So I think
+journals should all start opening up access on the web.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM12</strong>: So what impact does that have on the
+significance of copyright on the public when you basically don't
+interfere with providing free access on the web.</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Well, first of all, I disagree. Mirror sites
+are essential, so the journal should only provide open access but they
+should also give everyone the freedom to set up mirror sites with
+verbatim copies of these papers. If not then there is a danger that
+they will get lost. Various kinds of calamities could cause them to
+be lost, you know, natural disasters, political disasters, technical
+disasters, bureaucratic disasters, fiscal disasters… All sorts
+of things could cause that one site to disappear. So really what the
+scholarly community should logically be doing is carefully arranging
+to have a wide network of mirror sites making sure that every paper is
+available on every continent, from places near the ocean to places
+that are far inland and you know this is exactly the kind of thing
+that major libraries will feel is their mission if only they were not
+being stopped.</p>
+
+<p>So what should be done, is that these journals should go one step
+further. In addition to saying everybody can access the site they
+should be saying, everyone can set up a mirror site. Even if they said,
+you have to do the whole publication of this journal, together with our
+advertisements, now that would still at least do the job of making the
+availability redundant so that it's not in danger, and other
+institutions would set up mirror sites, and I predict that you would
+find ten years down the road, a very well organised unofficial system
+of co-ordinating the mirroring to make sure that nothing was getting
+left out. At this point the amount that it costs to set up the mirror
+site for years of a journal is so little that it doesn't require any
+special funding; nobody has to work very hard: just let librarians do
+it. Anyway, oh there was some other thing that this raised and I can't
+remember what it is. Oh well, I'll just have to let it go.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM13</strong>: The financing problem for the aesthetical
+works… do you think the dynamics could
+be… <em>[inaudible]</em> although I understand the problems
+of… I mean who's contributing? and who will be rewarded? Does
+the spirit of free software <em>[inaudible]</em></p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: I don't know. It's certainly suggesting the
+idea to people. We'll see. I don't the answers, I don't know how
+we're going to get there, I'm trying to think about where we should
+get to. I know know how we can get there. The publishers are so
+powerful, and can get governments to do their bidding. How we're going
+to build up the kind of world where the public refuses to tolerate
+this any more I don't know. I think the first thing we have to do is
+to clearly reject the term pirate and the views that go with it. Every
+time we hear that we have to speak out and say this is propaganda,
+it's not wrong for people to share these published works with each
+other, it's sharing with you friend, it's good. And sharing with your
+friend is more important than how much money these companies get. The
+society shouldn't be shaped for the sake of these companies. We have
+to keep on… because you see the idea that they've
+spread—that anything that reduces their income is immoral and
+therefore people must be restricted in any way it takes to guarantee
+for them to be paid for everything… that is the fundamental
+thing that we have to start attacking directly. People have mostly
+tried tactics of concentrating on secondary issues, you know, to when
+people, you know when the publishers demand increased power usually
+people saying it will cause some secondary kind of harm and arguing
+based on that but you rarely find anybody (except me) saying that the
+whole point of the change is wrong, that it's wrong to restrict it in
+that way, that it's legitimate for people to want to change copies and
+that they should be allowed to. We have to have more of this. We have
+to start cutting the root of their dominion not just hacking away at a
+few leaves.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM14</strong>: <em>[inaudible]</em> this is important is to
+concentrate on the donations system for music.</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: Yes. Unfortunately though there are patents
+covering the technique that seems most likely to be usable.</p>
+
+<p><em>[laughs, cries of “no” from audience]</em></p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: So it may take ten years before we can do it.</p>
+
+<p><strong>AM15</strong>: We only take French laws</p>
+
+<p><strong>RMS</strong>: I don't know. I think I'd better hand the
+floor over to Melanie whose talk was supposed to start at 3. and uh
+so</p>
+
+<p>RMS stands in silence. There is a pause before the outbreak of
+applause. RMS turns to applaud the stuffed fabric gnu he placed on the
+overhead projector at the beginning of the talk.</p>
+
+</div>
+
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+
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+<p>
+Copyright © 2001, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
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+<p>Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is
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+Updated:
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