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[Rob Myers]

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+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
+<title>RMS on Radio New Zealand -
+GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)</title>
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+<h2>RMS on Radio NZ - October 2009</h2>
+
+<p>Saturday 3 October 2009 / approx. 9.05 am NZST</p>
+Radio New Zealand National / Saturdays with Kim Hill<br />
+Interview between Kim Hill (presenter) and Richard M Stallman<br />
+Transcript by Jim Cheetham address@hidden with permission from Radio New
+Zealand.<br />&nbsp;
+</p>
+
+<h3>Interesting sections</h3>
+<p>
+[00:00] Introduction<br />
+[00:40] Surveillance<br />
+[00:19] Terrorism and 9/11<br />
+[04:30] Barack Obama<br />
+[06:23] Airline Security<br />
+[08:02] Digital Surveillance<br />
+[10:26] Systematic Surveillance<br />
+[12:20] Taxi surveillance<br />
+[14:25] Matters of Principle - cellphones<br />
+[15:33] Free Software and Freedom<br />
+[17:24] Free Trade treaties<br />
+[20:08] Cars, microwaves and planes<br />
+[21:05] Copying books<br />
+[25:31] E-books &amp; supporting artists<br />
+[28:42] Micropayments<br />
+[30:47] A simplistic political philosophy?<br />
+[32:51] Income<br />
+[33:48] Digital handcuffs &mdash; Amazon Kindle<br />
+[36:13] Buying books<br />
+[37:16] Social networking<br />
+[38:08] The ACTA<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<dl>
+<dt>[00:00]<br />
+KH</dt> 
+<dd>We spoke to Richard Stallman a while ago last year about his campaign for
+Free Software. He's a hero, of course, of the movement; launched the Free
+Software Foundation, campaigns against software patents and extensions of
+copyright laws. His battle is, as he told us last year, against what he calls
+extreme capitalism. His GNU operating system with Linux was the first Free
+operating system that could run on a PC. Richard Stallman says "it's all about
+freedom", a cause which goes beyond software; and we could talk about the
+others he's identified, surveillance and censorship, because he joins me now,
+hello.</dd>
+
+<dt>[00:40]<br />
+RMS</dt>
+<dd>Hello</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt> 
+<dd>Let us talk about surveillance and censorship. I've been looking at your
+personal website and you're talking about fingerprinting of air travellers, for
+example, which is something you're very hot about.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Yes, I urge people to refuse to go to the US where they would be
+mistreated that way.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Why is that mistreatment, do you think?
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Because it's too much information to collect about people who aren't
+criminals. And by the way for the same reason I will not ever go to Japan again
+unless they changed that policy, which makes me sad, but one must &hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>[01:19]<br />
+KH</dt>
+<dd>It's not justifiable in order to make sure that terrorists aren't getting
+on the plane?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>There's no need. Basically terrorism, and by the way we don't really know
+who was behind the September 11th attacks in the US, we don't know whether it
+was a bunch of Muslim fanatics, or it was a bunch of Christian fanatics and the
+White House. We do know that Bush corrupted and sabotaged the investigation
+when he was unable to prevent it from happening.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>So, are you an advocate of the conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>I can't say &hellip; first of all I think it's unfair &mdash; we know that 
the
+attack was a conspiracy. All the theories are conspiracies.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Well, all right, the conspiracy theory for example, that has the Bush
+administration staging the 9/11 attack in order to justify &hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>I don't know. The only way there could ever be proof of that is with a
+real investigation, but when you have a government not allowing a real
+investigation of a horrible crime then you've got to suspect that they're
+hiding something. Now I can't know for certain what they're hiding, but I want
+a real investigation to be carried out with the power to subpoena anyone
+possibly concerned, including Bush, and make those people testify under oath
+and show them no deference that everyone else wouldn't get.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Putting 9/11 aside then because we haven't got time here to go into the
+various theories about what could possibly have caused 9/11, there is
+undoubtedly a thing called terrorism.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Yes, but it's a minor problem. More people died in the US in September
+2001 from car accidents than from a terorist attack, and that continues month
+after month, but we don't have a Global War on Accidents, so basically
+politicians used a real danger, but not the world's biggest danger, as an
+excuse for what they want to do, which is &hellip; and remember that these
+governments are much more dangerous, it's quite clear that Bush's invasion of
+Iraq was far more destructive than anything non state-sponsored terrorists have
+been able to do &mdash; that's assuming that those terrorists in September 
2001 were
+not state-sponsored, which we don't know &mdash; but the point is, what Bush 
did by
+invading Iraq, using those attacks as an excuse, was tremendously worse and we
+must remember than governments gone amok can do far more damage than anybody
+not state-sponsored. After all, governments have a lot more men under arms and
+they don't have to hide the fact that they have men under arms, so they're in a
+much bigger position to do damage, so we must be concerned about letting them
+have too much power. A world in which the police can easily do whatever they'd
+like to do is a world in which the police are a threat.</dd>
+
+<dt>[04:30]<br />
+KH</dt>
+<dd>Last time we spoke, and we were talking about the issue of Free Software,
+but specifically in relation to that you doubted that President Bush's
+successor, who we now know is Barack Obama, would be pretty much any different
+from Bush.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>He's a little different, but I have to say he's small change. On human
+rights issues he's not very different. He's still in favour of keeping people
+in prison, without charges, indefinitely, and you can't get much worse than
+that in terms of human rights.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Well except he's addressing Guantanamo Bay.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well that's just one of the places where it's done, it's done also in
+Bagram in Afghanistan, and I really don't see why it would be better to move
+those people to Bagram. What has to be done is charge them or release 
them.</dd>
+They're entitled to that.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Yeah, they may be entitled to that but he's also democraticaly elected
+President who &hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>That doesn't mean he's entitled to violate human rights.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>No, but would the American people be in favour of the release of those 
&hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>I don't know.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>&hellip; that's got to be a consideration.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>No it's not, if they're not that just makes them responsible.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>I know you're &hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>I don't think I can excuse massive violations of human rights by saying
+that the public is maddened and supports it. Especially, why are they so
+maddened? Because of a constant propaganda campaign telling you "Be terrified
+of terrorists", "throw away your human rights and everyone else's because
+you're so scared of these terrorists". It's disproportionate, we have to keep
+these dangers in their proportion, there isn't a campaign saying "be terrified
+of getting in a car" but maybe there ought to be.</dd>
+
+<dt>[06:23]<br />
+KH</dt>
+<dd>Most airline security, getting back to the fingerprinting issue, you've
+said is just for show.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>A lot of it is, not all of it is, I'm very glad that they have reinforced
+the cabin doors so that hijackers can't get at the pilots, OK, that's a
+sensible measure.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>But are you? I would have thought that you would have said "why would they
+spend money reinforcing the cabin doors because hijackers are a minor 
issue".</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>I'm not against spending a little bit of money.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>You're saying that that issue isn't an infringement of human rights.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>OK, and I don't mind spending some money for safety, I even make some
+compromises you know on issues of rights, I'm not saying police shouldn't be
+able to get a search warrant, but they should have to go to a Judge, to present
+probable cause, to keep them in check because police are very dangerous when
+they run amok, as people discovered a few months ago in London, when the police
+did run amok, and they killed somebody who was trying to walk home past a
+protest, and he couldn't get home because the police were just deliberately
+blocking the streets, and then they hit him.  And then they lied about it too,
+which they typically do. Whenever the police attack someone they lie about him,
+they lie about what they did, and they lie about what he was doing, to make it
+sound that  they were justified in mistreating him in the first place, it's
+standard practice, they're like an armed gang.</dd>
+
+<dt>[08:02]<br />
+KH</dt>
+<dd>If you don't agree with surveillance, is there any way that you would
+accept that it might be quite a handy thing, CCTV &hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Wait a second, your view of surveillance is oversimplifying things, what
+I see happening with computers is they make possible a form of total
+surveillance which wasn't feasible in the past, even governments like Romania
+under Ceauşescu, or East Germany with the Stasi, they did a lot of 
surveillance
+but it took a lot of people working on it and even then it was limited what
+they could actually watch and record because it was so hard. Now, we're
+entering a kind of surveillance society that has never been seen before 
&hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>You're talking about digital surveillance.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Yes, but as people do more things using digital technology it becomes
+easy to keep a record of everything everyone has done, things that weren't done
+in the past and still aren't done with other media, there's no record of who
+sends a letter to who for all letters, it just isn't done. But there are
+records in many countries of who sends an email to whom and those records can
+be saved for years and we don't know that they'll ever be disposed of.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>If you think that governments are not to be trusted, which is a legitimate
+position of course, and if you think that the police are not to be trusted,
+again a legitimate position, why can't you feel happier about digital
+surveillance and CCTV surveillance given that it may well give the people more
+protection.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Oh, I'm all in favour of the right to make and record videos, such as
+when you're on the street or when you're watching a protest or whatever, I'm
+concerned about systematic surveillance.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>What is that, systematic surveillance?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well suppose the police set up a camera that always watches the street,
+and connects it to a face recognition program and make a database of everyone
+who passes, that's systematic surveillance. Now if you walk down the street and
+maybe you see somebody you know and you recognise him, that's not systematic
+surveillance, that's a whole bunch of people knowing something, there's nothing
+wrong with that, that's just what life is.</dd>
+
+<dt>[10:26]<br />
+KH</dt>
+<dd>What makes systematic surveillance more sinister to you?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Because we know that there's a tendancy for many different governments to
+treat dissenters as terrorists, and investigate them using laws that were set
+up supposedly to help them prevent terrorism. We know also that they tend to
+sabotage political activities, and this is dangerous.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>What's wrong with being investigated?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well, it depends if the government's investigating you because you're a
+political dissident, there are a lot of things they could do to harrass you.
+One thing I remember was in England, a busload of protestors, they were on they
+way to a protest, the police stopped their bus and drove them away from the
+protest, and they cited a law that had been passed to supposedly prevent
+terrorism. Well this is sabotaging political activity.  And then another thing
+that happens I know in England, is people have been prosecuted for copies of
+texts that they have, you know reading is sometimes illegal, it's really
+dangerous. What we see is a global tendancy for governments to bring out the
+worst side of themselves with terrorism as the excuse, so we must be on guard
+against that, that's potentially a much bigger danger than the terrorists it's
+supposed to protect us from. I don't have to say that they don't exist, or that
+they're no danger at all.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>No, the difficulty is being on guard against the danger that you've cited,
+without giving quarter to &hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>[12:20]<br />
+RMS</dt>
+<dd>Ah, no I don't see it's any problem at all. Police have lots of things
+they can do to investigate people and it's more all the time and whenever
+there's a specific reason to suspect particular people they can basically get
+permission to search whatever. So OK, that's necessary, but beyond that we've
+got to be careful not to go, and the digital surveillance society goes far
+beyond that, there's a tendancy to keep records of everything, check
+everything. In New York City for instance a taxi driver told me he had been
+required to install a camera which transmits by radio people's faces to the
+police where they run face recognition over it. I don't think that should be
+allowed. I don't mind if they have a system that records people's faces and
+keeps it for a week in case somebody attacks the taxi driver, that's not going
+to do anything to us if we don't attack taxi drivers. We can make use of
+surveillance technology in ways that don't threaten people's rights but we've
+got to make sure we use them in those ways.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>How come you can justify people being treated as if they're going to
+attack taxi drivers &hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>But you see there the point is, those are not looked at unless there's a
+crime to investigate and then they get erased if it's done right, but the way
+it's actually being done in New York City is they're sent to the police, and
+the police keep track of who goes where, and that's what scares me. Having all
+the information about what you do available to the police for years in the past
+whenever they want to look.  Well part of what I do about this is I don't buy
+things with credit cards unless it's something where they demand to know who I
+am anyway, I don't use a credit card or any digital method, I use cash, and
+that way Big Brother's not making a database of every place I've been, that I
+bought anything in, what I bought.</dd>
+
+<dt>[14:25]<br />
+KH</dt>
+<dd>As a matter of principle, rather than &hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>As a matter of principle. It's not an issue of convenience.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>You don't do quite alot of things actually.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Yeah, I don't carry a cellphone because I really don't want to be telling
+Big Brother where I am all the time, every place I go.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Is that why?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Yes, that's why. Well now there's another reason. Today, cellphones are
+powerful computers and there's no way to run one without proprietary 
software.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>I thought that would be your main reason.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Actually there is one you can get, although they're not producing it
+anymore, it didn't work all that well, it's Mark One. So that's another issue,
+but that didn't exist, that issue wasn't there when cellphones first came out,
+people didn't install programs in them, they were just fixed appliances, but
+they have always raised the issue that they're constantly saying where you are,
+and I just don't want to participate in a system like that, I think people
+shouldn't. It would be very convenient for me to have a cellphone, I'm not one
+of those people who would, who says "I resent the fact that people can call
+me", it's convenient when people can call me, but I'm not going to do it that
+way.</dd>
+
+<dt>[15:33]<br />
+KH</dt>
+<dd>It's interesting that your battle for Free Software and the issues of
+freedom that you identify intersect. They didn't start out being the same 
&mdash; or
+did they?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well they didn't start out being the same. Pervasive digital surveillance
+wasn't a big problem twenty-seven years ago.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>But the people who were in charge were still the people who were in
+charge, the people who you identified as the people you didn't want to see 
&hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well actually they're not the same people. Proprietary software's mostly
+controlled by various private entities that are developers, maybe Apple,
+Microsoft, Adobe, Google, Amazon, they're all distributing proprietary
+software.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>I would have thought you'd identify them all as forces of extreme
+capitalism.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well I'm sorry, when I say extreme capitalism I'm talking about a
+philosophy, and that philosophy says "the market should control everything,
+everything should be for sale, and business should be allowed to dominate
+politics and get the laws it wants", which is very different from mere
+capitalism, which says "within a socirty which we set up to protect peoples
+rights and so on, there are lots of things that people shold be free to do, and
+make businesses to do them, as they wish". That difference is why today's form
+of capitalism is running wild and why we see free exploitation treaties which
+basically undermine democracy and turn it in to a sham.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>What are you talking about there?</dd>
+
+<dt>[17:24]<br />
+RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well, the so-called Free Trade treaties, which I don't like to call that,
+they're designed to transfer power from our governments to companies. They all
+do this in one way, which is they let companies threaten to move to another
+country, or move their operations; and so any time the people are demanding
+that a government protect the environment, or the public health, or the general
+standard of living, or anything else that's more important than just who's
+going to buy and sell what, companies can say "we're against this, and if you
+do this we'll just move our operations elsewhere" and the politicians now have
+a wonderful excuse for why they're not going to do it. Of course it was they
+who decided to adopt that treaty in the first place which they shouldn't have
+done. But then a lot of these treaties go beyond that, and they explicitly deny
+democracy.  Now the US had a law that said it wouldn't sell tuna &mdash; you 
weren't
+allowed to sell tuna in the US if it had been caught in a way that endangered
+dolphins. Well that law had to be scrapped because of the World Trade
+Organisation, that's just one example.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Because it was regarded as a trade barrier.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Exactly. Then NAFTA, which is between the US, Canada and Mexico, allows
+companies to sue the government if they believe some law reduces their profits;
+effectively saying the highest value in society is how much money a company can
+make, and anything that gets in the way of that, we owe them.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Of course, we're in favour of Free Trade here, Richard, because we rely on
+it &hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well I'm not in favour of free trade beyond a certain point. The people
+who are in favour of Free Trade say that it can make everyone more prosperous
+and that's true up to a point, and that point is where it starts subverting
+democracy. But the point of these treaties is precisely to stretch free trade
+to the point where it does subvert democracy. And you can see business
+think-tanks reporting how they expect in a few decades governments will have
+much less control over what goes on in the world and business will have more
+control. What they're predicting is essentially that these treaties will march
+on.</dd>
+
+<dt>[20:08]<br />
+KH</dt>
+<dd>One of the other things you don't do, is you don't drive a car, is that
+right?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>No, that's not true, I don't own a car. I do have a driver's license.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>OK, one of the other things you don't do is you don't own a car.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Yeah, well that's to save money. I live in a city.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>No philosophy.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>No, I don't think it's wrong to own a car, it's good if we all drove
+somewhat less.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>I though that it was because of the proprietary software in cars.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Now that's an interesting issue. I have appliances, I have a microwave
+oven which might have some proprietary software in it.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>And you fly in planes.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Yeah. Well I don't own a plane though. I don't boycott everybody who uses
+proprietary software. If a company uses proprietary software I say that's too
+bad for them, but I'm not going to punish them by boycotting them, what I will
+try to do is explain to them why they deserve to have control over their
+computing rather than letting somebody else control their computing.</dd>
+
+<dt>[21:05]<br />
+KH</dt>
+<dd>What are you going to tell the Library and Information Association
+Conference with regard to copyright and community?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well, I'm going to explain why copyright law today is an injustice,
+because it forbids sharing, and sharing is absolutely essential. People must be
+free to share, so the New Zealand Copyright Law that was adopted about a year
+ago, and only one of several unjust things in it was temporarily withdrawn,
+that went in the wrong direction, but it was already too restrictive, people
+must be free to non-commercially share exact copies of any published work.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>So just let me &hellip; how would this work, for a moment? I write a book, 
I
+spend, you know, five years of my life writing a book.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well who knows, maybe you do it in a month.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Maybe I don't do it in a month.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>The point is, you do it by choice. People wrote books before there was
+copyright. I think you're going about this backwards. It's your choice whether
+to spend time writing, and the main reason most writers spend their time
+writing is because they have something they say they want to write and they
+hope people will appreciate it. It's only a few who get enough money that it
+starts to corrupt their spirit.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Don't most societies want to, and they don't do it fantastically
+efficiently, but to some extent they try to encourage people to write.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Oh, I'm all in favour of encouraging people to write.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Now how would you encourage people to write?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well first of all remember that I'm not talking about abolishing
+copyright on artistic works, I'm saying that people must be free to
+non-commercially share them. Commercial use would still be covered by copyright
+as it is now.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>If I can print off a whole book and pass it on, and they pass it on, pass
+it on, pass it on, pass it on, as an author I'm not going to sell many.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well that may be so, or may not be. I've seen people claim that it's only
+works that are bestsellers that are likely to sell less, because remember if
+you're not a big hit and people pass along copies what they're doing is getting
+you more fans. If you're not a bestseller then what you mainly want
+commercially is exposure, and this is a way you'll get more exposure, and
+without having to pay for it either, and without having to give control to a
+company that would take most of the profits anyway.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>So hang on, the only reason an author would want exposure would be to
+increase the sales of their next book.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Oh no, no no no no no. Only the ones who've been morally corrupted and
+are no longer yearning to be read and appreciated, that's what they start out
+wanting, and a few, only a few get rich, and then those few who get rich, when
+people are paid to do something that they originally did from pleasure or a
+yearning, they tend to start wanting the money more, and the thing that they
+used to yearn to do, they want less.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>So if being read and appreciated is what authors want &hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well they start out wanting. Those who have got rich, some of them want
+to be rich.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Well we'll forget about those because you're implying they write bad books
+as a consequence.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>No I'm not saying that they're all bad, I'm not making a simple
+generalisation like that, I say that their feelings have been corrupted, that
+doesn't necessarily mean their books are bad, I enjoy some of them.  The point
+is that that's not a typical author.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>But a typical author you seem to be condemning to even more penury.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Oh no I'm not, you're mistaken.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>If they cannot sell the book &hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>You're mistaken, you're making a projection which people who know more
+about this disagree. Cory Doctorow who has been a bestselling author puts all
+his works on the net and he doesn't even think he sells less.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>So people still go out and buy the hard copy from the shop?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Yes they do.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Even though people can pass his book from hand to hand willy-nilly.</dd>
+
+<dt>[25:31]<br />
+RMS</dt>
+<dd>They can do that anyway you know with printed books, that's the motive
+for e-books. E-books are designed to stop you from doing things like lending
+the book to your friend or selling it to a used bookstore and borrowing it from
+a public library. They're designed to turn public libraries into retail
+outlets. And the reason they do this is they want to establish a pay-per-read
+universe. They're following the twisted logic that says the most important
+thing is how much money people pay and everybody who reads had a debt, now owes
+money and he has to be made to pay. I think this is entirely twisted and I'm
+against it, because the freedom to share must be respected. But I have other
+proposals for ways to support artists. And remember the current system mostly
+supports corporations, so I don't think it works very well. And it makes a few
+authors quite rich, and those get treated with great deference by the
+corporations, and the rest basically get ground into the dust. My proposals 
&mdash;
+I have two, and another that combines them &mdash; one proposal is support 
artists
+using taxes, it could either be a specific tax on Internet connectivity or
+general funds, it wouldn't be a tremendous amount of money by comparison with
+other government expenditures, and then you divide this among artists by
+measuring their popularity, but you don't divide it in linear proportion, 'cos
+if you did that a large portion of this money would go to making superstars
+richer and it's not needed, what I propose is take the cube root of the
+popularity.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>How do you asess their popularity?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>You could do it with polling.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>How polling? Internet polling?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>All sorts of polling, there's public opinion polling and anything, use a
+sample, the point is you don't ask everybody, nobody's required to 
participate.</dd>
+But you use a sample, and you use that to measure popularity.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>I'm just holding that thought, popularity. You're equating popularity with
+merit?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>No I'm not, but I'm saying you don't want bureaucrats to be deciding who
+gets these funds. So this is one way, you could do it by polling, after all the
+current system bases it on popularity to some extent. Take the cube root, so if
+A is a thousand times as popular as B, A will get ten times as much money as B,
+so this way it's the counterpart to a progressive income tax. So this way, yes
+if you're tremendously successful you do get more, but you don't get
+tremendously more, and most of the money goes to support a large number of
+artists of mid-range popularity.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>And tell me again, where does the money come from?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>It comes from taxes. It comes from all of us.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>General taxes.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Could be general taxes, or a specific special tax. Either way is OK.</dd>
+
+<dt>[28:42]<br />
+KH</dt>
+<dd>Why don't you just ask people, if you're basing it on popularity, why
+don't you just ask people just to send in the money?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well that's my other proposal. If every player had a button to send a
+dollar I think people would do it often, after all the main reason we don't do
+it is how much trouble it is. It's not that you or I would miss a dollar, I
+often would be glad to send a dollar to some artists, but how am I going to do
+it? I need to use a credit card and identify myself and I need to find where to
+send it to them and that's a lot of work. Well, this button, which I hope would
+be implemented in an anonymous way, would take away all the work, it would be
+totally painless to send a dollar, and then I think a lot of people would do
+it.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>What about getting rid of taxes entirely, and giving us all the power to
+direct &hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>I'm not against taxes.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>I'm not suggesting you are, but I'm asking you why not?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Because we need to make sure that rich people pay their fair share, which
+is a bigger share than what poor people have to pay, to keep society going. We
+need a welfare state, at least at our current level of technology and the way
+society works, we need a welfare state, and the rich shouldn't be exempt from
+funding it.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Does it not matter that your popularity contest for artists may let the
+rich completely off the hook?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well, I'm not sure it matters. Supporting artists is desireable but it's
+not a matter of life and death in the same way that giving poor people food and
+shelter and medical care is, whether they're artists or not.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>I don't know, I think that if you look at society it's made up of all
+sorts of things that are contingent on one another for the health of the
+society.</dd>
+
+<dt>[30:47]<br />
+RMS</dt>
+<dd>Yes, but I don't want to have one answer for every question in 
society.</dd>
+I'm not a proponent of a very simpistic political philosophy, and I hope that
+that's visible. There are such people.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Yes, I'm sure there are. No, God no, I would never ever accuse you of
+being an advocate of a simplistic political philosophy :-)</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd><p>There are people who are totally opposed to copyright and criticise me
+for not going far enough, but what I say is that works whose use is to do
+practical jobs, these works must be Free in the sense of the Four Freedoms that
+define Free Software. You've got to be free to republish them, to modify them,
+publish your modified versions, because this is what the users of the works
+need in their lives. But of couse there are lots of works that don't, that
+contribute to society in other ways, they're not functional practical works.
+</p>
+<p>Art for instance, the contribution of an artistic work is in the impact it
+makes on your mind, not in whatever practical job you might figure out how to
+do with it sometime.  And then there are works that state people's opinions and
+thoughts and what they've seen, which is a different way that works can
+contribute to society, and I have different recommendations for these. But the
+freedom to non-commercially share, that must be respected, and that's why the
+new New Zealand Copyright Law and the old one were both unjust, and the purpose
+of the new one is, specifically the punishing people by disconnecting them from
+the Internet, the purpose of that is to stop people from sharing, and it's
+wrong to stop people from sharing, so even if they work out a different way of
+achieving this unjust goal, the goal is what's wrong, not only the nasty
+methods that are, because only draconian methods can stop people from sharing.
+</p></dd>
+
+<dt>[32:51]<br />
+KH</dt>
+<dd>How do you mke your income, if you don't mind me asking?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>From speeches; not all my speeches, a lot of them I give unpaid, and a
+lot of them I get paid.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>And that's how you make your income?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Yes. I don't spend a lot of money.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>And you wouldn't consider that being paid for something you should share
+happily? It's a donation.</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>I'd generally try to avoid having any admission charges. Once in a while
+I do agree to give a speech at a conference where they're charged people to
+register but often I will ask them to let the public in to my speech. So, in
+general I try to have it open to the public without charge because I want as
+many people as possible to come because I'm working for a cause, after all, and
+I want to do as much good as I can for this cause.</dd>
+
+<dt>[33:48]<br />
+KH</dt>
+<dd>Do you think that you're winning?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>You know, gradually we are. But of course we still have a lot of
+opposition, we still have a lot to fight. You know, there's something else in
+the New Zealand Copyright Law that was dopted a year ago, which is unjust, and
+it prohibits in some cases the distribution of Free Software that can break
+digital handcuffs. More and more products are designed with digital handcuffs,
+that is features to stop the user from doing things. So nowadays when I hear
+about a new product or a new service my first thought is "what's malicious in
+that?", "how is it designed to restrict what you can do?". And these products
+are very malicious, for instance there is the Amazon Kindle, it's an e-book
+reader, and they call it the Kindle to express what it's designed to do to our
+books.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>That's not true :-)
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>But it does express what it will do with our books. The point is this
+product does surveillance, it forces the user to identify herself to buy a
+book, and Amazon has a list, knows exactly what everybody has bought.  Then it
+is also designed to restrict the user, to stop people from sharing, from
+lending books to their friends, from selling them to a used bookstore, and
+various things that with printed books we can lawfully do.  Even worse, it has
+a back door, that is Amazon can send commands remotely and do things to you, we
+found out about this a few months ago.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Do what to you?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well Amazon sent a command to all the Kindles, ordering them to erase all
+copies of a particular book, namely "1984" by George Orwell. Somebody said that
+they had burned up the year's supply of irony by choosing that book.  So now we
+know Amazon can remotely erase your books. Now Amazon, after doing this,
+promised it would never do that again, but our freedom to keep a book for as
+long as we want, and read it as many times as we want, should not be dependant
+on any company's goodwill.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Where do you get your books from?</dd>
+
+<dt>[36:13]<br />
+RMS</dt>
+<dd>I buy books from bookstores, yes I go to a store and I say "I want that
+one".</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>And you hand money over for it? Even though you think that that's not
+particularly a good system?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>Well I didn't say that's a bad system.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>Well aren't you handing money over to the corporates rather than the
+author?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>To a large extent yes, but I'm not going to refuse to buy just because of
+that, with books actually typically some of the authors do get some money. With
+academic textbooks they generally don't.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>As a matter of interest we've been talking about freedoms, surveillance
+and digital monitoring, does the extraordinary rise of social networking 
&hellip;</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>I buy CDs of music as well even though in that case I know the musicians
+are not going to get paid, so I'd rather send them some money.</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>OK. And do you?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>I wish I could, I don't have a way, so I try to convince people to set up
+the system to make it easy.</dd>
+
+<dt>[37:16]<br />
+KH</dt>
+<dd>I'm sure they're sending us their addresses as you speak. Very briefly,
+the rise of social networking, is that a concern in terms of privacy for 
you?</dd>
+
+<dt>RMS</dt>
+<dd>It is, and I don't use those sites, it's more because I don't have time,
+I'm busy doing other things. I don't think social network sites are necessarily
+bad but they lead people into foolish activities. So I think an ethical social
+network site should warn people, and every time you connect to it it should
+warn you, "anything you post here might get known to the public no matter how
+you set up settings about supposed privacy. So if you don't want it published,
+you shouldn't say it here."
+
+<dt>KH</dt>
+<dd>That's a nice warning. Thank you, it's very nice to talk to you Richard
+Stallman.</dd>
+
+<dt>[38:08]<br />
+RMS</dt>
+<dd>We didn't even mention ACTA, the secret treaty that New Zealand is
+negotiating to restrict its citizens, and they won't; they tell publishers
+what's in the text that they're working on, but they won't tell the public. So
+the point is that the; many governments, including of course the US are
+conspiring in secret to impose new restrictions on us relating to copyright and
+part of their latest propaganda is they call sharing quote "counterfeiting"
+unquote. But the point is that this treaty will have provisions to restrict the
+public, we think, but they won't tell us.  This is called Policy Laundering,
+this general practice; instead of democratically considering a law, which means
+the public gets to know what's being considered, gets to talk to the
+legislators, sees how they voted and so on, in secret they negotiate a treaty
+and then they come back and they say "we can't change the treaty and we
+obviously can't refuse it, so we're all now, we've just arranged for our
+country to be stuck with this law."</dd>
+
+<dt>KH</dt> 
+<dd>And we may well look at that law in a couple or three weeks time.</dd>
+
+</dl>
+
+</div>
+
+<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
+<div id="footer">
+
+<p>
+Please send FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to
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+also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a> the FSF.
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+<p>
+Please see the
+<a href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+README</a> for information on coordinating and submitting
+translations of this article.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Transcript Copyright &copy; 2009 Jim Cheetham.
+</p>
+<p>This transcript is licensed under the 
+<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/nz/";>Creative 
+Commons Attribution-NonCommercial NoDerivatives New Zealand</a> license.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Updated:
+<!-- timestamp start -->
+$Date: 2009/12/04 23:19:42 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div id="translations">
+<h4>Translations of this page</h4>
+
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