Редактирование: Richard Stallman, Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer Networks

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Лекция прошла в 18:00 5 марта 2008 года в ИФ РАН.

[[Изображение:RMS_ifran1.png|thumb|240px|Ричард Мэттью Столлман]]

== Диктофонные записи ==
* [http://esyr.org/lections/audio/stallman/stallman_IFRAS.ogg Лекция в институте философии РАН]

== Видеозаписи ==
* [http://aiya.ru/rms-moscow-2008-copyright-vs-community.ogg Видеозапись], взятая с http://rms-moscow-2008.narod.ru/ (Зеркала: [http://file.linux.spb.org/Stallman/rms-moscow-2008-copyright-vs-community.ogg Санкт-Петербург], [ftp://ftp.linux.kiev.ua/pub/media/video/rms-moscow-2008-copyright-vs-community.ogg Украина], [http://linuxrsp.ru/media/rms-moscow-2008-copyright-vs-community.ogg Германия], [http://boids.name/talks/rms-moscow-2008-copyright-vs-community.ogg США], [http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4066450/rms-moscow-2008-copyright-vs-community.4066450.TPB.torrent BitTorrent]; [http://abbra.livejournal.com/119052.html источник])

== Расшифровка лекции ==

(расшифровка взята с [http://rms-moscow-2008.narod.ru], счетчик времени по [[#Видеозаписи|видеозаписи]], 
подзаголовки добавлены после расшифровки, только для ориентации по тексту  --[[Участник:PavelSutyrin|PavelSutyrin]] 07:37, 1 июля 2008 (UTC))

=== Introduction. The extents of freedoms ===

{00:00:38}

So, in my previous speeches elsewhere I spoke about the free software
movement, about software that respect the user's freedom, and I explained,
why software users deserve four essential freedoms. Freedom 0, the
freedom to run the program as you wish, freedom 1, the freedom to study
the source code and to change it, so that the program does what you wish,
freedom 2, the freedom to help you neighbor, the freedom to distribute
exact copies, make and distribute exact copies, when you wish, and
freedom 3, the freedom to contribute to your community, the freedom to
make and distribute copies of your modified versions, when you wish. If
the program gives you all four these freedoms, it is free software,
freedom-respecting software, "svobodny" software. [light laughter]

{00:01:43}

So, once the GNU+Linux system existed in the 90s and people started to
use it, I started getting invited to give more speeches, and at the
end of the speech sometimes people would ask, whether the same ideas
of the free software movement -- that all software should be free and
all users should have these freedoms -- do those apply to anything
but software? Sometimes they would say: "what about hardware? Should
computers be free or microphones, or tables, or chairs? [points at these
items around] Well, that was a silly question, because it doesn't even
make sense entirely.

What would it mean, for this table to be free in the same sense? Well,
it would mean that you have freedom 0, the freedom to use the table as
you wish, well, if you buy the table, you pretty much can use it as you
wish, so you have freedom 0. What about freedom 1, the freedom to study
the source code of the table and then change it to make the table to do
what you wish? Well, there is no source code. So, this freedom doesn't
entirely make sense, but you can study the table and you can modify the
table. This table is made of wood, I could cut an inch of every leg if
I wanted to and I have a lower table, there are various modifications
you can do. And the fact is: for the most part nobody will stop you,
if it's your table, you can modify it. So, you have freedom 0 and you
have freedom 1, partly to the extent it makes sense.

But on the other hand, a computer, you basically can't modify very much,
it's impossible. Nobody can modify the circuitry in a chip, you will
just destroy it.

(Can we open a window, it's getting hot in here?)

{00:03:45}

What about freedom 2, the freedom to copy and to distribute the
copies, well there are no copiers for tables, so that's completely
meaningless. And what about freedom 3, the freedom to copy and distribute
copies of your modified versions of the table. Well, if you change this
table, by cutting an inch of each leg, well, there is still no copiers, so
you won't be able to put the modified table into a copier and distribute
copies to people. So, basically, these physical objects in most cases are
as free as they can possibly be, but that's a very partial extent. So,
that was a silly question. He didn't really understand, the people who
ask that question about hardware didn't really understand what "free"
means, they didn't think careful.

But, there are other things about which this question makes sense. And
those are other works of authorship, that you may have a copy of, because
those you can copy and those you can modify, and so question of whether
you are permitted to do so is a real and important question. That is
the question, that this speech is about.

{00:05:10}

If you have a copy of something, some work, which is not software, then
for the most part, the only thing that could restrict your freedom to
copy or distribute or modify it is copyright law. So, the same question
looked at from the other side is: what should copyright law say about
those works?

=== The history of copyright law ===

{00:05:41}

Now, to think about issues of copyright law, it's useful to look at the
history, and the history of copyright law is connected with the history of
copying technology, for very good reasons, because changes in technology
can affect our ethical judgements. Now, changes in technology cannot
touch our basic ethical principles, which are too deep for mere changes
in technology to reach them. But when we apply these principles to a
specific question, we do it by looking at various alternative choices and
look at the consequences of each one. A change in a context can alter the
consequences of the same action and thus make it more good or more bad.

For instance, if we could reliably resurrect the dead, then murder
wouldn't be so bad. You would just say: "all right, you've killed him,
you'll have to pay for his new body", and that's it.

==== The ancient world ====

{00:06:53}

So, let's look at the history of copyright and copying technology.

Copying began in the ancient world, where it was done with a writing instrument
on a writing surface. Now, this copying technology has some interesting
consequences. First of all, there was no built-in economy of scale. Making
ten copies was ten much as work as making one copy. (Excuse me, I'm
looking for my clock... I thought was in here.. Ah.)

Another consequence of ancient world copying technology was: it did
not use any specialized equipment, only the ordinary equipment for
writing. And it didn't require any special skill, only the skill of
reading and writing. The result was a decentralized system, in which
copies of any given book were made in quantity starting one. Wherever
somebody had a copy and wanted another.

As far as I can tell, there was no such thing as copyright in the ancient
world. If you had a copy and you wanted to copy it, you could do so,
and no one would object, except perhaps if the king didn't like what the
book said, and then he may put you in prison or kill you or whatever,
of course, that was censorship, not copyright, but the two are closely
related.

==== The age of printing press ====

{00:08:48}

So there was no system of copyright anywhere in the ancient world,
as far as I know. But then there was a tremendous advance in copying
technology: the printing press, which made copying more efficient,
but not uniformly so. It made some kinds of copy a lot more efficient,
and didn't help in other kinds, because the printing press has a big
economy of scale. It takes a lot of work to set the type, probably the
more work than writing a copy by hand, but once you have set the type,
you can make many identical copies very efficiently.

{00:09:35}

Furthermore, the printing press and the type were expensive specialized
equipment that most regular /?/ people did not have. And it took special
knowledge to use them, different skills from the skills of reading and
writing. So, the result was a centralized system of producing copies,
where copies of any given book were made in a few places, and then they
were brought to whoever wanted to buy them.

In the first few centuries of printing, many copies were still made
by hand.  I recall it was a large fraction of the old copies, that were
almost half.  This was done either on behalf of very rich people to
show how rich they were, or by poor people, because, as the song goes,
"time ain't money, if all you got is time".

{00:10:55}

In the first few centuries of printing printed books were still very
expensive, and there were poor people who couldn't afford printed copy,
but they had the time to write the copy.

{00:11:17}

Copyright began in the age of the printing press.  For instance, in
the Italy, in the 1500s, it was commonplace that if you wrote a book,
you could then ask a prince to give you a monopoly on printing it. And
if he liked you and the book started by saying nice things about him,
then he would probably give you this monopoly. Princes used to hand out
monopolies of all sorts of things to whoever they wished to reward.

{00:12:00}

Copyright in England began as a system of censorship in the 1500s. If
someone wanted to publish a book, he had to... someone had to apply
to the government for permission, and this permission was given to one
publisher, and it was permanent monopoly for that publisher.

In the 1600s there was a revolution in England, and the system of
censorship became obsolete, there was a revolution of 1688. And they began
to think of getting rid of that system, and replacing it with another
system, designed to be good for the public and so they established the
system where copyright was given to the author for a limited period of
time, at that time, I believe, that was 14 years.

{00:13:06}

When the US Constitution was written, there was a proposal, that
authorship be entitled to a copyright. You'd never believe it from
listening to the US companies today, but that proposal was rejected. And
the US Constitution says: "Congress shall have the power to promote
the progress of science and the useful arts by reserving to authors
and inventors for a limited time the exclusive use of their respective
writings and inventions". And in US law this one sentence is the sum total
of everything there is in common between copyright law and patent law,
everything else is different.

In any case, we can see a few things from this sentence. First of all,
the Constitution does no require copyright to exist, in only permits
the option of having a copyright system. Second, it says that if
copyright exists, it's purpose is to promote progress, the purpose is
not to give authors something that they deserve, it doesn't say that
they deserve anything, it only allows a system of copyright as a way to
promote progress. And third, it says copyright can only be for a limited
time. These were wise decisions and ever since the publishers will be
trying to get rid of them.

{00:14:55}

Copyright in the age of the printing press operated as an industrial
regulation. It restricted publishers, the decisions were made by authors
and all this was organized so as to benefit the general public. Because it
acted as an industrial regulation, nobody ever thought about prosecuting
somebody from making copies by hand, it applied to publication and
printing, not hand-copying for your own use, no one would even have
thought of that, because everyone understood that it was meant as an
industrial regulation.

And because of this, copyright was easy to enforce, pretty much
uncontroversial, and arguably beneficial for the general public.  It was
easy to enforce, because it didn't require invading everybody's home and
computer, it only have to be applied in cases of publication, and it's
easy to find out, who is printing the books, you go to the bookstore
and say: where did these copies come from?

It was uncontroversial, because it didn't restrict what readers could
do. It only restricted what you can do as a publisher and ordinary
readers were not publishers, so they haven't felt any burden from
it. And it was arguably beneficial, because the public traded certain
nominal freedoms, that the public was not in a position to exercise,
and thus lost effectively nothing. And in exchange we see benefits of
more writing, more books you could buy, more conversation about important
issues that might help society decide what to do.

==== The age of computer networks ====

So, in the age of the printing press copyright seemed to be beneficial,
I would not be criticizing it, but the age of the printing press is
giving way slowly, gradually to the age of the computer networks,
another major advance in copying technology, which once again makes
copying more efficient, and once again this advance is not uniform,
it affect some cases more than others.

{00:17:47}

In the ancient world copying was always hard and slow. The printing press
made some cases a lot more efficient, and now computer networks make it
all a lot more efficient, and the variation in efficiency is much less
now. We don't have mass production of identical copies very efficient
and everything else very painful, now everything is pretty easy and
fast. This is not perfectly true, it remains the case, for instance,
that mass produced CDs are cheaper and more durable than one-off CDs,
but one-off CDs are cheap enough, that hundreds of millions of people
can make them.

So, we're in a situation once again, like the ancient world, where
anybody, who can use the work, can copy it too.

This completely changes the effect of copyright law, even if the law
itself were unchanged, because now the freedom that we traded away
because we couldn't use it, now we can use it! Now it's important to us.

{00:19:12}

The result it that copyright law has changed its social role, it is no
longer an industrial regulation on publishers in the hands of authors
to benefit the public, now it restricts the public, it's controlled
by the publishers and they do it only in the name of the authors. So
everything was turned upside down by this technological change. And
back in the 70s you could see that the publishers were up to no good,
because they started talking about how digital technology created problems
for copyright law. And that is clearly backwards, because, after all,
laws are supposed to do something that good in the situation that we are
in. So, I would have said: copyright law creates problems for enjoying
the use of digital technology. But publishers turned it around, because
their goal was the opposite of our goal. Our goal is to get the best
good we can out of our computers, their goal was to stop us from doing
that. Digital technology is useful, because it facilitates copying and
manipulating and communicating information. They don't want that to be
easy for us. They don't want us to get the full benefits of our computers.

{00:20:48}

So, what would a democratic government do in a situation like this? When
this democratic government trades away our freedom to get benefits from
us, except that now we want to start using that freedom, what would
the government say? It would say to those publishers: "Sorry, we used
to trade away these freedoms on behalf of our citizens, because the
didn't mind and they were happy to encourage writing, but now they want
to keep these freedoms, so we can't continue the same deal that we used
to make. Now we're going to reduce it, maybe we can trade you a part of
this freedom, but the public wants to keep the rest, and it is our duty
to represent interests of the public."

That, in theory, what the democratic government does, it represents
the interests of the public. We can measure how undemocratic various
governments are, by the extent to which they have done the exact opposite:
extending copyright power, when they ought to reduce it.

{00:22:00}

For instance, there is a world wide press to make copyright last
longer and longer. In the 1700s copyright in the UK lasted, I think, 14
years, in the US it lasted 14 years but could be renewed once. But in
the US in recent decades it has been extended over and over and over.
And the last time was in 1999, when they extended copyright by 20 more
years for existing works and potential future works. Now, what possible
justification could there be for extending copyright on works already
written? Works, for instance, written in the 1920s? How could they
convince, motivate, incent the now dead authors of 1920s to write more
back then by extending copyright now?

{00:23:09}

They never answered that question for us, and if they had a time machine,
they apparently did not use it, because our history books does not
record, that there was an explosion of artistic activity in the 1920s,
when authors learned that in 1998 (1999, maybe? --Pavel) they will be
granted 20 more years of copyright.  It is at least vaguely conceivable
that extending copyright for future works could create more motivation
to write them, but, practically speaking, no, and the reason is that
copyright already lasted such a long time that additional time tapped
on to the end of that had a discounted economic value, so small, that
it wouldn't motivate anything.

{00:24:23}

What really happened, the real reason for this was: companies like
Disney payed for the law, you see, that's why we call it "The Mickey
Mouse copyright act". You see, the character Mickey Mouse was going to
go into the public domain. Mickey Mouse appeared for the first time in
the movie called "Steambot Willie", in 1929, so time when its copyright
was going to expire was getting close. And if that happened, others could
make movies having Mickey Mouse in them, or other publications and have
pictures of Mickey Mouse in them, and Disney didn't want that ever happen,
so they payed for this 20 year extension and this... but they really want
copyright to last forever, and, in fact the Motion Picture Association
of America says it wants perpetual copyright, but even they don't have
enough power yet to amend the US Constitution to permit that, so the
worked out a scheme that has the same results without permitting it,
which we called "The perpetual copyright on the instalment plan". The
idea is: every 20 year they extend copyright 20 more years, and the
will do that forever. Thus, at anywhere in the time, if you pick up
a particular work, there is a certain day, where it is supposed to go
into the public domain, but don't hold your breath, because by the time
you get there, it will have been postponed 20 years and by the time you
get there, it will be postponed 20 more years, and this way, they hope,
nothing will go into the public domain again, and, in fact, nothing has
gone into the public domain in the US for decades.

=== Dimensions of the copyright power. Digital Restrictions Management ===

{00:26:35}

The duration is the one dimension of copyright power, the other
dimension is the extent of the power: which activities, which uses
are controlled by copyright. Now. In the age of the printing press,
copyright was never supposed to control every use of copyrighted work,
in the broad space of what you can do with the work, copyright was an
exception. The rest were unregulated uses. However, the publishers have
envisioned that with digital technology they can totally control access,
they hoped to establish a "pay per read" universe, when you have to get
permission even to read the part of the book. This is done with Digital
Restrictions Management or DRM, which means designing products so that
they restrict the users, specifically, products for playing music,
playing videos, reading book or accessing any sort of information,
they are designed to control you, not serve you. And we have seen this
problem in a broad spectrum of different kinds of works.

{00:28:10}

For instance, we see it in videos. DVDs were the first widely adopted
product designed to restrict the user. DVD movies are usually in an
encrypted format and the format details were secret. The DVD conspiracy
was set up to make sure that public would not be able to access the
data on DVDs, except in limited restricted ways. Here is how it works.
This conspiracy knows the format of DVDs, anybody who wants to make a
DVD player has to go to the conspiracy and ask for the secret, and the
conspiracy says: "we will tell you the secret, if you sign this contract
where you promise that your DVD players will restrict users just like
other DVD players do, we require that of all the manufactures of DVD
players". This is why there is effectively no competition in the DVD
players, because no matter how many different manufacturers they are,
all the players restrict the users the same way.

{00:29:47}

Naturally, people try to escape from these restrictions. People, in fact,
figured out the format of DVD encryption and wrote a free program to break
the encryption. That program is censored in the US today. (Is the window
is actually open?.. It is getting hotter.. Get open any more, that will
help. There are lot of people in here, and we really need ventilation.)

{00:30:28}

So, the United States practices censorship of software. This was
established by the law "Digital Millennium Copyright Act", also in
1998. Which says: when a work is published in encrypted form, in any form
that is designed to restrict the public, then distributing anything that
enables people to escape from these restrictions is a crime. In other
words, instead of defending us, what the government should have done,
it joined with our enemies to oppress us. So, I call it the government
of occupation... [applause] ...for the corporate empire.

{00:31:39}

Now, people ask me how I know about this conspiracy. The answer is: it's
not secret. They announced the existence of this conspiracy. They have
so little fear that anything will be done to stop them from attacking
the public, that they don't even see the need to hide what they're
doing. I think, what they're doing ought to be a crime, any conspiracy
of companies to restrict the technology available to the public should
be a crime. [applause]

{00:32:21}

And that would require a democratic government, and not very many of
those left in the world.

{00:32:36}

Now. Even though that program is censored, it is widely available. You
can get a copy of free software to play DVD, it's not hard. Now. In some
other countries it's a crime even to have a copy, for instance, in France,
you can be put in prison just for having a copy of free software to play
DVD. But the fact is the software is available, so they have designed a
new scheme to restrict the access to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. That scheme
is called AACS, but I call it "the axe", and we should "give it the axe",
so don't buy HD-DVD, don't buy Blu-Ray, don't buy any product with digital
restrictions management, unless you personally have the means to break
the restrictions of the product. Now, in fact, people have broken the axe,
a year ago code was released that can result in a proper algorithm...

([looks at someone who closes window] keep it open, it's still hot in
here, please keep it open, it's still hot. [someone near the window
replies: "It's cold!"]. Well, how about if I stand over there?.. [reply:
"It's a good idea", laughter]. [RMS makes several steps towards window]
Well, it's seems inconvenient to get there, a sort of mountain is in
the way. [laughter, RMS returns to his place])

{00:34:35}

And then a few months later I saw a strange photo, a friend showed it to
me, it showed two very cute adorable puppies and above them there was
sixteen hex numbers. And I asked myself: what in a world is this? Why
put these sixteen hex digits and these two cute puppies? I wonder if
it's some sort of key.  And it turned out that was the key to break
the axe. Somebody posted this on a site called dig [digg?], and the
editors deleted it, because publishing that in they US is illegal, it's
censored. And then somebody else posted it again and they took in down
again, and hundreds of people posted it and then editors said: "okay,
we give up, we can't stop people from circulating this information". And
eventually these sixteen hex digits were posted in over 700,000 web pages
in the strong show of public opposition to these conspiracies to restrict
our technology. But this doesn't mean the axe is defeated, because it
was designed that they can change the key, and they did. [light laughter]

{00:36:11}

So perhaps the people who had found that key should have waited a year or
two, because the discs that are already published those, can be decoded,
but the future ones which will use a new key, those will not be decodable
until someone finds that key, so the people engaged in breaking DRM
has to think strategically, it's like you are breaking enemy's codes,
how do you cause the enemy the most damage, and set back, how do you
basically going to defeat our enemy? Because all those companies making
things designed to restrict our use of our technology are our enemies.

{00:37:12}

We've also seen DRM in music. Starting most of a decade ago we started
to see things that looked like CDs, but they were not real CDs, because
they didn't follow... it were not real Compact Discs, because the didn't
follow the specifications of the CD format. So we called them Corrupt
Discs. I was once invited to give a speech on this topic by one of the
regions of Spain, and then they gave me a gift, some records of music of
that region, and one of them I was curiously to listen to, but before I
opened it I know it... instead of saying "Compact Disc" it said "Copy
Control. This disc can be played on Windows and Macintosh systems.",
[laughter] meaning that it can't be played with free software. It was
a good thing that I haven't opened it yet, because I handed it back to
my host and have said: here you can see the face of the enemy, please
take this back to the store, because they shouldn't be able to keep
your money. I don't want them to get money from me, they shouldn't get
your money either. So, I've never heard that music, but that's okay,
I'd rather not hear that music, than accept DRM.

{00:38:46}

Sony about 3 years ago implemented a very interesting DRM scheme on
music recordings. You would put this Corrupt Disc into the computer
and it would load software into the system without telling you. And
that software was called a RootKit, because it's something like what
security breakers do, crackers, something like what a virus might do. That
software was installed deep into the system and then it modified some of
the system commands, so that they would lie and disguise the presence of
that software, and it modified other commands so that it would be hard
to remove that software. Now, this was a crime in fact, but that's not
all, because it also damaged the security of the computer, and it also
committed copyright infringement, because it contained free software
that have been released under the GNU GPL [light laughter] included in
the combination that was not free and without giving the user a copy of
GNU GPL to inform him of his rights. People got very angry of this. But,
unfortunately, most of the anger focused on the other side nasty things,
that Sony had done and not on the nasty purpose of that all, which was
to restrict the user's access to the music that they have bought.

{00:40:31}

It turns out thought, that there was a couple of things that made this
scheme actually less harmful than most. First of all, it only affected
Windows users [light laughter]. And second, even a Windows user could
protect himself by holding down a certain key on the keyboard when
putting the disc in. [light laughter] So it was actually fairly easy
to bypass. But, you know, millions of people didn't know about this,
so their machines got infected. They got very angry, they sued Sony,
and Sony settled the suit by promising that next time they try to control
your access to your copies of data, they wouldn't do the other secondary
nasty things [light laughter]. But they learned their lesson. Next time
the RootKit will be built in before you get the machine and it will be
impossible to remove. [light laughter] And that's already the case in
the PlayStation 3, it is a very nasty thing.

{00:41:56}

We also see attempts to impose digital restrictions management on
books. Several years ago there was a powerful campaign in some countries
at least, trying to convince us to switch to e-books, and, of course,
these e-book have DRM. Basically, the publishers want to take away
certain traditional freedoms of readers. Freedoms to do things like
selling book to the used books store, borrowing from the public library,
buying anonymously by paying cash or lend it to your friend. And even the
freedom to keep the book for as long as you like and read it many times
and then pass it on to you children and they might read it and pass it
on, all these freedoms they wanna take away from us. They want total
control over what we do with our books. But there are so many people
that read books and are accustomed to certain freedoms, that they will
have trouble passing the law in the US taking away these freedoms from
readers. So they came up with two-stage plan to achieve the same goal.

{00:43:20}

The first stage was take away these freedoms for e-books and that they
achieved fairly easily, that's the result of the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act, which was passed in 1998 by the House of Representatives
without even bothering to vote, because no one dared to say: "I demand
a vote on this". The second stage was to convince people to switch from
printed books to e-books. That they tried and it didn't work.

Now. There was an organized PR campaign to convince people to use e-books,
I know this, because in 2001 I was in an airplane in Brazil on a domestic
flight, and I pulled out the in-flight magazine, which I rarely do,
an ordinary magazine would had an editorial, this one had an article:
discussing the question of how many years it would take before that
we all are using e-books. Now, those magazines never publish anything
unless they have a specific business reason to do so. Either it convinces
the people to fly more, or they pay. So I know, there was an organized
campaign for this. One publisher thought it would be effective to start
off it's line of e-books with my biography. [light laughter] So they
found an author and sent him to me, and he asked if I would like to
cooperate, and I said: sure, provided this book is published without
encryption [laughter, applause]. And they said no. So I suggested he
try a different publisher who said "yes", and the book was written and
published and it nominally is not encrypted, it's actually free, and
you can download the whole text with markup, and then you can edit it
and publish your own version. [laughter, applause].

{00:45:46}

Well, e-book were failure commercially, and I have been telling people
for years, they will try again. Well, now they're trying again. We've
seen a couple of e-book readers announced recently, there is the "Sony
Shredder", which describes what it will do to our books. And there is
"Amazon swindle" [light laughter]. And make sure your friends know,
before they buy one of these, that buying one of these is tenth amount
to saying: "I'm not gonna lend my friend's books any more", so it means
being a jerk. [laughter, applause]

Make sure that your friends know, that if they buy one of these and start
using it, you and, it should be a lots of people who tell him this,
will interpret this basically as refusal to be friends anymore. So,
across the board we have seen attempts to use digital technology in our
own computers against us. To subject us, to the power of the publishers.
They want to control whatever we do with our own copies, taking away
rights, that legally otherwise we would still have under the copyright
law. They're trying to make copyright total control. They do this because
they buy the support of governments, and governments don't defend us. But
what would a democratic government do?

{00:47:56}

I should mention another dimension of extending copyright power, and
that is increasing the penalties for unauthorized copying. And there
Russia may be the world champion [laughter] with six-year punishments
for unauthorized copying. That law is a total injustice it should be
eliminated. But what would democratic governments do?

=== Reducing copyright power ===

{00:48:21}

Well, they would reduce copyright power, so that we, the general public,
keep some of our natural rights, instead of trading them away. But what,
more specifically.

First of all, they should reduce copyright each dimension. First of all,
there is a dimension of time. While copyright has been extended and
extended, the publication cycle was getting shorter and shorter. In the
US today most books are remainder, which means: sold off cheap within
two years, and they go out of print within three. So, they don't need
copyright to last for up to a hundred and fifty years. So I propose
that copyright should last for ten years starting with the date of
publication. [applause]

{00:49:32}

I say "starting with the date of publication", because while the
work remains unpublished, we don't have copies, so we're not losing
anything, it's a purely theoretical question, whether we would be
allowed to copy them if we had them. We might as well let the author
to wait how long it takes to find a publisher for the work, but then
it should be ten years. Now. I propose this as a first adjustment, I'm
not sure ten years is right, I'm saying: let's try ten years. Let's see
how it works. Maybe we'll want to extend it some, maybe we'll want to
shorten it even more, I don't know. Ten year seems, because ten years
is three times the usual publication cycle, I'm comfortable that it's
long enough. However, not everyone agrees with this. I proposed this
at a panel discussion with some writers. And I expected fireworks and
I got some. Because the award-winning fantasy writer, sitting next to
me, said: "Ten years? Absolutely not! Anything more than five years is
unacceptable." [laughter, applause].

{00:50:53}

Now I was surprised when he said that, because I've been believing that
publishers' propaganda, since the publishers said they were doing this
for the authors. I assumed naively that the authors wanted this too. But
the fact is those same publishers, that demand more power over us in
the name of the authors, are grinding those authors into the ground with
the ground of their heels, frequently.

For instance, this author, the writer who objected, who didn't wanted more
than five years copyright, he had a legal lawsuit with his publisher. You
see, his contract said that if the book was out of print, if the books
were out of print, the rights will revert to him and he would be allowed
to distribute copies again. Well, practically speaking, he had found that
his book was out of print, people couldn't get it, but the publisher
refused to acknowledge that and was using copyright to stop him from
distributing copies of his own books, which he wanted to do, so that
people could read them.

{00:52:14}

He knew that unless he became a superstar, more than ten years of
copyright was not likely to do.. more than five years of copyright was not
likely to do him much good. So he said: five years maximum. Well, we could
try ten years, maybe we'll decide then to shorten it even more. I won't
argue against it, I just propose ten years as a good first adjustment,
which we could then further adjust.

=== Three categories of works ===

{00:52:57}

But what about the other dimension of copyright, its extent, the range
of activities it covers. Well, we should reduce that too, but not the
same for everything. I don't think that we should treat all works the
same and I distinguish three broad categories of works that I think we
should treat in different ways, each one according to way it's used.

These categories are: first, functional, practical works, works that you
use to do a job in your life; second, works of opinion and testimony,
the works that express... those social contribution is they say what
certain people thought; third: the works of art and entertainment,
whose social contribution lies in the impact of the work itself. Three
different ways that a work can contribute to society. And because these
contributions work differently, I think that different copyright laws
are appropriate for them.

==== Practical works ====

First, the works of... functional, practical works, the works you use to
do a practical job. These include software, recipes, educational works,
reference works, text funds, and various other things, things that
ordinary people could use to do practical jobs. These must be free. The
same arguments that apply to the software, why software should be free,
are applied to the other kinds of the functional works. If you're using
a work to do a job in your life and you can control what the work does,
then you can control your life. So you must be free to change it, and
once you changed it you should be free to publish your version, because
other people might have needs similar to yours, or preferences similar to
yours. Your version, which you made, because it's useful to you perhaps,
could be useful to other people as well. So you should be able to publish
your version. And this leads to the conclusion that they have to be free.

{00:55:23}

Now, people might say: but if there is no way to restrict the users and
interfere with their use of the works, they'll never be made. Well, we
don't have to be afraid that this (...)/?/ will follow if these works
are free, because now we have enough examples that show that they will
be made, they are made even today, lots of these works are made and
they are free. We have the example of the free software community, which
has developed thousands of useful applications, we have the example of
all the recipes that are circulating and it's normal for cooks to copy
recipes and modify recipes, and then we have, in the area of reference
works we have the example of Wikipedia and some of the other reference
sites of the similar sort, which are free and have done a tremendous job.

{00:56:20}

So, there is no need to be scared. We don't need to sabotage the use of
these work in order to get them developed. We should make them free. And
this is the answer to that question I posed in the beginning. This is
how far the ideas of free software go, in my opinion.

Now. The question for other two categories of works is the same, but I
don't think it's the same answer. Mean, you could apply the same answer
but that's not what I think is right. I don't try to generalize every
view that I've ever hold as far as it can possibly go, because even if
the answer makes sense over here, it doesn't mean it's the right answer
over here. We have to think about each area.

==== Works of opinion and testimony ====

{00:57:14}

Let's get to the category two, the category of works, whose social
contribution is they say what certain people thought. This includes
memoirs and other biographies, essays of opinion, scientific papers. After
all, the real purpose of a scientific paper is it says: "we did this and
we saw this", and the names of the authors on that paper are crucial. It
wouldn't be the same if it just said: "somebody did this" or "somebody
saw this" and we don't know who. You couldn't rely on it that way, but
when their authors' names are on it, and their reputations are behind
the honesty of it and the validity of it, then it's good for something.

Now. Publishing a modified version of these works is not socially useful,
that is just misrepresenting somebody. There is no particular reason why
we want that to be allowed. And that means we would have a compromise
copyright system, where everyone is free to redistribute exact copies
of the work non-commercially, but anything else requires permission,
just as now. So it will still be a copyright system, and it will cover
commercial use, and it will cover modification, but non-commercial
redistribution of the exact copies, that freedom we would all have.

{00:58:54}

And that, I believe, is the minimum freedom that we must have for all
kinds of works. To take away this freedom is what makes copyright into
tyranny. To take away this freedom, the freedom to share, is what requires
dracony /?/ and punishments and outrageous means of enforcement. By
winning back this freedom, by making these works shareable, we can turn
copyright back into an industrial regulation as it ought to be. So,
that's what I recommend for these works.

==== Artistic and entertainment works ====

{00:59:36}

What about the third category, artistic and entertainment works? For
that category it was hard for me to decide about modification, because
there are various arguments on both sides. There is the argument
that work can have an artistic integrity and modified versions could
destroy that integrity, and I think this is sometimes true, although,
most authors don't have as much integrity as they pretend to, and you
can see that by the way they allow Hollywood to butcher those works
in exchange for money. But there are some who won't, there are some
who won't let Hollywood to butcher it, and they will say: "You have to
make it faithfully, you have to do it right". Okay, those authors may
have integrity, but on the other side modifying art could produce good
contributions, interesting contributions to art.

{01:00:41}

Consider the folk process, where a series of people can transform a work
and produce something very rich and beautiful. But if we want to consider
only named authors, consider Shakespeare. Some of Shakespeare's plays
used stories that were copied from other works published a few decades
before. If today's copyright law had been in effect then, those plays of
Shakespeare would not have been allowed and probably they wouldn't have
been written. And surely, not published or performed. So, if Shakespeare
had complained about this, which he probably wouldn't have, but if he
had, then the copyright holders, who might have been perhaps the children
of the authors, people not particularly artistic themselves, they might
have said: "How dare you propose to make a cheap rip-off of my father's
work? [light laughter] It has to be a cheap rip-off, because you want
to copy from it, so why don't you go away and think of something else?"

We, listening to this, since we would never have seen that play of
Shakespeare which would never had written it, we wouldn't know that it
wasn't true. Since we have seen these plays we can say they're great
works of literature, but if we hadn't seen them, we wouldn't know that.
So we could easily been mislead by these arguments made by the copyright
holders.

{01:02:23}

For many years I wasn't sure what to do about these two valid arguments
and then I realized that while modifying art work could be useful,
it's not urgent. If you are using a functional work to do a job today
and it's not quite right, you have to be free to change it today. And
you should be free to publish your modified version today, so tomorrow
other people can get the benefit. But with the work of art, we can wait,
so if copyright last for ten years, makes, for ten years we can have a
compromise copyright system where people are free to non-commercially
redistribute exact copies, and that's all. And then after ten years it
will go into the public domain and then you could publish your modified
version. So that's what I propose for art.

And that's how I propose to change copyright law, that's what I think
the right solution is today. In particular this means legalizing the
peer-to-peer sharing. [applause]

=== Proposed ways to support artists ===

{01:03:50}

But some people say: If we share things peer-to-peer, that's taking money
out of mouths of that starving musicians [laughter], that's bullshit,
the starving musicians get nothing from the present system, they can't
lose what they can't get. The record companies treat musicians very
badly. When I buy a commercial CD, which I do, I feel ashamed that I'm
not supporting the musicians. [light laughter, applause], because unless
I'm buying it from the musicians, I know that musicians are probably
going to get nothing, zero.

{01:04:43}

You might wonder about this: isn't that part of the price is for
musicians? Well, yes, theoretically, but the production and publicity
expenses are treated as an advance to the musicians, which means that when
you buy the CD that share that is for the musicians comes from one account
of the record company to another, and the musicians never get it, and
very few records actually sell so many copies that they finish repaying
the so-called advance and start actually giving the musicians money,
some records can go gold and still not reach this point. The exception
of course is for the long-established superstars, because they finish
they first record contract, which usually covers five or seven records
and then they can negotiate a new contract and since they're superstars,
they can now get a decent contract, that doesn't exploit them.

{01:05:51}

So, If you're buying their records, they actually get some, then,
of course, they're rich anyway, so it's not crucial. So, really the
musicians don't stand to lose anything, except for superstars, who are
already rich, they don't stand to lose anything from peer-to-peer sharing.

Now. This does not mean that musicians don't get any benefit from their
record contracts, because the publicity does have an effect, that more
people go to their concerts, they have more concerts, and they make some
money that way, and then at the concerts they can sell things including
records, and they do make money from that, so they do benefit, but
there's more than one way to give musicians publicity. In fact, this
method of publicity is based on commercial planning, it's hype. It's
the hype musical complex. And it distorts music, so I'd rather give
musicians publicity in the way I do it, which is, by saying to people:
hey, listen to that music, isn't that wonderful?..

{01:07:07}

How about e-mailing a copy of somebody's song to your friend, that's
a great way to give musicians publicity, I'd rather see musicians get
publicity this way. It not only means that we can get rid of this nasty
record companies and have them stop them interfering with us enjoying
the music, but it also healthier for music to have music publicity and
popularity not be controlled by money.

{01:07:42}

So, a site /?/ from a superstar musicians will not be any worse if we
will legalize the peer-to-peer sharing. But we might do a better job
than the current system of supporting musicians. I would like to, and
I have two proposals that have to do that.

==== Taxes and cube root of popularity ====

{01:08:04}

One method uses tax. You tax blank discs, or internet connectivity,
or whatever, something that vaguely relates to enjoying music and
then you distribute that money entirely to the musicians, composers and
song-writers, based on their popularity, but not in linear proportion. And
the reason is this: a superstar could be a thousand times as popular
as somebody else, as a successful musician, and fairly popular. If
you distribute the money in linear proportion [shows it by hand as
a straight line], a few superstars will take almost all the money,
leaving very little for all the other musicians, which means the system
will work very inefficiently at supporting the activity of music, so,
what I propose is take the cube root of the popularity of each artist,
or maybe the fourth root, well, you could adjust this, the point is
you have a mathematical formula, and it looks like this [shows it by
hand as a typical root curve], so if the superstar is a thousand times
as popular, if we use the cube root, well, the superstar will get ten
much as money. Instead of the thousand times. Well, this way a few
superstars, although each on get more than the usual amount, it still
ends up to a small fraction of the money, meaning most of the money can
go to supporting lots of other musicians who are fairly popular but not
superstars. And the result is a system that works efficiently to support
the musicians who really need it. And still gives you to whatever extent
such an incentive does any good, because it could do harm instead. /?/
External incentives can kill creativity, they can be quite harmful,
but nonetheless, the superstars could still expect to get more, now,
if you get more popular you do get more, but it's on a sliding scale,
so a thousand times a popularity doesn't give you a thousand times as
much money, only ten times as much, and the result is paying less than
we do now to the copyright system, we can support musicians a lot better.

==== Voluntary payments ====

{01:10:47}

But, some people don't like taxes. I don't mind taxes, I believe in
a wealthier state and the wealthier state means to collect taxes. But,
some people don't like taxes, so I have  another approach to suggest. And
that is voluntary payments. Imagine that every player has a button you
can push, that would send one dollar to the artists, whether the e-book
reader, or television set, or music box, whatever, push the button and
send the dollar. Lots of people will do this, because..  first of all,
the dollar is not that much money. Well, they are poor people in the
world, they can't afford to send the dollar, and that's okay, they
shouldn't. We don't need to squeeze money out of them to support the
arts. They are plenty people in the world for whom one dollar is not
that much, who can push the button and who wouldn't mind, they wouldn't
notice the money, if the push it once a week, they won't mind. And they
will do. And I expect we can convince a lot of people even to push it
once a day. And if we are not satisfied with how much money people are
sending to the musicians or whoever in this way, we can have a friendly,
warm, loving publicity campaign: "Have you sent a dollar to the people
who made this song or a movie this week? (or wrote a book?) If not --
why not? Didn't you enjoy it? Send them a little bit, it's so easy,
you'll never miss the money." And this would be instead of these cruel,
fictitious /?/ PR propaganda campaigns saying that sharing is theft.

{01:13:00}

Society is based on the spirit of good will, and the practice of sharing
with and cooperating with other people in your community, to attack this
is to attack society. Today's copyright law is an attack on society and
it is intolerable. But once we get rid of it, we'll have a system that
treats us ethically, and if we wish to increase our support for those
who write, we have easy ways to do it.

{01:13:40}

So, at this point I will answer questions.

(Where is the box, is it here now? So I've got some... [to person X:]
Did you get the box? [X: I've sent somebody to retrieve it] He obviously
didn't return, there must be a monster in that office that ate him up
or something like that. [laughter, X leaves the room]. So be careful,
bring someone else with you! [light laughter] Splitting up is the recipe
for getting eaten.)

=== Questions ===

{01:14:14}

Anyway, questions.

==== What countries are democratic? ====

{01:14:17}

[Q: What countries are democratic in your sense?]

I'm not sure that they are any [laughter, applause]. New Zealand seems
better than most. Certainly not the US, Bush stole the election twice
and Congress just sells laws to.. ([discovers some cloth in the box
just brought:] uh-oh, what's this? [laughter] Ah.) And certainly not the
European Union, which keeps on adopting laws more and more nasty for the
sake of publishers. Certainly not Russia, I read that in the election
for Parliament the vote counts are too round, apparently somebody chose
what the vote counts would be and he picked round fractions like ten
percent and twenty percent, I'm sure next time they would make that
mistake. [laughter, applause] But you see, democracy doesn't just mean
that people vote. It means that those who are especially powerful are
not allowed to have political power in proportion to their own personal
influence and wealth. If you let rich people deploy their influence to
make people vote for what they want, that is not democracy.

==== Becoming member of the Congress ====

{01:16:20}

[Q: Richard, Lawrence Lessig tried... well, not tried, but
he thought about becoming member of the Congress..]

I don't know about that.

[the same listener: Yes. What do you think about becoming member of
Congress?]

You mean for Lawrence Lessig?

[the same listener: Maybe for you.]

For Lawrence Lessig I think he's honest so I guess he would be better
than most of the people in Congress now. As for me, I don't think people
would vote for me. [laughter] For one thing: I'm an atheist. And in the
US an atheist can't get elected docash /?/. A lot of people believe that
atheists are evil. [light laughter] They believe that to be an atheist is
to have no ethics. And then, well, I see plenty of people who claims to be
religious and in the name of their religion they do horrible things. Bush
says that god told him to launch his war of conquest to Iraq [laughter,
applause]. But then what would you expect from a god like that?

==== RFID chips ====

{01:17:54}

[Q: So, Richard, (can I ask you a question) in the beginning of
your conversation you touched theme of hardware. There is a sort
of restriction of human rights, it's the RFID chips, so what's your
opinion on this and will you start a company like "Stop DRM" 
(apparently
listener mispronounced 'company' for 'campaign', which has lead to a
confusion. --Pavel)]

I don't mind starting a companies, I don't mind what I will do with
one, I'm so busy doing what I'm already doing, I don't see I can start
anything new. But I am worried about RFIDs, well, there are some uses
for RFIDs that I think are okay, when a shipment from the manufacturer
to a store has an RFID on it for the sake of making sure that things
don't get stolen, I see no harm in that.

{01:18:46}

It's when they start putting RFIDs into the things we carry, then it
becomes dangerous. Now, I have a card that I've used to pay for subway
in Boston, and it has an RFID in it, the only reason I had it is because
they give you discount if you use that. But I've made sure they don't
know who has it and I always kept it an aluminium foil except when I
actually go into the subway and then I put it right back in, so it can't
be tracked anywhere else, and third, after every couple of months I get
a new one and I give away the old one to somebody else and so by trying
to get people going swapping them around so that they are not good for
surveillance. We have to resist these things. RFIDs in passports, are
very... a nasty and stupid idea. And I worry also about RFIDs in credit
cards, I don't know, it's sometimes hard to tell.

{01:20:03}

[the same listener: Implantation to...?]

Well, that's obviously nasty, but it doesn't have to go that far to be
nasty. For instance, in the US a lot of people have an RFID in their
cars and they use this to pay toll on the highways and bridges, and of
course, this means that system keeps track of everywhere they go. So,
people shouldn't use that. Well, those systems could be built a way that
is anonymous way, you can make anonymous payment system, the technology
is not the hard part, but our government wants to spy on people and has
no respect for human rights.

{01:20:49}

[Q: Usually they mention terrorists...]

Oh, yes, they always say they are protecting us from terrorists unless
they say they're protecting us from child pornographers they are some
kind of deem /?/ that they are protecting us from, but that's absurd
because the big danger is them. [laughter]

==== The era of "software as a service" ====

{01:21:15}

[Q: How do you see a future of free software in the era of "software as
a service"?]

Well, I don't like that term, "software as a service", I think it's
misleading and I do not use it. It's a confusing way to refer to two
different practices, which we need to distinguish. One of them is sites
that send a program to you browser to run on your machine. What I think,
if I'm going to run that program, I want to get in in the usual way,
I want to have it installed on my machine, and I want it to be free
software,and I want to be able to change my copy of it. So I consider
those things totally unacceptable. But the other thing, that this confused
with, is using a server to do computation. And that may be okay or may
be unacceptable depending on details of what the computation is.

{01:22:20}

Is it your computation that you do on your data or it is some other kind
of thing? Well, on most sites are some other kind of thing. Let's suppose
it's a search engine. Well, that's looking thought the company's data. You
say: please look through your data for me. Okay. It's not your data, it's
their data. Or suppose you're buying
something, then you make a deal with the owner of the site. That's not
doing your computation with your data, it's not something you can do on
your own computer.

On the other hand, look at Google Docs, basically, it's a spreadsheet
and a word processor, and it's sends a large program to run in your
browser and that's not good because that program is not free. But okay,
suppose they make that program free, it'll still be a problem, and that
is you are using their server to do your computing with your data. And
you should have control of that. But if you do it on somebody else's
server you don't have control. And note that it doesn't matter whether
the software on the server is free. Suppose...	    You know, a lot
of software running on that server is free software, and the rest is
is probably custom software, Google is the only user, only Google has
it, Google will never release it in any fashion, I would expect. Well,
that's okay as far as it goes, but the point is you don't control what
it does on their server. But suppose that they release all the source
code for that custom software. You sill wouldn't control what it does
on their server, it will all be free software, but if you run in on
their server, you don't control them. If were free software, you could
install it on your computer and then you would control. So the point is
for doing you own computing on your data, if you want to have control,
you have to do it on your computer with your copy of the program, and
it has to be free software. So, some kinds of web servers are okay,
some cause a problem. This is a different kind of issue, its structure
is different, from the issue of free versus proprietary software, we
have to think about it differently.

==== Standartization committees ====

{01:25:00}

[Q: What is your opinion about activity of various standardization
committees, especially those which pretend to regulate programming
languages?]

Well, standards are useful, it is a way of achieving compatibility, for
instance it's useful that there is a C standard, and that C compilers
will interpret a lot of things the same way.

[the same listener: But maybe... my question is about different
thing. What about the case when they actually change languages, like C99?]

It's useful, you know, people came up with ways to improve C, some of
the changes in C99 came from me [laughter, applause], I implemented
extensions in GCC and some of them people liked and then they were put
in the C spec.. Great!

==== Licenses for scientific articles ====

{01:26:16}

[Q: What do you think about licenses for scientific jobs, for example
articles, what exact types of license for example....]

Well, first of all, scientific articles, papers are in second category,
they're works of testimony.

[the same listener: And what exact type of licenses...]

Okay, let me answer please, let me answer, I'm trying to answer you,
okay? [light laughter] So, I believe we should all have the freedom to
at least the freedom to non-commercially redistribute the exact copies
of them. So, that's what I recommend, release them under the license
that permits that. Now, you could permit commercial exact copying too,
that, you know, there is no reason not, if you want to. So, for instance,
there are two Creative Commons licenses that would do this, and there
is no-derivs-no-commercial license and there is no-derivs license,
and I think they both are fine.

Now, the journal publishers try to prevent this. So right now science is
faced with the obstruction of the publishers of scientific journals who
are trying to interfere with the dissemination of scientific knowledge
for the sake of their own profits. We have to defeat them, we have to
perhaps get rid of them.

Now, they way I suggest for this is that universities should sign
contracts with all their faculty and staff and students where the
university reserves in advance the right of second publication on the
university's website of the final version of any article that they
publish, after it has been published by somebody else. So they have
to look for publication in the same way they do now, and once that's
done, the university can put a copy on its website under one of those CC
licenses, and this way everything becomes available. The nice thing about
this is that it doesn't matter, what the author signed with the journal
publisher, because they can't take away the rights that the university
already has. Of course, even better would be to simply put this into a
law, or, for instance, funding agencies that fund research could make this
a requirement, and one already has, I believe, it's called "The Welcome
Trust" which funds biological research, or medical research, and they
make it a requirement: if you get their fund, you have to agree to one
way or another, I don't know exactly, but the theme is this, but one way
or another they require the authors to publish their articles in a ways
that are open to the public and allow redistribution. So, we're starting
to do this, if enough funding sources do this, we will win the fight.

([somebody says through mic: Пожалуйста,
берите микрофон, чтобы в запись
попало.] What? [laughter] [I just get to make a microphone to
them...] I don't understand..)

==== Cooperating with occupation government ====

{01:30:09}

[Q: How do you understand, is it permittable for us cooperate with
occupation government. I meant that a government are now neutral support
of free software in some of bits /?/ aspects, but they do not agree with
idea as it all.]

We should cooperate them when they propose to do something that advances
our freedom.

[the same listener: But, if there is no absolute agreement, can we
sacrifice anything?]

I don't understand, it's too general, I'm sorry, I don't know to think
about such a general question.

[the same listener: Okay, for example, we propose some new amendments /?/
to the copyright law...]

Sorry, new what?

[the same listener: Amendments.] Okay. [the same listener: And we
cannot get the whole thing, and the final effect of the copyright law,
remains that.]

Well, if it is a step in the right direction, we can support it, but we
have to be clear and say: "it's only  part, it only corrects a part of
the problem".

[the same listener: I see, thank you.]

So, we have to advocate what is needed to really solve the problem,
but if we win only part of that it's still a victory, a partial victory.

==== Ten years expiry for the GNU GPL ====

{01:31:34}

[Q: If copyright goes out of effect in ten years, then GNU GPL software
will not be GNU GPL software in ten years?]

That's right, it would not be GPL in ten years anymore. Well, what I
propose for works in the first category, functional practical works,
that they should all be free.

(Did you want to ask a question? I want the guy who is standing against
a wall in a brownish coat...)

==== How many people will push buttons ====

{01:31:11}

[Q: Mr. Stallman, you said us about the way to support musicians and
writers by pressing button and sending them money. But do you really
believe that lots of people will push these buttons...]

Oh, sure, we know it, for instance, a few months ago Radiohead released
record and said: pay as much as you like and they didn't say what have
they got, but there are estimates that they got millions of dollars. And
the same record was being distributed in the same time through BitTorrent,
so I think it's now proved, that it's not only possible to support
musicians this way, but that they can even get rich.

[Q: I can actually add a more recent example, just two days ago Nine Inch
Nails released their latest album under the Creative Commons Share-alike
license.. ]

Wow! [light laughter]

[..and they published first nine tracks of that album of thirty six
tracks at the website for free, that instantly got into the Pirate Bay
torrent and then you can buy for five dollars all the tracks in the
FLAC or MP3 format without DRM, or you can pay ten or seventy of three
hundred dollars for different packages.]

Oh, good!

[Three hundred dollars package is already sold out. (RMS and some
listeners laugh) That was 4500 packages]

What this shows: a lot of people like giving money to the musicians
whose work they love. [laughter, applause]

You know, anybody who bought a three hundred dollar package, he was not
trying to save money, he was expressing his love. And the thing is art
can do that, art makes people.. arouses people's intense feelings. When
people love works of art, they want to support the artists, and in the
past it has been too hard. You know, there were many times when I would
happily sent some money to some musicians, but how in the world would
I do that? It was too much work. If I all I had to do is push a button,
suppose I could send ten dollars by pushing this button ten times... Well,
that's so easy! Of course, I would do it.

[Q: If they are not popular?]

{01:34:54}

Well, If they are not popular, they would not get so much money,
obviously, but...

[the same listener: If they are unknown?]

But what happens to unknown musicians today? For the most part, they
don't get anything! Now. For the most part, unknown musicians are totally
exploited by their record companies and they don't get any money if you
buy their CDs, so when people who think that we would lose something
important if we get rid of the present system, of even partly get rid of
the present system, which is what I'm proposing, after all, they're taking
for granted something that isn't true. The publishers, they always say:
"we are doing this to support the musicians", it's easy to make a mistake
of believing that the current system does support the artists. And the
fact is that it almost always does not. They are rare exceptions, they
are not zero, but they are rare, who make it big and get rich, and then
they are all the others, who have some success, but the current system
doesn't support them. You know, it supports the superstars.

[the same listener: Oh, I can see.]

==== Existing licenses for scientific works ====

{01:36:12}

[Q: Which of existing licenses do you mean as the best approximation to
your second case...]

Second case?...

[second case, scientific and other testimony...]

Oh, what I have said, there is Creative Commons, that is
CC-no-derivs-no-commercial license...

[the same listener: Aha.]

...that permits non-commercial redistribution of exact copies, and it
is least permissive Creative Commons license, and its okay for these
works but, of course, if you choose to permit more, that's okay too. So,
any Creative Commons license is okay for these two categories [points
by hand to second and third category as he had drawn them in the air
around himself previously]

[the same listener: Are you sure that these licenses are appropriate
now to use it to publish student and scientific works of some university?]

Yes. [A silent pause. Laughter, applause]

I usually permit commercial redistribution as well, when I publish
something, my essays, they permit distribution of exact copies and they
don't limit this to non-commercial.

==== Promoting free software to business ====

{01:37:48}

[Q: What ways do you see in promoting the free software to
business? Because, it's also... it's rather.. it gets population /?/...]

I'm not an expert on that, I don't focus on business, I focus on teaching
people about the human rights that they should have as software users,
you see, part of the reason that business has so much power is that many
people focus on... many people fond /fan? phone?/ on business, they say:
Oh, how can I convince the business to do this, to accept this idea,
but if you focus on convincing business that means you're accepting
the values of business. Well, I don't accept those values and that's
my most important point. So, I don't want to give these speeches as
if I was talking to business. My main point is about the rest of life,
about the values that business ignores.

[the same listener: But not every business is evil?]

I don't say they're all evil, what I'm saying is that I don't want
to... You see, business is one narrow area of life. If you focus on
business, in effect you strengthen that narrow area of life as if it were
everything and ignoring everything outside that, and that is harmful. So,
I'm not saying businesses should never exist, I'm not a communist,
[laughter, growing applause] but I do say, that what I care about is
our values.

==== Implementing the button, online payments ====

{01:39:30}

[Q: You've got the musicians. How do you practically see,
how could it be done, that button implemented?]

I'm not an expert, but I know that technology exists, the technology
for instance, for digital cash has been developed, it's not a technical
problem, it's the social problem, how would you get this to put it to
effect, that's our problem, but designing the algorithms is not the
problem. I'm not an expert in this area, I just know that the methods
exist.

[the same listener: I meant to say that some people /...?/ seeing danger
in online money transfers just the same as in RFID, it is being used
just too much.]

Sorry, see danger in what?

[the same listener: in online payments. Tracking and so on...]

Online payments. Well, I see danger in it too, because right now
e-commerce requires a credit card, it's not anonymous, so I don't do it. I
don't buy things with credit card, I buy things with cash, in a store,
a physical store, because I don't want to be recorded for where I was,
what I bought, I see that that is dangerous, I agree, well, maybe we
agree, if you are saying the same thing, then we agree.

[the same listener: Yep. That was just concern.. my concern, and
practicatorent.. /?/]

I have to leave, I have to stop in two minutes. I have to get out of
your... [RMS peers at previously mentioned mountain. laughter] by eight.

[points to another person who wants to ask]

{01:41:28}

[Q: What whould you say to such and example /?/. If I buy table I
don't have to give the manufacturer any information about me, if I buy
copyrighted software, I should give give a lot of information..]

Well, actually, that's not necessarily true. You might be able to go to
a store and buy a copy, and probably you can buy a copy like a book in
a store and you can pay cash and they will not know who you are. But I
agree, anonymity is important right and in general, non-free software
tramples your rights in a lot of ways, that's what I say: don't use
non-free software, protect your freedom.

[the same listener: Thank you]

==== Private software, military technologies ====

{01:42:09}

[Q: All software should be free, but do you understand that always will be
some fields where software can't be free, such as military technologies?]

Well, that's different. You see, software for military use is not
available to the public at all. That's different from proprietary
software. Microsoft doesn't say: "You can't have Windows, it's a secret",
they say: "Sure, you can have it, but you don't control it, we control
you." [laughter] I'm not against private software, that you develop and
use, your company might use it internally, and not release it to the
public, that I don't criticize. What I do criticize is when they offer
it to you but in a way that tramples your freedom. [Applause]

{01:43:12}

(So, now I will end the question period. I should point that there are
stickers here, please take the stickers, and I'm sure that some of you
will be able to make use of that, if these are /uneral?/, please take
it to one organization or another will be able to take these, so...)

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Редактирование: Richard Stallman, Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer Networks

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@@ Строка 1261: / Строка 1261: @@
 musicians this way, but that they can even get rich.
-[another listener: I can actually add a more recent example, just two days ago Nine Inch
+[Q: I can actually add a more recent example, just two days ago Nine Inch
 Nails released their latest album under the Creative Commons Share-alike
 license.. ]