Hello!
Welcome to the talk of Richard Stallman.
We are really honoured that he is here.
I don't think that is actually neccessary to introduce him...
But I will still do this.
Dr. Richard Stallman launched the Free Software Movement
in 1983 and started
the development of the GNU operating system in 1984.
It is free software.
Everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it.
With or without changes.
The GNU Linux system, basically the GNU operating system
with Linux added, is used on tens of millions of computers today.
Stallman has received the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award.
the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship,
the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pionner Award.
The Takeda Award for Social/Economic Well-being
as well as several honorary doctorates.
Very welcome and I leave the floor to you.
I hope I am not expected to pick up this floor and cary it with me.
It's probably too large.
I would need a lot of help.
The reason people started inviting me to speak
is because of my work for the Free Software Movement.
Free as in Freedom.
And developing the GNU operating system that most people
erroneously call Linux.
But that is not what this talk is about.
This talk responds to a question that people
often ask me at the end of the talk about free software.
Do those same ideas apply to anything else other than software?
In order to make that question meaningful, I have to
start by telling you briefly the ideas of free software.
With software there are just two possibilities:
either the users control the program or
the program controls the users.
The first case we call free software.
Because in order for the users to have effective control over
the programe and what it does for them,
they need certain freedoms in their use of the program.
If users have these freedoms, these essential freedoms
then they control the program.
They control it individually.
But they also control it colectively.
In whatever groups they form.
Those groups have control over the groups' version of the program.
Individually, people can change it for themselves so they have the
most direct control over the program as they individually use it.
But if the users don't have the essential freedoms then
the program controls the users.
But there's always some entity that controls the program.
And through it controls the users.
A non-free program is invariably
an instrument of unjust power.
A system of digital colonization
that keeps people divided and helpless.
They're divided because they are forbidden to redistribute the program.
They are helpless because they don't have the source codes
and they can't change it.
They cannot even determine what it really does.
For justice must eliminate non-free software.
The first step is personally to escape from it.
To come and live in a free world that we have built.
But our ultimate goal is that all users of computing
be free and have control of their computing.
And the elimination of proprietary software.
What are the essential freedoms? There are four of them.
A program is free software for you
if you as a user of the program have these four freedoms.
Freedom zero is the freedom to run the program as you wish.
Freedom one is the freedom to study
the source code and change it.
So the program does your computing as you wish.
Freedom two is the freedom to redistribute
exact copies of the program when you wish.
And freedom three is the freedom to contribute to your community.
Which is the freedom to distribute the copies
of your modified versions when you wish.
In order for the program to be free it must give
all four of these freedoms.
I try to put them in a meaningful order,
but these are not levels of freedom.
They are all equally essential.
And if any of them is missing or insufficient,
that means the program restricts users unacceptably.
And is unethical.
So this is not a technical distinction.
Any piece of code could be free or could be non-free.
This is not a question of what features it has.
Not directly.
It's not a question of how it works.
It's not a question of how that code was written.
It's a question of ethical, social and political arrangements.
For the way people are allowed to use that code.
And that's what makes it a cruical issue for everyone.
The technical questions we could leave
to the techical people doing a certain job.
But these ethical questions directly affect
everyone that uses it.
And therefore it must be everyone's concern.
The use of a free program in society is development.
Because a programe embodies knowledge.
In a free program, that knowledge is available
for the users to understand.
Then maintain, adapt and extend.
And also use in other ways.
But the use of a proprietary program
in society is not development at all.
Because it's dependence.
Imposed dependence on a particular entity.
And that is a social problem.
If we see people using a non-free program,
we should try to help them stop.
And in general we should try to discourage
use of that non-free program.
Because that use is a social problem.
To write a free program is a contribution to society.
More od less.
How much, that depends on the technical details.
Some programs are very useful.
Some are not worth even thinking about.
But at least if it's free software, it's distributed in a way
that permits it to contribute whatever it has to offer.
However, writing a non-free program
is no contribution to society, because it's a power grip.
It's an attempt to lure other people into loosing their freedom.
Becoming users of that program.
That is a harmful conduct.
If the program has attractive features,
those are the bait for the trap.
Paradoxically, they don't make it better.
They make it more harmful.
If you have the choice to write a non-free program.
Or do nothing at all.
Or if you have the choice to support or help
the development of a non-free program.
Or do nothing at all.
It's better to do nothing at all.
Because that way you don't do harm.
I understand that in real life you'd probably have other
alternatives that might be better than both of these.
But if it's just these two, do nothing.
If this was a talk about free-software, I'd now go into
more detail about the reasons why each of these
four freedoms is essential.
If I'm safe to say, in this talk,
they must apply to all kinds of activities in life.
Including business.
A program to say that is free for non-commercial use
is misleadingly described, it is not-free software.
But these four freedoms are not compulsary.
The point is, you've got to be free to do them
if you wish.
You're not required to do any of them.
You have the freedom to run the program as you wish.
But it's not required.
If you are a masochist, you can run it as you don't wish.
You can also decide not to run it at all.
You have the freedom to study and change the source code.
But it's not required.
Most users most of the time get a free program
from some place they trust and run it without looking.
Looking at the source code is something you do
when you've got a specific motivation to do it.
Sometimes people have that motivation.
Often they'd rather not do that.
They have other things to do.
You're free to redistribute the software.
But it's not required in any particular case.
We don't say: You must distribute copies to so and so.
Or to centrain kind of people in certain cases.
The point is, you must not be forbidden to do so.
You must be free to cooperate with others
when you feel like it.
We are opposed to any attempt
to intrude and divide people.
We are not communists.
We don't say: You must cooperate with so and so.
With freedom three, the freedom to distribute copies
of your modified versions that's not required either.
You can make a modified version and use it privately.
In some cases we might think...
You might even think, that that modified version
could contribute so much to the community
that you have a moral duty to make it available to people.
Free software doesn't say you must make your
modified versions available.
The point is that you must not be forbidden to do so.
I started the Free Software Movement in 1983.
I launched the development of the GNU
operating system in 1984.
Because free software as just an abstraction,
just as a nebulus future goal, wouldn't change much.
The only way we could be free in using computers
was to have enough free software to do everything.
So that we could reject non-free software
as a real policy.
That we could escape from it.
For real.
So I launched a project to do that.
The first step is to write a free operating system.
An operating system is something you find
in every computer, there is always some operating system.
It does the usual tasks and it provides a platform
for running other programs to do other more specific tasks.
GNU is an operating system
and its goal is to be entirely free software.
Its name is a joke.
The name is GNU's Not Unix.
That was a customary way
in the hacker community around the 1980s-ish.
To give credit.
If you wrote a program that was similar to some
existing program, you could give credit by saying:
This program is not the other one.
I decided to develop a Unix-like operating system.
To give credit to Unix for its technical ideas
I called the system GNU's Not Unix or GNU.
But the other reason for choosing that name is that it's
the most humour charged word in the English language.
Because according to the dictionary, the g is silent
and it's pronounced nu.
Every time you want to write the word gnu,
you can spell it g-n-u.
And you've got a joke.
Perhaps not a very good joke.
But there are lots of them.
People have been conditioned
to asociate this word with humour.
People see this word and they're almost ready to laugh.
They are primed to laugh.
I couldn't resist.
By the way: GNU is a joke, because it's a word.
It's the name of this animal that lives in Africa.
If it didn't have another meaning, it wouldn't be a joke.
When it's the name of our system,
please do not follow the dictionary.
Please call it GNU.
If you speak of the nu operating system,
you will get people confused.
Since we've been working on it for 28 years.
I'm using it for 20 years.
It's not new anymore.
You won't hear people talk about GNU very much.
Not even if they are using it.
Unfortunately, in 1992, somebody else
provided the last missing piece of the system.
Which is a piece, called the kernel.
And his kernel in 1991 was proprietary.
It's called Linux.
In 1992, he decided to make it free software.
At that point it filled the last gap in the GNU system.
Which was almost complete.
People got confused.
They started calling the whole thing Linux.
Giving him the credit for what we had done
in the years before that.
That's how it happens that millions of people are using
our system and they don't know it's the GNU system.
They think it's Linux, started by Mr Torvalds.
I would ask you therefore,
please call it GNU plus Linux.
If you call it Linux, you're giving the system's
principal developers none of the credit.
If you call it GNU plus Linux,
you're giving us equal mention.
I think it's fair to ask for that much.
We need it.
We are a campaign for your freedom.
In order to advance the campaign
we need people to find out about it.
When people hear the system is Linux,
they asociate it with Mr Torvalds and with his ideas.
It happens that he takes an apolitical,
amoral approach to this question.
Which he has a right to do, but it's important
for people who think about this system.
To know that it exists because of an explicit
campaign to give them a new freedom.
Then they may think about the issue of their freedom.
They may learn that it's important.
They may learn to fight for it.
They maybe we will win and we won't lose it.
Freedom is frequently threathened.
That's what I am going to be talking about
in the rest of this talk.
I'm almost done talking about free software.
There are two specific points I want to mention.
Starting in 1998, a large part of the free
software community doesn't say: Free software.
Instead they use a different term: Open source.
A term I don't use.
Because it doesn't even hint at an ethical issue.
That's the way they wanted it.
That's why they made up that term and used it.
They can give a new term that had never been used.
They associated it with...
They could decide, which ideas to associate with it.
And which ideas to leave out.
They left out completely the idea
that there is an issue of right and wrong.
They chose not to say that
if a program is not open source
that means it mistreats you.
In fact, they don't want that idea to come up.
They have gone out of their way to avoid it.
That's the most important point.
If people don't hear that...
I don't want to speak looking into the camera.
I just wanted to say... - OK. I didn't understand.
It's better to be explicit.
I don't understand hints.
You've got to say: We're changing the tape.
Then I will know we're changing the tape.
Take me past your leader.
Is it ready? OK.
Their goal was not to present this as a matter of
ethical or unethical release of software.
They didn't want to criticize
on ethical terms the usual industry practice.
If that might be off-putting to corporations.
So you could regard open source as
a corporate friendly cooptation campaign.
I wasn't as politically experienced back then.
I didn't realize I should expect
a corporate friendly cooptation campaign
to go wrong at some point.
If you want to help our cause
the way you do that is by alluding to freedom.
I don't know how to say free in Slovenian.
I know that in Serbo-Croatian it's slobodan.
In Russian it's svobodni.
In Italian it's libero.
In other words, it's free. As in freedom.
If you have a word that specifically means free.
It refers to freedom and doesn't refer to price.
That's a better word, so use it.
The English word free is somewhat
flood, but it's the best word we've got in English.
We use prosto programje. - What?
Prosto programje. - What is? I can't hear it. Speak louder.
Prosto. - Prosto?
What does prosto mean?
Free, more like roots... - I am afraid that's like open source.
The wrong word.
Free is more strange... - How would you say free press?
Svobodni tisk. - What? - Svobodni tisk.
I think you better say slobodni.
You better say slobodni.
Prosto is the wrong word.
We could also say free entrance... - But free entrance is wrong.
Not the right analogy. Think of free speech.
It's that kind of issue.
Just as free speech refers to having the freedom to speak.
Then this is software that gives you the freedom to do
computing as you wish and to cooperate with others.
In doing so.
The users must have control both individually
and collectively, giving each user individually control
is not enough. It has to be collective as well.
The reason is, most users don't know how to program.
If we only gave users enough freedom to
personally study and change the software.
This would do no good for all those non-programers.
Including perhaps many of you.
When the control that also is available to any group
of people, then the non-programers are included
in the benefits.
Let me show you with some examples
how this happens.
Non-free software is full of malicious features.
These features tipically do things, such as surveillance
of the user, they restrict the user.
Those are called digital handcuffs.
Or digital restrictions management.
There are back doors that receive commands from others
and do things to the user without asking permission.
These are so widespread
that they are the usual case.
If somebody is using non-free software
almost certainly he is using some non-free software
with malicious features.
Let me prove this with a few examples.
One proprietary package in which people have found all kinds
of these malicious features that you may have heard of
is called Microsoft Windows.
In fact, Microsoft Windows has a backdoor, allowing
remote impossition of software changes.
Microsoft can forceably change the software.
Without asking permission of the nominal owner
of the computer.
This means Microsoft is universal malware.
Any malicious feature that Microsoft could think of
if it isn't in Windows now, it could be installed tomorrow.
Any program with malicious features is malware.
Windows is not just malware,
it's universal malware.
MacOS is malware too.
It has digital handcuffs.
The iThings, Apple's newer computer products
are much nastier.
They have surveillance features, people keep finding
surveillance features in them.
They have the tightest digital handcuffs ever invented.
Apple ceased control even over the users in some
installations of applications.
Pioneering the computer as jail.
They have a backdoor.
Flashplayer is malware.
It has a known surveillance feature
and known digital handcuffs.
Flashplayer is gratis.
But it's not free.
What significance does the lack of a price have?
It just means Adobe does not make people pay
to be abused.
If a website uses Flash, complain.
The Amazon Swindle is malware.
It's designed to take away readers' traditional freedoms.
But I'll talk more about that later.
Most cellular phones have malware in them.
With a surveillance feature and a universal backdoor
that allow software changes to be remotely installed.
That has been used to remotely convert them
into listening devices.
You've heard of software that has bugs?
This is software that is a bug.
I've just given you examples which include almost
all users of non-free software.
I've proved my point.
No speculation. No extrapolation needed.
How can we protect ourselves from malicious features
in the software we use?
There's only one known defence.
That is free software.
With free software some of the users are programers.
From time to time some of them look at that source code
for whatever reason. But in the process
they have a chance to spot a malicious feature.
If anyone finds out that there's a malicious feature,
they can fix the program.
They can get rid of the malicious feature.
Which is basically impossible
with proprietary software.
That's why even though I know that Windows
has certain malicious features.
Users have not made a version of Windows
without those malicious features.
Because they don't have the source code.
They couldn't change it.
Beyond just changing it.
They'd have to publish the modified version
so other users could get it.
This is why those freedoms are essential.
If you were using a non-free program
and you don't know how to fix it yourself, other users
of the same program do know how.
They will fix it to protect themselves.
When they do, they will announce the changed version.
That will protect you.
The community of users of the program,
the ones that know how, protect the whole community.
In order to do that, they need the four freedoms.
With proprietary software, we're
simply at the mercy of the developer.
Which is tipically a corporation,
often a large corporation.
They say: Of course you know you can trust
a large corporation like us.
How could you possibly say that a corporation
is less than totally trustworthy?
We say we would never do nasty things to you.
You can't possibly disbelieve us, can you?
We've never heard of any
corporation that mistreated people.
With free software we have an imperfect defence.
It's not guaranteed, but it's much better than being
defenceless and at the mercy of an entity that faces
a tremendous temptation to use its power to gain more.
That's why these widely used non-free programs tend
to be malware.
They are all made by these big companies.
They face a temptation. What else they're gonna do?
Except give into it.
The last point I want to make about free software
is that educational activities must teach
exclusively free software.
A museum is a kind of educational activity.
You have computers for the visitors to use.
Those computer should be running only free software
so they teach users free software rather than
teach and encourage non-free software.
Many proprietary software developers
offer gratis copies of their non-free software.
To schools and educational activities.
Why do they do this?
It's because they want to use those activities
to impose dependence on something.
They provide gratis copies, so the activity
will teach people to use them.
In the process, those people become dependent.
Afterwards, they're still dependent.
After they graduate from the school,
the developer doesn't offer them gratis copies
of this non-free program.
Some of them work for companies
the developer doesn't offer the companies gratis copies.
So it's like handing out gratis needles
full of adictive drugs.
Saying: The first dose is gratis.
Once you're dependent then you have to pay.
Schools and museums have a social mission.
Teaching dependance on proprietary software is
counter to that mission.
So they must not do it.
They must educate people as free software users
so they are prepared to live in a free society.
Instead of an obstacle to a free society.
There is a deeper reason for education
of the best programers.
Some people are natural born programers.
Technically, 10 to 13 years old
they are fascinated and they want to know
how every program works.
But when these kids ask the teachers: How does it do this?
If that program is proprietary, the teacher can only say:
I'm sorry, we can't find out. It's a secret.
Thus education is not allowed.
Excuse me. I realized I better take this now.
Thus a non-free program is the enemy of the spirit
of education. And therefore
any honest educational institution
must say it is not permitted to be there.
However, if the program is free,
the teacher can explain whatever he knows.
And then say: Here's a copy of the source code.
Then you understand everything.
Those kids, being fascinated, will read it
trying to understand everything.
The teacher can say: If you come accross any point
that you cannot figure out for yourself.
Show it to me and we will figure it out together.
That gives our natural born programers
a chance to learn a cruical lesson:
That code is badly written.
You shouldn't write it that way.
Natural born rogramers are clever
and they can write lots of code that nobody else will...
It works correctly, but nobody else will understand it.
Good programers, they need to learn not to write
code that way. They need to learn what that code is.
They need to learn all the different ways of how to write code
that will be hard to understand.
In order to learn to avoid them.
The way to learn to write good clear code is by
reading lots of code and writing lots of code.
Only this gives you the opportunity to read the code
of large programs we really use.
Then write changes in them.
Which is the way you learn to handle the difficulties
of code in large programs.
Before the day you can write a large program yourself
and do a good job,
you need to make changes in existing
large programs and learn to do a good job.
Every school can offer this opportunity,
but only if it is a free software school.
Every museum if it has an exhibit that involves
software, should show the source code
of that software as free software
to allow people who are interested to understand
what's going on.
There is an even deeper reason
for education. Education in citizenship.
Because it's not just enough.
It's not enough just to teach some topic.
Or skills or facts.
We need to teach the spirit of will.
The habit of helping your neighbour.
The practice of sharing knowledge.
Every class were to follow a rule:
Student if you bring software to the class
you may not keep it to yourself.
You must share it with the rest of the class.
Including the source code.
In case someone wants to learn.
Because this class is a place we share our knowledge.
Therefore: If you can't share it with source code,
you can't bring it here.
Of course, the organization has to
follow its own rule.
It must bring only free software to the class
and share it with everyone in the class.
At the end of the talk on free software people
ask me: Do the same ideas apply to anything else?
Now you know what the ideas are.
You can understand the question.
Often they ask me: What about hardware?
We need copiers for hardware.
Strictly speaking, it doesn't make sense as a question.
Nowadays, there are starting to be 3D printers.
You can give them a file, which is a kind of desing.
It will make an object. If the object...
This design is something we could ask about.
Should it be free?
I will cover that in the end of this speech.
Towards the end.
But this technology is just at the infancy.
Look around this room.
Most of the objects we can see here
can't be made today by a 3D printer.
In the future, perhaps.
But that can take care of it by itself.
You see: When we apply... when we judge an ethical question.
We do it by applying our basic principles
the various possible choices and their consequences.
A change in the context
which includes a change in technology,
can alter the consequences of a particular choice.
That can make it more good or mode bad
than it used to be.
For instance:
If we could reliably resurrect the dead
then murder wouldn't be so bad.
The judge would say:
I sentence you to pay for his new body.
In the U.S., we would need all to have
uninsured killer insurance.
In civilized countries,
the national health service would take care of it.
If we made all the objects we used,
we would use the 3D maker technology.
We would be making all of our useful objects
from files and those files would be an example of
the thing for which this question is so meaninful.
Namely, works that we have copies of.
Given our computers, we can copy.
We can make more copies and we can change them too.
Because we can do those things, the question
whether we are allowed to do those things
is a real and important question.
That's the real question here.
Until recently, if you had a copy of a work that was not
a program, almost certainly the only thing
that might restrict you to do anything with it
was the copyright law.
This is starting to change because they are starting
to impose End User Licence Agreements.
On published works and software.
Maybe some day I will have to change the title of my talk.
And redesign it some.
For the most part it's copyright law.
We have the same question from the other direction, by saying:
What should copyright law say about
what we can do with our copies of published works?
For this it's useful to look at the history of copyright
law which is connected closely with the history
of copying technology.
Copying began in the ancient world when it was done by
reading one copy and writing another.
This technology was very slow.
But it had other interesting characteristics as well.
For one thing, it had little or no economy of scale.
To make ten copies would take you ten times as long
approximately as making one copy.
Second, it required no special equipment other
than the equipment for reading and writing.
Third, it required no particular skill other than
litteracy itself.
The result was decentralized production of copies.
Wherever there was a copy and someone wanted to make
another, he might.
In the ancient world, there was nothing like copyright.
If you had a copy and you wanted to write another copy,
nobody said you couldn't do that.
Except perhaps, if the local potentate didn't like that book.
In which case he might do horrible things to you.
Which was not exactly copyright, but
rather censorship. The two have had close historical
relationship, but they're not the same.
That went on for thousands of years, but then
there was a big advance in copying technology.
The printing press.
The printing press made copying much more
efficient, but in a non-uniform way.
In the age of the printing press,
mass production copying and one off copying were both slow.
Sorry, in the ancient world.
In the age of the printing press,
mass production got much more efficient.
One off copying did not benefit.
The fastest way to make one copy was to write it by hand.
However, the printing press was
a big improvement if you wanted to make many copies.
The reason is the economy of scale.
In the use of the printing press.
It took a lot of work to set the type for a page.
But once that was done you could quickly make
many identical copies from it.
In addition, the printing press and the type were
expensive equipment. Most people who were literate
did not own a printing press.
They also didn't know how to use one.
Because using a printing press is a different
skill from reading and writing.
The result of this was a centralized system
of production of copies.
Copies of any work were made in a few places and
then transported to where somebody would wanna buy them.
Copyright originated after the printing press.
It was an age when rulers
made a habit of giving out various sorts of monopolies
to all and sundry that they wished to reward
for whatever reason.
They started handing out monopolies over printing
certain books or maybe even printing any books.
Copyright in England, which is
more or less the root of today's copyright
started as a system of censorship.
In 1553, I believe,
under queen Mary who wanted to censor protestantism.
And was willing to kill to do so.
This law said that to be allowed to publish
a book one had to ask the state for permission.
That permission was granted as a perpetual monopoly.
To one publisher.
By the way, I just remembered something I should
have said to you at the beginning:
If you take photos of me, please do not put them in Facebook.
Facebook is a surveillance engine.
I don't use it. - Good. I don't either.
Facebook is not your friend.
If you post a photo on Facebook,
Facebook asks people to give names
to whoever is in that photo.
Just posting a photo helps Facebook to collect information
about the people that are in it.
I dont want you to do that to me.
I could raise the question of whether that's a good way
to treat your friends.
But I only insist about me.
If you were making a recording, audio or video,
and you want to distribute copies
that's ok provided you do it in
a format that is friendly to free software.
That is one that isn't patented
and is implemented in free software.
That means the Ogg formats
or webM.
Not mp3, not anything mpeg and certainly not Flash.
Also, please put the Creative Commons attribution,
No Derivatives licence on it.
The reason for No Derivatives is that this is
a statemement of my opinions.
Getting back to the main topic:
The copyright system of censorship
was allowed to lapse in the 1680s.
The publishers pleaded to get their monopoly back.
What was done was somewhat different.
It gave a monopoly to the author.
For 14 years. Which could be renewed once
If the author was still alive.
The idea developed.
The copyright was a system to encourage authorship.
Encourage people to write.
In this way it was meant to benefit society.
When the U.S. constitution was written
there was a proposal to say that
authors were entitled to a copyright, but this was rejected.
Instead, the 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 discoveries.
We can see three things in this.
First of all, copyright is not required, it's optional.
Second, if it exists, it's for the purpose of promoting
progress, it's not an entitlement for the author.
Third, it has to last for a limited time.
Ever since then, publishers have been trying to
convince us to forget those decisions.
Which I think were wise.
However, in the age of the printing press
copyright was not very controversial.
Because it functioned as an industrial regulation.
On publishers, controlled by the authors.
But designed to provide benefits to the general public.
Because of this, it was mostly uncontroversial.
Easy to enforce and arguably beneficial.
It was mostly uncontroversial,
because it was only enforced against publishers.
Ordinary readers were never restricted by it.
They never had anything to complain about.
It was easy to enforce,
because it only had to be enforced against publishers.
It's easy to find out who is publishing a book.
You go to the bookstore and you say:
Where did these copies come from?
It didn't require invading everybody's home,
everybody's computer or everybody's internet connection.
In addition, it was arguably beneficial
for society, because notionally
the public had traded away
part of its natual right to copy anything.
It was a part of that right that the public was not in
a position to exercise
and thus was valueless.
In exchange, it got real value.
More books written.
It was considered an advantageous trade.
Advantageous for the public.
Also advantageous for the authors.
If we were still in the age of the printing press
I don't think I would be campaigning against it.
The age of the printing press is gradually
giving way to the age of the computer networks.
Another advance in copying tehnology.
Which once again makes copying more efficient
and once again in a non-uniform way.
The situation in the age of the printing press was this:
Mass production copying very efficient
and it became even more so.
Starting in the late 1800s.
One off copying still very slow.
With digital technology, we get this.
Mass production copying is more efficient.
What really benefited is one off copying.
It's almost as efficient as mass production copying.
They're not exactly equal.
One off copying is now so efficient
that hundreds of millions of people can do it.
Which brings us back to a situation
more like the ancient world.
In which copies can be made in a decentralized way.
However, not everyone wants us to
get the benefit of being able to make copies.
Publishers don't want us to
realize the benefits of digital technology.
They wanna keep those benefits in their own hands
and dribble them out to us
with their power.
In fact, digital technology
changes the effect of copyright law
even if the words of the law have not changed.
The effect would be totally different.
Instead of an industrial regulation
on publishers, controlled by authors, set up
to benefit the public, we now have an intolerable
restriction on the public, controlled mainly by the
publishers with a little tripping down to the authors.
Therefore, it is no longer uncontroversial.
People are now starting to form parties
to fight against it.
It is no longer easy to enforce.
Because now it requires invading everybody's home,
everybody's computer and everybody's internet connection.
In Europe, they are busy setting up the invasion
of everybody's network connection
and invading in measures, which were the only measures
that can possibly convince people
not to do something as useful and easy as copying.
It's no longer beneficial to the public.
Because the freedom that we traded away
and didn't care, because we didn't know
how to use it anyway, now we can exercise.
We want to exercise it.
What would a democratic government do
in this situation?
Government of the people, by the people, for the people.
It would say: The freedom that was traded away
for our citizens must be recovered for them.
They have to have this freedom.
In the present situation, it's intolerable
not to have this freedom,
so we are going to take it back for them.
We can measure the sickness of democracy
around the world by the tendency
of governments to do the exact oposite.
That's government of the people,
by the funds for the corporations.
They're doing what the corporations
most interested in this question
want them to do.
Those corporations are the publishers.
They are doing what the publishers want.
They are making copyright law
more strict, just when they ought to be relaxing it.
This shows up in the dimension of time.
How long should copyright last?
They keep making it last longer and longer.
Just recently there was a big extension
in the length of time that copyright
on a sound recording lasts in Europe.
There wasn't, I'm sad to say, a movement,
saying: Don't take away any more of our rights.
There was opposition.
But it wasn't a big enough movement to stop this.
European Union turns out to be a powerful engine
for giving bussiness what it wants.
A powerful enemy of democracy.
The idea of the European Union
was a wishfull dream, because
we imagined that it would be a democratic system.
But it isn't.
The worst example is Mexico.
Where copyright lasts for a hundred years
after the author's death.
In the U.S., in 1998
they extended copyrights by 20 years.
On all, past and future works.
How they claim to promote the making of
past works by extending the copyright retroactively,
I do not understand.
Unless they have a time machine.
If they have a time machine,
why don't they use it?
We don't see it. Apparently they haven't used it.
History books don't tell us that in 1923,
when artists found out that their
copyrights would be extended by 20 years in 1998,
as was extended other times before that,
that they were set to work with renewed vision.
Why don't they use their time machine
and get us more beloved classics?
Now, extending copyright on future works
in priciple might encourage making more of them.
But only for artists, who are indeed crazy.
Any rational person wouldn't care.
Economists will explain that the discount
present value of 20 years more
starting 50 years after your death
is small to affect your rational decisions today.
Why did they pass this law?
There were bussinesses that recognized
that they had lucrative monopolies
that were slated to endure.
Like Disney.
Which realized that the copyright on the first films
which had Mickey Mouse in them were going to expire.
Once that happened, other people could draw
Mickey Mouse as part of their artistic work.
Since Disney has obtained a tremendous amount
of value from the public domain,
it appreciates how important the public domain is.
And is firmly determined never to contribute anything to it.
Companies like Disney
purchased that law.
That's how laws are made in the U.S.
Which is why they deserve so little respect.
What moral authority does a law have?
That was purchased by companies.
No more than those companies do.
They purchased this law to extend copyright by 20 years.
Which means that in 2018,
they'll be back in the same situation
and to some extent they will probably
try to do the same thing again.
And call this perpetual copyright and the installment plan.
Every 20 years extending
copyright by 20 more years.
The movie companies want perpetual copyright.
They don't yet have the power
to ammend the U.S. constitution.
The have to pretend at any given time
that copyrights will expire.
If they manage to keep extending them
forever, then no copyright will even expire again
and that's their goal.
However, even more important than the
dimension of length is the dimension of breath.
Which uses of the copyrighted work
does the copyright cover?
In the age of the printing press
were not supposed to be all uses.
In the space of all things
you could do with published work,
which initially entirely free activity
for the readers or users,
activities covered by copyright
were an exception.
Those were the ones that had been restricted by this
law and everything outside people were still free to do.
The publishers have recognized that digital technology
if misused, gives them the opportunity to cease total control
and impose a paper view universe.
How they do this is with digital handcuffs
one of the kinds of malicious software features that
you find in non-free software.
Although, they can also be aided by special
malicious hardware changes as well.
It's not exclusively in software,
but almost always requires help
from non-free software.
The software needs to be non-free.
In order to achieve their evil goal.
Their goal is to restric the users.
Trying to restrict people through free software
is like trying to push somebody by
pushing cooked spaghetti against him, it bends too much.
It's too flexible. You need something
that's hard in order to push with it.
You need something that they can't break.
Or bend in order to tie them up with it.
They use non-free software.
That the users don't control. It controls them.
This is how they're trying to use that control.
To restrict what people do with their copies.
Let me describe what they have done.
The first place where users encountered this
outside of software like games
was in DVDs.
DVDs were designed
to restrict the users.
The video can be stored in an encrypted format
which was initially secret.
It was kept secret by the conspiracy
who set up the DVD design.
And implemented the making of DVDs and players.
The conspiracy said that if you want to make
a DVD player, you must join the conspiracy.
You must agree to keep the format a secret.
You agree to build your DVD players to restrict
the users, just like all the other DVD players.
With all the DVD players around the world
that are officially approved
restrict users the same way.
For a while this worked.
Then people figured out the format
and released a free program
that could decode this encryption.
The movie companies tried to get
the known member of that group prosecuted
but it turns out there was no way
to prosecute him because this wasn't illegal.
They began making it illegal.
First in the U.S. with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act
which imposed censorship on that software.
There was a national court case about
the free software to play a DVD
and the court ruled that distributing
that in the U.S. was forbidden.
The U.S. started the censorship of software.
But it has extended to the European Union.
With the EU Copyright Directive of around 9 years ago.
Most EU countries have implemented
Directive in a harsher manner then neccessary.
Although, some countries peculiarly
have decided that it doesn't apply to
the specific software to play DVDs.
In Finland, a court ruled
this software being so ubiquitous
it meant that the DVD encryption method
was no longer an effective of restricting the public
and therefore the law didn't apply to it.
That would be nice if we could count on it
if we only had to get a free program
sufficiently into distribution
to make it legal to distribute.
Then we could win.
Usually, but not always.
When the movie companies discovered
that these laws had not actually
stop people from getting
the free software to play a DVD
they set up another scheme
to force the encryption, called AACS.
That is used in Blu-ray discs.
They thought that it would never be broken
but people did release a free program
to decrypt Blu-ray.
However, it can't always be used.
In order to use it, you have to know the key.
They keep changing that key.
That's a battle that can't be won
conclusively and permanently.
In addition, Blu-ray discs have another level
of digital restrictions management
which they change, they reprogram it
every three months or so.
They don't all use it
but it's there.
It will be very hard for the free world to keep up with
that constantly changing system of restrictions.
It's a mistake to assume
that because there's so many of us and we're so clever
we will always defeat the enemy technically.
That can't be taken for granted
and understimating the enemy
is a prime act of folley.
That has often led to defeat.
Nowadays, we see movies being distributed
over the internet with digital restrictions management.
They could change their digital
restrictions management scheme
from one day to the next.
It's a tremendous challenge to see
how anyone could effectively defeat it.
We can't assume
that we will defeat their handcuffs technically.
We've also seen DRM in music.
Around 10 years ago
we saw things that looked like compact discs,
but they were not written following
the specs for compact discs.
Therefore we called them corrupt discs.
They were CDs.
But c stood for corrupt.
So people made lists of them
to tell other people what not to buy.
I once gave a speech like this
in Spain where I have been invited by
a regional government agency.
Of course, they gave me afterwards
some books with beautiful photos
of the region and some discs of
music from the region.
One of them I wanted to listen to
because it was by a musician I have heard of.
But fortunately, before I opened the package
I saw that instead of the Compact Disc logo
it had another symbol.
It said: Copy Control. This disc can be played
in Windows and Macintosh systems.
Which meant: Not by any computer I would have.
The reason it had that symbol is
that some European countries
ruled that they can't put the Compact Disc symbol
on those discs, because they weren't writing them
accordingly to the specs for a Compact Disc.
They had to put on something else
and that turned out to be useful.
I handed that disc back: There you see the face
of the enemy. Please, give this back
to the store.
They shouldn't get to keep your money.
I've never heard that music.
Maybe I never will.
But that's ok.
That's a tiny sacrifice to make
for freedom.
We must be prepared for fighting
if we wanna keep our freedom.
Otherwise somebody will make us choose.
If we don't choose freedom, we'll loose it.
Right then and there.
Now, Sony had a very clever idea.
For making corrupt discs.
Instead of writing the tracks
in a strange viguelly fashion hoping the computers
wouldn't read it, they put a program on the disc.
The idea was: If you put the disc
into a computer, that program would run
automatically.
It would take control
of the operating system and install changes.
To restrict acess to all those discs.
That program resembled
a virus or what a cracker would use
to cease control over your computer.
It's called a root kit.
It's illegal.
In fact, it's a serious crime.
Distributing such software.
Or getting it to run on people's computers.
Without their permission.
But that's what Sony did.
It made other changes in the system as well.
It undermined security in various ways.
It changed the part of the system that you could use
to ask what's installed in the system
so thus to disguise its own presence.
It modified another part of the system
that you could use to delete it
so that it wouldn't really delete that stuff.
Sounds more like a virus
in every detail.
That was one felony Sony commited
but not the only one.
Part of this code
it was code from a free program
that had been released under the
GNU general public licence.
Which is a copyleft licence.
Which means, it says: When you distribute any
program in some of this code
your entire program must
be released under the same licence.
You must give users a copy of the licence.
So they know their rights.
You must make the source code of your whole program
available to them.
Sony didn't do any of that
which was copyright infridgement
Thanx to a law, purchased by
Sony in the middle of 90s
that's a felony in the U.S.
Sony was never prosecuted.
U.S. officials understood perfectly
well that the U.S. government's job
is to maintain the power of those
corporations over the citizens.
It's a government of occupation
for the empire of the mega corporations.
They didn't prosecute Sony.
But people did sue Sony.
The victims.
Unfortunately, they focused their condemnation
not on the evil purpose
of putting this root kit on the discs
but rather only on the other nasty things
that were the means Sony used.
This meant that Sony was able to settle
the lawsuit by promising that in the future
when it's restricted what users could do
it would not practice those means.
Sony learned its lesson.
In the Playstation 3
the root kit was built in
before they sold the product
and it was designed to be impossible to remove
and its AAs.
However, they were defeated technically.
A year or two ago some people figured out a way
to break that particular piece of handcuffs.
They were able to jailbreak the machine
And install their own choice of software on it.
Sony sent the police after them.
Which is why we have Boycott Sony stickers up there.
So, DRM in music...
There was one redeeming feature for these
Sony corrupt discs. That program that ran automatically
would run on Windows, but if you put it into
a GNU plus Linux system, it wouldn't bother you at all.
But that's no excuse.
If somebody tries to do something extremely nasty
and makes a dumb mistake and some of the intended
victims escape unhurt, that's no excuse.
DRM on music mostly dissapeared a few years ago.
What happened was:
The record companies made a contract
to sell through iTunes with DRM.
Then they discovered that it was
Apple who was in the driver's seat.
That Apple was in a dominant possition
and was screwing them.
They had to sell it some other way.
Their contract said they could only
sell it some other way without DRM.
So they did it. Lo and behold! People bought it.
The sky didn't fall.
Eventually, Apple had to get rid
of the DRM also.
With a little pressure from the
Free Software Foundation helping
to encourage them on the way.
DRM mostly dissapeared
from music, but it's creeping back.
Thanx to streaming services
such as Spotify.
They are bringing back digital restrictions management
to music.
They transmit the music in a secret, encrypted format
for the specific purpose of restricting the users.
That's why they require users to run
a specific non-free client program.
Non-free in order to restrict the users.
There's a specific feature that would be natural
to put in, they don't want it to be there.
That feature is: Save this last piece on my
disc in a file.
The most natural, obvious feature.
Except, they want you to think
that because it's streaming you can't have that feature.
That's nonsense. You can have that feature.
They don't want it to have that feature.
So, out, out, damn Spotify.
We've got to spread the word that those features,
those services mistreat people.
You mustn't let yourself be at their mercy.
You've got to have your own copy.
That's in a non-encrypted format
that you can use
as you wish.
Then there were books.
There's a hand out up there about
the danger of e-books.
I hope you'll take a copy.
Now they're applying DRM to books as well.
The first attempt was 10 years ago.
There was a broad public relations campaign
to convince us that e-books
were going to be really great.
They started making e-book players
and publishing e-books.
One publisher had the idea that he could
get its line of user restricting e-books
selling with a bang on techno files.
If they started with a biography of me.
They found an author who came to ask
for my cooperation and I said:
Only if this e-book is published
without encryption.
So that people can distribute it.
The publisher wouldn't accept that
so I said: No. But a few months later we found
another publisher who agreed
and in fact wanted it on paper.
It was written and published actually
under a free licence
You can dowload the marked up text
and edit it and publish it yourself.
That was nice.
E-books flopped a decade ago.
Just people didn't like them very much.
It would've been really nice, if people
had rejected them because they
didn't wanna give up the traditional freedoms
of readers of books.
We realized that that would be...
We couldn't assume that
they probably rejected them
for mere covenience reasons
and the agressors would fix up
the convenience and try again to attack our freedom.
And they did. With products, such as
the Sony's Shredder and the Barnes and Noble's sNOOK
and the Amazon's Swindle.
Which is designed so that it swindles readers
out of the traditional freedoms of
readers of books.
For instance, there's the freedom
to accuire a book anonimously
but in cash.
That's not allowed with the Swindle.
Amazon is the only place to get books for the Swindle
and Amazon does not allow people to pay cash.
It does not allow people to buy annonimously.
That means Amazon maintains
a giant database of all the books each user
has read on the device.
Such a database threatens human rights.
We must not tollerate its existence
no matter where.
There's no need to ask whether Amazon in particular
is a suitable custodian for that database,
because no-one could possibly be.
Then there's freedom to give the book
to someone else after you read it.
The freedom to lend the book to other people.
The freedom to sell the book to a used bookstore.
Amazon eliminates these freedoms with digital handcuffs,
together with End User Licence Agreements.
Amazon does not respect private property.
Amazon says that you can't own a book.
If you're using the Swindle.
It says that the books all belong to Amazon.
All the reader gets is a licence to
read it under Amazon's choice of imposed conditions.
Then there's the freedom to keep the book
as long as you wish.
And then you pass it on to your heirs.
Amazon eliminates this with a backdoor.
We know about this backdoor with observation.
We don't know everything it can do
because we can't see the source code.
All we know is what we saw.
In version 9, Amazon remotely erased
thousands of copies
of a particular book.
Until that day, those copies
were authorized copies.
They were maintained in the usual
approoved manner from Amazon.
They were authorized copies until the day
Amazon said they weren't.
Because of that, Amazon knew exactly
where they were.
Amazon knew exactly where to send the commands
to make those books dissapear.
The book with which Amazon demonstrated
orwellian nature of its product, was 1984 by George Orwell.
If I were writing fiction,
I wouldn't dare make it up that way.
Too improbable a coincidence.
People would say.
But that's what happened.
1984 is the book that gave us the slogan:
Big brother is watching you.
It describes a totalitarian state
whose crown began with destroying books it didnt like.
And it got worse from there.
There was a lot of criticism.
Amazon promised it would never do this again
unless ordered to by the state.
I try not to find that comforting.
You should all read 1984
But not on the Swindle.
The official name of that product is Swindle.
Kindle means to start a fire.
Which suggests that the real purpose of the device
is to burn our books.
But I wont let it get mine.
Because I will never use a device of that kind.
I wont get books that way.
I hope you will join me in refusing.
any e-book that gives me less freedom
either theoretically or practically
than a printed book, I will not accept.
On May 4th, in the day against DRM
we are planning to have protests around the world
against DRM.
If you want to help in the campaign
either then or through other kinds of actions
so you can easily do them anywhere
visit defectivebydesign.org.
Which is a site for our anti-DRM campaign.
The companies organize to build the system
to restrict us.
We must organize to fight back.
Under what circumstances might Amazon get
called by the state to erase people's books?
Let me tell you about one.
Several years ago
J.K. Rowling and her publisher went to
court in Canada
and maintained an injunction, ordering the people
that bought one of her books,
not to read it.
She literally told people
her fans, not to read her book.
Why was this?
A bookstore put the book on display
before the date it was supposed to be sold.
Thus risking damage
to a carefully crafted
marketing campaign so that perhaps she might
have got not as quite as many millions of dollars.
People walked into the store
they put a book on display, they bought it and they left.
She couldn't find out who they were.
All she could do was get this order
published, telling people not to read it.
Also, forbidding them in Canada to publish
some juicy secrets from the plot.
I got somebody to tell me and I published them.
Not that I care that much about Harry Potter
but just because it was important to defy
something as nasty as that.
Not being in Canada,
I could safely do so.
I also call for a boycott
of Harry Potter.
I don't say you shouldn't read those books.
I leave that to Ms Rowling.
Let her tell people not to read her books.
I am saying you shouldn't buy them.
You shouldn't pay to see the movie.
Borrow the book and read it, if you want to read it.
Go to a public library.
Only, if you take it out, they will send her some money.
Which is a bad thing.
But if you borrow it, you can read it in the library.
You could borrow it from a friend.
There are ways you can read the book.
And not give her money.
Now she has a site
selling e-books.
I don't know if she claims that it's really
selling them, maybe it's only
giving users licences to read them.
These users identify themselves,
so now if this happens again
she could really go and erase them.
I've said that conspiracies of companies
are usually responsible for these DRM schemes.
The reason for this is that
with a few exceptions
one company by itself is usually not
in a position to implement those schemes.
It takes various companies working together,
publishers and technology companies
so they have to make a conspiracy.
If they want to let some other companies
make players, so they have to invite
those other companies to join the conspiracy.
How do I know about
these conspiracies?
It's because they don't keep them secret.
These conspiracies have websites.
Where they explain the rules of the conspiracy.
They say which companies
serve up the conspiracy.
I once visited the website
of the AACS.
And saw those things.
Conspiracy is to restrict
the public's access to technology.
For private gain.
Ought to be a felony. Like conspiracies to fix prices.
After all, those can only cost us more money.
But the conspiracy for DRM
can attack our freedom
which is much worse.
In fact, those companies know
they have nothing to fear,
because our governments are on their side
against us.
Therefore, they announce,
they proudly announce their conspiracies
to restrict us.
Well, I want them to go to jail.
Instead of designing a technology to put us in jail.
Until we can make that happen,
we need to work together,
so please join defectivebydesign.org
What would a democratic government say
that wants to stand up for what its people want?
Instead of saying
we must surrender to the corporations,
it's best for you if we obey them,
reduce copyright power.
How precisely?
First of all, there's the dimension of time.
We must make copyright last a shorter period of time.
I propose 10 years,
starting from the day of publication.
Why from the date of publication?
Because, before the work is published
we don't have copies of it.
Therefore, it doesn't matter to us
whether theoretically we would do various things
with the copies, if we had them.
We might as well let the artist
have as long as it takes to arrange publication
and start the clock then.
Why 10 years?
In the U.S. and some other places
the usual publication cycle
is only three years.
By three years,
almost all books are out of print
or almost all records are out of print.
They're gone.
So, 10 years is more than three times that.
It ought to be plenty.
It's a tiny fraction of works that would
still be in print that long.
Not everybody agrees with that suggestion.
I once made these proposals
in a panel discussion with fiction writers
and an award winning fantasy writer
from U.S. said: 10 years, that's crazy.
Anything more than 5 years is intolerable.
I was surprised too.
Until that moment,
the publishers had succeded
in fooling me.
Because when they demand more power
over cross-sharing,
they say this is in the name of the artists.
They may even bring out a few
very famous artists
who will say: Yes, I want more power.
They want us to think
that they represent all the other artists,
who however were not famous enough
to be invited.
That's not true.
Publishers treat those very famous
and sucessful artists very nicely.
They grind the other artists into
the ground with their heels.
This author had experienced that.
His book was out of print
and his fans were contacting him,
saying: I wanna read this, people tell me it's great.
Where can I get it?
He wanted to send them copies
but he wasn't allowed to.
Because he had transfered the rights,
licenced the exclusive rights to the publisher.
The publisher wouldn't let him.
The contract said
that if the book went out of print
the rights would revert to him.
The publisher refused to acknowledge
the book was out of print,
even though the fans were saying they couldn't get it.
Thus he had a legal dispute with his publisher.
Which was using the copyright of his own book
to stop him to distributing copies of his own work.
He had reached the conclusion
that more than 5 years of copyright were very
unlikely to do him any good,
but he saw that they can do him harm.
He said: Only five years.
I'm not insisting on 10 years exactly.
I'm suggesting this as a rough adjustment.
I have no way of knowing
what the best possible length would be.
If everyone else prefers five years,
I'll go along with it.
I just wanna be a little more cautious.
I'm proposing to shrink it down to 10 years.
What about breadth?
Which uses of a copyrighted work
should be covered by copyright
and what should we be allowed to do?
I think that depends on what kind of work it is.
I distinguish three broad categories of works.
Based on the kind of contribution
that they make to society.
This is not meant as a value judgement.
I'm not saying that one of these kinds of works
is more important than another.
I'm saying, they contribute in
different ways.
First, there are the works
of practical use.
Works that you use to do a job.
Second, there are the works that show
what certain people think or thought.
Third, there are the works of art and entertainment.
Whose contribution is in the impact of the work.
Let's look at these one by one.
The first category is works
that serve a functional purpose.
You use them to get a job done.
This does not mean that they can't have any
aesthetic aspects, but that is secondary.
There are some aesthetic aspects
in writing a program.
The main point of that program is what it will
do for you when you run it.
Works in this category include
computer programs, recipes,
educational work, effort works,
fonts for displaying text.
And other things.
These works should be free.
Freedom is having control of your own life.
If you use the work to do a job
you must have control over that job.
That means you must have control over the work.
The users of the work must
have control over it.
You've got to be free to use it the way you wish.
Free to change it, so it does
the job the way you wish.
Then you must be free to distribute
copies of your modified work, to publish it.
Because your version might be
better for some other people.
They may prefer it.
Just as you prefer it. They may want to do the job
the way you wanna do it.
You've gotta be free
to publish it and provide it to them.
So that the users can have the collective
control over the work as well as individual
control over the works, as they use it.
That leads us to the same four freedoms.
But those are not all the works.
There are also works that state what somebody thinks.
Like this talk.
Like essays of opinion.
Memoirs, scientific papers.
Which are the works of testimony.
Certain people say: This is what we did.
This is what we saw. Signed so and so.
Our reputation is at stake if there's anything wrong here.
For these works, there's no particular reason
to allow people to publish modified versions.
That would just be misrepresenting the authors.
That means there's no particular reason
for any commercial use of these works without permission.
I propose a modified copyright system
that would cover all commercial use and all modification.
There's one freedom that we must have.
That is the freedom to share.
When I say share, I mean
noncommercially redistribute exact copies of the work.
I believe people must have the freedom to share
any published work.
So I am not talking about private personal data here.
That's a totally different issue.
I'm talking about published works.
Works that anybody is welcome to get a copy of somehow.
With this partially reduced copyright system that
gives us the freedom to share, we will turn copyright
back into a tolerable industrial regulation we can live with.
We will end the war on sharing.
This is what makes current copyright system intolerable.
The fact that we are forbidden to do this
easy and tremendously useful thing
that digital technology allows us to do.
That is sharing.
Sharing is cooperation.
It builds the better society.
To attack sharing is to attack society.
Because sharing is good and handy
people will share.
Only nasty draconian measures
could possibly convince them to stop.
Why the publishers and their tamed politicians
keep proposing and inacting nasty draconian measures?
They want to stop doing something that's easy and good.
First, they started designing technology
with digital handcuffs.
But that didn't always work.
People broke the digital handcuffs.
They made the laws to forbid
breaking digital handcuffs.
The laws are completely malicious.
Digital handcuffs should be forbidden.
Not protected by law.
That didn't really suceed.
Then they started suing teenagers
for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That didn't entirely suceed either.
The latest thing is to punish people who are
sharing by the internet.
There are various ways to do this.
A combination of imposing censorship on the internet
with a specific purpose of blocking the people sharing
Of course, it's easy to block other things, too.
It leaves an arbitrary system of sharing.
They generally set it up so that sites could be blocked
without a trial.
They also disconnect people as
a punishment for being accused of sharing.
Punishment for merely being accused.
Which destroys a basic principle
of justice.
They're willing to destroy basic principles
of justice.
With their dirty goals achieved.
We must end the war on sharing.
That's why I say:
Sharing must be legal.
There's no particular reason in this
category to permit commercial use or modification
without authorisation.
I propose thus somewhat reduced
copyright system which will continue to provide
some income for the artist in more or less the same
lousy and inadequate fashion as today.
Except for a few stars.
It's lousy and inadequate.
Then there's the third category:
Works of art and entertainment.
For these works, modification is a difficult issue.
There are valid arguments on both sides.
On the one hand, an artistic work can have an artistic integrity.
Modifying it can destroy that integrity.
For proof of this, just look at how Hollywood
generally butchers works of fiction.
Those authors didn't have enough artistic integrity
to say no.
On the other hand, there are some
exceptions who make sure that Hollywood
doesn't butcher their works.
They apparently have some artistic integrity.
On the other hand, modifying artistic work can be
a contribution to art.
Consider for instance the folk process.
There are many things that
people now do with the internet
what they may still call a program.
Either these terms go out of fashion
faster than I can follow.
Consider Shakespeare.
Some of Shakespeare's plays use
stories, copied from other works
stored a few decades before
If today's copyright law would be in effect then
Shakespeare or whoever it was would not have been allowed
to perform or publish those plays
and probably would never have written them.
The copyright holders would have said:
Shakespeare just wants to make a cheap rip off
of my work.
If Shakespeare would had never written that
we couldn't point at it and say: That's not true.
Since it is written we can say that they are all
important contributions to human literature.
It would be a shame, if any of them would have been
prevented from being written.
After Shakespeare's works went into
the public domain, other works that we consider
important and worthy in having been published
were based on them and derived from them in some way.
There is valid argument on both sides.
Eventually, I thought of this compromising solution:
For ten years
which is how long I'm proposing copyright should last
this reduced copyright system would be in effect
that would cover all commercial use and all modification
but everybody would be free to non commercially
redistribute the same of copies.
Then copyright would expire
and people could publish modified versions
This means that to publish
a modified version you might have to wait
up to 10 years.
But you can wait up to 10 years.
It's not like today,
where you might have to wait a century.
And you'd be dead before it lasts.
That's what I propose.
There's one other issue and that is remix.
Remix means taking parts of various works
putting them together and making something
that overall is totally different.
It's too different to be considered a modified version
of one work, because its whole point
is entirely different.
For many of the works that you might
have used pieces of
remix should be legal.
The legitimate purpose of copyright is
to encourage other works.
To interpret copyright
so that it becomes an obstacle
to making a broad class of interesting
work is turning it on
its head and that only happens
when a law, initially made to benefit society,
gets distorted under the control of private
interest to benefit from it.
Which is of course what we have.
In particular: Peer sharing must be legal.
I don't know about services like
Megaupload, after all they're businesses.
I don't know whether Megaupload was illegal or legal
under U.S. law.
In any case, I'm not arguing in particular
for services like that.
Peer to peer sharing doesn't
require any particular business to support it.
That definitely is non commercial
and it's got to be legal.
Record companies will say: That's horrible.
You're stealling from the musicians.
Which is nonsense.
They stole everything from the musicians.
Leaving nothing for us to take if we've tried.
With the exception of long established stars.
Here's how it works.
When I buy a commercial CD,
I feel ashamed because I know
I am not supporting the musicians.
Why is that? Because in general
they are not long established superstars.
The musicians.
Whose CDs I buy.
The point is, when musicians
get a record contract,
nominally, a certain fraction
is for the musicians.
But they never get it.
Because the same contract says that the production
and publicity expenses
are considered as an advance
to the musicians.
This fraction of the price you pay that's supposedly
for the musicians, goes to: Repay the advance.
Really it just goes from one account
in the record company to another.
The musicians don't ever get that.
It's almost unheard of
that a record sells so many copies
that it finishes repaying that so called advance.
The money starts actually going to the musicians.
A record can go platinum
in the U.S., without reaching that point.
It almost never happens.
If the musicians finish the first contract
which is tipically five or seven albums.
And they're famous.
At that point they can negotiate another contract that
really gives them money, when people buy their records.
That's very, very few.
That only applies to their subsequent music.
The initial albums remain forever under the first
contract and might still not give them any money.
How do musicians get any benefit
from their record contract
if they become stars?
They do get a benefit in a different way.
They get to be better known.
They have more concerts
and publish more and more people come.
They can sell merchandise at their concerts.
In those ways they make more money.
We have other ways
of publicizing musicians.
Thanx to digital technology,
we can just share their music.
We can write how much did we loose.
Our benefit ... - No, how much did we loose.
No, it's ok. - So it's still going?
Yeah. - OK. Good.
I just wanted to know if I had to repeat something.
No.
Ready. - OK.
By telling our friends:
Here's something nice, listen to it.
By publicizing musicians.
This is healthier.
Because it's not controled by money.
We can get the influence
out of spreading the music.
I think that legally sharing the music is healthy music.
In addition, another good effect would be
to remove those monstrous companies that have
lobbied for unjust laws
to sue teenagers for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I want them to get what they deserve,
which is to disappear.
I'm not saying that there's something unjust
in making and selling records.
It might be nice if we had a system that
really made those that sell records pay
the musicians, which mostly they don't.
Those particular record companies, the major record
companies, they're fewer of them every decade.
They keep merging.
They have done such nasty things.
They need to be wiped out.
I think this is a good chance
to apply the corporate death penalty.
What about movies?
You've heard astronomical sums
for the cost of making movies.
Could movies still be made?
A producer told me
that those costs are actually more
publicity than production.
The part that's supposedly the production costs.
Is exagerated through creative accounting.
The real cost of production was probably much less.
On the other hand, a lot of use in movies is commercial use.
It would be covered by my proposed
of reduced copyright system
just as by the current copyright system.
Putting those two together,
I think they would get the money to make movies.
They might not go in for
pushing the limit of special effects
but I think we could live without that.
In any case, Hollywood systematically
produces crap.
This is a stronger statement then
to say that Hollywood usually produces crap.
That's also true.
But I am saying it's due to the operation of a system.
I learned about the work of this system from a book
called Save the Cat.
That book aims to teach people how to
write and adapt screenplays.
I had no intention of trying to do that.
That I probably don't have any talent for it.
Or the desire.
What I learned from the book was how the system works.
That arranges for most of the production
of Hollywood to be crap.
I'm completely against censorship.
I don't advocate stopping people for making a movie.
Just because I think that.
They should have the right to make it anyway.
It's not a question of whether they should be allowed
to make it, it's a question if we should give up
our freedom to help them make it.
That's a different story.
We should not.
By the way, film production
in a lot of countries is
very much subsidiesed as well.
I'm not saying that's necessarily bad,
but that's something you keep in mind when asking
whether they could still make movies.
At this point you might wonder:
Since the existing system is lousy.
I'm just saying that this reduced copyright system
would provide almost as much income.
Well, that would also be lousy.
Maybe we would like to support artists better
than the current system.
I have two proposals on how to do this.
Which are compatible with legalizing sharing.
One proposal is,
to be run by the state.
State agency would get money
either out of the general budget
or perhaps through attacks
on internet connectivity
or anything, doesn't matter what.
It would distribute this money
through specified rules
among artists.
Not to businesses, only to the artists.
We should make sure that no businesses could take it
away from the artists.
They will try.
The crucial thing is:
How much does each artist get?
What I'm proposing is like the existing system
and that it's based on their popularity.
Not juries or bureaucrats or anything.
You can measure the popularity without
surveilance by poling of some kind.
There are various kinds, it could be done.
How do you determine
from each artist's popularity
how much that artist should get?
The most obvious way is linear proportion.
But that doesn't give results.
It gives too much to the stars.
It's easy for a star
to be a thousand times as popular
as a fairly good apreciated artist to be.
With linear proportion A would get
a thousand times as much as B.
Which means that either B is given not enough to live on
or A is getting to be super rich.
Neither of those achieves the goal.
Therefore I propose we take the cube root
of the popularity of each artist.
Cube root function looks sort of like that.
Since the cube of a thousand is ten.
If A, the star, is a thousand times as popular
as capable artist B, A would get ten times as much as B.
Not a thousand.
Thousand times but ten times.
The result of this would be to
that the total amount that goes to all the stars.
woulb be a small fraction.
There are not so many stars
and they get only ten or so times as much.
The money that goes to all the stars put together
would be just a small part of total.
Most of the money would go to the artists
that really need this help.
Thus, because the system is more consistent it achieves
the goal of supporting the arts.
We could do it with a lot less money.
That's why it doesn't matter crucially
how they will collect money.
Because we'd been saving so much
that we ought to just be grateful that we're saving it
not to worry exactly how we're paying
the amount that they get.
The other method I propose is with
voluntary payments.
Imagine that each player had a button.
Push a button and it pays one dollar
or half a euro to the artist.
Anonimously.
My idea is each country would choose the amount.
It would choose the amount to try
to maximize the total amount that people send per year.
It's a small enough amount
that a lot of people wouldn't hesitate.
For you to send half a euro
you could do that once a day.
Of course, there are poor people
who can't afford to do that and they wont.
That's fine.
We wont need to squeeze money out of
poor people to support us.
There are enough non poor people
who would be happy to do it.
It's nice to support art.
The only thing you hesitate is
value of that half a euro.
That's not much of a reason not to do it.
Why don't you do it today?
Because it's too much trouble.
The trouble is what discourages you
not the value of the money you'd give.
With this proposal we would eliminate all the trouble
we would make it as easy as pie.
The only thing to make you hesitate is
how much money you're giving.
I think this would work pretty well.
Because people do feel good when they give.
If it didn't send enough,
we could have warm and friendly PR campaigns.
To convince people to give more.
Contrast them with the vicious, threatening,
insulting PR campaigns that say:
If you share, you're a thief.
Which is false.
Legally speaking, sharing is not a theft.
But they say it anyway.
They're trying to scare people out of helping others.
This campaign would only appeal the good emotions.
I would say: Did you send half a euro
to some artist today?
Why not? It's such a small amount of money.
If you enjoyed listening to it and reading it.
Push the button.
You'll feel good.
If people do it, they will feel good.
They'll learn to do it more.
These are my recommended methods.
Of supporting the arts and encouraging sharing.
I'd like to mention there are stickers up there.
From about GNU and the Free Software Foundation.
There are some iBad stickers.
Bad for your freedom.
Take stickers, they're gratis.
Take as many as you can make good use of.
And put them up where people will see them.
I also have some merchandise for sale.
Like these little buttons which are
2 euros and those big buttons which are 3 euros.
These lepel pins which are 10 euros.
These are metal stickers, basically like this one.
They say: GNU/Linux inside.
You can put them on your computer and they wont rub off.
These are two euros.
There's also this adorable gnu.
Which needs a home.
I'm going to auction it now.
The benefit of the Free Software Fundation.
If you buy it, I'd be happy to sign the card for you.
If you have the penguin,
you need to get a gnu for your penguin.
Because we know, a penguin can't hardly
work without a gnu.
When you bid, please wave your arm
and shout the amount you're bidding,
because it's useless to bid if I don't notice.
We can accept payment either with cash or with credit
card you use to make international purchases.
I'm going to start now with 20 euros.
20 euros? How much?
30. I've got 30.
Do I get 35 or more?
I'll give 35.
Have you got a credit card to pay with?
35. Do I get 40?
40. - You first saw it.
40. Do I get 45?
Do I get 45?
I've got 45. Do I get 50?
I've got 50. Do I get 55 or more?
Do I get 55 or more for this adorable gnu that needs a home.
Do I get 55 or more
to the Free Software Fundation to defend freedom?
I've got 55. Do I get 60?
I've got 55. Do I get 60 or more for this
aborable gnu that needs a home?
To the Free Software Fundation to defend freedom.
Do I get 60 or more? Last chance.
Last chance to give 60 or more.
Going... - 60. - I've got 60.
Do I get 65?
For this adorable gnu that needs a home.
Do I get 65 or more to the Free Software Fundation
to defend freedom?
Last chance. Do I get 65 or more?
65 or more? Last chance.
Going. Going... - 65. - I've got 65.
Do I get 70 or more?
I've got 65. Do I get 70 or more for this adorable gnu?
To the Free Software Fundation. Do I get 70 or more?
Last chance. Going. Going. Gone for 65.
Please come down. Please come down and pay.
Meanwhile, those of you who wanna buy something else
please come down.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Hope to see you soon.