===========================================================================
Transcription of the video: 
2019-11-17--rms-branco--resisting-unjust-platforms-and-systems--lisbon.webm
By:        Richard Stallman
Event:     13rd Lisbon & Sintra Film Festival (LEFFEST)
Host(s):   Juan Branco
Date:      November 17, 2019
Location:  Teatro Tivoli BBVA, Lisbon, Portugal
Language:  English with introduction in Portuguese
Duration:  1h 18min

Copyright © 2019 Richard Stallman and Juan Paulo Branco Lopez
License:  Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0)

0:00:00 to 0:01:57:  Introduction by Juan Branco, in Portuguese
0:01:57 to 0:51:42:  Speech by Richard Stallman, in English
0:51:42 to 0:57:38:  Auction, in English
0:57:38 to 1:17:42:  Conversation between Juan Branco and RMS, in English
============================================================================= 


00:02 - 02:05
[Introduction by Juan Branco in Portuguese - Not transcribed]

02:07
I'm here to talk about the injustice of the computing systems that 
people use. 

Of course we're aware that some of the computing companies can do evil 
things. We know that some companies provide support to the US government 
for deportations. We know that some companies do surveillance and 
manipulate elections. But most people are completely unaware that the 
digital systems and tools that they use are mistreating them 
systematically and fundamentally. This is a form of subjection, a form 
of digital colonization that people have not become aware of. But this 
is what I have been fighting against for 35 years

03:11
Initially, people did computing by running a program: you'd have a 
computer, you would get a program and install it in your computer, and 
it would do things. The developer would say, "Here is what this program 
does." You would install it and it would do those things... usually. And 
if it didn't do those things it was usually by accident, not anybody's 
fault, we all make mistakes.

03:44
Nowadays, people sometimes do their computing through online services. 
If you use an online service you don't even run the program, the program 
is running in somebody else's computer and you can never control what it 
does. 

04:06
So, I'm going to talk about the difference between software livre and 
proprietary, nonfree software. 

04:18
The first point is, when I say free software I mean livre, I do not mean 
gratis. I'm not talking about price, price is a side issue. Whether you 
pay money to get a copy of a program or receive it as a gift or a 
business just hands it out without charging, that's a minor detail. 
That's not an important question because we're not against buying and 
selling. We're concerned with something more fundamental, more morally 
important. Once you have the program, how does it treat you? Does it 
respect your freedom or does it crush your freedom and subjugate you? 
Does it respect your community or does it drive people apart and tear 
apart your community? These are the important questions. This is what
software livre is about. 

05:34
First, what is a program, what is a computer? A computer is a universal 
computing engine, but really all it knows how to do is one very simple 
thing: get the next instruction and do what that says, and then the next 
instruction and do what that says, and the next and the next and the 
next. Millions of times per second it will get an instruction and do 
what that instruction says. The instructions come from a program, which 
is simply a collection of instructions. Depending on what instructions 
are in that particular program, it can make the same computer do this or 
that or that or that or that or that or that, or an 
infinity--potentially--of other things. The same computer with
the right program could do absolutely any computing job, except the 
impossible ones which no computer can do. But if we stick to the ones 
that are possible, the same computer could do any of them with the right 
program, with the right instructions. 

06:49
Who gives the instructions to your computer? You might think it's you, 
when really it's someone else. You might think that your computer is 
obeying you, when really it's obeying its true master all the time, and 
it does what you want _if_ the true master says OK. But if the true 
master doesn't like it, you'll find there is no way to tell your
computer to do the thing you want. There's simply no word for that. 

07:28
With any program there were two possibilities: either the users control
the program or the program controls the users. It's always one or the 
other, because there's no other possibility. When the users control the 
program, that is free software, software livre. Why so? Well, what is 
freedom? Freedom is having control of what you do in your life, control 
of the activities you do. But if you use a program to do the activity,
control of the activity requires control of the program you're using. So 
when the users control the program, that program respects their freedom 
and community, it's free software. (I'll explain in a couple of minutes 
how community fits into this.)

08:27
Practically speaking, in order for users to have control of the program 
the program has to give them the four essential freedoms--now we're 
getting to the practical criterion for a program which is livre. 

08:46
Freedom 0 is the freedom to run the program any way you wish for any 
purpose. Freedom 1 is the freedom to study the program source code and 
change it so the program runs the way you wish and does your computing 
the way you wish. Why do we focus on source code? Well, here is some 
source code [pointing to a slide on the screen] this looks like a 
mixture of English and math; if you have learned the programming 
language you can read the source code and understand it, and then change 
it to do something a little different or a lot different. But to run it 
we convert it into executable code, which is an enigmatic series of ones
and zeros which is difficult even for programmers to understand, 
especially when it gets to be a lot of them. This is still a small
program but you can see it's a lot of complex details, not so easy to 
figure out what this program actually says, what are the instructions in 
this program. With a real program, which might have a hundred million 
ones and zeros, the job of figuring out what it does can be painfully 
hard, so we don't even think of trying except as a last resort in a case 
of desperation. In order for people to really have the option of 
changing their programs they must have the source code of those programs. 
Freedom 1 includes that source code is available. 

10:29
These two freedoms together give users separate control of the program.
[Pointing to a slide on the screen] Here are four users using the same 
program. One of them is exercising freedom 1 by changing per copy of the 
program (I use the singular gender-neutral pronouns "person," "per," and 
"pers;" they work grammatically like "she," "her," and "hers," but they 
do not specify the person's gender; this way I can maintain the 
distinction between singular and plural and that makes a lot of 
sentences much clearer and easier to understand.) This separate control 
is very useful and it's essential, but it's not enough because most 
users are not programmers, most users don't know how to read source code 
and why should they do other things, they have other talents in life. 
There are many interesting things to do in life if you're good at them, 
and programming is just one, so I don't think everybody should have to 
learn to program. 

11:41
But even the non programmers deserve control over their own computing 
lives. How can non programmers have that? Through collective control, 
which means the freedom to work with others as a group to exercise 
control over what the program does. At the top we see a group of three 
users working together to change this program but look, two of them
on the right are actually touching the code, they must be programmers, 
but the third one on the left is not touching the code, maybe person 
doesn't know how to program but is participating in the group's 
decisions about what changes to make. That's how non programmers can 
participate in exercising control over the behavior of the programs they 
use. This, it turns out, is crucial to making programs treat users with 
respect and honesty. Those who cooperate in this way are those who 
choose to. At the bottom are two more users of the same program but they 
are not working with the group, they're just using it separately, and 
they're free to do either one. Maybe tomorrow they'll all decide to work 
together or maybe they'll decide that what they want is too different 
and it doesn't make sense practically to cooperate, it's up to all of 
them. 

13:13
In any case, collective control of the program depends on two more 
essential freedoms. Freedom 2 is the freedom to make exact copies of the 
program and give or sell them to others when you wish. And freedom 3 is 
to make copies of your modified versions of the program and give or sell 
them to others when you wish. These permit any group to function and 
cooperate. If one member of the group makes a modified version, using 
freedom 3 person is free to make copies and distribute them to others in 
the group. Each of them, with freedom 2, is free to make more exact 
copies of that and distribute those to others in the group--of course, 
they also have freedom 3, they could make their own changes if they wish. 
This way everyone in the group can get a copy, but the group does not
have to have any formal existence, it doesn't have to have a list of 
members; whichever people are cooperating that's a group. So, Freedoms 3 
and 2 do not restrict who you can distribute copies to. You can 
redistribute--give or sell copies--to anyone in the world. You can even 
offer copies to the general public, which means publishing that 
version--anyone who gets a copy is free to do so. 

14:52
This is what free software means you're allowed to do. If the program 
comes with these four essential freedoms, then the users control the 
program, both separately and collectively, in parallel. So this program 
respects the users freedom and their community and it's free software. 
Since the four essential freedoms are fundamental, I'll repeat them. 

15:24
Freedom 0, to run the program any way you wish for any purpose. Freedom 
1 is the freedom to study the program source code and change it so that 
it runs in the way you wish. Freedom 2 is to make exact copies and give 
or sell them to others when you wish. And freedom 3 is to make copies of 
your modified versions, if you have made any modified versions, and then 
give or sell them to others when you wish. 

15:58
If one of these freedoms is missing or incomplete, insufficient, then 
the program is not free software because it doesn't respect the users 
freedom and community, it is not under the control of the users. 
Instead, the program controls the users, a nonfree program controls the 
users and the owner controls the program. This nonfree program, 
precisely because it is nonfree, generates a system of unjust power, 
power for the company over the users. This is purely, simply, because 
the program doesn't respect the users freedom. 

16:49
I've used an example of a giant company, but it doesn't matter if the 
company is big or small. No matter what company it is that owns this 
nonfree program, no matter how many or how few users there are, the 
company has power over the users, and this is an injustice. People often
talk about monopolies or quasi monopolies for these software companies.
Well, monopoly is a dangerous thing, but if instead of Microsoft we had 
ten different companies making ten different nonfree programs to do the 
same job, I would say no to all of them because none of them should have 
power over me or over you. If you have a choice between nonfree programs, 
that means you can choose who is your master. Freedom means not having a 
master. If we want to be in control of our computing lives we've got to 
stop anyone else from controlling our computing lives, we've got to 
escape from nonfree software. 

18:08
This is the fundamental injustice inherent in any nonfree program, but 
typically it leads to other injustices because the owner has power over 
people and power corrupts. The owner feels the temptation to put 
malicious functionalities into the software, and nowadays it's normal 
for nonfree programs to have malicious functionalities. For instance, 
spying on people. You've probably heard of the Amazon Kindle (I call it  
the Amazon "swindle" because it swindles readers out of the traditional 
freedoms of readers of books), it reports what users are doing, it 
reports what the user is reading, it reports which page the user is 
reading, if the user enters any notes or highlights any text, that's all 
reported to Amazon. Spying on the user is standard practice in nonfree 
software today. The five main nonfree operating systems--I'm talking 
about Windows, macOs, Android, iOS and Chrome OS--all spy on the user. 
And most apps also spy on the user, according to research. Of course, 
you shouldn't tolerate that a computing system spies on you, we should 
rise up and put an end to the use of those systems. I've been doing my 
best to rise up for 35 years. 

19:56
The Fitbit is really outrageous. It's there to keep track of your 
running and your exercise, but it was set up so that it wouldn't offer 
the data directly to the user. No, the user was supposed to upload the 
data to the manufacturer's server, and then the manufacturer would sell 
the data to the user the data is about. What nerve! Well, if you hear 
someone talking about the Internet of Things it usually means that it's 
designed to work that way; when the user wants to give a command to the 
product or get any information from the product, it has to go through 
the manufacturer's server, which means the manufacturer spies on
everything and controls everything. There's even a sex toy that works 
this way; it's designed so someone else can send commands, but those 
commands go through the manufacturer's server, so the manufacturer is 
spying on all the lovers that are using this as couples. Well, that's 
vicious, they shouldn't be allowed to know what users are doing with 
their products. It should be illegal to design these programs to spy on 
people, it should be required to design them in ways where the 
manufacturer can't spy and neither can anyone else. 

In addition, occasionally the company says, "we're not making enough 
money from that old product, let's switch off the server," and all the 
products break. This has happened many times.

21:55
Then, there is digital restrictions management or DRM. That's when the 
system is designed to restrict the users, to refuse to do certain things 
or refuse to do them for certain people. Here you can see that instead 
of your servant, that program is your prison guard, your jailer. I 
refuse to use any system with DRM unless I can break the DRM. If it was 
designed to restrict me, then unless I know how to defeat the 
restrictions I reject it totally. I won't use it at all. I've never used 
a Blu-ray disc because I don't have free software that can break the 
digital handcuffs in the Blu-ray disc, so as far as I'm concerned the 
disc is not there. I will not trade my freedom for all the movies in the 
world. 

23:00
Then there are backdoors. A backdoor is when they can send a command 
remotely to your computer and tell it to do something whether you like 
it or not. The Amazon swindle has a backdoor to erase books. We found 
this out in 2009, Amazon erased thousands of copies of a particular book. 
Which book? Can you guess? It was 1984 by George Orwell. This is how we
learned that the system had the ability to erase books. It would have 
been even nicer, I suppose more ironic, if it could burn the books. 

Now imagine a driverless taxi with a back door. Imagine if someone could 
send a command to the taxi telling it to take you to secret police 
headquarters or the torture center, with the doors locked and not let 
you open them. You can't trust a driverless taxi if it has any
way of knowing who the passenger is. If it's your own car and it's 
driverless, then you could trust it if the car has no connection to 
anyone, if there's no way for anyone to send it a command or to upgrade 
the software. Really what you want though is all the software in the car 
should be free. I'm sure the US would do this. I expect Saudi Arabia 
would do this. They'd probably build a saw into every taxi so that the 
passenger could arrive predismembered dismembered. China of course would 
do this. 

25:08
Then there is censorship. Apple invented censorship of apps. The iPhone 
was the first generally useful computer--it could do many different 
things--where users were not permitted to install their choice of apps. 
They could only install the apps that Apple approved. Apple practices 
censorship for China. Recently Apple banned an app that had been made to 
help protesters in Hong Kong coordinate; China ordered Apple to block 
that app, and Apple did. By the way, there's also a backdoor, Apple can 
erase the app even if it's already installed.

Windows has a universal backdoor meaning that Microsoft can remotely 
change the code, which means it can do absolutely any nasty thing to the 
machine that has Windows running in it. This was first discovered in 
Windows XP. Nowadays Microsoft admits that it has this backdoor but uses 
a nice sounding name, it's called "Auto Upgrade." Or, if you don't like 
the change, you might decide that "Auto Downgrade" is a more fitting
term. In any case, this should not exist, it's an injustice. 

These are a few examples, but almost everyone that uses nonfree software 
uses these, so we know almost everyone that is using proprietary--that 
is, nonfree software--is already a victim of proprietary malware.

27:10
Basically, in principle, a program can be free or nonfree and it can be 
honest or malware. They're theoretically independent, but in practice 
they go together. Free programs are almost always honest and nonfree 
programs are usually malware. Why is this? There's a systematic reason, 
because the developers of nonfree software have power over the user. 
That power corrupts them, so they put in malicious functionalities in 
order to profit more. They know that whatever they put in the users 
cannot remove it, the users are stuck. Basically, the only way to trust 
a nonfree program is with blind faith, you have to make an effort to 
forget that that company has mistreated you before, mistreated millions 
of people before, perhaps, and just believe. Well, this time I can trust 
it, right? Blind faith. But with free software you can have rational 
trust because you know that the user community controls that program. 
The user community can make that program honest. The user community can 
look for anything that is bad. Of course, it's the programmers who do 
that, but when they find something, _if_ they find something bad, and 
they release an improved version which doesn't have the bad thing, that 
protects you even if you don't know any programming. That corrected 
version will be circulated in the community and eventually that's the 
one you will get. So, because the user community can protect itself, 
what that means is that the programmers in the community can protect 
everyone else in the community. We're not helplessly at the mercy of 
some company that owns the program. This is what deters free software
developers from putting in anything nasty in the first place, because 
you've got to expect that users will notice it and they'll fix it. We 
don't have power, that saves us from being corrupted. 

29:48
So you've got to recognize that a nonfree program was meant to subjugate 
you and then mistreat you. It's an opportunity to be swindled, don't 
accept it. You should come to the free world that we have built and live 
with us in freedom. We built it with the GNU operating system and the 
kernel Linux, which worked together. I started GNU in 1984, almost 36 
years ago now, and Linux was started in 1991. Linux filled the last gap 
in GNU, so now you can use the GNU system with Linux as a kernel, it's 
also called the GNU/Linux system. Many people mistakenly call the system 
"Linux" and they're giving us no credit at all. Please don't do that, 
please give us equal mention. We started it, I think we deserve equal 
mention. 

30:58
There's a lot I will have to skip, but I should point out that nowadays 
a lot of digital systems surveil the users. We suffer from more 
surveillance than the Soviet Union, and this is extremely dangerous. Not 
just in the ways people usually think of. Yes, Facebook uses this to 
manipulate elections or to let the rich manipulate elections and we've 
got to put an end to that, but simply keeping track of what people do is 
dangerous even if it's not used to manipulate elections. 

If we look at the whole set of surveillance data, it's a lot of stuff, 
but it's collected by various different systems. In some cases through 
nonfree programs, in some cases through services, so it ends up in these 
different databases. But then they sell this data to data brokers, and 
the data brokers put it all together into one effectively big database. 
Sometimes the data brokers get databases in anonymized form, meaning
your name and your address and your ID number are not there, but it 
turns out it's usually easy to figure out who the person is, so they do 
that. So they put together one giant surveillance database. 

32:50
Governments do that. In the US the FBI can simply demand a copy of these 
databases, it doesn't even have to give a reason. And it's done secretly, 
so you can't tell that the FBI has demanded the copies of a thousand 
databases that have information about you. I'm guessing, I don't know if 
it's a thousand, maybe it's only two hundred, maybe it's ten thousand, 
we're not allowed to know. But we can be confident that the FBI gets all 
this data and puts it into one giant database. This is tremendously 
dangerous, it's dangerous for democracy. You see, some people are heroes, 
some people are whistleblowers who reveal to the public crimes that the 
government is committing. For instance Chelsea Manning, for instance 
Edward Snowden, have revealed to us crimes that the US government was 
committing. The government likes to keep those crimes secret, so it 
calls the whistleblowers spies or traitors or whatever. It wants to find 
them, and if it finds them, it will destroy them. How does it find them? 
Well, if the government records who goes where and what person does 
there and who person talks with, then it can almost always identify the 
whistleblower just from that. And if it catches all the whistleblowers 
it'll be so frightening, we won't have whistleblowers, we won't find out 
about crimes committed, whether they're war crimes or crimes against 
democracy. We won't find out. 

34:57
So if we want to find out, we must ensure that those things are not 
collected. We must make sure it is possible to communicate with people 
and travel to talk with people without being tracked. That's why I say 
this, "don't be tracked, pay cash." I never buy things with anything but 
cash. I go to a physical store and I hand over cash. That's the only way 
I do it because it's my duty to defend democracy by fighting against all 
systems to track what people buy. Tracking what people buy gives a lot 
of insight into their lives and their movements. This is why I insist on 
paying for the bus or the train anonymously, because the state must not 
be allowed to monitor people's movements. 

36:14
We have to learn that that is the prerequisite for democracy, making it 
sure people can communicate privately, making sure that the government 
can't tell, can't identify the whistleblower by asking, "Who talked with 
this journalist in the past six months?" That's what the US government 
does, it gets the full communication records of the journalists who 
might have been involved and then it says who in that agency talked with 
one of these journalists. People have been put in prison by this.

36:56
So, if we want democracy, we must protect whistleblowers, we must 
facilitate whistleblowing, and that means we must not allow systems to 
collect these data: who talked with whom, who went where and what did 
that person do there. These data must not be collected except when a 
court gives a specific order you can start following that person now, 
and that should only be given when there's some evidence of a crime. To 
justify a court order to investigate someone you have to show evidence 
of a crime. 

37:44
We must give up on the foolish inadequate approach of the GDPR, which 
tries to limit the commercial use of the data already collected. That's 
totally inadequate, it can't ever do the job. We must go much further, 
we must forbid systems from collecting data. We must have laws saying, 
"If it is possible to do this job without identifying people, even if 
it's not quite as efficient, you must do it without identifying people." 
There are cities in Europe where if you park a car you have to enter the 
license plate number in a machine. That's a system of massive 
surveillance of people's movements, it should be absolutely forbidden. 
We know it's possible to charge for parking without identifying people, 
therefore, the law must say, "You may not identify the people or the 
cars, which identifies the people anyway. You must use the anonymous 
methods and only the anonymous methods to collect that money." 

39:00
Anyway, some people propose to break up these companies into pieces. 
Well, then we'd have more separate databases at the beginning, but they 
would still go to the data brokerage that would combine them, and the 
FBI would still combine them. So breaking up the companies won't protect 
us from data collection. It might be useful, it might reduce their 
lobbying power. That would be a step forward, but this is not the way to 
protect us from dangerous surveillance we have to forbid the
surveillance. 

39:36
I should mention, many of you have heard of something called open source. 
Well, that is a corporate friendly co-optation campaign to depoliticize 
free software. As you can tell, the idea of free software, the free 
software movement, campaigns for people's freedom, for human rights that 
have not been recognized but ought to be. That struck people as too 
radical--some people. So they decided to separate our software from the 
ideas behind our software. They started calling the programs open source, 
which doesn't mention freedom, doesn't even hint at freedom. So they 
developed a different discourse, a different philosophy that doesn't 
present the issue as a matter of justice or injustice, as a matter of 
freedom people deserve, as a matter of right or wrong. It just talks 
about the practical convenience when you can change the programs you're 
using. It is convenient, what they're saying is not wrong but it's 
implicitly legitimizing the programs that subjugate people and that's 
what's wrong. This is why I never advocate open source, I stand for 
software livre, and if you care about these freedoms you can show that 
by refusing to talk about open source. You can do what I do, insist on 
talking about software livre. 

41:19
Another thing you can do... well, we have some things for sale outside. 
For instance, this button that says "Ask me about free software" costs 4 
Euros; this little button with a GNU head is 2 Euros. We've got various 
other products out there. We also have a lot of stickers which are 
gratis. If you can put one sticker to good use, please take one; if you 
could put ten stickers to good use, please take ten; if you can put 
forty stickers to good use, please take forty. Use them, put them up 
where people will see them. 

42:05
Schools should teach exclusively free software because schools have a 
social mission: to educate good citizens of a society that is strong, 
capable, independent, cooperating, and free. In the computing field that 
means teaching people to be capable users of free software and ready to 
live in such a society. You should never teach students to use a nonfree 
program because that implants dependence in the future of society, it's 
like teaching them to smoke tobacco. Never. It should be forbidden for 
schools to ever teach the use of a nonfree program. I mean any level of 
school, from kindergarten to university. When I say "teach," I mean 
anything that leads the students to use a particular program. They 
should always be leading students to be citizens of a free society,
never teaching dependence. 

43:18
In addition, there is moral education. We need to teach students to 
cooperate with each other, to help each other. What does nonfree 
software teach? It teaches, "Never share, if you share you're a pirate." 
They're saying that helping other people is the moral equivalent of 
attacking ships. I say that's false, so let's not call those people 
"pirates," let's call them good members of their community. 

43:54
Every class should have this rule, "Students, if you bring a program to 
class you may not keep it for yourself, you must share copies with the 
rest of the class, including source code in case someone here wants to learn
because this class is a place where we share our knowledge. Therefore, 
it is not permitted to bring a nonfree program to this class except to 
do reverse engineering, which means figuring out how it works so we can 
learn." But the school has to follow its own rule to set a good example. 
It must bring only free programs to class and offer copies, including
source code, to everyone in the class that wants a copy. 

44:42
Human rights depend on each other. If you lose one human right, it 
becomes harder to defend the other human rights. Now that we do so many 
important things with software and digital systems, free software, which 
more broadly means control of your computing activities, is one of the 
human rights we must defend so that we can defend the other human rights. 
That sometimes means you've got to make a sacrifice. If you want to keep 
your freedom, you have to say, "No, I won't use that system." 

45:22
I will go to tremendous lengths to refuse to use nonfree software, 
refuse to identify myself--of course, there are some places where it's 
legitimate to ask you to identify yourself. Dealing with your bank, yes, 
you should identify yourself, we don't want someone else to be able to 
steal the money from your bank account. But there are many other 
situations where no one has any legitimate reason to want to know who 
you are. We should fight against systems for buying things, for paying 
for transportation, for making a phone call when you're in the middle of 
the street, which require identifying yourself. Because that's dangerous. 

46:12
There are many kinds of systems that surveil people nowadays. It's not 
just nonfree programs running on your computer like Windows or Mac OS or 
Android. They do so, but it's not just that. It's not just all the 
digital payment systems. We have developed an anonymous digital payment 
system, we should campaign for that to replace the systems that identify 
the purchaser. Our system is called taler.net. 

46:54
Also, if you're using a phone, a mobile phone, its location is tracked 
all the time, and it can be remotely converted into a listening device. 
Every mobile phone has some nonfree software in it that communicates 
with the radio, and this program has a universal backdoor, so they can 
replace it with a different program silently and you might not even 
notice that any change was made. The replacement program listens and 
transmits all the time, and it never really turns off. If you ask it to 
switch off, it is programmed to pretend to switch off but it doesn't 
really switch off. It continues running, listening, and transmitting. So 
I call the mobile phone "Stalin's dream" and I don't have one. I feel 
that no matter how convenient it might be, it's my duty as a citizen to 
fight against Stalin's dream, so I don't have one. 

48:08
I do use mobile phones, I use lots of different mobile phones. If I need 
to make a call, if I want to say, "The bus will arrive in forty minutes," 
I ask someone else on the bus, "Will you please make a call for me?" 
That way I can tell my friend. Or, "Will you please send a text for me?" 
That way, big brother doesn't know it's me. Remember, I bought a ticket 
anonymously too. I hope Big Brother doesn't know that I'm on that bus.
The state has no right to know who's on the bus, it should never know. 

48:50
The danger of face recognition is hard to resist. It's interesting that 
several countries have made it a crime to cover your face in public. 
They present this as a way of persecuting Muslim women, but I say it's 
not just Muslim women who deserve not to be tracked in their movements. 
We all deserve this, we all deserve the right to cover our faces so that 
we can't be tracked. It would be much nicer if we had governments that 
did not permit systems that would identify us in the street so that we 
could be sure we were not being tracked. 

49:44
For more information about surveillance, look at 
gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html. For
more information about why software should be free, look at 
gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html. In general, 
look at gnu.org for information about the GNU operating system and the 
free software movement. 

50:23
You can also help us. You can do work for the cause by writing free 
software if you're a talented programmer. But there are other things you 
can do that don't require any technical skill: you can organize to 
campaign, this is a political movement that needs organizing like any 
other political movement. You can persuade schools and governments to 
move to free software. Nowadays schools make students run nonfree 
software that spies on them to companies, this should be a crime. Any 
school administrators that permit this to go on should be prosecuted. 
You can help other users if you become an expert at using the GNU system, 
helping other users learn to use it is a good thing to do too. And just 
saying "software livre" instead of "open source" shows your support for 
our cause. There are so many other things you can do there's no room for 
them, so look at gnu.org/help and you'll see many other kinds of 
volunteer work that we need. 

51:43 - 57:38
[Auction - Not transcribed]

Conversation
------------

57:39 - 1:17:42
Juan Branco: As you know, social networks need to reach very quickly a 
certain mass of users in order to impose themselves to other social 
networks. 

Richard M. Stallman: I understand, they're competing using the network 
effect. But if the social network is an injustice, then you just 
shouldn't use it. 

JB: My question is, the ecosystem seems to require to reach that mass. 

RMS: No, it doesn't. It only requires that if you're a business and 
you're determined to make money by mistreating the people who are on the 
network. This is why I say that Facebook does not have users, it has 
"useds." 

JB: My question is, I don't know if you think that building alternatives... 

RMS: We have alternatives. You can use them, and they have more than a 
handful of users. 

JB: For example, Mastodon, maybe you'd think of it, is one of the 
solutions... 

RMS: The free social networks I know of include Diaspora, GNU Social or 
Mastodon--they're related. There's also GNU Jami, which is for 
communicating anonymously, encrypted.

58:56
JB: Do you think that portability of data is an answer or is it a false 
answer? 

RMS: It's not enough. The idea of portability of data is meaningful for 
a particular scenario. 

JB: So, portability of data. In two seconds, can you tell the audience? 

RMS: If you put some data into a service, portability of data means you 
can get the data out in a structured fashion so that you can have a 
program manipulate the structure and you could put it into a different 
service to do the same job for you. This is only meaningful when the job
that the service does consists of doing some computing on your data,  
there are some services like that. The data should be transmitted in and
out in a standard format or at least a documented format so that 
programmers can see how to convert that data to put it into some other 
service. 

But most services are not like that. Social networks, a social network
doesn't exist so that you could take a bunch of data and put it in and 
tell it to do some computing on that data. That's not the job of a 
social network, it's a different kind of job. So, the idea of data 
portability sort of makes no sense. Not only that, if you look at the 
example of Facebook, what data does Facebook keep about each sucker? 
That's what the "useds" of Facebook are called, they're suckers. 

So it keeps the data that that "used" has put in, but it also keeps a 
lot of other data which consists of deductions: this person likes a 
certain song and a certain movie, so probably person is gay. It does 
machine learning, it figures out these probable rules and then it 
reaches deductions about each sucker. But those are not part of the 
sucker's data, and when people ask for their data from Facebook they 
don't get any of that. 

1:01:16
JB: Is there a way to structurally transfer this data or the nature of 
the... 

RMS: I think it's irrelevant. The important thing is nobody should know 
it. 

JB: You shouldn't create the free Facebook, it makes no sense.

RMS: The distinction between livre and proprietary makes sense for a
program, more generally that makes sense for a work. Now, what is a work? 
It's a particular series of information which can be copied. A book can 
be copied a recording of music can be copied, a program can be copied. 
If I write a program and release it, then you can copy it, you could 
each have a copy of the same program. Then, if you wish, you could 
change it. It's possible to do that. With proprietary software they say
you're not allowed, but it's basically possible to do it. But that 
doesn't make sense for a service. You can't copy a service, there are no 
copiers just as there are no copiers for tables and chairs and shoes and 
shirts. There are no copiers for these things. Most of the things we use, 
the physical objects we use in our lives, have no copiers and copying is 
not a meaningful thing for individuals to do. How could you copy that 
microphone? Even if it's allowed, you still can't do it. 

So the things that distinguish a free program or a free song or a free 
cookbook or a free encyclopedia from a nonfree one, they don't even make 
any sense for services. They're questions that don't mean anything. The 
only thing you know, that the owner of the service is going to control 
what it does, so the only way you can trust it is if you know it has no 
capability to mistreat you. The only way you can trust it with your data 
is by not giving it data. If the service lets you use it anonymously 
such that it can't tell that you are the same person who did something 
else yesterday, then you could trust it. But how do we make sure of that? 
It's because of the interface between your computer and the service. If 
that interface does not give the service the ability to recognize people, 
then it's safe. And if they want to charge for using the service, with 
an anonymous payment system like the GNU Taler you could pay anonymously 
each time you use it and they wouldn't know that you were the same 
person who paid for something else the other day. 

1:04:10
JB: So the free software movement needs in a sense an avant-garde, which 
is intermediating between the software and the users that have not the 
technical capacity to know if the software is actually respecting them. 

RMS: Right. 

JB: And the users depend on the existence of this. 

RMS: Anybody can become part of that, you just have to learn to program 
and start reading the code of free programs and reporting bugs. 

JB: And in terms of accessibility, when you say "anyone," is it really 
true that at any age with any condition you are capable of... 

RMS: Maybe not, but the point is some people are going to be better at
things than others. Anyone can be a cook but that doesn't mean you have 
the talent or I have the talent to be a great chef. 

JB: How do users who are illiterate in terms of computer programming and 
so forth are sure that the avant-garde will not betray them in a way or 
another? 

RMS: Because they'd be betraying themselves and each other. You have a 
community of people who use a certain program, they don't want it to spy 
on them. Some of those people are programmers and they study the code of 
this program because they noticed a bug. They want to fix the bug, they 
want to make the program do that job correctly, so they study it. Then 
they work together to make a corrected version of that program. In the
process, some of them have to read the source code, parts of the source 
code, and they might notice something malicious. If there's something 
malicious it's in the source code somewhere. If those people who use the 
program notice anything malicious, they're going to fix it, because it 
would be treating _them_ wrong. They're just users, they don't control 
this program in some way. If the program is profiting someone, they 
aren't the people who are being profited, a malicious functionality in 
the program is bad for them just as it's bad for you. So if they notice 
it they'll fix it, and in the process of course they'll announce, "Look 
at the nasty thing we found in that program," and all the redistributors 
will switch to the corrected version because they all have the interest 
to do so. 

1:06:43
JB: If we take a step forward the technical dimension, which I think it 
is quite clear, we've seen apparatus of power infiltrating or attempting 
to infiltrate dysfunctioning. For example, Jacob Appelbaum told us 
yesterday regarding his work at Tor, which is supposed to help people 
navigate anonymously on the Internet. 

RMS: It does, and I use it for that. But remember, he was trying to help 
specific people, namely dissidents living in dictatorships, people who 
might be killed if they were identified, and indeed they could be
betrayed and some have been. I'm not a dissident living in a 
dictatorship. What I do is not persecuted. I offer the same advice to 
the US government for the same good reasons as I offer to you.

We in fact are having some influence in US government agencies in 
helping them avoid being subjugated by businesses. Every government 
should do this just as every company should do this and every 
organization should do this and every person should do this. The point 
is, the US government doesn't consider me an enemy. They don't even ask 
to search my computer when I go into the country. 

JB: The reason I ask you this question is because good technique or good 
technical solutions which are politicized in the technical dimension can 
be used by bad political actors. 

RMS: Yes, they can, but that's a different question. 

JB: Of course, that's why I'm trying to...

RMS: I know, but I'd like to finish the previous one and then get to 
this one. I use Tor simply because I don't want companies to track my 
location when I am communicating over the net, and Tor does that fine 
for me. If the NSA or the CIA wanted to find me I suppose it could, but 
I have no reason to think that they care. But I do know that lots of 
companies would like to fill up a database about my movements and travel, 
and I don't want them to do that. So for my need, Tor seems to work just 
fine as far as I can tell. 

JB: As long as you are not targeted politically by the government.

RMS: Exactly. A tool that can give most of us adequate privacy about our 
movements may not be enough for a dissident in Egypt or a whistleblower 
in the US, who knows. 

JB: On the other hand, we've seen emancipation movements, very important 
emancipation movements, rely heavily on platforms like Facebook, like
Twitter and so forth, which are designed to collect their data for 
commercial reasons but which also actually work as concentrators of data 
which can be then used by governments to spy on them. 

RMS: That's right. The point is, they never pretended to protect 
people's privacy. They never pretended that they didn't surveil. 
Facebook is all about surveillance. 

JB: The question I am asking myself and, I don't know, do you consider 
it as paradoxical, and is it a paradox that you can solve? 

RMS: I don't have a solution for that. I'm not talking about that 
particular issue, not directly. What I say relates to it but I am 
pointing out a form of oppression that you weren't even thinking about, 
that you hadn't even noticed. This doesn't deny the other kinds of 
oppression that you're aware of, of course they're wrong too. It's like 
when people started pointing out the danger of seed companies and the 
power they have over farmers. When I first heard that, it had never 
occurred to me that there was a problem, but yes it's a problem. I'm 
doing the same kind of thing, I'm telling you that companies that 
control the software you use are dangerous just as companies that 
control the seeds you plant are dangerous. 

JB: So you live up to the individuals and citizens the decision because, 
for example... 

RMS: Well, I have no choice about that, I can't tell anyone what to do. 

JB: But, prescriptively, for example an Algerian person who tries now to 
mobilize himself or herself in the movement needs to go through Facebook 
and Whatsapp. 

RMS: I don't know what they need to do. I do know that I wouldn't use 
either of those. Whatsapp is another tentacle of Facebook. 

JB: If you see yourself in an authoritarian regime as the Algerian, is 
it a measure to get into this network? 

RMS: I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it at all.

JB: I come back to this question, how to participate? 

RMS: I don't know. I'm not Algerian, I don't live there and I'm not 
gonna try to pronounce upon recommendations for people and situations I 
don't know. 

JB: So, technically, we don't have alternatives yet. 

RMS: Yes, you do. There are lots of free social networks. You can
connect through Tor to networks that the Algerian government probably 
can't spy on. The US government maybe can, but I don't think the US 
government is particularly a friend of the Algerian government, is it?

JB: I don't know.

RMS: In the past it wasn't, particularly. The thing is, I don't know 
about situations like that. I'm pointing out that all of us face 
oppression through the digital systems that subjugate their users or spy 
on them, restrict them, and mistreat them in various ways. This is 
another part of the political situation that people have ignored 
completely. I've dedicated myself to this particular form of injustice. 
I try to fight against other injustices too on the side, but there I'm a 
helper, I'm one of the millions who support those other causes. 

JB: I think it leaves a question, an extraordinary important question.
How to combine this emancipation from this oppression you speak about, 
and how to still be able to organize massively movements of emancipation 
in countries that are suffering from political oppression.

RMS: I don't know how it is that they let people continue to communicate 
dissent through Facebook. Why don't they block those Facebook pages? I
don't know.

JB: I have a suggestion. I think in France, for example, the Yellow 
Vests--and not yellow jackets--massively organized themselves through 
Facebook but, more importantly, Facebook seems to push their content, it 
was very viral content. 

RMS: I don't like the work content when you're talking about people's
statements or works. 

JB: So videos, statements and so forth. Probably because it triggered 
very low emotions on people which actually pushed them to share them and 
therefore maintain them on the platform in order for Facebook to make 
more profits. 

RMS: In the US Facebook does that with Nazis. 

JB: Facebook doesn't care if it triggers a revolution in Algeria or in 
France because it is looking for profit. 

RMS: Yeah, exactly.

JB: And so it doesn't actually care for the actual contents of the 
statements.

RMS: Yes, exactly. It doesn't care which cause it is. But do note that 
Facebook gets its money mainly by sowing targeted ads. So, if the viral
messages are messages that enable people with money to sell targeted ads, 
those are the ones that are going to be promoted most on Facebook and 
that's why more or less right wing messages tend to get promoted mainly 
on Facebook. 

JB: In the US, for example.

RMS: Well, everywhere generally, not just in the US. I don't know 
whether it is an accidental byproduct that rebellion in Algeria got 
promoted or maybe they want to open up the Algerian market more to 
political manipulation by the plutocrats. 

1:15:47
RMS: By the way, since the question of globalization came up in a 
previous panel, I have a conclusion about globalization. You should 
always ask, "Globalization of what?" Many different human activities can 
be globalized and I came to the general conclusion that if something is 
good, globalizing it makes it better. But if something is evil, 
globalizing it makes it worse. 

When we talk about globalization it usually refers to globalization of 
the power of business, globalization of plutocracy. The power of 
business is an injustice, plutocracy is an injustice, so globalizing it 
makes it worse. However, we also have scientific cooperation, the
globalization of humanity's search for knowledge, globalizing that is 
good. We have globalization of dissent and resistance to plutocracy, I 
think that's good, why not globalize it. In fact, that's what we're 
doing here, so let's be careful and not to say that globalization in the 
abstract is good or bad. Instead, ask, "What is being globalized here?" 

JB: Thank you very much Richard for being with us. We're going to 
continue now with a debate on the Mediterranean Sea. It's an extremely 
important one. I'm sorry we've got very little time but maybe Richard 
will be able to interact... 

RMS: Yes, outside, while I sell the merchandise. Meanwhile,  
those who have won the auction should please come and see me outside.