Richard Stallman on Copyright and more

Intro

I've been planning to start blogging again for a few weeks, and the recent talk by Richard Stallman (R.M.S) given at the University of Waterloo (UW) provided the perfect excuse.

Background

Richard Stallman is the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU project. He is an outspoken advocate of copyright reform and a slew of other issues.

On R.M.S.

At first glance, Stallman appears like a less-impressive version of Lenin. If you read his personal site, he starts to sound like Lenin too. <rant>Lenin was a f***ing bastard, and as a result my expectations of Stallman were not too high</rant>. Dmitry even suggested that an argument between Stallman and me would be amusing.

Stallman has a very powerful presentation style. He commands history and facts to make a good argument. My only problem is his use of exaggeration like "evil corporations" and "horrible punishments"; this style makes him sound even more like Lenin.

The talk

My doubts about Stallman slowly evaporated throughout the duration of the talk. As promised, this talk was about copyright rather than free software. I didn't want to listen to 90 minutes of "Vista sucks, Free Software rules." However, Stallman took 5 minutes to express just how disappointed he was that people don't give "GNU" in "GNU/Linux" enough credit. His sentiment: if Linus is not with the FSF movement, then he is against it! I would have to disagree: just because you can't write a proper kernel, don't bash others who do!

R.M.S. went on to talk about the history of copyright: it started off as censorship, and was transformed into a law to protect authors from publishers who wanted to make money distributing their work. This would benefit the consumer by encouraging authors to publish more works. However, in the digital age anyone can be a "publisher" in the sense of being able to share information with many people. Therefore, copyright is starting to restrict the rights of the very consumers it was supposed to benefit.

Richard Stallman proposes a new system of copyright laws where works are seperated into 3 categories: practical (used to increase value to society), opinion (including scientific works), and works of entertainment (they themselves provide value). Each category should be treated seperately: works of practical value should be free as in "Free Software", opinion pieces must be free but protected from modifications to preserve their authenticity, and works of entertainment value would continue to have a (much reduced) period of copyright monopoly.

Finally, he touched on the topic of DRM-protected media and how it hurts the rights of the consumer. He also brought up a very disturbing point about how DRM is being applied to e-books, and how this affects the future of publishing.

My opinion

I can openly say I agree with Stallman's main message. Copyright gives record studios, movie studios, and publishers the unfair right to delay technological progress. If manufacturing physical CDs, DVDs, or books is not economical in our society, as these companies claim, then they should go find something else to do. R.M.S. made it very clear how little artists and authors actually get from the sales. As Larry Smith says, all government intervention has a high price (in terms of economics and human rights), and I am not willing to pay the price of copyright any more.

On the flip-side of the coin, I don't think the government should force all software to be free (in the FSF meaning of free), or all music to be DRM-free. The sale of propriatary software and the use of encryption are valid business practises. However, the DMCA should be abolished. We all know DRM is a big joke - every published song worth downloading is still available online. However, it makes big old-fashioned recording companies more comfortable with online music sales. Already we are seeing a shift to DRM-free music. Check out these articles:

• iTunes adds DRM-free tracks
• HMV to sell DRM-free MP3s
• Megatunes - a DRM-free store for independent artists

Copyright in Canada

Richard Stallman said that he was glad to hear Canadians can "share songs freely online". However, his website links to the website describing a disturbing bill called "C60" which would introduce DMCA-like regulations to Canada. While this bill was dropped when the latest election was called, others are sure to follow. I am planning to sign the patition presented on the website; is anyone who lives locally interested in adding their signature? I am talking about physical signatures on paper.

Software as a Service

Someone beat me to the question about how all this applies to "software as a service" businesses like Google's web services and Microsoft's "Live" series. I was glad to hear Stallman is very clear on the subject: if you use software on someone else's computer then they own it, not you. We can't demand that Google share their source code or exercise any of the other software "freedoms". This finally convinced me that R.M.S. is more of a realist than people give him credit for.

Conclusion

I'll finish off with an R.M.S. quote: don't purchase DRM'ed media unless you can reliably break the DRM!

~ Anton