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Election 2006 (and beyond): Digital Copyright Canada

Free/Libre Software and Community Networking FORUM

Re: Has RMS gone off the deep end?

From: russell_-at-_flora.ottawa.on.ca
Date: 2 Feb 1999 19:56:37 -0500
References: <36B749EB.9BDA41E2@atlsci.com>

  The impossible conversation: I guess we are doing it to give ideas to
our 'audience' as the probability of convincing the other of our beliefs
are insignificant.  We don't even have adequate language to debate this as
the concepts are so much a part of who we are.

  Either you believe information can/should be owned, or you do not. The
ideas of the other philosophy are just not going to make sense.


On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, Paul J.Y. Lahaie wrote:

>     Rember:  RMS is a fool.  He believes that information has no value
> (because it costs pretty much nothing to redistribute).  Information
> has much value. Information comes at great cost (time, which has a
> cost factor).


  RMS is a fool in the same way that anyone who pays for their own goods
and services rather than stealing it is a fool.  I would call him an
honest person, unlike people who wish to treat information as if it were a 
physical object.  In the Free Software mindset, the "who is the thief" is
very different:  If I stole some food from you there is two ways of
looking at it.

  a) The lack of access to that food.  In the Information world that is
what copyright does (Restricts access) and thus people who copyright their
materials are considered theifs by Free Software people.

  b) The expense in terms of money to replace the food.  In the
Information World this is the justification used to try to convince us of
the value of copyright, that it give people a way to ensure that they get
paid for their intellectual works.  I believe it is just one way, and not
often the best way.




  Information does not 'cost' the same amount that is 'charged' in a
proprietary world (Much of the so-called costs are due to the extra costs
associated with information restriction, licensing and policing).  In the
proprietary world there is also no true "Free Market Capitalism" as
consumers do not have the freedom to choose the best value-add producer,
just pay the arbitrary license fees to those who stole from the public
realm by patenting/copyrighting some intellectual works.


  The real costs of value-add to information can be paid for in many
different ways that do not involve restricting access to information.

>    So basically, what you are implying is that if someone taps your line
> it's fine.

  I haven't the slightest idea how you came to this conclusions.  If my
intended party is one person, then that is an invasion of privacy.
Proprietary software restricts the 'form' in which someone has access to
information, and what they can do with that information after they already
have it.   It does not at all relate to privacy and whether they get the
information in the first place.

  If you write a piece of software and give it to your friends, you are
perfectly fine to do whatever you want with it including keeping it
secret.  Patents/Copyright are used to restrict information AFTER you have
decided to not keep something secret.  Heck, patents can be used to revoke
access to information that people have already known and used for years
(First to file allows for blatant theft of information).

>    Money is not a form of slavery.

  Money very is a form of power and control over others.  I don't know how
I would convince you of this fact any more than I could convince someone
of the existence of gravity.

  As to getting off one's ass: I think getting paid for something you did
in the past (Copyright) rather than getting paid for something you do in
the present and will do in the future (CopyLeft) is very much a matter of
who is lazy and who is not.  I am not one to knock the concepts of Welfare
as it does have it's place in a social context, but do consider
Copyright/Patents to be the worst form of anti-Social welfare (Getting
something for nothing, stealing from the commons) that exists in our
society today.

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://russell.flora.org/work/>
 Thoughts about India, Business including Netshooter project
 Happy Republic Day, India/Linux!  http://russell.flora.org/india/

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