David A. Harding
Wednesday, 11 Apr 2007
Introduction
Professor Joe Kilian
introduced
Richard
Stallman
by saying talking to Stallman is like talking to his own
consciousness.
Stallman took the stage and gave a brief autobiography. After a brief introduction to free software, he said, ``that's as much as I can say about the free software movement in a speech about something else.'' Stallman said that people began asking him how his free software ideals applied elsewhere and he began trying to apply the four freedoms to other things.
For example, Stallman tried applying the four freedoms to physical objects. Freedom 2 doesn't apply, he said, ``you can't copy physical objects. If you could, I wouldn't mind [if you did].''
``But there are things for which the 4 freedoms [do] apply,'' Stallman said and he began talking about the history of copyright.
The History of Copyright
In the ancient world, Stallman said, copying was done by hand—there
was no scaling: to make 10 copies took 10 times as long as to make 1
copy. As far as Stallman knows, there was no copyright at that time.
The
printing press
made copying more effective, but not uniformly so, Stallman said.
Copyright began in the age of the printing press. Authors would ask princes for monopolies to print their books, and the princes would grant the monopoly in return for a share of the profits. In England, in particular, copyright began in the late 16th century as a method of censorship: authors had to ask the government for permission to print their books. To avoid this censorship, many people copied books by hand. In 1589 (maybe he said 1689) the censorship law lapsed and the government adopted copyright law as an incentive to authors to write.
In the United States, the constitutional framers rejected copyright law in favour of giving the power to adopt copyright (and patents) to congress. Stallman pointed out that this is the only thing copyright and patent law has in common: ``no clear thinking can result from that term, [intellectual property].''
The constitution says the purpose of copyright must be to promote progress. ``A public benefit,'' Stallman said, ``is the sole reason for copyright ... Perpetual copyright is illegal.''
Copyright is a system where the public trades away certain freedoms—freedoms it can't get anyway—in return for more ideas, art, and etc... In the age of the printing press, copyright applied only to the publishers; the original U.S. copyright law applied to printing and publication—not copying. At that time the poor still copied copied by hand, for, as Stallman quoted, ``time ain't money if all you got is time.''
This original copyright law wasn't controversial, Stallman said, because it didn't restrict freedom: ``if you trade something you don't have, and get anything of value, you got a deal,'' he said.
Copy, Right Now
The age of the printing press gave way to the age of the computer
network. ``The laws came before ... the networks made [copying]
easier.'' The situation now is more like the ancient world where the
time to make 1 copy is the same as the time to make 10 copies—that
is, no time at all.
Copying of digital works can be done by anybody who can use them—unless they're stopped. ``The deal is no longer good ... democratic representatives would've renegotiated this deal. We can measure the sickness of democracy by government's willingness to do the exact opposite,'' Stallman said.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Stallman said, authorises publishers to make their own copyright laws by creating a [book] reader with their laws [implemented] as code.''
Stallman said book publishers had a two stage plan for eBooks:
He had a personal story to tell: a publisher hired an author to write Free as in Freedom, the biography of Richard Stallman, and was going to publish it in a digital restrictions management (DRM) restricted format, but Stallman said that wasn't allowed, and the author found another publisher that wouldn't use DRM (O'Reilly).
So far, Stallman said, Stage 2 in the publisher's plan has failed. Stallman asked the audience to ``please go'' to defectivebydesign.org to learn more about the issues. Stallman believes that ePaper will be the next resource publishers use to encourage adoption of eBooks.
Copyright Done Right
What would a democratic government do about these problems? Stallman
asked that question out loud. He thinks a democratic government would
reduce the dimensions of copyright law. They could start by reducing
the amount of time a work remains copyrighted. Stallman said most books
are remaindered after 2 years and out of print in 3, and so he thinks a
10 year copyright term won't affect most authors.
When Stallman pitched the idea of a 10 year copyright term to a panel of science fiction and fantasy authors, he expected disagreement. Loud disagreement. And he got it: one of the authors—an award winning fantasy author—said, ``10 years is outrageous! 5 years should be the max.'' It turned out this author had a dispute with his publisher: the publication rights to the book were to revert to the author after the book went out of print, but the publisher refused to admit they weren't printing the book anymore.
``10 years is a start,'' Stallman said, ``we can adjust it a little bit either way later.''
Another useful copyright reform is decreasing the breadth of copyright: works should be divided into categories so they can be governed better independently. There are, Stallman said, three types of copyrighted works today:
Practical works include software, recipes, educational material, and typefaces (and more). All of these must be free (as in freedom), Stallman said. ``If it is required to do a job, and you don't control it, you don't control your life,'' he said. Recipes passed from person to person, free software, free typefaces, and Wikipedia are all examples of free practical works. There's ``more to do,'' Stallman said, but we've proved it can be done.
Opinion includes opinionated writing, memoirs, and advertisements (and more). There is ``no reason to publish modified works,'' Stallman said, but when the copyright expires on these works, they should be available for commercial redistribution.
Art and entertainment works are often said to have an artistic integrity, but Stallman said, ``authors let their books be butchered by Hollywood in exchange for money.'' ``Shakespeare used parts from previous plays ... since we've seen these plays, we know they're good, but copyright holders wouldn't have wanted [Shakespeare to use their parts].'' Stallman thinks it's reasonable to wait 10 years for the copyright to expire before modifying an artistic work.
The Sound of Music Reform
``Record companies
don't support musicians,'' Stallman said, beginning to outline a system
for better supporting musicians. In the current system, musicians only
get paid once their record label's advertising costs are recouped. Under
this system, most musicians make most of their money at concerts, and a
few stars are able to get new contracts that respect them. ``Music will
be healthy when the music manufactures are gone,'' Stallman said.
He had two suggestions. Firstly, we can tax something vaguely associated with music and distribute the money raised from the tax to musicians in proportion to their popularity—but not direct proportion. Stallman suggested an artist with 1,000 listeners should only receive 10 times as much money as an artist with 10 listeners. Since, Stallman said, ``the average person in the U.S. spends $20 a year on music and only $1 of which goes to the musicians, a tax of $2 per person per year is enough.''
Secondly, For the people who don't want a tax, he suggested we add buttons to music playing applications that say, ``send $1 to this artist.'' Again, if people pressed the button, on average, two times a year, the musicians would receive more money than they do now. Even if some people didn't press the button twice a year (or at all), other people might press the button more than twice a year.
Questions and Answers
Stallman took questions from the audience for about 20 minutes. He had
at least two great quotes:
Postscript
While Stallman was talking about DRM, he reminded me of my use of the
DeCSS algorithm.
The implementation I use is under a free software
license, but I can't legally share the code with other people because
United States law forbids it. I explained this problem to Stallman after
his talk and asked him if the DeCSS implementation I use is still free
software. He said, ``Yes. It's underground free software.'' I
was happy to hear this because it means all the software I use,
including DeCSS, is free software.