[00:01.410 --> 00:05.270]  Books, 9 West 19th Street, from 10 a.m.
[00:05.370 --> 00:06.210]  to 7 p.m.
[00:06.490 --> 00:12.590]  Brooklyn Bus Tickets can also be reserved at 718-636-5446.
[00:12.790 --> 00:16.390]  718-636-5446.
[00:16.570 --> 00:22.410]  For more information, please go to www.nycpj.org.
[00:22.570 --> 00:26.090]  www.nycpj.org.
[00:35.020 --> 00:37.460]  And you're listening to radio station WBAI.
[00:37.980 --> 00:39.180]  Time for Off the Hook.
[00:42.450 --> 00:47.030]  The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
[00:47.950 --> 00:50.030]  I cut myself while shaving.
[00:50.550 --> 00:52.610]  Now I can't make a cough.
[00:53.370 --> 00:55.390]  We couldn't get much worse.
[00:55.950 --> 00:57.970]  But if they could, they would.
[00:57.970 --> 01:00.930]  But I'm really born for the best, expect the worst.
[01:01.690 --> 01:03.470]  I hope that's understood.
[01:03.830 --> 01:04.490]  But I'm really born.
[03:15.500 --> 03:16.620]  And a good evening to everybody.
[03:16.700 --> 03:17.560]  The program is Off the Hook.
[03:17.720 --> 03:21.260]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, as we are every Tuesday night at this time.
[03:21.680 --> 03:24.260]  And we've got a bunch of people with us tonight.
[03:24.340 --> 03:25.140]  AutoJack, how are you doing?
[03:25.400 --> 03:25.620]  Okay.
[03:25.980 --> 03:26.420]  Mike's here.
[03:26.960 --> 03:27.160]  Hello.
[03:27.380 --> 03:27.820]  Jim's here.
[03:28.080 --> 03:28.300]  Yep.
[03:28.520 --> 03:29.400]  And we have Richard Stallman.
[03:29.940 --> 03:30.600]  How are you doing?
[03:30.640 --> 03:30.840]  Hello.
[03:32.280 --> 03:32.680]  Welcome.
[03:32.680 --> 03:36.340]  And we have a bit of news to bring you.
[03:36.480 --> 03:38.360]  A bit of things to update you on.
[03:38.500 --> 03:39.480]  Oh, all bad, of course.
[03:39.560 --> 03:40.380]  It's always bad news.
[03:40.880 --> 03:41.980]  Actually, no, there's some good news.
[03:42.080 --> 03:42.820]  There is some good news.
[03:42.980 --> 03:46.220]  So let's take a look at something that happened in Argentina real quick.
[03:46.920 --> 03:51.060]  Computer hackers may be the scourge of the digital age, hunted down by police across borders.
[03:51.760 --> 03:56.780]  But in Argentina, they have found an unlikely ally, the very justice system they scorned.
[03:57.300 --> 04:01.060]  Warning of a dangerous legal void making digital crimes hard to prosecute.
[04:01.100 --> 04:04.560]  A judge has ruled that hacking is legal by default in Argentina.
[04:05.040 --> 04:07.640]  The decision came in the case of cyber pirates.
[04:07.680 --> 04:10.900]  And these are the media's words, folks, so don't blame me for them.
[04:11.400 --> 04:15.480]  The case of cyber pirates who defaced the Supreme Court's web page.
[04:16.140 --> 04:19.200]  Which isn't really hacking in the first place, but we'll let that go, too.
[04:19.600 --> 04:29.340]  Arguing that the law only covered crimes on people, things, and animals, and not digital attacks, a federal court declared several Argentines, known as X-Team, innocent of charges.
[04:29.920 --> 04:34.220]  They broke into the high court's web page to accuse judges of covering up a human rights case.
[04:34.300 --> 04:39.020]  Maybe that's why the judges are tiptoeing around this one, but I don't know.
[04:39.580 --> 04:41.100]  We'll keep an eye on that story.
[04:41.200 --> 04:43.420]  That's a very interesting thing right there.
[04:46.400 --> 04:52.860]  We have some updates on a rather disturbing development that's going on.
[04:53.480 --> 05:00.820]  Something we talked about a little bit last week, we were rather ill-prepared for it, but the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel, that's what CARP stands for.
[05:01.120 --> 05:02.020]  We all know that now.
[05:02.160 --> 05:02.960]  I thought it was a fish.
[05:03.140 --> 05:04.080]  No, it's not a fish.
[05:05.320 --> 05:06.020]  Definitely not.
[05:06.620 --> 05:08.660]  It's something really more dangerous than a fish.
[05:08.660 --> 05:14.560]  That is the panel that is recommending that everybody who streams over the Internet...
[05:14.560 --> 05:15.400]  Yes, that's us.
[05:15.520 --> 05:16.900]  We're streaming over the Internet right now.
[05:17.780 --> 05:20.660]  All those people, all those entities must pay.
[05:21.820 --> 05:24.860]  They must pay per song they play.
[05:24.980 --> 05:26.660]  So I guess the song we're playing now...
[05:27.880 --> 05:29.160]  Okay, we'll just turn it off then.
[05:29.400 --> 05:29.540]  There.
[05:29.760 --> 05:31.200]  That's what you get, you know?
[05:31.360 --> 05:31.800]  Silence.
[05:32.480 --> 05:35.380]  Yeah, pay not only per song, but per listener.
[05:35.980 --> 05:37.000]  Every single listener.
[05:37.000 --> 05:38.660]  Somehow, we have to track.
[05:38.800 --> 05:44.020]  We have to figure out who's listening, where they're listening from, because you have to have some kind of unique identifier.
[05:44.420 --> 05:46.180]  Now, again, this has not yet happened.
[05:46.280 --> 05:50.120]  This is something that is in the process of happening.
[05:51.460 --> 05:56.820]  And the Librarian of Congress has until May 21st to make a final decision on the proposal.
[05:56.820 --> 06:08.080]  So we need people to contact the Copyright Office in Washington, D.C., or go to a website known as saveinternetradio.org.
[06:08.100 --> 06:18.240]  Now, basically, the way this is happening, the way it looks right now, the people who will suffer the most are webcasters who are on the net without a radio station.
[06:18.240 --> 06:26.160]  They would have to pay, it sounds like a little bit, sounds like a tiny amount, 0.0014 cent for every song streamed for every listener.
[06:26.360 --> 06:41.860]  But when you consider that they're going to have to keep track of all their listeners, when you consider how many songs might be played in an hour, when you consider how many hours are in a day, how many days are in a year, and also when you consider that this is retroactive going back to when the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed back in 1998,
[06:42.660 --> 06:45.360]  we're talking a fair bit of change here.
[06:45.500 --> 06:47.520]  And it's already having a chilling effect.
[06:47.900 --> 06:52.120]  Our sister station, WNYU, down the dial, 89.1.
[06:52.900 --> 06:56.700]  You may notice, if you go to their website, that they're no longer on the internet.
[06:56.700 --> 07:06.380]  What we found out is that the general manager and program director over there approached the NYU attorneys about this impending Copyright Office decision.
[07:06.880 --> 07:23.140]  And according to the attorneys, they feel there's more than a 90% chance that the Copyright Office will rule in favor of the RIAA, Recording Industry of America, meaning the RIAA will be able to charge radio stations a fee based on each song that is played over the internet stream.
[07:23.140 --> 07:27.440]  And by the way, folks, this applies to things that are stored on the internet, too.
[07:27.520 --> 07:32.160]  So all those back editions of Off the Hook, we'd somehow be responsible for that.
[07:32.240 --> 07:38.080]  We'd somehow have to track everybody coming to our website and see what they listen to and report that.
[07:38.420 --> 07:39.880]  I'll tell you right now, we're not going to do it.
[07:41.320 --> 07:45.400]  They can throw us in prison or something for not revealing information like that.
[07:45.520 --> 07:46.860]  But we're not going to... it's ridiculous.
[07:46.860 --> 07:48.540]  You need to hire a full-time staff.
[07:49.320 --> 08:01.740]  Anyway, continuing with the NYU story, even though the fee amount per song per listener is relatively minuscule, once you start multiplying the number of songs that NYU plays an hour times the number of listeners, times 24 hours, times 365, it can add up.
[08:02.180 --> 08:05.140]  Also tracking who is listening on the stream, what was played when.
[08:05.400 --> 08:07.020]  It could be an administrative nightmare.
[08:07.180 --> 08:10.380]  It would be like having to fill out BMI logs.
[08:10.460 --> 08:13.040]  Once a year, radio stations have to fill out these BMI logs.
[08:13.640 --> 08:17.980]  And that's how they determine how much is paid as a fee for the radio stations.
[08:18.060 --> 08:19.520]  The radio stations already pay a fee for this.
[08:19.520 --> 08:22.460]  They want an additional fee, which is going to amount to a lot more.
[08:24.360 --> 08:30.700]  And again, if the ruling is in favor of the RAA, the fees will be retroactive back to 1998 when the DMCA became law.
[08:31.000 --> 08:36.560]  They could possibly subpoena the server logs from any station that was streaming audio in order to levy fines.
[08:37.920 --> 08:38.720]  Levy fines, rather.
[08:38.940 --> 08:43.980]  That could mean stations could be hit with a lump sum retroactive streaming fee at some point.
[08:43.980 --> 08:51.400]  So what happened at NYU, the attorneys recommended that WNYU voluntarily discontinue streaming its broadcast ASAP.
[08:51.840 --> 08:55.560]  And following that, remove all references from the website regarding streaming.
[08:56.000 --> 09:08.320]  The attorneys hope is that when the decision is rendered in May, and if it does go in favor of the RAA, NYU might be able to sort of stay under the radar by not being noticed.
[09:10.960 --> 09:17.460]  And basically, this is something I think a lot of radio stations are going to wind up doing.
[09:17.540 --> 09:19.960]  A lot of the smaller ones, unfortunately, are going to wind up doing this.
[09:20.000 --> 09:25.180]  And it's a very bad thing, because then you can't talk to the people that you're trying to reach and tell them about this.
[09:25.240 --> 09:30.920]  And that's what we're trying to do here, is reach people and let them know the threats that are going on.
[09:30.920 --> 09:35.160]  And that's probably one of the biggest threats that's going on right now.
[09:35.600 --> 09:39.580]  One other thing, before we get into the rest of the show.
[09:39.960 --> 09:41.020]  You may have heard this.
[09:41.080 --> 09:48.180]  The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, that's IEEE, they publish 30% of all computer science journals worldwide.
[09:49.640 --> 09:58.340]  They recently announced that the author's work has to comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, our friend the DMCA.
[09:59.220 --> 10:06.120]  And apparently that provokes such an outrage that they have now decided to change the policy.
[10:06.640 --> 10:13.700]  According to the intellectual property rights manager for the IEEE, Bill Hagen, the plan is to remove the reference to the DMCA.
[10:14.040 --> 10:16.040]  It's controversial to say the least.
[10:16.040 --> 10:21.340]  We've been getting a lot of correspondence, comment, and opinion, and have been forced to reconsider it.
[10:21.440 --> 10:22.760]  Public pressure does work.
[10:24.340 --> 10:31.180]  With that, I'd like to give a welcome to Richard Salmon, who joins us here live in the studios.
[10:31.420 --> 10:33.660]  And Richard, I have to say it's an honor to have you here.
[10:34.240 --> 10:35.660]  Well, thank you, and happy hacking.
[10:35.880 --> 10:36.240]  Yes.
[10:36.640 --> 10:40.020]  And hacking doesn't mean what you were describing in that earlier bulletin.
[10:40.180 --> 10:40.580]  It has...
[10:40.580 --> 10:41.680]  Defacing webpages?
[10:41.760 --> 10:43.460]  That's not necessarily hacking.
[10:43.540 --> 10:43.680]  No.
[10:43.680 --> 10:45.240]  Hacking is playful cleverness.
[10:45.480 --> 10:48.240]  It has nothing to do particularly with breaking security.
[10:48.860 --> 10:52.900]  Please, if you don't want to insult us hackers, please call that cracking.
[10:53.420 --> 11:01.300]  You see, okay, this is where I'm going to disagree, only because the whole cracking thing, I think, is another word that's not defined.
[11:01.460 --> 11:05.440]  Like, when you call somebody a cracker, they don't want to look into...
[11:05.440 --> 11:08.480]  They don't want to look into what the person is actually doing.
[11:08.740 --> 11:09.720]  Like Kevin Mitnick, for instance.
[11:10.220 --> 11:13.920]  People who called him a cracker wanted him to stay in prison, and they didn't care what he did.
[11:13.980 --> 11:14.940]  They didn't want to hear the story.
[11:14.940 --> 11:18.440]  So, yeah, I agree that the things you're describing are not hacking.
[11:18.620 --> 11:19.180]  They're definitely not hacking.
[11:19.180 --> 11:19.860]  They're defacement.
[11:20.100 --> 11:20.720]  They're scandalous.
[11:20.740 --> 11:22.140]  Well, it's not necessarily bad.
[11:22.320 --> 11:29.940]  I mean, graffiti is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when you're calling attention to a scandalous misbehavior of public officials.
[11:31.720 --> 11:33.620]  But hacking is something else.
[11:33.620 --> 11:35.800]  It's not about breaking security particularly.
[11:36.360 --> 11:39.160]  Most hacking has nothing to do with computer security.
[11:39.560 --> 11:41.860]  You know, I wrote a text editor.
[11:41.860 --> 11:45.480]  That was hacking, because I was doing it in a spirit of playful cleverness.
[11:45.700 --> 11:49.320]  No security was violated by my writing that text editor.
[11:50.240 --> 11:59.800]  Nowadays, when I say that I'm a hacker, people think I'm saying that I break security habitually, that that's what I am doing all the time.
[12:00.000 --> 12:00.680]  It's not true.
[12:00.780 --> 12:02.320]  That's even defined that way in Webster's.
[12:02.640 --> 12:03.280]  Well, it's wrong.
[12:03.420 --> 12:03.700]  It's wrong.
[12:03.700 --> 12:03.740]  I agree.
[12:03.740 --> 12:06.460]  It's insulting to us hackers, so please don't contribute to it.
[12:06.640 --> 12:07.560]  Help set it right.
[12:07.560 --> 12:08.720]  All right, all right.
[12:08.780 --> 12:12.660]  Well, I mean, that was a news story, and I did say that those were their words there.
[12:13.260 --> 12:17.900]  But there is a spirit of hacking that goes into a lot of things that I know people don't approve of.
[12:18.600 --> 12:20.140]  Figuring things out for the first time.
[12:20.280 --> 12:20.840]  It usually...
[12:20.840 --> 12:28.180]  What you have today is a lot of people just using scripts and doing things because it's easy and doing things because it's popular, because it's in the mass media.
[12:28.360 --> 12:29.740]  It happens every time there's a film.
[12:29.880 --> 12:34.360]  Every time there's some kind of news piece, we get thousands of emails from people who want to be hackers.
[12:35.260 --> 12:46.740]  And it's, you know, it damages the entire reputation of the community because, as you say, hacking is... it's a bit of mischief, but it's also a bit of figuring things out.
[12:46.860 --> 12:48.300]  It's not having the answers handed to you.
[12:48.580 --> 12:51.840]  Well, it can be mischievous, but it's not malicious.
[12:52.280 --> 12:52.560]  Right.
[12:52.840 --> 12:55.080]  There's nothing malicious about the spirit of hacking.
[12:55.240 --> 12:58.320]  It tends to ignore authority and rules.
[12:59.080 --> 13:06.940]  But if you're a caring person, you're not going to try... you're not going to trample people whether you're hacking or not.
[13:07.180 --> 13:11.860]  So now how would you answer the people that write in and say, I want to be a hacker, what do I do?
[13:11.940 --> 13:13.380]  I'd ask them what they mean.
[13:13.580 --> 13:20.600]  And I'd say that if I wanted to learn about playful cleverness, they should just take that approach to life.
[13:20.760 --> 13:25.480]  Look for... look for ways to be clever and enjoy it.
[13:25.660 --> 13:27.140]  And they can do that in any medium.
[13:27.140 --> 13:36.000]  You know, when Guillaume de Machaut wrote a palindromic piece of three-part music, which was in the 1300s, I think he was hacking.
[13:36.120 --> 13:37.400]  I think that piece is a great hack.
[13:37.540 --> 13:39.040]  It also sounds good to listen to.
[13:39.240 --> 13:40.880]  I played a part in it once.
[13:42.100 --> 13:42.500]  Wow.
[13:42.820 --> 13:44.500]  Wish we had a copy of it here.
[13:44.580 --> 13:44.960]  We could listen.
[13:46.400 --> 13:49.240]  What kinds of things have you been involved in over the years?
[13:49.820 --> 13:52.340]  These days... well, over the years, that's too much.
[13:52.520 --> 13:53.820]  Well, I get a sense of the history here.
[13:53.820 --> 14:02.060]  Well, you know, I developed the free operating system GNU that most people unfortunately think is Linux and think it was developed by Linus Torvalds.
[14:02.180 --> 14:05.220]  You've also cleared up how to pronounce it, which I get into arguments with people all the time.
[14:05.220 --> 14:06.660]  So the G is pronounced.
[14:06.920 --> 14:07.500]  Yes, of course.
[14:07.640 --> 14:08.140]  You've heard it here.
[14:08.260 --> 14:11.540]  If you called it the new operating system, you'd get people very confused.
[14:11.540 --> 14:17.380]  I started it in 1984, which means it's now 18 years.
[14:17.840 --> 14:19.620]  So it's not so new anymore.
[14:20.600 --> 14:25.440]  But it will always be GNU, no matter how many people call it Linux by mistake.
[14:26.380 --> 14:29.500]  Now, also, tell us something about GPL, which you...
[14:29.500 --> 14:39.940]  Well, the GNU GPL is the license, the copyleft license that I developed to make sure that all variants of GNU programs remain free for their users.
[14:40.320 --> 14:42.980]  Do you want free software to be the topic we focus on?
[14:43.060 --> 14:43.900]  Because that's where we're headed.
[14:44.080 --> 14:45.840]  If we go that way, it's going to be the whole show.
[14:45.900 --> 14:47.360]  You warned me about this before the show.
[14:47.480 --> 14:52.120]  And I think it's really up to our listeners to decide, you know, the questions they want to ask when we open up the phones.
[14:52.540 --> 14:58.660]  But I should caution people that Richard is going to talk about free software for the entire hour if we start on that subject.
[14:58.860 --> 15:05.100]  And if you're really interested, if you're really interested in hearing him talk about these subjects, come to the ICON convention, which is happening this weekend.
[15:05.180 --> 15:06.060]  Why don't you tell us something about that?
[15:06.180 --> 15:07.380]  I don't know where ICON is.
[15:07.440 --> 15:07.620]  Do you?
[15:07.800 --> 15:08.040]  Yeah.
[15:08.040 --> 15:15.180]  Actually, it's at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, which is easily reached by, well, almost any kind of transportation.
[15:15.360 --> 15:18.760]  But the conventional kind is the train, I guess, which stops right there.
[15:19.280 --> 15:27.760]  And the convention is the annual science fiction convention, which with, I guess, a hacker technology track as well, which you'll be playing a big part in.
[15:27.980 --> 15:30.480]  And it takes place all weekend long, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
[15:30.540 --> 15:32.400]  I think you have a talk Saturday at 2.
[15:32.400 --> 15:34.900]  Yes, I think that's probably my main speech.
[15:35.020 --> 15:38.000]  And I'll be speaking about the free software movement and GNU.
[15:38.140 --> 15:42.940]  But you can also read about it in www.gnu.org.
[15:43.300 --> 15:50.160]  And then in the slash philosophy directory is where you'll find all the information about the philosophy of the free software movement.
[15:50.520 --> 15:55.540]  In the slash licenses directory, you'll find information about the GNU general public license.
[15:55.540 --> 15:58.140]  See, I'd love to talk about free software.
[15:58.340 --> 16:05.280]  If you want me to talk about free software, tell Emanuel that I should be on again.
[16:05.520 --> 16:05.600]  Yeah.
[16:05.600 --> 16:13.880]  Because the DMCA and its evil spawn is such an important issue that we think we better focus on that.
[16:13.960 --> 16:19.920]  Yeah, that is the immediate issue because we might not be able to talk about free software at all if the DMCA keeps chipping away at our freedoms.
[16:20.140 --> 16:26.280]  But I do want to say that a couple of days ago I was looking at your webpage and I decided just to hit print, you know, to print it out.
[16:26.300 --> 16:28.160]  It was 54 pages long on your main page.
[16:28.300 --> 16:31.660]  You have so many things that you're involved in that you care about.
[16:31.860 --> 16:33.160]  And I think that's commendable.
[16:33.300 --> 16:35.860]  Are you talking about www.stallman.org?
[16:35.880 --> 16:36.060]  Yeah.
[16:36.340 --> 16:36.660]  Is that not you?
[16:36.660 --> 16:46.940]  That's my personal page where I talk about all my other political views and post my silly limericks and filk songs and other such things.
[16:47.200 --> 16:48.600]  I found it fascinating.
[16:48.800 --> 16:51.700]  Just all the different things that you pay attention to and are focused on.
[16:51.700 --> 16:57.240]  I mean, do you think people have to be focused on lots of issues these days?
[16:57.960 --> 16:58.200]  No.
[16:58.500 --> 17:14.420]  But the thing is, while I'm mostly focusing on freedom issues about software, putting most of my time into that, I don't want to neglect the tremendous issues that people listening to this station have heard of many times and things that relate to them.
[17:14.420 --> 17:24.440]  And so I set up this personal website where I can put things about my views that don't relate to free software particularly or to software necessarily at all.
[17:25.500 --> 17:28.680]  Tell us something about your involvement with the DMCA.
[17:28.900 --> 17:30.080]  Like, how has it affected you?
[17:31.220 --> 17:39.800]  Well, it hasn't affected me in a direct technical sense because for about 10 years I've been mostly doing political activism and not programming.
[17:39.800 --> 17:46.540]  The GNU project's big enough, we've recruited lots of people to write software, so I now present the philosophy.
[17:47.620 --> 18:00.440]  But it's affected the free software world by, for instance, with the prohibition of DECSS, which was a piece of free software released under the GNU General Public License, the license I wrote.
[18:00.440 --> 18:03.640]  And it was taken away from us in the U.S.
[18:03.960 --> 18:05.580]  by the DMCA.
[18:06.320 --> 18:21.260]  And the DMCA effectively seems to prohibit free software for a certain particular, a certain category of jobs, a rather narrow category of jobs that millions of users will find very important.
[18:21.920 --> 18:23.060]  Not just computer users?
[18:23.440 --> 18:25.260]  Well, anyone who, yes, computer users.
[18:25.380 --> 18:29.480]  For free software, right, you run it on a computer, so it's computer users who will be affected.
[18:29.480 --> 18:30.880]  But not just programmers.
[18:31.100 --> 18:41.140]  Anyone using a computer is likely to want to do things like play a real audio stream or play a DVD or read an e-book.
[18:41.360 --> 18:50.160]  And those activities, even though they're a tiny part of the whole world of what you could do with software, are going to be tremendously important.
[18:50.220 --> 18:56.700]  And if we can't provide software to do those jobs, that's going to be a big blow against free software.
[18:56.700 --> 19:02.800]  And I'm sad to say the European Union just adopted a directive which is similar to the DMCA.
[19:03.160 --> 19:11.180]  At this point, there are political battles in some of the countries in Europe about how to implement that directive because the countries do have a certain amount of leeway.
[19:11.540 --> 19:26.220]  If they adopt a policy that a free program, which as written, does not do circumvention, is lawful, then they can mitigate the effects of this disgusting directive.
[19:26.660 --> 19:27.760]  What's it called in Europe?
[19:28.020 --> 19:28.660]  I don't know.
[19:29.780 --> 19:33.000]  Do you think this is something that the United States has paved the way for?
[19:33.340 --> 19:34.120]  I'm afraid so.
[19:34.140 --> 19:35.960]  And I'm sure that the U.S.
[19:36.060 --> 19:40.760]  trade representative is working assiduously to push these policies on the rest of the world.
[19:40.760 --> 19:52.940]  The, quote, World Intellectual Property Organization, unquote, has a copyright treaty which has most of the same requirements as the DMCA about circumvention.
[19:53.080 --> 19:54.460]  It's not quite as harsh.
[19:54.640 --> 19:56.340]  Well, the DMCA was written to implement, though.
[19:56.340 --> 19:58.900]  Well, no, actually, that's a mistake.
[19:59.080 --> 20:00.840]  Basically, the same people wrote both.
[20:00.980 --> 20:04.200]  It's just it's two different pairs to get the same thing enacted.
[20:05.600 --> 20:14.640]  They don't hesitate to go to an international agency and get it to write a treaty as an excuse to put the policies into effect in the U.S.
[20:14.800 --> 20:24.820]  They were pushing it for the same policies using any level of jurisdiction they can get their hands on for years before that.
[20:27.660 --> 20:29.440]  So, I've heard that the U.S.
[20:29.480 --> 20:35.620]  is trying to get a requirement to sign the WIPO Copyright Treaty put into the free trade area of the Americas.
[20:36.240 --> 20:40.300]  And, of course, these so-called free trade treaties, which they're not really free trade treaties.
[20:40.420 --> 20:42.740]  They're corporate managed trade treaties.
[20:42.920 --> 20:53.300]  They transfer the control over trade from governments, which at least we could hope might be democratic, to corporations, which don't even pretend to try to be democratic.
[20:54.400 --> 20:57.460]  And that's among the main bad things in them.
[20:57.640 --> 21:06.460]  So, the FTA, of course, is a bad thing, but this is one particular additional thorn in it.
[21:06.900 --> 21:18.520]  Well, it sounds like a very obvious parallel to what's going on with WTO and IMF and all that, where corporate treaties are being pushed on people that don't really know all the facts.
[21:18.520 --> 21:23.460]  Yeah, basically, there's a place in life for business, and we have to put business in its place.
[21:23.660 --> 21:24.460]  And what place is that?
[21:24.800 --> 21:26.260]  Not master of the world.
[21:27.080 --> 21:29.960]  Yeah, well, I think a lot of people here would agree with that.
[21:31.180 --> 21:32.860]  It's a scary time we live in.
[21:32.940 --> 21:35.440]  I mean, you know, you've seen the changes over the years.
[21:35.440 --> 21:49.600]  Yes, it's when I contrast the ideology of bowing down to businesses' every wish that I see today with the political views that I grew up with, it makes me very sad.
[21:49.780 --> 21:49.920]  Yeah.
[21:50.480 --> 21:52.480]  And tell us about those political views that you grew up with.
[21:53.960 --> 21:55.020]  It's hard for me.
[21:55.200 --> 21:58.520]  I mean, there were many political views in the 60s and 70s.
[21:58.700 --> 22:07.240]  There was a large movement in favor of restricting what companies could do when it wasn't good for the general populace.
[22:08.620 --> 22:12.200]  Business didn't control the government the way they do now.
[22:12.820 --> 22:20.960]  What do you say to the people, though, that say, well, if we just stop regulating these companies, the people will have the final say.
[22:20.960 --> 22:23.060]  The people will be able to regulate on their own.
[22:23.260 --> 22:23.920]  Oh, they can't.
[22:24.000 --> 22:25.200]  I mean, the people don't have clout.
[22:25.300 --> 22:26.400]  The businesses have the clout.
[22:26.540 --> 22:28.640]  You look at a negotiation situation.
[22:28.740 --> 22:32.000]  It's one business against millions of people.
[22:32.380 --> 22:33.920]  The business is more concentrated.
[22:34.060 --> 22:34.760]  The business wins.
[22:36.160 --> 22:45.920]  Unless the people can get organized so that their numbers can work together to equal the clout of the business's money, they're never going to get what they want.
[22:46.760 --> 22:50.480]  Most Americans, when asked, say that business has too much power now.
[22:51.680 --> 22:53.120]  What do you see as the role of the government?
[22:53.900 --> 22:58.360]  The government should restrict the power of the rich for the sake of the many.
[22:58.480 --> 23:01.460]  I mean, that's what the Athenian democracy was all about.
[23:01.460 --> 23:02.860]  This is not a new idea.
[23:04.520 --> 23:05.700]  I'm glad you're on our side.
[23:06.660 --> 23:07.440]  I really am.
[23:07.540 --> 23:09.960]  212-209-2900 is our phone number.
[23:10.120 --> 23:11.120]  We're speaking with Richard Stallman.
[23:11.620 --> 23:19.300]  You know, years ago, I remember you ran, you might still run it for all I know, a system up in Massachusetts where everybody could log in using the same password.
[23:19.480 --> 23:20.120]  Tell us something about that.
[23:20.120 --> 23:20.900]  I had to give that up.
[23:21.020 --> 23:21.840]  But we're getting...
[23:21.840 --> 23:26.440]  Do we want to have time to talk about e-books and the music industry and things like that?
[23:26.440 --> 23:30.200]  Okay, e-books next, but just for my own curiosity, what happened to that particular system?
[23:30.400 --> 23:37.540]  Well, what happened was when the Free Software Foundation didn't have very many staff, we got a rash of crackers.
[23:37.660 --> 23:45.280]  They weren't hackers, but they were crackers who didn't even know who we were, but they were obsessed with breaking security on computers.
[23:45.280 --> 23:47.220]  That's what they had fun doing.
[23:47.460 --> 23:48.760]  But wasn't the root password public?
[23:49.000 --> 23:49.220]  No.
[23:49.380 --> 23:50.240]  Oh, I thought it was.
[23:50.260 --> 23:52.600]  The root password wasn't, but my password was.
[23:52.820 --> 23:53.200]  Okay, all right.
[23:53.460 --> 24:02.560]  And later on, for a number of years, my password wasn't public, but we'd make guest accounts for anybody who'd exchange a couple of snail mails with us.
[24:02.900 --> 24:13.640]  And we ran into this problem with some crackers persistently destroying the system files on our systems, and we had to shut them down and close them off.
[24:13.760 --> 24:14.640]  And I felt...
[24:14.640 --> 24:16.040]  I felt...
[24:16.040 --> 24:20.300]  I had no choice if the Free Software Foundation was to keep on going.
[24:20.660 --> 24:22.860]  But I felt terribly ashamed of this.
[24:23.060 --> 24:25.180]  It became a victim of mass stupidity, it sounds like.
[24:25.540 --> 24:25.880]  Yeah.
[24:26.380 --> 24:31.680]  And as a result, I now, as a personal penance, basically don't use the internet.
[24:32.020 --> 24:38.580]  I said to myself, if I'm locking this door so other people can't come in, I can no longer go out.
[24:39.840 --> 24:41.500]  Some people don't understand this.
[24:41.600 --> 24:43.580]  Most people I tell this to don't understand it.
[24:43.960 --> 24:45.820]  They say, it makes you ineffective.
[24:45.840 --> 24:48.040]  You've got to get rid of that.
[24:48.600 --> 24:54.680]  Well, I think that the decision I made was necessary, but that doesn't mean I feel at ease with it.
[24:55.000 --> 25:03.960]  I hope that people can understand the idea of taking the lesser of two evils and feeling terribly ashamed of how evil it was.
[25:06.480 --> 25:07.520]  Let's talk about e-books.
[25:07.880 --> 25:12.080]  Now, e-books are something that I think we're going to see a lot more of, unfortunately.
[25:12.080 --> 25:15.660]  We have seen it already at various colleges, NYU being one of them.
[25:16.380 --> 25:26.900]  I remember a couple of years ago they were being introduced as textbooks that basically students rent, I guess is the best word for it, and they continue to pay for it after they graduate.
[25:27.020 --> 25:30.020]  And if they don't pay for it, they get wiped away and they can't read them anymore.
[25:30.240 --> 25:31.340]  Is that an accurate...
[25:31.340 --> 25:33.360]  That's my understanding of it.
[25:33.360 --> 25:43.500]  Now, e-books are essentially a plan by the publishers to take away from the readers the freedoms they have traditionally and always had.
[25:44.040 --> 26:04.700]  Freedoms to do things such as lend a book to a friend or borrow it from a public library or buy a book from a used bookstore or sell the book to a used bookstore or buy the book anonymously without having your name entered in a database or even to keep it for years and read it again.
[26:05.280 --> 26:10.860]  These are freedoms that have never been questioned in the U.S.
[26:11.280 --> 26:14.520]  But they're being taken away now through e-books.
[26:14.740 --> 26:22.820]  You see, powerful as the publishers are, they couldn't succeed in passing a law taking away those freedoms for printed books.
[26:23.240 --> 26:29.440]  They rage against the people who use these freedoms, against librarians, against used bookstores.
[26:29.920 --> 26:32.540]  They say horrible things about these people.
[26:32.820 --> 26:39.200]  But they don't have enough support to pass a law abolishing those freedoms for printed books.
[26:39.340 --> 26:40.980]  So they have a two-step plan.
[26:41.200 --> 26:43.840]  First, they took away those freedoms for e-books.
[26:44.040 --> 26:47.400]  And they did that by buying the DMCA.
[26:47.740 --> 26:58.860]  The DMCA said that publishers can deny you those freedoms for an e-book simply by building something into the reader software that prevents you from doing those things.
[26:59.200 --> 27:03.960]  Effectively, the DMCA said that the publishers could write their own copyright law.
[27:04.560 --> 27:10.940]  Copyright law was never intended to be a total monopoly on all use of a copyrighted work.
[27:11.080 --> 27:13.220]  But that's, in effect, what the publishers got.
[27:14.000 --> 27:17.180]  Nominantly, you still have various rights of fair use.
[27:17.420 --> 27:31.360]  But practically speaking, the publishers have the right to make it impossible for you to exercise those rights by prohibiting any software, anything that would tell you how or enable you to exercise those rights.
[27:31.580 --> 27:38.900]  So, they took away all those freedoms for e-books at a time when there was no constituency of users of e-books.
[27:39.060 --> 27:40.880]  So there was nobody to get outraged.
[27:41.100 --> 27:42.400]  That was step one.
[27:42.680 --> 27:46.500]  Step two in the plan is switch people over to e-books.
[27:46.680 --> 27:54.940]  And they're looking for any opening they can get to do this, to get people used to this restrictive system, to switch people over.
[27:55.100 --> 28:00.840]  They thought a couple of years ago that mass market books would be a successful market for them.
[28:00.920 --> 28:02.040]  That seems to have failed.
[28:02.380 --> 28:12.880]  And I had an interesting brush with that personally because a year and a half ago, somebody was approached to write a biography of me as an e-book.
[28:13.560 --> 28:18.040]  And they wanted to do this to launch and popularize the e-book line.
[28:18.040 --> 28:25.140]  And I said, I'll cooperate this provided my e-book is released without any of these restrictions.
[28:26.500 --> 28:27.320]  Didn't fly, did it?
[28:27.380 --> 28:28.960]  No, the publisher said no to it.
[28:29.380 --> 28:42.000]  And so eventually that author found another publisher and the book has been published actually under a copy left license that even permits modified versions.
[28:42.260 --> 28:43.260]  Modified versions?
[28:43.420 --> 28:43.660]  Yes.
[28:43.880 --> 28:51.240]  You can download the text of this book and publish a modified version of it under the GNU-free documentation license.
[28:51.320 --> 28:52.900]  We can change the history of your life or something?
[28:53.080 --> 28:53.280]  Yes.
[28:53.560 --> 29:00.920]  In fact, someday maybe it would be interesting for me to write something I could call it changing my life about...
[29:00.920 --> 29:03.080]  This is assuming people actually do that.
[29:03.220 --> 29:06.500]  I shouldn't assume that they will but they might.
[29:06.620 --> 29:09.300]  And if they do that would be an amusing book title.
[29:09.420 --> 29:12.280]  Now if only I had the time to write such a book I probably won't.
[29:12.280 --> 29:21.460]  I think one of the interesting things about this whole e-book debate is that people don't like using don't like having don't like using the e-books even without all the restrictions.
[29:21.720 --> 29:22.600]  I mean...
[29:22.600 --> 29:25.100]  So we've been saved by the bell by accident essentially.
[29:25.360 --> 29:25.640]  Essentially.
[29:25.860 --> 29:34.440]  I mean I once had a textbook that didn't have any of these restrictions it was just a normal document that I could read on my computer and it was terrible.
[29:34.600 --> 29:38.200]  The first thing everyone did was print it out and have the printed copy.
[29:38.200 --> 29:50.000]  I felt though that this is not a reason to feel sanguine because what this means is that if they ever make technical advances to make reading an e-book attractive we'll be in renewed danger.
[29:50.260 --> 29:52.480]  No of course you're right about that but I think...
[29:52.480 --> 29:54.100]  And they're working on it already.
[29:54.340 --> 29:56.580]  They're working on what is it electronic paper?
[29:57.320 --> 30:09.340]  One of the things that they're going to try and do is not release books in the printed format that people want and only release them in these locked down e-book formats which is what happened I believe at the NYU Dental School.
[30:09.520 --> 30:10.260]  Yes, exactly.
[30:10.620 --> 30:20.680]  They failed in that with mass market books because they had no other lever to make you buy any particular book and people wouldn't do it that way.
[30:20.980 --> 30:25.960]  But at the NYU Dental School they figure they've got enough of a lever over the students.
[30:26.080 --> 30:27.680]  The students have to buy the e-book.
[30:28.220 --> 30:34.340]  Somebody is going to have to crack that program and underground circulate the books to the NYU Dental School.
[30:34.700 --> 30:36.040]  But I have another idea.
[30:36.040 --> 30:43.200]  It seems to me that there must be some time to contact applicants to the NYU Dental School.
[30:43.540 --> 30:55.240]  And if some people manage to find out what that is and go away with old-fashioned handouts telling the students here's a system that you'd be buying into if you go to this school.
[30:55.500 --> 30:57.200]  Pick another dental school.
[30:57.440 --> 30:58.580]  Don't go here.
[30:58.820 --> 31:04.560]  Show the administration here what you think of not being allowed to take your textbooks with you.
[31:04.700 --> 31:10.100]  Show them what you think of medical knowledge being locked up and inaccessible.
[31:10.340 --> 31:11.220]  A secret.
[31:11.660 --> 31:13.200]  Good old-fashioned activism.
[31:13.900 --> 31:16.220]  It might have some substantial effect.
[31:17.760 --> 31:18.900]  It's worth trying.
[31:20.020 --> 31:23.040]  Mike, I don't entirely agree with not...
[31:23.040 --> 31:25.460]  like everybody not liking to read e-books.
[31:25.700 --> 31:32.720]  I've had a lot of great joy in reading e-books on the toilet using my PDA or in bed or whatever.
[31:32.960 --> 31:34.760]  And it didn't really bother me too much.
[31:34.860 --> 31:38.200]  Is that an e-book or is that something that just happens to be available also for PDAs?
[31:38.260 --> 31:40.260]  It's an e-book but it's on a PDA.
[31:40.480 --> 31:45.560]  Well, I'd rather do my PDAs while not sitting on a toilet personally.
[31:48.400 --> 31:51.600]  I'd rather not sit on a toilet in public for the most part.
[31:53.340 --> 31:54.820]  212-209-2900.
[31:55.060 --> 32:01.380]  We've got Richard Stallman here and I guess basically the best thing to do is open up the lines for some questions.
[32:02.100 --> 32:03.900]  Again, Richard will be appearing...
[32:03.900 --> 32:11.960]  Actually, we'll all be appearing, I think, at the ICON conference as we do every year at Stony Brook science fiction and all kinds of other fun things.
[32:12.880 --> 32:19.820]  Go to www.iconsf.org for more information on that and Richard's main talk will be Saturday at 2 o'clock.
[32:20.000 --> 32:20.940]  Do you know what room or where...
[32:20.940 --> 32:22.440]  How would I know such things like that?
[32:22.440 --> 32:23.680]  Find out when you're there.
[32:23.760 --> 32:24.320]  Don't waste time.
[32:24.340 --> 32:29.760]  Somebody will guide you to have some repeal the DMCA buttons available.
[32:30.120 --> 32:36.020]  I'll be asking for a donation to the Free Software Foundation of however much you feel you can give.
[32:36.160 --> 32:43.880]  Remember, folks, that is probably the most important issue facing us right now, the Digital Lame Copyright Act and all the evil things that it's bringing to us.
[32:44.160 --> 32:45.360]  All right, let's take our first phone call.
[32:45.560 --> 32:45.900]  Good evening.
[32:46.100 --> 32:46.740]  You're on the air.
[32:47.020 --> 32:48.260]  Oh, our first phone call got in.
[32:48.340 --> 32:48.960]  Patience, go over there.
[32:49.300 --> 32:50.240]  Good evening, you're on the air.
[32:51.140 --> 32:51.540]  Hello?
[32:51.800 --> 32:52.180]  Speak up.
[32:53.240 --> 32:53.440]  Yeah,
[33:05.540 --> 33:08.540]  I'm sorry to hear that.
[33:08.540 --> 33:13.120]  Okay, first of all, it's a great honor to listen to Richard Stallman.
[33:13.260 --> 33:18.760]  I heard him singing on the internet on RealPlayer and it was quite a memorable experience.
[33:19.160 --> 33:20.180]  I'm shocked.
[33:20.460 --> 33:23.600]  Since when is my song being distributed through RealPlayer?
[33:24.220 --> 33:33.600]  Well, I just had to listen to, you know, after I read so many books on Linux and so on, I just wanted to, you know, hear the person speak who was responsible.
[33:33.600 --> 33:36.660]  But my point is, where did you find it being distributed through RealPlayer?
[33:36.660 --> 33:38.040]  I want to write to them.
[33:38.160 --> 33:41.900]  I want to ask them to use a format like MP3 or AugVorbis.
[33:42.100 --> 33:43.040]  Okay, then let me back up.
[33:43.120 --> 33:44.620]  I'm not sure at all it was RealPlayer.
[33:44.820 --> 33:47.660]  I think that RealPlayer can play some of the open formats.
[33:47.880 --> 33:48.620]  So maybe that's what happened.
[33:48.860 --> 33:49.240]  I can't.
[33:49.300 --> 33:52.320]  I'm not, you know, that much up on the technology.
[33:52.540 --> 34:02.040]  But one question I do have, and I resonated very much with what you're saying about business taking over, business telling us what to do and so on.
[34:02.040 --> 34:11.660]  And, you know, you go on the internet, you see so many different people, you know, flailing and speaking up, but there's no cohesion.
[34:11.800 --> 34:20.160]  There is no kind of, you know, unifying force, no kind of media effect over a large group of people.
[34:20.360 --> 34:34.420]  And based on your knowledge, how would you feel that this movement can pull together using the internet as a place for people to, you know, have their voices heard?
[34:34.600 --> 34:37.600]  What I think we need are local activist groups.
[34:38.140 --> 34:52.380]  For instance, in New York, there's a group called NYLXS, which is not just a user group, it's an activist group whose purpose is to lobby for changes in things like the DMCA.
[34:52.560 --> 34:55.820]  And they've had some effect on persuading congressional staff.
[34:56.000 --> 35:02.820]  You could get together with them and if you want to work, then you can help them.
[35:03.040 --> 35:04.300]  It takes work, you know.
[35:04.680 --> 35:08.240]  Reading something alone is not going to affect anything.
[35:08.380 --> 35:08.560]  Right.
[35:08.680 --> 35:12.500]  I post all over the place, but you kind of feel like you're spitting into the ocean.
[35:12.860 --> 35:16.060]  Well, the thing is that just posting isn't the way to do it.
[35:16.160 --> 35:18.980]  You know, going to Washington, talking to people.
[35:18.980 --> 35:19.460]  I live in Washington.
[35:19.720 --> 35:22.800]  Okay, well then, you'd be in a great position to organize.
[35:25.020 --> 35:35.740]  Well, basically, if you want to help organize, look at the site digitalspeech.org, which is a site we're setting up to help local groups organize.
[35:36.920 --> 35:38.000]  Digitalspeech.com?
[35:38.300 --> 35:39.440]  Digitalspeech.org.
[35:39.500 --> 35:40.120]  Oh, I'm sorry.
[35:40.360 --> 35:57.180]  And the approach that we decided to take in the Free Software Foundation is to find someone to go to various localities and set up local organizations organizations that would then be, we hope, self-sustaining and would recruit more support.
[35:58.220 --> 36:08.840]  So, that person is writing the website digitalspeech.org, which contains advice for such groups based on what he's learned by doing this.
[36:09.340 --> 36:19.800]  So, you can organize such a group, but you can also get in touch with them and get in touch with other people in the area who share these views and then together organize a group.
[36:22.420 --> 36:23.080]  Okay, caller?
[36:23.420 --> 36:24.060]  Oh, yeah, great.
[36:24.220 --> 36:28.220]  The first acronym you gave was NYXLS.
[36:29.680 --> 36:30.080]  NYLXS.
[36:30.540 --> 36:38.580]  It's just a group I happen to have come across that is very activist in its nature and it's in New York.
[36:38.720 --> 36:40.640]  They had demonstrations for Dimitri, I believe, right?
[36:41.000 --> 36:41.200]  Yes.
[36:41.360 --> 36:41.980]  Outside the library.
[36:42.380 --> 36:42.640]  Yes.
[36:42.940 --> 36:47.380]  Well, again, it was an honor speaking to you, sir, and thank you very much, Emmanuel, for the show.
[36:47.580 --> 36:48.140]  Thanks for calling.
[36:48.440 --> 36:48.640]  Bye.
[36:49.800 --> 36:53.460]  Let's take our next listener phone call 212-209-2900 if you're out of the country.
[36:53.660 --> 36:54.280]  Country code 1.
[36:54.640 --> 36:55.240]  Good evening.
[36:55.520 --> 36:56.080]  You're on the air.
[36:56.540 --> 36:59.380]  You know, this phone system is hopping all over the place.
[36:59.460 --> 36:59.820]  Try this one.
[37:00.040 --> 37:00.580]  Good evening.
[37:00.700 --> 37:01.080]  You're on the air.
[37:01.360 --> 37:08.600]  Yeah, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, what provisions of it would you like to see changed?
[37:09.260 --> 37:13.680]  The provisions about circumvention are the dangerous ones.
[37:13.920 --> 37:24.940]  They make it a crime to bypass the robot guards that the publishers put into the software that stop you from doing things like that you could do with a printed book, say.
[37:25.440 --> 37:37.220]  And also, the provisions that make it a crime to make anything that people can use to do this circumvention, the provision that was used to prohibit the program M-D-E-C-S-S.
[37:38.500 --> 37:41.840]  Now, there's some other things in the law, some of which are harmless.
[37:42.220 --> 37:48.460]  You know, there's a provision prohibiting removal of information saying who the copyright holder is.
[37:48.760 --> 37:50.140]  We can live with that.
[37:50.140 --> 37:50.680]  I can live with that.
[37:50.940 --> 37:51.460]  Definitely.
[37:52.000 --> 38:09.540]  So, but the idea of circumvention, it seems like that if you're trying to circumvent the code that you're trying to obtain someone else's intellectual property, there's no such thing as someone else's intellectual property.
[38:09.960 --> 38:20.340]  That term is not only a propaganda term, but it gives you the impression that there's a particular thing called, like a substance called intellectual property.
[38:20.600 --> 38:21.900]  There's no such thing.
[38:22.160 --> 38:24.000]  That term is a catch-all.
[38:24.180 --> 38:27.960]  It lumps together various areas of law.
[38:28.140 --> 38:29.680]  Well, what is a copyright if not...
[38:29.680 --> 38:31.120]  A copyright is a copyright.
[38:31.440 --> 38:31.760]  It has...
[38:31.760 --> 38:33.940]  A patent is something completely different.
[38:34.360 --> 38:37.180]  Copyright law law and patent law have nothing in common.
[38:37.640 --> 38:42.280]  And trademark law has nothing in common with either of them.
[38:42.560 --> 38:50.980]  Lumping these three things with others as well, together, under any name, is just an encouragement for confusion.
[38:51.220 --> 39:01.380]  It encourages people to look at all these issues lumped together at a level of generality where none of the real public policy issues can even be seen.
[39:02.220 --> 39:03.520]  And the result is...
[39:03.520 --> 39:05.040]  It's also biased, by the way.
[39:05.140 --> 39:10.100]  If you talk about the whole subject with the word property, you're assuming...
[39:10.100 --> 39:17.100]  You're prejudging the most basic question in the whole area, which is, how do we treat this thing or that thing or the other thing?
[39:17.280 --> 39:20.640]  The most basic question would be...
[39:20.640 --> 39:25.460]  would include alternatives, such as making it somebody's property and maybe various other alternatives.
[39:25.980 --> 39:29.880]  But if you call the whole subject property, you've prejudged that.
[39:30.280 --> 39:39.660]  Now, when people lump together copyrights and patents and trademarks and trade secrets and call them intellectual property, that's confusing enough.
[39:39.820 --> 39:52.480]  But when they start calling things like programs or songs or ideas, that is, works or thoughts, when they start calling those things intellectual property, they've taken a further leap into confusion.
[39:52.760 --> 40:03.760]  That is essentially the attitude of a Philistine who doesn't care at all about any piece of music or any novel or any work of art, except as a vehicle for investment.
[40:04.020 --> 40:12.500]  What it means is that you're trying to exercise your legal rights in using copyrighted works.
[40:14.080 --> 40:14.900]  You know...
[40:14.900 --> 40:17.100]  Everything you would say is in the public domain.
[40:17.520 --> 40:21.880]  No, you've misinterpreted what I've said or else you're...
[40:21.880 --> 40:23.380]  I guess you're confused.
[40:23.880 --> 40:28.360]  The copyright existed and that doesn't mean it always is justified.
[40:28.920 --> 40:32.260]  Copyright existed before the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
[40:32.840 --> 40:36.000]  I criticize some areas of copyright law.
[40:36.220 --> 40:45.340]  I think, given the computer networks of today, copyright law as it was in the age of the printing press is no longer appropriate.
[40:45.660 --> 40:50.760]  Copyright law was acceptable in the age of the printing press because it was an industrial regulation.
[40:50.760 --> 40:53.020]  It only restricted publishers.
[40:53.460 --> 40:57.780]  It didn't restrict the things that you as a reader could feasibly do.
[40:58.340 --> 41:04.360]  Today, however, even the old-fashioned copyright law restricts what ordinary readers and listeners can do.
[41:04.620 --> 41:06.780]  And that means it is too restrictive.
[41:07.400 --> 41:10.340]  But that doesn't mean that necessarily we should abolish it.
[41:10.380 --> 41:15.920]  In fact, I don't advocate total abolition of copyright law on all kinds of works.
[41:16.180 --> 41:17.820]  That's not what my position is.
[41:17.960 --> 41:20.600]  But copyright law as it used to be was too strong.
[41:20.600 --> 41:21.620]  We have to...
[41:21.620 --> 41:23.780]  Copyright law is considered in the U.S.
[41:23.860 --> 41:28.020]  to be a bargain, a trade, between the public and authors.
[41:28.340 --> 41:31.300]  Copyright is not a natural right in the U.S.
[41:31.700 --> 41:32.660]  Absolutely not.
[41:32.940 --> 41:37.260]  The Supreme Court reaffirms this constantly whenever they get such a case.
[41:37.680 --> 41:39.580]  The Constitution makes it clear.
[41:40.260 --> 41:48.820]  Copyright is an artificial restriction placed on the public and its purpose is quote, to promote the progress of science, unquote.
[41:49.120 --> 41:50.460]  That's a quote from the Constitution.
[41:51.100 --> 42:00.260]  So, I say that copyright restrictions have to be made less restrictive so that the readers are not being burdened by it.
[42:00.600 --> 42:04.540]  An industrial regulation restricting publishers, that can still be okay.
[42:05.800 --> 42:14.000]  So, basically, though, instead of making copyright law weaker, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act extended the copyright powers.
[42:15.160 --> 42:21.240]  Nominally speaking, you still have certain rights called fair use, but you have no way to exercise them.
[42:22.880 --> 42:24.500]  I guess we could go on forever.
[42:24.740 --> 42:26.000]  Thank you very much.
[42:26.260 --> 42:27.000]  Okay, thanks for calling.
[42:27.380 --> 42:29.240]  I think Thomas Jefferson said something.
[42:29.620 --> 42:38.760]  We printed a quote by him last year sometime basically saying that when you say something, when you have an idea, it's out in the world for everybody to share.
[42:39.260 --> 42:43.780]  In other words, it doesn't belong to any one particular person once you express it.
[42:43.800 --> 42:50.880]  Yes, although he was talking more about patents and I, because actual patents cover ideas, copyrights do not cover ideas.
[42:51.120 --> 42:52.420]  It's part of copyright law.
[42:52.580 --> 42:57.040]  It does not cover any idea, principle, method of operation or system.
[42:57.400 --> 42:59.500]  I can't remember all the words in that list.
[42:59.820 --> 43:00.620]  I used to know them.
[43:01.840 --> 43:05.560]  Also, there's a marvelous analogy, the idea of copywriting fire.
[43:07.040 --> 43:11.880]  After all, you know, if you have a fire, you can light a fire for someone else, right?
[43:12.200 --> 43:15.520]  That person's fire is now a copy of your fire.
[43:15.700 --> 43:15.900]  That's right.
[43:16.120 --> 43:20.120]  So you should be able to collect royalties for everything he does with his fire, right?
[43:20.320 --> 43:20.580]  Wow.
[43:21.000 --> 43:21.840]  That's a good idea.
[43:22.840 --> 43:28.080]  You know, I think confusion, though, is basically how such laws get passed in the first place.
[43:28.160 --> 43:31.180]  I mean, does the average person understand all the intricacies of the DMCA?
[43:31.360 --> 43:38.760]  Even the average congressman didn't understand all the intricacies of the DMCA and they let that bill pass without even an actual vote.
[43:38.940 --> 43:38.980]  Right.
[43:39.140 --> 43:41.540]  It passed, I believe it's on the suspension calendar.
[43:42.040 --> 43:47.760]  I'm not sure exactly how that figures into house rules, but basically, they didn't even bother to vote on it.
[43:47.820 --> 43:49.100]  You can't find out who voted for it.
[43:49.340 --> 43:49.600]  Yeah.
[43:49.740 --> 43:50.180]  I've tried.
[43:50.860 --> 43:52.500]  Well, that's the answer because nobody did.
[43:52.620 --> 43:54.840]  It was essentially not even debated.
[43:54.840 --> 44:04.340]  It was considered uncontroversial to take away the rights of readers and music listeners and software users in this way.
[44:05.300 --> 44:06.380]  All right, let's go back to the phones.
[44:06.480 --> 44:07.760]  It's 212-209-2900.
[44:07.880 --> 44:10.780]  And a note to our callers, I see the phone lines bouncing all over the place.
[44:10.780 --> 44:11.980]  That's a phone company thing.
[44:11.980 --> 44:15.480]  If you call us and it rings about 20 times, you might get disconnected.
[44:15.480 --> 44:16.300]  Just call right back.
[44:17.380 --> 44:18.420]  Let's go over here.
[44:18.740 --> 44:19.240]  Good evening.
[44:19.280 --> 44:19.760]  You're on the air.
[44:20.800 --> 44:20.940]  Hello.
[44:21.140 --> 44:21.580]  Yes, go ahead.
[44:21.880 --> 44:22.320]  Oh, hi.
[44:22.520 --> 44:23.120]  I'm sorry.
[44:23.200 --> 44:24.540]  I didn't get the name of your guest.
[44:24.700 --> 44:25.520]  That's Richard Stallman.
[44:26.020 --> 44:26.840]  How do you spell that?
[44:27.260 --> 44:29.800]  S-T-A-L-L-M-A-N.
[44:30.160 --> 44:31.320]  Does that affect your question?
[44:31.520 --> 44:32.120]  No, it doesn't.
[44:32.280 --> 44:32.400]  All right.
[44:32.520 --> 44:35.960]  Actually, I have just two little quick little statements here and then a question.
[44:37.860 --> 44:48.680]  Basically, it seems to me that this type of collusion of the Congress to just kind of go along with this has really been in the works for a long time.
[44:48.680 --> 44:53.160]  I don't want to be too down about this whole thing because I think there is hope.
[44:53.280 --> 44:58.060]  But you're familiar with the CFR and the Trilateral Commission?
[44:58.720 --> 44:59.240]  Yeah.
[44:59.820 --> 45:15.100]  Well, apparently, this is what Brzezinski, who is, I think, the one who started the Trilateral Commission, he said in Foreign Affairs, you know, the CFR publication, he said that he saw a society in the future that is shaped culturally, psychologically,
[45:15.440 --> 45:22.340]  socially, and economically by the impact of technology and electronics, particularly in the area of computers and communication.
[45:25.060 --> 45:33.700]  And the idea of consolidating world power and economic power, which, of course, is seen in GATT and AFTA.
[45:34.220 --> 45:47.960]  And it seems to me that this has been a long-term goal by those, you know, in power who basically, you know, move between business and government back and forth and academia.
[45:48.700 --> 45:50.540]  Cheney is a good example of that kind of thing.
[45:50.540 --> 46:04.020]  But as far as CFR members being part of the government and, you know, presidents and their staff, it just makes me think that, you know, this is the kind of thing that we're all up against is really this collusion with government and big business.
[46:04.460 --> 46:05.640]  Is it a hopeless fight?
[46:05.800 --> 46:08.940]  It's not hopeless because we can fight clandestinely.
[46:09.100 --> 46:11.400]  We can do things even if this goes through.
[46:11.740 --> 46:17.960]  We can fight by subverting their distribution power and all that.
[46:18.140 --> 46:33.340]  I mean, the fact that we're all very intelligent and motivated to fight it is something in the long run I think will, you know, enable people to have alternate ways of distributing information underground ways.
[46:33.660 --> 46:35.840]  Well, of course, that wouldn't be the first time.
[46:36.040 --> 46:36.920]  See, the U.S.
[46:37.040 --> 46:43.300]  today is the world leader in trying to stamp out the unauthorized redistribution of published works.
[46:43.580 --> 46:44.360]  But the U.S.
[46:44.400 --> 46:47.540]  is not the first country to put a focus on this.
[46:47.740 --> 46:49.260]  The Soviet Union did so.
[46:49.260 --> 46:58.040]  And if you look at the various methods they used to stamp out Samizdat, and they never completely succeeded, but they certainly made it harder to get.
[46:58.540 --> 47:00.920]  And look at the methods they used.
[47:01.240 --> 47:09.240]  First of all, guards watching each copier to check what you were going to copy, make sure you weren't going to do unauthorized copying.
[47:09.540 --> 47:17.220]  Second, harsh punishments sending you to Siberia for years if you were caught doing unauthorized copying.
[47:17.220 --> 47:24.880]  And third, asking for informers, asking people to rat on their neighbors and co-workers to the information police.
[47:25.240 --> 47:36.720]  Fourth, collective responsibility, putting certain people in positions of being watchers and punishing them if anyone they were responsible for was caught doing unauthorized copying.
[47:36.960 --> 47:39.520]  And fifth, a massive propaganda campaign.
[47:40.000 --> 47:42.160]  All of these things are going on in the U.S.
[47:42.300 --> 47:42.520]  today.
[47:43.020 --> 47:45.320]  And when you look at how...
[47:45.320 --> 47:49.580]  In fact, the digital monium copyright act was responsible for a couple of parts of that.
[47:50.220 --> 47:57.880]  That's what makes it a crime to bypass the robot guards that they use to check what you're going to copy on your own computer.
[47:58.530 --> 48:05.460]  And that's what makes internet service providers legally responsible for whatever you copy, for whatever you post.
[48:05.680 --> 48:17.460]  So that they're scared whenever a customer gets accused, usually the customer gets unplugged before getting any day in court.
[48:18.220 --> 48:30.240]  And there was a separate law passed in 1996 that made it a crime and even in many cases a felony to make copies of something just to hand them out to your friends to be nice.
[48:30.660 --> 48:32.980]  Before that, it wasn't a crime in the U.S.
[48:33.140 --> 48:43.600]  If you took something published and you made copies of it and you non-commercially handed out those copies not asking for anything in return, that wasn't a crime.
[48:43.600 --> 48:50.920]  and then in 1996 it was made a crime and in some cases a felony so you could be put in prison for years.
[48:51.260 --> 48:57.860]  As for the massive propaganda campaign, that's what the word pirate is used for.
[48:58.120 --> 49:05.560]  They're trying to say that sharing published information with your neighbor is the moral equivalent of attacking a ship.
[49:05.980 --> 49:06.400]  Yeah.
[49:06.420 --> 49:09.380]  So if you don't agree with that, refuse to use that word.
[49:09.600 --> 49:15.720]  I remember the media, the way they categorized when we lost the case with the MPAA, they said that digital pirates were defeated.
[49:16.600 --> 49:17.900]  What are you talking about?
[49:17.960 --> 49:21.280]  We don't even have DVD players and we're being categorized in this way.
[49:21.560 --> 49:23.680]  Well, of course they would want to call you that.
[49:23.840 --> 49:25.180]  They're the media companies, right?
[49:25.320 --> 49:26.640]  Yeah, the same companies suing us.
[49:26.700 --> 49:27.380]  It was insane.
[49:28.320 --> 49:29.000]  All right, thanks for that call.
[49:29.060 --> 49:29.940]  Let's take another phone call.
[49:30.160 --> 49:30.780]  Let's go down here.
[49:30.860 --> 49:31.160]  Good evening.
[49:31.340 --> 49:31.900]  You're on the air.
[49:33.700 --> 49:35.780]  Turn your radio down or your computer.
[49:36.120 --> 49:36.220]  Okay.
[49:36.440 --> 49:36.940]  All right, thanks for that.
[49:37.700 --> 49:38.060]  Hello?
[49:38.060 --> 49:38.680]  Yes, go ahead.
[49:41.920 --> 49:51.380]  It's true that some people have certain talents that can be that can result in things that can be duplicated millions of times.
[49:51.860 --> 49:57.360]  I mean, Paul McCartney can write a song in a few minutes and, you know, you can make millions of dollars out of that.
[49:58.300 --> 50:19.060]  other than dealing with this thing as a copyright question or intellectual blah, blah, maybe we can look at it as one way of making sure that certain people who can never duplicate their efforts get to be undervalued in an economy.
[50:19.880 --> 50:25.180]  A housewife has to do the cleaning and laundry and blah, blah, every day.
[50:25.180 --> 50:30.220]  She can say, oh, you remember how I did it 25 years ago?
[50:30.680 --> 50:34.420]  Why don't you just replay that and give me the money or whatever it is.
[50:34.520 --> 50:35.840]  Give me the favor or respect.
[50:36.600 --> 50:39.260]  A dentist has to attend to every tooth.
[50:39.920 --> 50:44.200]  He can say, oh, yeah, well, you know, the best whatever.
[50:44.980 --> 50:46.680]  The job was done.
[50:46.780 --> 50:47.440]  You know, I did it.
[50:47.520 --> 50:48.420]  I videotaped it.
[50:48.560 --> 50:49.800]  You should play it all over.
[50:50.020 --> 50:54.980]  And you should listen to it in your elevators and supermarkets and give me money.
[50:55.740 --> 50:57.580]  That's a very good point.
[50:57.600 --> 50:58.540]  That's very interesting.
[50:58.720 --> 50:59.220]  I've never...
[50:59.220 --> 51:01.920]  I don't recall hearing anyone make that point.
[51:02.140 --> 51:05.560]  Well, I can actually get in touch with you.
[51:05.660 --> 51:06.780]  I wrote on these things.
[51:07.160 --> 51:14.480]  I'm some kind of an economic thinker or whatever, but mostly a political philosopher.
[51:14.700 --> 51:33.280]  But another point is we also make a similar mistake when we look at a guy who is digging up diamonds in his backyard and another guy has no choice but to whatever, produce potatoes or rice or whatever and he's at the mercy of the climate.
[51:33.920 --> 51:46.380]  Now, the guy who is digging up diamonds, let's say South Africans, I mean, not a guy but a huge government or whatever it is or De Beers, they do nothing to produce that diamond there.
[51:46.680 --> 51:52.260]  The diamond happens to be there and, you know, they happen to be there and they they had the land rights.
[51:52.440 --> 51:59.740]  Now, things like these happened in the case of Richard Rhodes and, you know, he grabbed the country as a result of this trick.
[52:00.160 --> 52:04.320]  And Rockefellers made oodles of money similarly, you know, with oil.
[52:04.720 --> 52:21.880]  And now the Saudis and blah, blah, you know, all kinds of countries are basically tapping into things that were created or, you know, they, you know, natural phenomena created these things, false fossils or whatever it was.
[52:22.640 --> 52:28.780]  But it's not no credit to the people who have the rights to that land or the country or whatever.
[52:29.080 --> 52:45.820]  So when we say yes to a system like this, what we are saying is it is okay that those people should be more, should have advantages and the other people who have to attend to everybody one at a time have to be devalued.
[52:46.420 --> 52:50.660]  So if you want to be, let's say, I'll give you one example.
[52:50.900 --> 52:56.160]  You know, some of these people actually have degrees in some kind of medical science.
[52:56.620 --> 53:03.380]  Let's say Naomi Judd, if I'm remembering her name correctly, is a good singer, let's say.
[53:03.940 --> 53:06.500]  But she also happens to be a registered nurse.
[53:07.180 --> 53:23.120]  Now the economy tells her if you want to be smart, if you want to be both famous, appreciated, and, you know, well-liked, you better do something that is not one-on-one, do something that you can do in front of tens of thousands of people, then we're going to like you.
[53:24.180 --> 53:39.340]  But as a nurse, attending to somebody, you know, in a professional way, in a kind way, and blah, blah, you know, was that work really less valuable than singing in front of an audience of, you know, millions of people?
[53:39.340 --> 53:42.860]  Sir, I think we understand the point, and we do have to move on to another call.
[53:43.420 --> 53:44.760]  Thanks for your point, Jim.
[53:45.040 --> 53:46.620]  Just a quick response to this guy.
[53:46.740 --> 53:53.940]  There's a late philosopher named Robert Nozick who wrote a book called Anarchy, State, and Utopia, tears apart a couple of those arguments.
[53:54.080 --> 53:57.260]  Just a quickie about De Beers, the Rockefellers, and the Saudis.
[53:57.660 --> 54:02.080]  Of those three, the only ones that are taking advantage of being somewhere are the Saudis.
[54:02.200 --> 54:12.360]  De Beers and Rockefeller both were in a position where they were struggling, and then they bought up everybody else's rights because they saw a situation that none of hundreds of other people saw.
[54:12.760 --> 54:16.900]  De Beers notably was in a pit digging diamonds 150 years ago.
[54:17.240 --> 54:20.660]  He found the strike, or somebody else actually found the strike.
[54:21.460 --> 54:23.740]  Anybody else there could have bought up the whole damn mine.
[54:23.740 --> 54:24.460]  He did.
[54:24.680 --> 54:25.020]  Okay?
[54:25.280 --> 54:27.840]  So don't give me a bit about he's being unjustly rewarded.
[54:28.140 --> 54:30.700]  Everybody had a shot who was there, hundreds of people.
[54:30.880 --> 54:31.580]  He took it.
[54:31.700 --> 54:35.820]  Well, that doesn't necessarily mean that all of the consequences are justified.
[54:36.100 --> 54:36.980]  No, I'm not saying that.
[54:36.980 --> 54:40.660]  But I'm saying this man's argument of those...
[54:40.660 --> 54:43.180]  And he gives three examples, only one of which holds up his argument.
[54:43.500 --> 54:44.000]  All right, well...
[54:44.000 --> 54:46.960]  But that's for the second point, and I think the first point is stronger.
[54:48.240 --> 54:48.960]  Mm-hmm.
[54:49.460 --> 54:59.400]  Because, you know, setting up a copyright system is an artificial restriction that artificially distorts the economy.
[54:59.660 --> 55:05.080]  And it artificially adjusts how much we value various different things.
[55:05.520 --> 55:05.840]  Right.
[55:06.200 --> 55:06.500]  All right.
[55:06.680 --> 55:07.920]  Let's try to fit in one more phone call.
[55:08.000 --> 55:12.340]  And I have to warn the person that we pick up on that you only have about 30 seconds to make your point.
[55:12.380 --> 55:12.880]  So go ahead.
[55:13.280 --> 55:16.460]  Oh, well, that's not the point I wanted to make this point.
[55:16.540 --> 55:16.840]  Good evening.
[55:17.000 --> 55:17.520]  You're on the air.
[55:17.520 --> 55:18.220]  Hi.
[55:18.540 --> 55:29.660]  The great miscalculation that I believe you're making is to assume that the fair use rights that we've been accustomed to in the analog age can be continued in the digital age.
[55:29.780 --> 55:32.040]  I've read several judicial cases.
[55:32.240 --> 55:34.500]  I'm not a lawyer, but I have copyrights.
[55:34.580 --> 55:42.900]  I've read several judicial cases regarding fair use, and I've read major revisions in copyright law that Congress enacted.
[55:43.260 --> 55:54.900]  The iron-clared rule that is always stated is that fair use is only permitted when there is no substantial financial loss to the copyright holder.
[55:55.080 --> 56:01.300]  In the digital age, where if one copy is released and is now available for free to every person on the planet...
[56:01.300 --> 56:03.740]  I'm afraid you're misunderstanding a number of crucial points.
[56:03.960 --> 56:05.960]  Do I have time to respond if he goes on?
[56:06.080 --> 56:06.660]  You have about a minute.
[56:06.840 --> 56:07.920]  So why don't you respond now?
[56:08.340 --> 56:16.400]  Basically, first of all, the right to buy books, buy and sell used books or keep a book for years and read it again.
[56:16.540 --> 56:18.200]  This has nothing to do with fair use.
[56:18.360 --> 56:23.860]  This is a right that readers have always had which e-books are taking away, but it's not what you're talking about.
[56:24.120 --> 56:25.780]  Fair use is something very different.
[56:25.940 --> 56:29.480]  It's a matter of publishing modified versions or quotations.
[56:30.480 --> 56:30.720]  Mm-hmm.
[56:31.540 --> 56:32.000]  All right.
[56:33.180 --> 56:36.020]  We don't have time to get into a big protracted debate on this, unfortunately.
[56:36.120 --> 56:36.580]  I wish we did.
[56:37.060 --> 56:40.780]  But again, Richard Stallman will be appearing at Stony Brook this Saturday...
[56:40.780 --> 56:41.980]  or this weekend, actually, the whole weekend.
[56:42.080 --> 56:42.400]  But Saturday,
[56:46.300 --> 56:47.860]  visit iconsf.org.
[56:48.040 --> 56:52.300]  And Richard, do you want to give out any other means of contact or places people should go?
[56:52.480 --> 56:58.940]  Take a look at www.gnu.org for the GNU project and free software movement.
[56:59.460 --> 57:01.640]  We're not the same as the open source movement.
[57:02.020 --> 57:05.920]  They do something similar, but they get rid of all the ethical dimension of it.
[57:05.920 --> 57:10.820]  And we developed the GNU slash Linux operating system.
[57:11.000 --> 57:11.960]  Not every piece of it.
[57:12.100 --> 57:12.880]  Many people...
[57:12.880 --> 57:16.960]  Thousands of people have contributed parts, but we're the ones who started the project.
[57:17.300 --> 57:20.020]  And by the way, I did make a mistake of using...
[57:20.020 --> 57:25.240]  saying only fair use before, when in fact some of these rights are entirely...
[57:25.240 --> 57:27.480]  of readers are entirely separate from fair use.
[57:27.600 --> 57:29.720]  So it's partly my fault for that confusion.
[57:29.960 --> 57:31.600]  I have to own up to it.
[57:31.600 --> 57:41.340]  And for my personal website, www.stallman.org where you can find silly songs and political articles.
[57:41.620 --> 57:46.900]  And every day or two, there's some political notes about events in the world and commentary.
[57:47.140 --> 57:47.740]  That's quite a sight.
[57:47.940 --> 57:48.540]  It really is.
[57:48.940 --> 57:52.840]  Richard, it's been an honor having you here and the doors always open for you and I look forward to this weekend.
[57:53.240 --> 57:54.620]  And we'll talk again soon.
[57:55.440 --> 57:57.220]  Manuel Goldstein for Off the Hook.
[57:57.560 --> 57:58.240]  Have a good night.
[57:58.300 --> 57:58.960]  We'll see you next week.
[58:10.950 --> 58:42.470]  Sons of your blackmail written to ransom A part of the fingernail Scissors so handsome Clean time is over Time to take over While others just talk and talk Somebody's watching where the others don't walk.
[59:02.560 --> 59:06.180]  A part of the shadow.
[59:07.000 --> 59:07.660]  Time
[59:22.700 --> 59:24.840]  to take over.
[01:00:05.680 --> 01:00:08.040]  Making love a slave.
[01:00:10.740 --> 01:00:12.300]  WBAI, New York.