Richard Stallman: Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer Networks

'But if we seriously hope to serve the only legitimate purpose of copyright, to promote progress for the benefit of the public'

The purpose of copyright is so that the creator of the work in question, be it an image, a piece of writing, or a piece of music, gets paid for his work. I receive royalties on books I have written. If the text is widely available on the Internet for nothing, then not many people are going to want to pay for the book (Hello, Google?).

The end result will be a return to the eighteenth century, where artists survived only because they had rich patrons.

yes, i sort of agree with the above comment.

it is necessary to abolish the capitalist and commodity economy for non-copyrighted material to reach its true potential. otherwise your hard work will just get ripped off, and you'll get nothing in return and receive no remuneration.

it is self-sacrificing to devote time to a project and then not demand anything in return, when we live in a society governed by money. it is a form of self-managed un-remunerated labour. there is a reason why free software can only possess a limited potential in a capitalist world, and that is because capital is master of people's time.

abolish capital and the commodity economy and time is freed from this hegemony, then non-copyrighted things will really take off. from each according to ability to each according to needs .....

If a carpenter makes a chair, they don't get paid forever each time someone sits in it. So why should musicians get paid each time someone different listens to their recording? The greedy fuckers should get out and make an honest living by doing live performances or the like. And if they can't make a living, well tough shit, we'll just have to do without their music. I'd rather that than some oppressive restriction on my freedom to copy bits of information around.

Virtually everyone I know nowadays gets all their music and films for free off the internet. That isn't going to change anytime soon, it is going to get more prevalent. Just download a BitTorrent program and head over to somewhere like  http://thepiratebay.org for thousands of things for free download. Or search for "Lord of the Rings torrent"

For music these days, another top tip is to search for something like "Metallica mp3 rapidshare" and you can often find direct downloads on various music blogs. Rapidshare is a service for people to upload large files to, so others can download them. If you can't find it there, try searching for similar services like "megaupload" together with the name of the album you are interested in.

Another option is just to take an external hard drive or mp3 player to your friends house and copy over the music and films directly.

For software, I wouldn't really recommend downloading pirate versions, but only for the reason that they are often full of viruses or trojans. Either use a free alternative to Windows like Linux, or else there are usually free alternatives to most programs you might need. e.g. LibreOffice as a Microsoft Office replacement:  http://www.libreoffice.org, GIMP as an alternative to Photoshop:  http://www.gimp.org, etc.

Most software programmers work on in-house programs, so it wouldn't matter a bit if copyright on them was abolished - they never get distributed, and they have a very customised and specific purpose anyway.

>> If a carpenter makes a chair, they don't get paid forever each time someone sits in it. So why should musicians get paid each time someone different listens to their recording? The greedy fuckers should get out and make an honest living by doing live performances or the like. And if they can't make a living, well tough shit, we'll just have to do without their music. I'd rather that than some oppressive restriction on my freedom to copy bits of information around.

The difference is that you cannot "copy" a chair, so the carpenters earnings are protected.
If someone invented a machine that could copy a chair, then I think carpenters would start to get very concerned.

>> Most software programmers work on in-house programs, so it wouldn't matter a bit if copyright on them was abolished - they never get distributed, and they have a very customised and specific purpose anyway.

No they don't! I certainly don't. I make educational software. If people/schools didn't pay for it then I'd be out of work and wouldn't being making any more software for the little kids. Is that what you want?

The central point of your argument is based around the idea that you want stuff but you don't want to pay for it. Which...... sounds a bit like a thief to me

Its great to know that IMC readers can afford to buy hand crafted chairs from carpenters.

Imagine if people made software available for other people to use without copyright or charge.

Never happen, will it

Next thing people will be suggesting that capitalism is crap.....

Sometimes copying software, books, films or music is compard to stealing. The thing with stealing is that it involves depriving an individual or organisation from something. However copying electronic data is not depriving anyone of anything, as effectively a duplicate copy can be made at zero cost.

The music/film industry elite complain that copying results in lost profits, however they are making the assumption that all the people who copied their song/film would actually have paid for it had they not copied it. I remember swapping mix tapes with people at school, however it is not as if we would have gone and purchased all that music if tapes didn't exist. Most people who copy would not have the money in the first place to pay for it. I think this is more about people being annoyed at the fact that someone could have something for nothing, whilst they paid for it, and certain industries exaggerating their losses as a strategy to boost their bottom line through dubious legal proceedings. From the way the music industry portrays 'piracy', you would think that Metallica and Madonna would be on the fucking breadline if it wasn't for all those evil teenage kids copying their shite music.

You must be delighted that libraries are shutting down!

All those people sharing books must be bad for 'destitute' intellectual property rights holders like yourself.

Abolishing libraries would help you pay your carpenter.

>> The purpose of copyright is so that the creator of the work in question, be it an image, a piece of writing, or a piece of music, gets paid for his work. I receive royalties on books I have written. If the text is widely available on the Internet for nothing, then not many people are going to want to pay for the book (Hello, Google?).

Stop printing books will you! Isn´t it enough that you get to write without having to chop a tree down in celebration!

>> No they don't! I certainly don't. I make educational software. If people/schools didn't pay for it then I'd be out of work and wouldn't being making any more software for the little kids. Is that what you want?

Soo, you make educational software do you and make your money solely from selling license fees? Hmm ... very revealing.

>> You must also have some remarkably flexible 'editorial guidelines', if my previous posts have breached them.

For some one who is reluctant to write copy unless you´re going get paid for it somehow, you do tend to write a lot. If you really want to discuss the 'editorial guidelines', you can always post an email to  imc-uk-moderation@lists.indymedia.org you know. And just so you don´t feel like a thief if you take this information and act on it in any way, i´m telling you now, i´m giving it to you free libre!

-- pb

'Stop printing books will you! Isn´t it enough that you get to write without having to chop a tree down in celebration!'

Ebooks are one way ahead. Actually, chopping down trees can be ecologically sound. The carbon remains locked in the paper while a new tree grows in its stead.

What you call a poor analogy is exactly the point I'm making - electronic files can be copied exactly for virtually zero cost, which is why it is ludicrous to charge money for something that has zero cost.

If chairs could be copied for zero cost, you 're right, it would be crazy to have to pay the original chair maker to copy it.

And there is plenty of free educational software "for the little kids" (that sounds so corny I'm wondering if you're just trolling) so if you can't extort money out of "the little kids" for copies of your software then tough shit.

I'm wondering what kind of political leanings these copyright supporters have. Anarchists would be against it on principle, as would right-wing Libertarians. Socialists and communists would want things to be for the good of the people (maybe funded by a centralised state).

The question about political leanings was just out of interest, that's all.

All I ask is for the right to copy bits of information from one place to another without hassle or fear of prosecution. That is hardly too much to ask, is it?

If your work relies on government-enforced artificial scarcity and forbidding me to copy information on pain of fine or imprisonment, then sorry, your job is nothing but a con and you'll have to find a way to make money that doesn't infringe on other people's freedom so much.

I manage to make a living writing software perfectly well without relying on copyright, and so do most other software developers.

Do the people trolling this have any understanding of the nature of Free Software of the history of RMS? Have they even listened to the meeting?

This is a good place to start for any genuine readers who get this far...

DIRECT HACKTION
SchNEWS interviews Richard Stallman – hacker, founder of the Free Software movement and activist for digital-software-information freedom...
 http://www.schnews.org.uk/features/show_feature.php?feature=14

>> And there is plenty of free educational software "for the little kids" (that sounds so corny I'm wondering if you're just trolling) so if you can't extort money out of "the little kids" for copies of your software then tough shit

Call me a troll? F*ck off tosser

Yes, the BBC and such-like make lots of "free" software. Although it isn't free is it? People are paid a lot of money to make it one way or another.

The rest that is truly free is usually shit, not up to standard, or inferior to the paid software.
Why? Because trying to get a team of talented people to work together on a product for NO MONEY is next to impossible.

Yes, you can download a few "free" educational games. But obviously you clearly have no experience of what schools and teachers want for ICT. What about a whole LP that runs over a network. There arn't any free. Whos going to support it for nowt? Or what about something for making printouts for worksheets? Theres no free software for that. Sure, theres lot of mainstream free stuff. But it is small, shit and doesn't really aid progression. Get into something that runs over a network via 200 client machines with 50 levels of progression and thousands of content images and it aint free anymore and will never be free.

You are just one of those idiots who think everyone will do everything for free and all the bad things in the world will get done automatically by fairies whilst you sit in the pub.

And how dare you have a go at me simply because I want to make a living. Everyone makes a living. Work done = getting paid. whats wrong with that?
At least i'm not living on handouts like you lot, where you produce nothing of value AND get paid for it. Sitting on your arses so you can get a handout salary. Why don't you refuse to take that money? If could be spent on something better like bandages and medicine for the sick rather than you blowing it on rollups and beer.

The other aspect is where do you lot get off telling people what they can and can't do with their work? What gives you the right to dictate what people can do with something they have made. If someone makes a product and wants to sell 1 copy for a million bucks then thats their decision not yours (unless of course we are turning to Nazism whereby you lot all decide how the world is run and what us workers can and can't do with our work).

Its all a mute point. You can whine and whinge as much as you like but we're just ignore you.

I don't think you get it.

"What about a whole LP that runs over a network. There arn't any free."

I haven't got a clue what you mean by an "LP". Long Playing (as in a vinyl disc)?

"Whos going to support it for nowt?"

First misunderstanding - no-one is saying people should support it for free. Charge what you want for support, I don't care. That sort of thing is exactly where you should be making your living.

"And how dare you have a go at me simply because I want to make a living. Everyone makes a living. Work done = getting paid. whats wrong with that?"

Second misunderstanding - I'm not saying you're wrong to make a living, I'm just saying don't make it by restricting my freedom to copy 0s and 1s around.

"At least i'm not living on handouts like you lot"

I'm ashamed to say I'm not living on state benefits, I do in fact whore myself out to a company, doing programming just like you.

"The other aspect is where do you lot get off telling people what they can and can't do with their work?"

You might be starting to get it now - I don't give a shit what you do with your work. But once it leaves your hands and I have a copy, it's nothing to do with you any more. Why do YOU get off on telling people what they can and can't do with bits of information in their possession? Are you such a censoring bossy-boots that you want to control that information forever?

"If someone makes a product and wants to sell 1 copy for a million bucks then thats their decision not yours"

Go for it if you can find someone to pay for it. Just don't expect me to help its artificial scarcity by not copying it if I want.

"Its all a mute point."

Gah I know it's childish but I couldn't let this one pass - you mean a "moot point".

"You can whine and whinge as much as you like but we're just ignore you."

Likewise. I'll certainly carry on ignoring copyright.

As the saying goes: "Information wants to be free!"

I'm the anon arguing against copyright, but why the hell is some administrator hiding all the comments arguing for copyright? It is very useful for people to be able to see the dialog, the points and responses. Just leaving all the anti-copyright comments but hiding the comments they are replying to makes absolutely no sense at all.

Can't another Indymedia admin unhide them all please?

Hiding posts is meant to be for trolls, spammers, fascists, etc. Not just people you disagree with. This is just abusing the privilege.

Having the arguments and counter-arguments is a great way to expose the pro-copyright arguments for the sham they are.

I know I suggested they might be a troll because of their "think of the children" comment, but that was said slightly tongue in cheek. I think it unlikely to be a troll. Unless the admins can see from IP logs that the poster was a well-known troll or something - is that the case?