Copyright vs Community Stallman

8/9/2019 Copyright vs Community Stallman

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Copyright versus Community in the Age of Computer Networks

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Keynote speech at LIANZA conference, Christchurch Convention Centre, 12 Octoer

2!!"

BC:

Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa. Today I have the privilege of introducingRichard tallman, !hose keynote speech is being sponsored by the chool of Information"anagement at #ictoria $niversity of %ellington.

Richard has been !orking to promote soft!are freedom for over &' years. In ()*+ hestarted the -$ proect to develop a free operating system /the -$ system0, and in ()*'he set up the 1ree oft!are 1oundation. 2very time you read or send a message to n34libs,

you use the "ailman soft!are !hich is part of the -$ proect. o !hether you reali3e it ornot, Richard5s !ork has touched all of your lives.

I like to describe him as the most in6uential person most people have never heard of,although he tells me that that cannot possibly be true because it cannot be tested.

R":%e can5t tell.

BC:

I said that7I still like it. 8is ideas about soft!are freedom and free access to information!ere used by Tim Berners49ee !hen he created the !orld5s rst !eb server, and in ())) hismusings about a free online encyclopedia inspired Jimmy %ales to set up !hat is no!%ikipedia.

Today Richard !ill be talking to us about copyright vs community in the age of computer

net!orks, and their implications for libraries. Richard.

R":

I5ve been in -e! ;ealand for a couple of !eeks, and in the -orth Island it !as raining mostof the time. -o! I kno! !hy they call gumboots nd then I sa! somebody!ho !as making chairs and tables out of ponga !ood, and he called it fern4iture. Then !etook the ferry to get here, and as soon as !e got o?, people started mocking and insultingus@ but there !ere no hard feelings, they ust !anted to make us really feel Aicton.

The reason people usually invite me to give speeches is because of my !ork on freesoft!are. This is not a talk about free soft!are@ this talk ans!ers the uestion !hether the

ideas of free soft!are etend to other kinds of !orks. But in order for that to make sense,I5d better tell you brie6y !hat free soft!are means.

1ree soft!are is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of


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• 1reedom & is the freedom to help your neighbour@ that is, the freedom to redistributecopies of the program, eact copies !hen you !ish.

• >nd 1reedom + is the freedom to contribute to your community. That5s the freedom

to publish your modied versions !hen you !ish.

If the program gives you these four freedoms then it5s free soft!are, !hich means the socialsystem of its distribution and use is an ethical system, one !hich respects the user5s

freedom and the social solidarity of the user5s community. But if one of these freedoms ismissing or insu?icient, then it5s proprietary soft!are, nonfree soft!are, user4subugatingsoft!are. It5s unethical. It5s not a contribution to society, it5s a po!er grab. This unethicalpractice should not eist@ the goal of the free soft!are movement is to put an end to it. >llsoft!are should be free, so that all users can be free.

Aroprietary soft!are keeps the users divided and helpless: divided, because they5reforbidden to share it, and helpless, because they don5t have the source code so they can5tchange it. They can5t even study it to verify !hat it5s really doing to them, and manyproprietary programs have malicious features !hich spy on the user, restrict the user, evenback doors to attack the user.

1or instance, "icrosoft %indo!s has a back door !ith !hich "icrosoft can forcibly install

soft!are changes, !ithout getting permission from the supposed o!ner of the computer. Eou may think it5s your computer, but if you5ve made the mistake of having %indo!srunning in it, then really "icrosoft has o!ned your computer. Computers need to bedefenestrated, !hich means either thro! %indo!s out of the computer, or thro! thecomputer out the !indo!.

But any proprietary soft!are gives the developers unust po!er over the users. ome of thedevelopers abuse this po!er more, and some abuse it less, but none of them ought to haveit. Eou deserve to have control of your computing, and not be forcibly dependent on aparticular company. o you deserve free soft!are.

>t the end of speeches about free soft!are, people sometimes ask !hether these samefreedoms and ideas apply to other things. If you have a copy of a published !ork on your

computer, it makes sense to ask !hether you should have the same four freedoms7!hetherit5s ethically essential that you have them or not. >nd that5s the uestion that I5m going toaddress today.

If you have a copy of something that5s not soft!are, for the most part, the only thing thatmight deny you any of these freedoms is copyright la!. %ith soft!are that5s not so. Themain !ays of making soft!are nonfree are contracts and !ithholding the source code fromthe users. Copyright is a sort of secondary, back up method. 1or other things there5s nosuch distinction as bet!een source code and eecutable code.

1or instance, if !e5re talking about a tet, if you can see the tet to read it, there5s nothingin the tet that you can5t see. o it5s not the same kind of issue eactly as soft!are. It5s for

the most part only copyright that might deny you these freedoms.

o the uestion can be restated:


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no economy of scale. To !rite ten copies !ould take ten times as long as to !rite one copy.It reuired no special euipment other than the euipment for !riting, and it reuired nospecial skill other than literacy itself. The result !as that copies of any particular book !eremade in a decentrali3ed manner. %herever there !as a copy, if someone !anted to copy it,he could.

There !as nothing like copyright in the ancient !orld. If you had a copy and !anted to copyit, nobody !as going to tell you you !eren5t allo!ed7ecept if the local prince didn5t like!hat the book said, in !hich case he might punish you for copying it. But that5s notcopyright, but rather something closely related, namely censorship. To this day, copyright isoften used in attempts to censor people.

That !ent on for thousands of years, but then there !as a big advance in copyingtechnology, namely the printing press. The printing press made copying more e?icient, butnot uniformly. /This !as0 because mass production copying became a lot more e?icient, butmaking one copy at a time didn5t benet from the printing press. In fact, you !ere better o?

ust !riting it by hand@ that !ould be faster than trying to print one copy.

The printing press has an economy of scale: it takes a lot of !ork to set the type, but then you can make many copies very fast. >lso, the printing press and the type !ere epensive

euipment that most people didn5t o!n@ and the ability to use them, most literate peopledidn5t kno!. $sing a press !as a di?erent skill from !riting. The result !as a centrali3edmanner of producing copies: the copies of any given book !ould be made in a fe! places,and then they !ould be transported to !herever someone !anted to buy copies.

Copyright began in the age of the printing press. Copyright in 2ngland began as a system of censorship in the ('DDs. I believe it !as originally meant to censor Arotestants, but it !asturned around and used to censor Catholics and presumably lots of others as !ell.

>ccording to this la!, in order to publish a book you had to get permission from the Cro!n,and this permission !as granted in the form of a perpetual monopoly to publish it. This !asallo!ed to lapse in the (G*Ds, I believe /it epired in (G)' according to the %ikipediaentry0. The publishers !anted it back again, but !hat they got !as something some!hatdi?erent. The tatute of >nne gave authors a copyright, and only for (H years, although the

author could rene! it once.

This !as a totally di?erent idea7a temporary monopoly for the author, instead of aperpetual monopoly for the publisher. The idea developed that copyright !as a means ofpromoting !riting.

%hen the $ constitution !as !ritten, some people !anted authors to be entitled to acopyright, but that !as reected. Instead, the $ Constitution says that Congress canoptionally adopt a copyright la!, and if there is a copyright la!, its purpose is to promoteprogress. In other !ords, the purpose is not benets for copyright holders or anybody theydo business !ith, but for the general public. Copyright has to last a limited time@ publisherskeep hoping for us to forget about this.

8ere !e have an idea of copyright !hich is an industrial regulation on publishers,controlled by authors, and designed to provide benets to the public at large. It functionedthis !ay because it didn5t restrict the readers.

-o! in the early centuries of printing, and still I believe in the ()Ds, lots of readers !rotecopies by hand because they couldn5t a?ord printed copies. -obody ever epectedcopyright la! to be something other than an industrial regulation. It !asn5t meant to stoppeople from !riting copies, it !as meant to regulate the publishers. Because of this it !aseasy to enforce, uncontroversial, and arguably benecial for society.


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It !as easy to enforce, because it only had to be enforced against publishers. >nd it5s easyto nd the unauthori3ed publishers of a book7you go to a bookstore and say

It !as uncontroversial because, as the readers !ere not restricted, they had nothing tocomplain about. Theoretically they !ere restricted from publishing, but not beingpublishers and not having printing presses, they couldn5t do that any!ay. In !hat theyactually could do, they !ere not restricted.

It !as arguably benecial because the general public, according to the concepts ofcopyright la!, traded a!ay a theoretical right they !ere not in a position to eercise. Inechange, they got the benets of more !riting.

-o! if you trade a!ay something you have no possible use for, and you get something youcan use in echange, it5s a positive trade. %hether or not you could have gotten a betterdeal some other !ay, that5s a di?erent uestion, but at least it5s positive.

o if this !ere still in the age of the printing press, I don5t think I5d be complaining aboutcopyright la!. But the age of the printing press is gradually giving !ay to the age of the

computer net!orks7another advance in copying technology that makes copying moree?icient, and once again not uniformly so.

8ere5s !hat !e had in the age of the printing press: mass production very e?icient, one at atime copying still ust as slo! as the ancient !orld. igital technology gets us here: they5veboth beneted, but one4o? copying has beneted the most.

%e get to a situation much more like the ancient !orld, !here one at a time copying is notso much !orse /i.e., harder0 than mass production copying. It5s a little bit less e?icient, alittle bit less good, but it5s perfectly cheap enough that hundreds of millions of people do it.Consider ho! many people !rite Cs once in a !hile, even in poor countries. Eou may nothave a C4!riter yourself, so you go to a store !here you can do it.

This means that copyright no longer ts in !ith the technology as it used to. 2ven if the!ords of copyright la! had not changed, they !ouldn5t have the same e?ect. Instead of anindustrial regulation on publishers controlled by authors, !ith the benets set up to go tothe public, it is no! a restriction on the general public, controlled mainly by the publishers,in the name of the authors.

In other !ords, it5s tyranny. It5s intolerable and !e can5t allo! it to continue this !ay.

>s a result of this change, /copyright0 is no longer easy to enforce, no longeruncontroversial, and no longer benecial.

It5s no longer easy to enforce because no! the publishers !ant to enforce it against each

and every person, and to do this reuires cruel measures, draconian punishments, invasionsof privacy, abolition of our basic ideas of ustice. There5s almost no limit to ho! far they !illpropose to go to prosecute the %ar on haring.

It5s no longer uncontroversial. There are political parties in several countries !hose basicplatform is


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%hat !ould a democratic government do in this situationF

It !ould reduce copyright po!er. It !ould say: round the !orld !e see pressure to makecopyright last longer and longer and longer.

> !ave of this started in the $ in ())*. Copyright !as etended by &D years on both pastand future !orks. I do not understand ho! they hope to convince the no! dead or senile!riters of the &Ds and +Ds to !rite more back then by etending copyright on their !orksno!. If they have a time machine !ith !hich to inform them, they haven5t used it. Murhistory books don5t say that there !as a burst of vigor in the arts in the &Ds !hen all theartists found out that their copyrights !ould be etended in ())*.

It5s theoretically conceivable that &D years more copyright on future !orks !ould convincepeople to make more e?ort in producing those !orks. But not anyone rational, because the

discounted present value of &D more years of copyright starting ' years in the future7ifit5s a !ork made for hire7and probably even longer if it5s a !ork !ith an individualcopyright holder, is so small it couldn5t persuade any rational person to do anythingdi?erent. >ny business that !ants to claim other!ise ought to present its proected balancesheets for ' years in the future, !hich of course they can5t do because none of them reallylooks that far ahead.

The real reason for this la!, the desire that prompted various companies to purchase thisla! in the $ Congress, !hich is ho! la!s are decided on for the most part, !as they hadlucrative monopolies and they !anted those monopolies to continue.

1or instance, isney !as a!are that the rst lm in !hich "ickey "ouse appeared !ouldgo into the public domain in a fe! years, and then anybody !ould be free to dra! that samecharacter as part of other !orks. isney didn5t !ant that to happen. isney borro!s a lotfrom the public domain, but is determined never to give the slightest thing back. o isneypaid for this la!, !hich !e refer to as the "ickey "ouse Copyright >ct.

The movie companies say they !ant perpetual copyright, but the $ Constitution !on5t letthem get that o?icially. o they came up !ith a !ay to get the same result uno?icially:nd often the computer


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itself is designed to restrict the user.

The rst !ay in !hich the general public sa! this !as in #s. > movie on a # !asusually encrypted, and the format !as secret. The # conspiracy kept this secret becausethey said anyone that !ants to make # players has to oin the conspiracy, promise tokeep the format secret, and promise to design the # players to restrict the usersaccording to the rules, !hich say it has to stop the user from doing this, from doing that,from doing that7a precise set of reuirements, all of !hich are malicious to!ards us.

It !orked for a !hile, but then some people gured out the secret format, and publishedfree soft!are capable of reading the movie on a # and playing it. Then the publisherssaid nd they started thatin the $ in ())* !ith the igital "illennium Copyright >ct, !hich imposed censorship onsoft!are capable of doing such obs.

o that particular piece of free soft!are !as the subect of a court case. Its distribution inthe $ is forbidden@ the $ practices censorship of soft!are.

The movie companies are !ell a!are that they can5t really make that program disappear7it5s easy enough to nd it. o they designed another encryption system, !hich they hoped

!ould be harder to break, and it5s called >>C, or the ae.

The >>C conspiracy makes precise rules about all players. 1or instance, in &D(( it5s goingto be forbidden to make analog video outputs. o all video outputs !ill have to be digital,and they !ill carry the signal encrypted into a monitor specially designed to keep secretsfrom the user. That is malicious hard!are. They say that the purpose of this is to >C !ebsite proudly describes the contracts that manufacturers have tosign, !hich is ho! I kno! about this reuirement. It proudly states the names of thecompanies that have established this conspiracy, !hich include "icrosoft and >pple, andIntel, and ony, and isney, and IB".

> conspiracy of companies designed to restrict the public5s access to technology ought to beprosecuted as a serious crime, like a conspiracy to prices, ecept it5s !orse, so theprison sentences for this should be longer. But these companies are uite condent that ourgovernments are on their side against us. They have no fear against being prosecuted forthese conspiracies, !hich is !hy they don5t bother to hide them.

In general R" is set up by a conspiracy of companies. Mnce in a !hile a single companycan do it, but generally it reuires a conspiracy bet!een technology companies andpublishers, so /it5s0 almost al!ays a conspiracy.

They thought that nobody !ould ever be able to break the >>C, but about three and a half years ago someone released a free program capable of decrypting that format. 8o!ever, it!as totally useless, because in order to run it you need to kno! the key.

>nd then, si months later, I sa! a photo of t!o adorable puppies, !ith +& he digits abovethem, and I !ondered:


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>nd that5s !hat it !as7that !as the key to break the ae. Aeople posted it, and editorsdeleted it, because la!s in many countries no! conscript them to censor this information. It!as posted again, they deleted it@ eventually they gave up, and in t!o !eeks this number!as posted in over DD,DDD !eb sites.

That5s a big outpouring of public disgust !ith R". But it didn5t !in the !ar, because thepublishers changed the key. -ot only that: !ith 8 #, this !as adeuate to break theR", but not !ith Blu4ray. Blu4ray has an additional level of R" and so far there is no freesoft!are that can break it, !hich means that you must regard Blu4ray disks as somethingincompatible !ith your o!n freedom. They are an enemy !ith !hich no accommodation ispossible, at least not !ith our present level of kno!ledge.

-ever accept any product designed to attack your freedom. If you don5t have the freesoft!are to play a #, you mustn5t buy or rent any #s, or accept them even as gifts,ecept for the rare non4encrypted #s, !hich there are a fe! of. I actually have a fe! /ofthese07I don5t have any encrypted #s, I !on5t take them.

o this is ho! things stand in video, but !e5ve also seen R" in music.

1or instance, about ten years ago !e started to see things that looked like compact disks,

but they !eren5t !ritten uite like compact disks. They didn5t follo! the standard. %e calledthem 5corrupt disks5, and the idea of them !as that they !ould play in an audio player, but it!as impossible to read them on a computer. These di?erent methods had various problems.

2ventually ony came up !ith a clever idea. They put a program on the disk, so that if youstuck the disk into a computer, the disk !ould install the program. This program !asdesigned like a virus to take control of the system. It5s called a 5root kit5, meaning that it hasthings in it to break the security of the system so that it can install the soft!are deep insidethe system, and modify various parts of the system.

1or instance, it modied the command you could use to eamine the system to see if thesoft!are !as present, so as to disguise itself. It modied the command you could use todelete some of these les, so that it !ouldn5t really delete them. -o! all of this is a seriouscrime, but it5s not the only one ony committed, because the soft!are also included freesoft!are code7code that had been released under the -$ eneral Aublic 9icense.

-o! the -$ A9 is a copyleft license, and that means it says nd you must make the source codeavailable to users, and to inform them of their rights you must give them a copy of thislicense !hen they get the soft!are.=

ony didn5t comply !ith all that. That5s commercial copyright infringement, !hich is afelony. They5re both felonies, but ony !asn5t prosecuted because the governmentunderstands that the purpose of the government and the la! is to maintain the po!er of

those companies over us, not to help defend our freedom in any !ay.

Aeople got angry and they sued ony. 8o!ever, they made a mistake. They focused theircondemnation not on the evil purpose of this scheme, but only on the secondary evils of the

various methods that ony used. o ony settled the la!suits and promised that in thefuture, !hen it attacks our freedom, it !ill not do those other things.

>ctually, that particular corrupt disk scheme !as not so bad, because if you !ere not using%indo!s it !ould not a?ect you at all. 2ven if you !ere using %indo!s, there5s a key on thekeyboard7if you remembered every time to hold it do!n, then the disk !ouldn5t install thesoft!are. But of course it5s hard to remember that every time@ you5re going to slip up some


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day. This sho!s the kind of thing !e5ve had to deal !ith.

1ortunately music R" is receding. 2ven the main record companies sell do!nloads!ithout R". But !e see a rene!ed e?ort to impose R" on books.

Eou see, the publishers !ant to take a!ay the traditional freedoms of book readers7freedom to do things such as borro! a book from the public library, or lend it to a friend@ to

sell a book to a used book store, or buy it anonymously paying cash K!hich is the only !ay Ibuy books7!e5ve got to resist the temptations to let Big Brother kno! everything that!e5re doing.L

2ven the freedom to keep the book as long as you !ish, and read it as many times as you!ish, they plan to get rid of.

The !ay they do it is !ith R". They kne! that so many people read books and !ould getangry if these freedoms !ere taken a!ay that they didn5t believe they could buy a la!specically to abolish these freedoms7there !ould be too much opposition. emocracy issick, but once in a !hile people manage to demand something. o they came up !ith a t!o4stage plan.

1irst, take a!ay these freedoms from ebooks, and second, convince people to s!itch frompaper books to ebooks. They5ve succeeded !ith stage (.

In the $ they did it !ith the igital "illennium Copyright >ct, and in -e! ;ealand, that!as part of the year4ago Copyright >ct@ censorship on soft!are that can break R" !aspart of that la!. That5s an unust provision@ it5s got to be repealed.

The second stage is convince people to s!itch from printed books to ebooks@ that didn5t goso !ell.

Mne publisher in &DD( had the idea they !ould make their line of ebooks really popular ifthey started it !ith my biography. o they found an author and the author asked me if I5d

cooperate, and I said


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Then there is igital Restrictions "anagement, so you can5t lend the book or sell it to aused bookstore, and the library can5t lend it either.

>nd then there5s the back door, !hich !e found out about about three months ago, because >ma3on used it. >ma3on sent a command to all the Nindles to erase a particular book,namely ()*H by eorge Mr!ell. Ees, they couldn5t have picked a more ironic book to erase.o that5s ho! !e kno! that >ma3on has a back door !ith !hich it can erase booksremotely.

%hat else it can do, !ho kno!sF "aybe it5s like "icrosoft %indo!s. "aybe >ma3on canremotely upgrade the soft!are, !hich means that !hatever malicious things are not in itno!, they could put them in it tomorro!.

This is intolerable7any one of these restrictions is intolerable. They !ant to create a !orld!here nobody lends books to anybody anymore.

Imagine that you visit a friend and there are no books on the shelf. It5s not that your frienddoesn5t read, but his books are all inside a device, and of course he can5t lend you thosebooks. The only !ay he could lend you any one of those books is to lend you his !holelibrary, !hich is obviously a ridiculous thing to ask anybody to do. o there goes friendship

for people !ho love books.

"ake sure that you inform people !hat this device implies. It means other readers !ill nolonger be your friends, because you !ill be acting like a erk to!ard them. pread the !ordpreemptively. This device is your enemy. It5s the enemy of everyone !ho reads. The people!ho don5t recogni3e that are the people !ho are thinking so short4term that they don5t seeit. It5s our ob to help them see beyond the momentary convenience to the implications ofthis device.

I have nothing against distributing books in digital form, if they are not designed to takea!ay our freedom. trictly speaking, it is possible to have an ebook reader:

•

that is not designed to attack you,• !hich runs free soft!are and not proprietary soft!are,

• !hich doesn5t have R",

• !hich doesn5t make people identify yourself to get a book,

• !hich doesn5t have a back door, /and0

• !hich doesn5t restrict !hat you can do !ith the les on your machine.

It5s possible, but the big companies really pushing ebooks are doing it to attack ourfreedom, and !e mustn5t stand for that. This is !hat governments are doing in cahoots !ithbig business to attack our freedom, by making copyright harsher and nastier, morerestrictive than ever before.

But !hat should they doF overnments should make copyright po!er less. 8ere are my

specic proposals.

1irst of all, there is the dimension of time. I propose copyright should last ten years,starting from the date of publication of a !ork.

%hy from the date of publicationF Because before that, !e don5t have copies. It doesn5tmatter to us !hether !e !ould have been allo!ed to copy our copies that !e don5t have, soI gure !e might as !ell let the authors have as much time as it takes to arrangepublication, and then start the clock.


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But !hy ten yearsF I don5t kno! about in this country, but in the $, the publication cyclehas got shorter and shorter. -o!adays almost all books are remaindered !ithin t!o yearsand out4of4print !ithin three. o ten years is more than three times the usual publicationcycle7that should be plenty comfortable.

But not everybody agrees. I once proposed this in a panel discussion !ith ction !riters,and the a!ard4!inning fantasy !riter net to me said nything morethan ve years is intolerable.= Eou see, he had a legal dispute !ith his publisher. 8is booksseemed to be out of print, but the publisher !ouldn5t admit it. The publisher !as using thecopyright on his o!n book to stop him from distributing copies himself, !hich he !anted todo so people could read it.

This is !hat every artist starts out !anting7!anting to distribute her !ork so it !ill getread and appreciated. #ery fe! make a lot of money. That tiny fraction face the danger ofbeing morally corrupted, like J.N. Ro!ling.

J.N. Ro!ling, in Canada, got an inunction against people !ho had bought her book in abookstore, ordering them not to read it. o in response I call for a boycott of 8arry Aotterbooks. But I don5t say you shouldn5t read them@ I leave that to the author and the publisher.I ust say you shouldn5t buy them.

It5s fe! authors that make enough money that they can be corrupted in this !ay. "ost ofthem don5t get any!here near that, and continue !anting the same thing they !anted atthe outset: they !ant their !ork to be appreciated.

8e !anted to distribute his o!n book, and copyright !as stopping him. 8e reali3ed thatmore than ve years of copyright !as unlikely to ever do him any good.

If people !ould rather have copyright last ve years, I !on5t be against it. I propose ten asa rst stab at the problem. 9et5s reduce it to ten years and then take stock for a !hile, and!e could adust it after that. I don5t say I think ten years is the eact right number7I don5tkno!.

%hat about the dimension of breadthF %hich activities should copyright coverF Idistinguish three broad categories of !orks.

1irst of all, there are the functional !orks that you use to do a practical ob in your life. Thisincludes soft!are, recipes, educational !orks, reference !orks, tet fonts, and other things

you can think of. These !orks should be free.

If you use the !ork to do a ob in your life, then if you can5t change the !ork to suit you, youdon5t control your life. Mnce you have changed the !ork to suit you, then you5ve got to befree to publish it7publish your version7because there !ill be others !ho !ill !ant thechanges you5ve made.

This leads uickly to the conclusion that users have to have the same four freedoms /for allfunctional !orks0, not ust for soft!are. >nd you5ll notice that for recipes, practicallyspeaking, cooks are al!ays sharing and changing recipes ust as if the recipes !ere free.Imagine ho! people !ould react if the government tried to stamp out so4called


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bad, sharing !ith other people is good, so !e should rmly denounce that propaganda termnd this !ill provide a revenue stream to the authors in more or lessthe same Kusually inadeuateL !ay as the present system. Eou5ve got to keep in mind /that0the present system, ecept for superstars, is usually totally inadeuate.

%hat about !orks of art and entertainmentF 8ere it took me a !hile to decide !hat to think about modications.

Eou see, on one hand, a !ork of art can have an artistic integrity and modifying it coulddestroy that. Mf course, copyright doesn5t necessarily stop !orks from being butchered that!ay. 8olly!ood does it all the time. Mn the other hand, modifying the !ork can be acontribution to art. It makes possible the folk process !hich leads to things !hich arebeautiful and rich.

2ven if !e look at named authors only: consider hakespeare, !ho borro!ed stories fromother !orks only a fe! decades old, and did them in di?erent !ays, and made important!orks of literature. If today5s copyright la! had eisted then, that !ould have beenforbidden and those plays !ouldn5t have been !ritten.

But eventually I reali3ed that modifying a !ork of art can be a contribution to art, but it5snot desperately urgent in most cases. If you had to !ait ten years for the copyright toepire, you could !ait that long. -ot like the present4day copyright that makes you !aitmaybe ' years, or )' years. In "eico you might have to !ait almost &DD years in somecases, because copyright in "eico epires a hundred years after the author dies. This isinsane, but ten years, as I5ve proposed copyright should last, that people can !ait.


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o I propose the same partly reduced copyright that covers commercial use andmodication, but everyone5s got to be free to non4commercially redistribute eact copies.

>fter ten years it goes into the public domain, and people can contribute to art bypublishing their modied versions.

Mne other thing: if you5re going to take little pieces out of a bunch of !orks and rearrangethem into something totally di?erent, that should ust be legal, because the purpose ofcopyright is to promote art, not to obstruct art. It5s stupid to apply copyright to usingsnippets like that7it5s self4defeating. It5s a kind of distortion that you5d only get !hen thegovernment is under the control of the publishers of the eisting successful !orks, and hastotally lost sight of its intended purpose.

That5s !hat I propose, and in particular, this means that sharing copies on the Internetmust be legal. haring is good. haring builds the bonds of society. To attack sharing is toattack society.

o any time the government proposes some ne! means to attack people !ho share, to stopthem from sharing, !e have to recogni3e that this is evil, not ust because the meansproposed almost invariably o?end basic ideas of ustice Kbut that5s not a coincidenceL. Thereason is because the purpose is evil. haring is good and the government should

encourage sharing.

But copyright did after all have a useful purpose. Copyright as a means to carry out thatpurpose has a problem no!, because it doesn5t t in !ith the technology !e use. Itinterferes !ith all the vital freedoms for all the readers, listeners, vie!ers, and !hatever,but the goal of promoting the arts is still desirable. o in addition to the partly reducedcopyright system, !hich !ould continue to be a copyright system, I propose t!o othermethods.

Mne is taes7distribute ta money directly to artists. This could be a special ta, perhapson Internet connectivity, or it could come from general revenue, because it !on5t be thatmuch money in total, not if it5s distributed in an e?icient !ay. To distribute it e?iciently topromote the arts means not in linear proportion to popularity. It should be based on

popularity, because !e don5t !ant bureaucrats to have the discretion to decide !hich artiststo support and !hich to ignore, but based on popularity does not imply linear proportion.

%hat I propose is measure the popularity of the various artists, !hich you could do throughpolling KsamplesL in !hich nobody is reuired to participate, and then take the cube root.The cube root looks like this: it means basically that /the payment0 tapers o? after a !hile.

If superstar > is a thousand times as popular as successful artist B, !ith this system >!ould get ten times as much money as B, not a thousand times.

9inearly !ould give > a thousand times as much as B, !hich means that if !e !anted B toget enough to live on !e5re going to have to make > tremendously rich. This is !asteful use

of the ta money7it shouldn5t be done.

But if !e make it taper o?, then yes, each superstar !ill get handsomely more than anordinary successful artist, but the total of all the superstars !ill be a small fraction of the/total0 money. "ost of the money !ill go to support a large number of fairly successfulartists, fairly appreciated artists, fairly popular artists. Thus the system !ill use money a lotmore e?iciently than the eisting system.

The eisting system is regressive. It actually gives far, far more per record, for instance, toa superstar than to anybody else. The money is etremely badly used. The result is !e5dactually be paying a lot less this !ay. I hope that5s enough to mollify some of these people


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!ho have a knee4erk hostile reaction to taes7one that I don5t share, because I believe in a!elfare state.

I have another suggestion !hich is voluntary payments. uppose every player had a button you could push to send a dollar to the artist !ho made the !ork you5re currently playing orthe last one you played. This money !ould be delivered anonymously to those artists. Ithink a lot of people !ould push that button fairly often.

1or instance, all of us could a?ord to push that button once every day, and !e !ouldn5t missthat much money. It5s not that much money for us, I5m pretty sure. Mf course, there are poorpeople !ho couldn5t a?ord to push it ever, and it5s MN if they don5t. %e don5t need tosuee3e money out of poor people to support the artists. There are enough people !ho arenot poor to do the ob ust ne. I5m sure you5re a!are that a lot of people really love certainart and are really happy to support the artists.

>n idea ust came to me. The player could also give you a certicate of having supported so4and4so, and it could even count up ho! many times you had done it and give you acerticate that says


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to do it other !ays that respect our freedom.

emand that they change the t!o evil parts of the -e! ;ealand Copyright >ct. They

shouldn5t replace the three strikes punishment/&0, because sharing is good, and they5ve gotto get rid of the censorship for the soft!are to break R". Be!are of >CT>7they5re tryingto negotiate a treaty bet!een various countries, for all of these countries to attack theirciti3ens, and !e don5t kno! ho! because they !on5t tell us.

Click here for an older version of this talk from &DDD.

#ootnotes

(. In &D(D, the encryption system for digital video output !as denitively cracked.

http:PP!!!.pcmag.comParticle&PD,&*(,&+G)&*D,DD.asp

&. -e! ;ealand had enacted a system of punishment !ithout trial for Internet users accused

of copying@ then, facing popular protest, the government did not implement it, and

announced a plan to implement a modied unust punishment system. The point here !as

that they should not proceed to implement a replacement 7 rather, they should have no

such system. 8o!ever, the !ords I used don5t say this clearly.The -e! ;ealand government subseuently implemented the punishment scheme more or

less as originally planned.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-versus-community.html#footnote2http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-versus-community.html#footnote2http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-versus-community-2000.htmlhttp://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2369280,00.asphttp://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2369280,00.asphttp://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-versus-community.html#footnote2http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-versus-community-2000.htmlhttp://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2369280,00.asp

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Copyright vs Community Stallman