DIGITAL FREEDOM: Copyright isn't just pay-for-looking

progressive

(Tue, 13 May 2008 12:17:51 -0500 (CDT)) --- This piece clarifies issues against restrictive copyright laws

Michael

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en.epochtimes.com

Epoch Times UK Staff May 13, 2008

FREEDOM FIGHTER OF THE DIGITAL AGE

By Caroline Yates

DIGITAL FREEDOM: Richard Stallman, a Free Software legend, puts the case
for new copyright laws designed to protect society from overly restrictive
copyright laws leading to a "pay per read universe." (The Epoch Times)

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As music, movies and books move further into the digital realm, the question
of our freedoms being diminished was raised by Richard Stallman at
Cambridge University on April 30th at his talk on "Copyright vs.
Community".

Stallman, a legendary software developer and free software activist, argued
that current copyright laws are an attack on individual freedom, are not
beneficial to social progress and are unacceptable.

"There is no justification for forbidding people to share. In fact it's
about as evil a thing as one could imagine because sharing is the basis of
society. To attack sharing is to attack society and those governments that
try to forbid people to share are attacking society. They have chosen to side
with the mega-corporations against society," said Stallman.

Copyright law came into effect around the time of the printing press and was
always intended to promote social progress. The full title of Britain's Statute
of Anne, considered the world's first copyright law, starts "An Act for
the Encouragement of Learning"; the U.S. Constitution's copyright clause
begins "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".

With modern copyright laws, however, businesses are able to to restrict
the public's use of content and technology as they never have beforethus
restricting social progress.

"Copyright in the age of the printing press functioned as an
industrial regulator. Regulating publishers, controlled by authors, with
the benefits intended to go to the public. It only restricted printing and
publication, it didn't restrict the reader. The result was that it was
uncontroversial, easy to enforce and beneficial to the public. So the deal was
beneficial for the public," said Stallman.

DRM: "DIGITAL HANDCUFFS"

Currently, the two ways in which corporations have manipulated
copyrights to their advantage are by extending the length of time of
copyright and by extending the breadth of controlto the point of allowing
publishers to write their own copyright rules.

Copyrights now allow them to publish something encrypted or
proprietary to access, and forbid us to bypass these limitations. This practice
is known as DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) or "Digital Handcuffs". "To
attack sharing is to attack society"

"Digital Restrictions Management attacks your freedom at two levels at once.
Its purpose is to take away your freedom, to deny you the ability to do
what would otherwise be your legal right in many cases. But in order to do
that, they have to make sure you can't access it with free software at all. So
you have to use proprietary software and that also is an offense against the
freedom that you deserve to have," said Stallman.

For example, there has been a big push by Sony and Amazon to convince people
to start reading e-books in proprietary digital formats.

"The publishers have envisioned using digital technology to achieve total
control over everything anyone does with a book. You might call it a 'pay per
read universe'. That's what they want," said Stallman.

Proprietary e-books deny readers the traditional freedoms that they have
thus-far enjoyed, such as: * buying a book anonymously by paying cash * lending
a book to your friend * selling it to a used book store * borrowing it from the
public library * keeping it for years, reading it as many times as you wish
and passing it on to your heirs.

Stallman stated that in order for corporations to secure their "pay per read
universe," they plan to do this in two stages. The first stage is to
outlaw free software that breaks DRM, which the corporations have done
already. The second stage is to convince people to switch to proprietary
e-books, which is what they are trying to accomplish now. What Is 'Free
Software'? Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. Free
software respects the user's freedom. Non-free software or proprietary software
keeps users divided and helpless.

There are four essential freedoms: * To run the program for any purpose you
wish. * To study the source code and change it so the program does what you
wish. * To help your neighbor, which is the freedom to make and distribute
exact copies of the program to others when you wish. * To contribute to your
community, which is the freedom to make and distribute copies of your modified
versions when you wish.

"The idea of the free software movement is that users deserve these
freedoms; it's wrong to take away these freedoms from the users. That doing
so is an attempt to seize power over people and that that is simply
unethical and we shouldn't stand for it. So, to do something practically to
put an end to it.

"I want the project to develop a complete free operating system.^ 1 And now
we are developing lots of free applications. And the idea is that we will make
it possible to do everything with free software.

"We will reclaim our freedom and get rid of proprietary software," said
Richard Stallman.

For more information visit: www.gnu.org

[1] The GNU project free operating system is properly known as
"GNU/Linux", but often called "Linux".

Compromise Copyright System

Stallman is not against having copyright laws. What he is against is our
freedoms being taken away by the overly restrictive current copyright
laws.

The two areas where Stallman proposed to reduce copyright are in length
and breadth. For length, he suggested trying ten years. Once, at a panel
discussion with some writers he mentioned this and an award-winning fantasy
writer exclaimed "Ten years? That would be intolerable! Anything more than
five years is too much!"

"Most authors realise that the publishers are just screwing them anyway.
In fact these same publishers that demand more power over us in the name of
the authors are grinding those authors into the ground with their heels," said
Stallman.

The area of breadth that Stallman proposed to change is dependent on the
classification of the work, since different works contribute in different
ways to society.

Functional works: These are works you use to do a practical job, like
software, recipes, text fonts, educational works, reference works, etc.

These works must be free and given the four freedoms like free software
in order to benefit society best.

Works of testimony: Works whose purpose is to state what certain people
thought or experienced or believed: works such as memoirs, essays of
opinion, scientific papers.

For these, a "Compromise Copyright System" is proposed, stating that
"Everyone is free to do non-commercial redistribution of exact copies, but
everything else is covered by copyright law". This turns copyright back to an
industrial regulation and frees people to do the the thing they most wish to
do.

Works of 'art': Artistic and entertainment works.

This is a difficult category because some work has artistic integrity;
modifying the art could destroy that integrity. On the other hand,
modifying a work of art can contribute to art.

Stallman cited Shakespeare as an example, who used ideas from
previously published works. If copyright law existed, those plays probably
wouldn't have been made and we would have lost masterworks.

For this category, Stallman suggests that modified works can benefit society;
unlike functional works, their redistribution is not urgent. So he proposes to
use the Compromise Copyright System for ten years.

FREE MUSIC DOWNLOADS

One consequence of this proposed copyright is that sharing music and other
art on the internet will be legal. The record companies would claim that
this is taking away money from the musicians, but this is not entirely true,
explained Stallman. Only 4% of the record company's income goes to musicians
and the superstars get the bulk of this money; the system is about 96%
inefficient.

Stallman suggested that there were far more efficient ways to support
musicians. One way is to tax something connected with the copying of music,
like blank disks. The other was to make voluntary payments directly to the
artists. The latter has already been proven to work on the internet. Stallman
cited a Canadian musician who is earning more than the norm by relying on
voluntary payments for her freely downloadable music. But he also cited
how Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead also set up voluntary payment schemes for
downloading their music and each got about a million dollarsshowing that
superstars would still do quite well under voluntary payments.

With such a copyright system in place, Stallman suggests that artists and
society would do far better than under the present copyright laws, and most
importantly, we would still retain our freedoms.

For more information visit: The campaign against DRM "Defective by Design"
at DefectiveByDesign.org and gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-copyright.html

MichaelP (papadop@peak.org).

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