February 13, 2002

Stallman talks

Went to listen to hacker god Richard Stallman at the Queen Mary College last night.

The first half of the talk summarised the philosophy of Free Software (pretty much all this). While I cursorily knew what is was about, it was enlightening having the distinction between Open Source and Free Software pointed out (the former's raison d'être is technical, the latter, moral) and between Gnu and Linux (properly, Gnu/Linux).

The second half of the talk concerned the evolution of copyright, and the role of copyright in the era of digital copying. In a nutshell, where copyright evolved to advance knowledge and serve the public, its meaning is now being perverted to protect publishers, who are facing obsolescence, at the expense of the public and the advancement of knowledge.

One interesting argument was the case of ebooks: removing from their use the freedoms always associated with books, as is currently being attempted, provokes relatively little controversy as most people are not using ebooks. But when people start using ebooks en masse, as they eventually will (with loud encouragement), they will assume these restrictions on their use of the ebooks as the status quo. Dastardly.

He cautioned against the use of analogy to reach conclusions (whenever I have a hard time understanding issues, I ask for analogies), as it can yield false conclusions. What is applicable in one area is not necessarily so in another. One must look at the consequences.

Interestingly, towards the end of his talk, when speculating about music distribution without publishers, he made a strong case for what others would call "micropayments". This is something of a pet interest of mine, as I share the belief that this is what internet commerce should become. Further reading: Jakob Nielsen, Scott McCloud (I like the middle right panels on the right from this page of his last book), Writetheweb.

Some questions I didn't get round to asking:

1. Couldn't the music/publishing industry use micropayments to maintain the status quo? In effect, use technology to make themselves more streamlined, but maintaining all the restrictions on use. (I think this is what is being attempted with Napster now...)

2. Maybe ordinary people like hype.

3. If selling CDs at concerts is so profitable for musicians, why are they always so shit at it? I don't know how many times I've given up on trying to fight my way through the crush for merchandise at concerts, how many times the supply runs out within 10 minutes, them not having change, etc... (going to a concert tonight BTW.)

...answers to the above on a postcard.

Comments