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+<!-- This is the second edition of Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman.
+
+Free Software Foundation
+
+51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
+
+Boston, MA 02110-1335
+Copyright C 2002, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire book are permitted
+worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice is
+preserved. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations
+of this book from the original English into another language provided
+the translation has been approved by the Free Software Foundation and
+the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all
+copies.
+
+ISBN 978-0-9831592-0-9
+Cover design by Rob Myers.
+
+Cover photograph by Peter Hinely.
+ -->
+
+
+ <a name="The-Right-to-Read_003a-A-Dystopian-Short-Story">
+ </a>
+ <h1 class="chapter">
+ 17. The Right to Read: A Dystopian Short Story
+ </h1>
+ <a name="index-_0060_0060Right-to-Read_003a-A-Dystopian-Short-Story_0027_0027-_0028see-also-DMCA_002c-DRM_002c-fair-use_002c-and-libraries_0029">
+ </a>
+ <p>
+ <em>
+ From
+ <cite>
+ <span class="roman">
+ The Road to Tycho,
+ </span>
+ </cite>
+ a collection of articles about the antecedents of the Lunarian Revolution, published in Luna City in 2096.
+ </em>
+ <br>
+ For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college—when Lissa
+Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless
+she could borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There
+was no one she dared ask, except Dan.
+ </br>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her—but if he lent
+her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that
+you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read
+your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had
+been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and
+wrong—something that only pirates would do.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And there wasn’t much chance that the SPA—the Software
+Protection Authority—would fail to catch him. In his software
+class, Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that
+reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central
+Licensing. (They used this information to catch reading pirates, but
+also to sell personal interest profiles to retailers.) The next time
+his computer was networked, Central Licensing would find out. He, as
+computer owner, would receive the harshest punishment—for not
+taking pains to prevent the crime.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Of course, Lissa did not necessarily intend to read his books. She
+might want the computer only to write her midterm. But Dan knew she
+came from a middle-class family and could hardly afford the tuition,
+let alone her reading fees. Reading his books might be the only way
+she could graduate. He understood this situation; he himself had had
+to borrow to pay for all the research papers he read. (Ten percent of those
+fees went to the researchers who wrote the papers; since Dan aimed for
+an academic career, he could hope that his own research papers, if
+frequently referenced, would bring in enough to repay this loan.)
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Later on, Dan would learn there was a time when anyone could go to the
+library and read journal articles, and even books, without having to
+pay. There were independent scholars who read thousands of pages
+without government library grants. But in the 1990s, both commercial
+and nonprofit journal publishers had begun charging fees for access.
+By 2047, libraries offering free public access to scholarly literature
+were a dim memory.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There were ways, of course, to get around the SPA and Central
+Licensing. They were themselves illegal. Dan had had a classmate in
+software, Frank Martucci, who had obtained an illicit debugging tool,
+and used it to skip over the copyright monitor code when reading
+books. But he had told too many friends about it, and one of them
+turned him in to the SPA for a reward (students deep in debt were
+easily tempted into betrayal). In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for
+pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Dan would later learn that there was a time when anyone could have
+debugging tools. There were even free debugging tools available on CD
+or downloadable over the net. But ordinary users started using them
+to bypass copyright monitors, and eventually a judge ruled that this
+had become their principal use in actual practice. This meant they
+were illegal; the debuggers’ developers were sent to prison.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Programmers still needed debugging tools, of course, but debugger
+vendors in 2047 distributed numbered copies only, and only to
+officially licensed and bonded programmers. The debugger Dan used in
+software class was kept behind a special firewall so that it could be
+used only for class exercises.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was also possible to bypass the copyright monitors by installing a
+modified system kernel. Dan would eventually find out about the free
+kernels, even entire free operating systems, that had existed around
+the turn of the century. But not only were they illegal, like
+debuggers—you could not install one if you had one, without
+knowing your computer’s root password. And neither
+the FBI nor Microsoft Support would tell you that.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Dan concluded that he couldn’t simply lend Lissa his computer. But he
+couldn’t refuse to help her, because he loved her. Every chance to
+speak with her filled him with delight. And that she chose him to ask
+for help, that could mean she loved him too.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Dan resolved the dilemma by doing something even more
+unthinkable—he lent her the computer, and told her his password.
+This way, if Lissa read his books, Central Licensing would think he
+was reading them. It was still a crime, but the SPA would not
+automatically find out about it. They would only find out if Lissa
+reported him.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Of course, if the school ever found out that he had given Lissa his
+own password, it would be curtains for both of them as students,
+regardless of what she had used it for. School policy was that any
+interference with their means of monitoring students’ computer use was
+grounds for disciplinary action. It didn’t matter whether you did
+anything harmful—the offense was making it hard for the
+administrators to check on you. They assumed this meant you were
+doing something else forbidden, and they did not need to know what it
+was.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Students were not usually expelled for this—not directly.
+Instead they were banned from the school computer systems, and would
+inevitably fail all their classes.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Later, Dan would learn that this kind of university policy started
+only in the 1980s, when university students in large numbers began
+using computers. Previously, universities maintained a different
+approach to student discipline; they punished activities that were
+harmful, not those that merely raised suspicion.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Lissa did not report Dan to the SPA. His decision to help her led to
+their marriage, and also led them to question what they had been
+taught about piracy as children. The couple began reading about the
+history of copyright, about the Soviet Union and its restrictions on
+copying, and even the original United States Constitution. They moved
+to Luna, where they found others who had likewise gravitated away from
+the long arm of the SPA. When the Tycho Uprising began in 2062, the
+universal right to read soon became one of its central aims.
+ <a name="index-_0060_0060Right-to-Read_003a-A-Dystopian-Short-Story_0027_0027-_0028see-also-DMCA_002c-DRM_002c-fair-use_002c-and-libraries_0029-1">
+ </a>
+ </p>
+ <a name="index-DMCA-_0028see-also-_0060_0060Right-to-Read_002c_0027_0027-fair-use_002c-DRM_002c-and-libraries_0029-1">
+ </a>
+ <a name="index-Digital-Millennium-Copyright-Act-_0028DMCA_0029-_0028see-also-DMCA_002c-_0060_0060Right-to-Read_002c_0027_0027-fair-use_002c-DRM_002c-and-libraries_0029">
+ </a>
+ <p>
+ The right to read is a battle being fought today. Although it may
+take 50 years for our present way of life to fade into obscurity, most
+of the specific laws and practices described above have already been
+proposed; many have been enacted into law in the US and elsewhere. In
+the US, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) established the legal
+basis to restrict the reading and lending of computerized books (and
+other works as well). The
+ <a name="index-European-Union">
+ </a>
+ European Union imposed similar restrictions
+in a 2001 copyright directive. In
+ <a name="index-France">
+ </a>
+ France, under the
+ <a name="index-DADVSI-_0028see-also-both-DMCA-and-DRM_0029">
+ </a>
+ DADVSI law adopted in 2006, mere possession of a copy of
+ <a name="index-DeCSS-_0028see-also-both-DMCA-and-DRM_0029">
+ </a>
+ DeCSS, the free program
+to decrypt video on a DVD, is a crime.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In 2001,
+ <a name="index-Disney">
+ </a>
+ Disney-funded Senator
+ <a name="index-Hollings_002c-Senator-Ernest">
+ </a>
+ Hollings proposed a bill called the
+ <a name="index-Security-Systems-Standards-and-Certification-Act-_0028SSSCA_0029-_0028see-also-Consumer-Broadband-and-Digital-Television-Promotion-Act-_0028CBDTPA_0029_0029">
+ </a>
+ SSSCA that would require every new computer to have mandatory
+copy-restriction facilities that the user cannot bypass. Following
+the
+ <a name="index-Clipper-chip">
+ </a>
+ Clipper chip and similar US government key-escrow proposals, this
+shows a long-term trend: computer systems are increasingly set up to
+give absentees with clout control over the people actually using the
+computer system. The SSSCA was later renamed to the unpronounceable
+ <a name="index-Consumer-Broadband-and-Digital-Television-Promotion-Act-_0028CBDTPA_0029-1">
+ </a>
+ CBDTPA, which was glossed as the “Consume But Don’t Try
+Programming Act.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The Republicans took control of the US senate shortly thereafter.
+They are less tied to
+ <a name="index-Hollywood">
+ </a>
+ Hollywood than the Democrats, so they did not
+press these proposals. Now that the Democrats are back in control,
+the danger is once again higher.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In 2001 the US began attempting to use the proposed
+ <a name="index-Free-Trade-Area-of-the-Americas-_0028FTAA_0029">
+ </a>
+ Free Trade Area of
+the Americas (FTAA) treaty to impose the same rules on all the countries in
+the Western Hemisphere. The FTAA is one of the so-called free
+trade treaties, which are actually designed to give business
+increased power over democratic governments; imposing laws like the
+DMCA is typical of this spirit. The FTAA was effectively killed by
+ <a name="index-Lula-da-Silva_002c-President">
+ </a>
+ <a name="index-da-Silva_002c-President-Luis-Inacio-Lula">
+ </a>
+ Lula, President of
+ <a name="index-Brazil-1">
+ </a>
+ Brazil, who rejected the DMCA requirement and
+others.
+@let@textindent=@gobble
+@def@hang{@kern-@defaultparindent}@hangindent=0pt@relax
+@def@thisfootno{}
+@dofootnote{
+ <em>
+ ^1
+ </em>
+ This note has been updated several times since the first publication of the story.}
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Since then, the US has imposed similar requirements on countries such
+as
+ <a name="index-Australia">
+ </a>
+ Australia and
+ <a name="index-Mexico">
+ </a>
+ Mexico through bilateral “free trade”
+agreements, and on countries such as
+ <a name="index-Costa-Rica">
+ </a>
+ Costa Rica through another
+treaty,
+ <a name="index-CAFTA">
+ </a>
+ CAFTA.
+ <a name="index-Ecuador">
+ </a>
+ Ecuador’s President
+ <a name="index-Correa_002c-President-Rafael">
+ </a>
+ Correa refused to sign a
+“free trade” agreement with the US, but I’ve heard Ecuador
+had adopted something like the DMCA in 2003.
+ </p>
+ <a name="index-Microsoft_002c-control-over-users">
+ </a>
+ <p>
+ One of the ideas in the story was not proposed in reality until 2002.
+This is the idea that the
+ <a name="index-FBI">
+ </a>
+ FBI and Microsoft will keep the
+root passwords for your personal computers, and not let you have
+them.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The proponents of this scheme have given it names such as
+ <a name="index-_0060_0060trusted-computing_002c_0027_0027-avoid-use-of-term-_0028see-also-treacherous-computing_0029-1">
+ </a>
+ “trusted computing” and
+ <a name="index-Palladium">
+ </a>
+ “Palladium.” We call
+it
+ <a name="index-treacherous-computing-1">
+ </a>
+ “treacherous
+computing” because the effect is to make your computer obey
+companies even to the extent of disobeying and defying you. This was
+implemented in 2007 as part of
+ <a name="index-Windows_002c-Vista">
+ </a>
+ <a name="index-Vista_002c-Windows-_0028see-also-both-Windows-and-DRM_0029">
+ </a>
+ Windows Vista; we expect
+ <a name="index-Apple-_0028see-also-DRM_0029">
+ </a>
+ Apple to do something similar. In this scheme,
+it is the manufacturer that keeps the secret code, but
+the FBI would have little trouble getting it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ What Microsoft keeps is not exactly a password in the traditional
+sense; no person ever types it on a terminal. Rather, it is a
+signature and encryption key that corresponds to a second key stored
+in your computer. This enables Microsoft, and potentially any web
+sites that cooperate with Microsoft, the ultimate control over what
+the user can do on his own computer.
+ </p>
+ <a name="index-DRM_002c-Vista_0027s-main-purpose">
+ </a>
+ <p>
+ Vista also gives Microsoft additional powers; for instance, Microsoft
+can forcibly install upgrades, and it can order all machines running
+Vista to refuse to run a certain device driver. The main purpose of
+Vista’s many restrictions is to impose DRM (Digital Restrictions
+Management) that users can’t overcome. The threat of DRM is why we
+have established the
+ <a name="index-Defective-by-Design-_0028see-also-DRM_0029-1">
+ </a>
+ Defective by Design campaign.
+ </p>
+ <a name="index-Software-Publishers-Association-_0028SPA_0029-2">
+ </a>
+ <p>
+ When this story was first written, the SPA was threatening small
+Internet service providers, demanding they permit the SPA to monitor
+all users. Most
+ <a name="index-ISP-_0028Internet-Service-Provider_0029">
+ </a>
+ ISPs surrendered when threatened, because they cannot
+afford to fight back in court. One ISP,
+ <a name="index-Community-ConneXion">
+ </a>
+ Community ConneXion in
+Oakland, California, refused the demand and was actually sued. The
+SPA later dropped the suit, but obtained the DMCA, which gave them the
+power they sought.
+ <a name="index-DMCA-_0028see-also-_0060_0060Right-to-Read_002c_0027_0027-fair-use_002c-DRM_002c-and-libraries_0029-2">
+ </a>
+ <a name="index-Digital-Millennium-Copyright-Act-_0028DMCA_0029-_0028see-also-DMCA_002c-_0060_0060Right-to-Read_002c_0027_0027-fair-use_002c-DRM_002c-and-libraries_0029-1">
+ </a>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The SPA, which actually stands for Software Publishers Association,
+has been replaced in its police-like role by the
+ <a name="index-Business-Software-Alliance-_0028BSA_0029-_0028see-also-Software-Publishers-Association-_0028SPA_0029_0029">
+ </a>
+ Business
+Software Alliance. The BSA is not, today, an official police force;
+unofficially, it acts like one. Using methods reminiscent of the
+erstwhile
+ <a name="index-Soviet-Union-2">
+ </a>
+ Soviet Union, it invites people to inform on their coworkers
+and friends. A BSA terror campaign in
+ <a name="index-Argentina">
+ </a>
+ Argentina in 2001 made
+slightly veiled threats that people sharing software would be raped.
+ </p>
+ <a name="index-universities-2">
+ </a>
+ <p>
+ The university security policies described above are not imaginary.
+For example, a computer at one Chicago-area university displayed this
+message upon login:
+ </p>
+ <blockquote class="smallquotation">
+ <p>
+ This system is for the use of authorized users only. Individuals using
+this computer system without authority or in the excess of their authority
+are subject to having all their activities on this system monitored and
+recorded by system personnel. In the course of monitoring individuals
+improperly using this system or in the course of system maintenance, the
+activities of authorized user may also be monitored. Anyone using this
+system expressly consents to such monitoring and is advised that if such
+monitoring reveals possible evidence of illegal activity or violation of
+University regulations system personnel may provide the evidence of such
+monitoring to University authorities and/or law enforcement officials.
+ </p>
+ </blockquote>
+ <p>
+ This is an interesting approach to the
+ <a name="index-Fourth-Amendment">
+ </a>
+ Fourth Amendment: pressure most
+everyone to agree, in advance, to waive their rights under it.
+ </p>
+ <a name="References">
+ </a>
+ <h3 class="subheading">
+ References
+ </h3>
+ <ul>
+ <li>
+ United States Patent and Trademark Office,
+ <cite>
+ Intellectual Property [
+ <em>
+ sic
+ </em>
+ ] and the National Information Infrastructure: The Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property [
+ <em>
+ sic
+ </em>
+ ] Rights,
+ </cite>
+ Washington, DC: GPO, 1995.
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ Samuelson, Pamela, “The Copyright Grab,”
+ <em>
+ Wired,
+ </em>
+ January 1996, n. 4.01.
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ Boyle, James, “Sold Out,”
+ <em>
+ New York Times,
+ </em>
+ 31 March 1996, sec. 4, p. 15.
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ Editorial,
+ <em>
+ Washington Post,
+ </em>
+ “Public Data or Private Data,” 3 November 1996, sec. C, p. 6.
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ Union for the Public Domain—an organization that aims to resist and reverse the overextension of copyright and patent powers.
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+ <hr size="2"/>
+