From 1ae0306a3cf2ea27f60b2d205789994d260c2cce Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Christian Grothoff Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2020 13:29:45 +0200 Subject: add i18n FSFS --- talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/rms-aj.html | 764 ++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 764 insertions(+) create mode 100644 talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/rms-aj.html (limited to 'talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/rms-aj.html') diff --git a/talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/rms-aj.html b/talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/rms-aj.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d2e7402 --- /dev/null +++ b/talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/rms-aj.html @@ -0,0 +1,764 @@ + + +RMS on the Alex Jones Show +- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation + + +

Richard Stallman on the Alex Jones Show

+ +

Transcript of an interview that took place on +January 19, 2012.

+
+ +
+ +
Alex Jones
+ +
+ +

Okay, my friends, we've got a real treat for you—they talk +about the top ten people out there in Internet land who've really +changed our perspective on so many things, it's Dr. Richard +Stallman. He's a software developer and software freedom activist, he +graduated from Harvard in '74 with a BA in physics and received many +awards, doctorates and professorships for extensive work.

+ +

In January of '84 he resigned from MIT to start the GNU or +[pronounced] “guh-new” operating system, meant to be +entirely free software, and has been the project leader ever since. +Dr. Stallman also launched the free software movement.

+ +

In October of '85 he started the Free Software Foundation (and thank +god, because nothing would work if we were running off of Microsoft +still, and I don't know anything about Internet, but I know that), and +in 1999 Stallman called for development of a free online encyclopedia +with a means of inviting the public to contribute articles so he was the +progenitor of Wikipedia.

+ +

During his college years he also worked as a staff hacker at the MIT +artificial intelligence lab learning operating system development by +doing it.

+ +

Stallman pioneered the concept of “copyleft” and is the +main author of the GNU General Public License, the most widely-used free +software license. This is why since the mid-90s Stallman has spent most +of his time in political advocacy for free software and spreading the +ethical ideas as well as campaigning against both software patents and +dangerous extensions of copyright laws. That's why he's probably the +best guest we can get on to discuss Russia, China, the US: they're all +using copyright, and later admitting they're using it to shut down free +speech.

+ +

SOPA's just one manifestation of this. And this monster's receding +for now but it's guaranteed to come back very soon, in fact in a few +weeks. Here's the Associated Press; “Supreme Court Rules Congress +Can Re-Copyright Public Domain Works” that have been out for +hundreds of years, this is amazing, so here to break down the different +horrors of the expansion of copyright—to where you can't even use +[some] words now, they're saying—is Professor and +Dr. Stallman. Thank you for coming on with us, sir.

+
+ +
Richard Stallman
+ +
Hello.
+ +
AJ
+ +
Hello. Well, let's go over it I mean what do you make of what's +happening right now?
+ +
RS
+ +
Well, I haven't read any details about today's Supreme Court +Decision, I haven't seen that yet. But previously other Supreme Court +decisions said it was unconstitutional to recopyright anything that was +in the public domain. But this is a very pro-business Supreme Court, we +can't trust it to protect human rights. They're going to give those +human rights to corporations, and protect the rights of corporations, +but not the rights of humans in any practical sense.
+ +
AJ
+ +
Yes, sir. What got you started developing the ideas that have become +the free software movement that you kicked off?
+ +
RS
+ +
+

I lived in a free software community in the 1970's, although we +didn't use that term, when I was working at the artificial intelligence +lab at MIT. It was part of a community where we shared the software that +we developed, and all the software that we used was the software of the +community, and we were happy to share it with anyone that was interested +in it, and we hoped that if they improved it they would share it back, +and often they did.

+ +

But this community died in the early 80's, leaving +me face to face with the proprietary software world, which is the way +everyone else was using software. And by comparison to the life of +freedom I was used to, proprietary software was ugly—morally +ugly.

+ +

So I balked at that, I said I am not going to accept the life of +proprietary software, I would be ashamed of my life if I did that, so I +decided to build a new free software community. Since the old one was +based on software for obsolete computers, it was necessary to start +again from scratch. So I launched that project, and now there are free +operating systems, now it's just barely possible to use computers and +not be subjugated by software developers of nonfree software.

+
+ +
AJ
+ +
But expanding that, with just basic text copyright, take Righthaven, +they've been absolutely destroyed in court, they sued a lot of people +across the spectrum for even taking a paragraph in a comment board where +it was clearly a third party that had even done it, and they were backed +by the Associated Press and others, I mean that is really creep to have +the Associated Press and others actually suing, you know, quadriplegics +and community activist groups helping homeless people because they had +one paragraph of their article and clearly were discussing in many cases +their own—they were in the news article, they were posting it on +their blog about them for humanitarian discussion, couldn't get any more +clear [that it's] free speech, and they were being sued.
+ +
RS
+ +
Well, if they went to court they might win, the defendants might win +on the grounds of fair use, the problem is it's hard to tell in advance +and it costs you a lot of money to go to court and find out, so those +people probably didn't have enough money to stand up for what are +possibly their rights, plausibly their rights. But because of the way +fair use is defined in copyright law it's not a clear permission. It's a +rather vaguely-drawn defense against charges of copyright infringement.
+ +
AJ
+ +
Yeah, case by case. Shifting gears, overall, specifically on SOPA is +it heartening for you to see the big blackouts, to see…
+ +
RS
+ +
+

It is. And what this means is, that we can sometimes defeat the +copyright lobby when it demands increased power. Of course, we haven't +defeated them yet. We are at least coming close to defeating them, and +maybe we'll defeat them, but everybody listening to this, you've got to +phone your senators today, because they're going to vote next week. So +at least even if we don't actually defeat them we'll have mounted a +campaign that will have come fairly close.

+ +

This is the first time it's been such a fight. When the Digital +Millennium Copyright Act was passed, the law that censors software that +you can use to decode encrypted publications, that you can use to break +digital handcuffs; that was passed in the House of Representatives +without an explicit vote, it was considered totally uncontroversial, +there were just a few of us saying that this is an injustice.

+ +

And that's why Digital Restrictions Management or DRM is such a pain +nowadays, because of that law that the copyright lobby purchased in +1998, which bans the software capable of breaking the digital handcuffs. +So I am against anything that the copyright lobby wants until they start +undoing some of the injustices they've already imposed on us.

+
+ +
AJ
+ +
Doctor, let me try to quantify that from my layman's perspective and +correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I see as the injustice: +they're talking about their rights as they attempt to put a preemptive, +non-deliberative, no due process, guilty until proven guilty +system…
+ +
RS
+ +
Guilty until proven innocent, I think you meant.
+ +
AJ
+ +
Well, I was being sarcastic, I mean you're guilty basically, period. +Yeah, guilty until proven guilty, I was being sarcastic…
+ +
RS
+ +
Oh, OK.
+ +
AJ
+ +
But I mean you're guilty up front. And they're basically just +gobbling up the Internet, gobbling up what people have created, gobbling +up everything like they're masters of the Universe, and until they +become reasonable, there's no point in discussing anything with them, +because they're not giving anyone quarter.
+ +
RS
+ +
+

I agree. But furthermore, the more subtle thing that they're doing +is that they're trying to focus attention on their problems as if their +problems needed to be catered to while distracting away from the +problems they have already imposed on us.

+ +

I hope we completely defeat SOPA. But don't forget that copyright +law in the US already gives them too much power. Of course they're not +satisfied, they always want more, that's what the 1% do to the 99%, but +even if we stop them from getting more, that's not enough.

+ +

We've got to aim for more than just preventing them from making it +worse. We've got to undo some of the injustices they have already done +to us. We have to put an end to the war on sharing, which is a cruel +war that attacks all of us.

+ +

Now, when I say sharing, I mean something specific. I mean +non-commercial copying and redistribution of published works. Exact +copies, that means, not modifications. That's a rather limited freedom, +but that's a freedom all must have so that the war on sharing ends and +copyright ceases to be tyranny.

+ +

Now, that means they've got to stop using digital handcuffs. Lots of +products nowadays are designed with digital handcuffs. Every DVD player +you can buy has digital handcuffs…

+
+ +
AJ
+ +
+

Let me give people an example. I have a TV studio, I have a TV show, +I make films. I buy prosumer and professional equipment, and half of +our technical difficulties with digital TVs, monitors, cameras is having +the right software keys, everything talking to each other plugged in, it +has to authenticate that I'm allowed to run a video through it, it's all +spying on me and screwing up my entire operation, my whole life is about +complying with this stuff, and I bought it and I'm in here using it to +produce TV, and as the 80 inventors of the Internet pointed out, this +SOPA would cripple the Internet by putting all these pre-restrictions on +things.

+
+ +
RS
+ +
+

Well, yes. The worst thing in SOPA is that it becomes easy to shut +down any website where the public is posting things. It just takes an +accusation that somebody posted something that was infringing copyright +and it becomes almost impossible for that site to keep operating. +That's why Wikipedia decided to go black yesterday, because it would be +impossible to operate something even vaguely like Wikipedia under the +rules of SOPA.

+ +

Now, after the show's over I'd like you to tell me more about the +precise details of your problems with these TV systems or have your +technical person tell me because that's an area I don't know about, and +I want to know about the details of that.

+
+ +
AJ
+ +
Sure, if you'd like that, Doctor, I actually have two engineers +here, and they can explain it to you, but you know we have TV sets +behind me on the nightly news and they're digital, and just to run feeds +to them to talk to a guest on Skype or to have a blue background behind +me, all the TVs you buy that are prosumer or even professional now, it +has a gate in it that scans to see if I'm even streaming something over +it that's copyright, and then it's endless—to use software, you've +got to have the dongle in the machine, and then that screws +up…
+ +
RS
+ +
+

Well that's 'cause you're using proprietary software. See with +software there are just two possibilities—either the users control +the program or the program controls the users. What you're seeing is +that with proprietary software, the software controls the users.

+ +

Now, what's proprietary software? That's any software for which the +users don't have the freedom to run it as they wish, study and change +the source code, and redistribute it either with or without changes. +So…

+
+ +
AJ
+ +
Sure, just to be clear, doctor…
+ +
RS
+ +
…control. But with Windows or MacOS or Skype the software +controls the users. That's why I will not use any of that.
+ +
AJ
+ +
Well, it is the machine surveying us, preemptively turning us into +slaves. A lot of our operation is run on Linux systems, I'm not a tech +guy…
+ +
RS
+ +
Uh-uh, they're not Linux systems, they're GNU systems, and you're +talking about my work there.
+ +
AJ
+ +
+

You're right, you are the progenitor of that with GNU that other +things grew out of. So GNU systems, we do have a lot of those, one of +our IT people just absolutely loves your work and has tried to build a +lot of things around here like that.

+ +

But separately, when I've got a pretty big operation—it's not +that big, like 34 people—sometimes we've gotta hurry, we've gotta +buy software to run TV shows, we've got to get equipment, I'm talking +about solid state stuff that won't work as well. All I'm saying is that +it screws everything up.

+
+ +
RS
+ +
Hardware can be malicious too. And the encryption of video between +a computer and a monitor is an example of a malicious hardware feature +that has been put into essentially all modern PCs by a conspiracy of +corporations…
+ +
AJ
+ +
Yeah!
+ +
RS
+ +
+

…including hardware companies and media companies, so you can +see it! They buy laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to +forbid people to escape from these things, and then they can design our +technology to abuse us however they wish.

+ +

So what you can see is that proprietary software—even when +there's hardware that's malicious, the software has to make use of the +malicious features, so the proprietary software's involved also. And +when software's proprietary, it is likely to have malicious features in +it to spy, to restrict, and there's even back doors that accept remote +commands to do things.

+
+ +
AJ
+ +
+

That's what I was about to get to, sir. We're talking to Richard +Stallman, free software inventor, creator, guru, Obi-Wan Kenobi type, so +much of what we live with today that is the only alternative to what the +big corporate borg are oppressing us with, did come out of his +ideas.

+ +

But expanding on this, doc, that's what I'm saying. I've tried to get +the freer systems and I'm saying in many cases it does not exist. I +don't have the money to hire an army of people that are trained in free +software to be able to even attempt it, and what you said is true. +There's all these trojan horses built into everything, and I'm even +paying for it, and it's junk no matter how expensive because the whole +thing is tied down with these handcuffs, and it just absolutely stifles +innovation as you said thirty years ago.

+
+ +
RS
+ +
Mmn-hmmn. Although it does worse than stifle innovation. You see, +innovation is the sacred cow of people who claim that they need to be +allowed to restrict us. They say if they can restrict us they'll do more +innovation. But innovation can be good or bad. Democracy was once an +innovation. Tyranny was once an innovation. So innovation can serve us.
+ +
AJ
+ +
Bioweapons were once an innovation.
+ +
RS
+ +
Innovation will only serve us if we have control over what +innovations we'll accept and what innovations we'll reject. So I do not +accept innovation as sufficiently important to justify taking away our +freedom. Yes, I'd like innovation all else being equal assuming we have +freedom. But when somebody argues, “give up your freedom so we can +have more innovation,” that is literally a trojan horse.
+ +
AJ
+ +
Well that's well said, but my point is, they are—I mean, +everybody knows Microsoft stuff works horribly because it's all got back +doors, spy systems, and it's just total crap. Because, excuse my French +there, because they're obsessed and control freaks; Bill Gates!
+ +
RS
+ +
Yup. But it's not just Microsoft. I've got to point out that Apple +is even worse…
+ +
AJ
+ +
Oh yeah.
+ +
RS
+ +
And Amazon is horrible. The Amazon “Swindle” and eBook +reader has known spy features, of course it has digital handcuffs, and +it has a back door for deleting books. Did you know that Amazon remotely +deleted thousands of books in 2009?
+ +
AJ
+ +
Yeah, 1984!
+ +
RS
+ +
Right. Someone wrote they used up a year's supply of irony +demonstrating the Orwellian nature of their product, which they call the +Kindle because it's designed to burn our books [1]. +But they demonstrated it by deleting Orwell's book.
+ +
AJ
+ +
Oh, that's another point. They've got this Kazaa thing +[Note—Youtube's content fingerprinting system was actually +licensed from AudibleMagic in 2007] where I've had rights to music, I've +uploaded it, but because it's in some registrar, suddenly it shuts down +the audio on my videos that millions of people are watching, and even +though I have letters sending them to Youtube that I have license here, +it doesn't matter because the computer recognizes and did that, and they +now admit they could erase my voice off of these major systems in a +matter of hours with the same technology—I mean, you talk about +dangerous having all the books digital, they could just hit a +button…
+ +
RS
+ +
That's why I won't use such systems, I will never use anything like +the Amazon Kindle for my books, because I want to have books that I can +read without any proprietary technology, I want to buy them without +identifying myself, and I'm not willing to sign a contract to get them. +If I buy a paper book, I can do it with cash in a book store, I don't +sign a contract, and my eyes without any aid at all, or at most perhaps +some lenses, can see the letters. I'm not required to get some secret +technology just to see what the letters in the book are.
+ +
AJ
+ +
Wow.
+ +
RS
+ +
So I will never use those eBooks under any circumstances, and I hope +that the rest of you will join me. If you want to read more about this, +look at +http://stallman.org/articles/ebooks.pdf, and at the bottom of that +there's a link to a place you can sign up to participate in our campaign +against tyrannical eBooks systems.
+ +
AJ
+ +
I had read some of your writings on this, but the way you put it, we +can really see it being put into function. I mean, this is a tyranny, +they've designed the current web system as a tyranny, consciously, as +you said, the big corporations, and the sick part is when we pay the +licenses and buy the equipment, we're paying for their own trojan horse +for them to engage in beyond Orwellian behavior.
+ +
RS
+ +
Well, I wouldn't say beyond Orwellian, after all Oceania did things +even worse than destroying books, they just murdered people, but the +point is we have to reject these systems, and that's the basic idea of +the free software movement—I won't accept the systems that are +designed to take away my freedom.
+ +
AJ
+ +
OK, Doctor, I'm going to try to get you in touch right now with one +of the engineers to give you any of that information you want, and I'll +say bye to you during the break, perhaps you could even come back for a +couple more minutes on the other side and tell us more about solutions, +but, just intriguing to hear you on with us and all the points that you +bring up, it absolutely makes sterling sense.
+ +
+ +

[Break.]

+ +
+ +
Alex Jones
+ +
+

Well, Richard Stallman, Dr. Richard Stallman, free software +creator of the GNU system that everything is pretty much based on today, +Linux, you name it, is our guest for five more minutes. He's going to +be gone for a while, but hopefully coming up in a few months, we'll be +able to get him on for a full hour because everything he talks about +just totally clicks; because I'm not an IT person, but I live +12–14 hours per day around it, we're an Internet operation pretty +much, we're on commercial radio as well and XM, but I live it and I've +experienced what he's talking about and all the points he makes ties +right in to what I'm just organically seeing as a lay person here, but I +was bringing up some intriguing stuff to him during the break.

+ +

We have the articles we had the Time-Warner executives send us the +internal documents after we surmised it, an example of these trojan +horses. The TiVo systems, the Time-Warner cable systems and others.

+ +

When they censored the Jesse Ventura TV show, it aired once, congress +went crazy on the FEMA camps, ordered them not to air it again, that +later came out in congress, it was a big scandal, suddenly off of DVRs +nationwide, cable systems you name it, it disappeared. We confirmed it +through one Time-Warner office that they were ordered to put the command +in. They'd never seen that before.

+ +

But the point is, you pay for cable, you have a DVR, you record on it +and then they go in and erase. And I know you want to see the proof of +that, we'll get it to you, Doctor, but if true, what do you make of +that?

+
+ +
Richard Stallman
+ +
It's just another example of how nonfree software is a restriction +on the users, and it's an injustice. So if you look around at any +nonfree software you've heard of, you know, various products that have +nonfree software in them, every one of them should not be that way.
+ +
AJ
+ +
Yeah, it's very very sad that this is all going on, we're paying for +our own prison. In just 3 or 4 minutes, because I know you've got to +go, Doctor, what are some other solutions or things we can start doing +to weaken the power of the corporate borg?
+ +
RS
+ +
+

Well, all across the various areas of life we can see corporations +taking control of our government and using that power to hurt most +people. Of course, there's the financial crisis, and all the Americans +are facing foreclosures. A lot of these foreclosures are fraudulent, +the banks are committing fraud when they foreclose, and right now we're +pushing Obama not to let them off the hook, which is what he wants them +to do. There are a few states where the Attorneys-General are trying to +pursue the banksters for their fraudulent foreclosures, and there are +protests run by Move On, today, I'm going to go to one of them this +afternoon, but that's just one example.

+ +

Of course, the banks created the downturn by purchasing deregulation +in Congress. And then if we look at, for instance, agribusiness which +has basically crushed family farming in the US and now gets tremendous +subsidies to these corporations, subsidies which were originally meant +to help family farmers, and that made sense. But nowadays, it's just +subsidies to big business. And then you look at the private prison +industry, which is a great reason […]

+ +

They use the prisoners, they have the prisoners work, but it's the +company that gets the money. The prisoner gets paid like 50 cents a +day, which is even better for them than hiring somebody in Mexico or +China. And so, that's a reason to imprison more Americans because +they're effectively slave labor.

+ +

And then we will get the oil companies, and they push for burning up +our planet. You may have followed the fight to block the Keystone XL +planet roaster pipeline, and that's not dead either.

+ +

So what is it these things have in common? What they have is, +corporations have power so we need to clean up politics. We need to get +corporate money out of politics.

+ +

And I got a book yesterday, let me read the exact title, it's +“Corporations Are Not People” by Jeffrey Clements, and this +proposes a constitutional amendment to say “no, when the +constitution gives rights to people or persons it's not talking about +corporations.”

+
+ +
AJ
+ +
+

Well, the power to give corporations rights so they can then stomp on +our rights, it's very very frightening, and for those who don't know, +you couldn't even have corporations in this country the way they are +until about the last 130 years or so, before that they had limited +duration to build a bridge or to do some type of program. And I +understand a little company having a corporation so you can have +different people involved together, but the idea of giving it more +rights than the humans, and then having these crooks that run it.

+ +

I mean, take Mitt Romney: he's got most his money in the Cayman +Islands, and he's running around lecturing everybody, and he's paying +almost no taxes.

+
+ +
RS
+ +
Well, he said that corporations are people and someone pointed out +that if that's true, then he's a serial killer.
+ +
AJ
+ +
Ha-ha, yeah I saw that!
+ +
RS
+ +
+

I don't want to abolish corporations either, but we must abolish the +political power of business. In this country, it's taken for granted +that powerful business has a veto over everything. And that means it's +taken for granted that we've lost our democracy. No one should think +about that without feeling disgusted and saying this must be +changed.

+ +

Get that book, because he explains how it's not an accident that the +Supreme Court gave corporations unlimited power to pay for political +ads. It's the culmination of a 40-year or 35-year perhaps campaign for +giving human rights to corporations.

+
+ +
AJ
+ +
It is very very dangerous, and now those corporations are destroying +our sovereignty, our local control. Dr. Stallman, thank you so +much for spending time with us and again give us your website and any +other websites you think are important for people to look at.
+ +
RS
+ +
For free software, look at the Free Software Foundation site, that +is http://fsf.org, and you can join, if you +wish. For my other political causes, look at http://stallman.org. And if you want to +join our fight against digital handcuffs (DRM), go to http://defectivebydesign.org. +And for the danger of eBooks and how they take away our freedom, look at + +http://stallman.org/articles/ebooks.pdf.
+ +
AJ
+ +
Alright, doc, thanks for the time, but in the final statement, just +reiterating you think it's really exciting that there's such an +awakening to the power grabbing of the copyright industry and the fact +that Hollywood and others just think they control the known Universe, +and this has certainly gotten their attention, what do you expect them +to do now? How will…
+ +
RS
+ +
+

They'll find another way. You see, whether we defeat SOPA or not, +even if we defeat it, it'll be clear that we defeated it because the +measures they wanted to take were going to cause tremendous damage to +everything around them. But if they propose something else that'll give +them more power, but won't hurt other companies, they might still get +away with it.

+ +

So what that means is we still have a long way to go in building up +our opposition to the point where we can start to undo some of the +injustices they have already put into copyright law.

+
+ +
AJ
+ +
So it was just so ham-fisted and so brazen bull in a china cabinet, +they were unable to get it, but they will come back. And it does show, +I mean, remember five years ago, when McCain said “let's pass a +bill where no judge, no jury, no proof we just kill your computer if we +think you did something copyright,” I mean, this is overthrowing +our entire Magna Charta, our entire constitution. I mean, it's +tyrannical on it's face, Doc.
+ +
RS
+ +
Absolutely. But that's what big business is like. Big business +just wants power and has no respect for anything.
+ +
AJ
+ +
Wow. Well, I look forward to speaking with you again, thank you so +much, Doctor.
+ +
RS
+ +
Happy hacking! Thanks for giving me the chance.
+ +
AJ
+ +
Yeah, thanks for being with us.
+ +
+ +
+

Footnote

+
    +
  1. [2019] We call it the Swindle +because it's designed to swindle readers out of the traditional +freedoms of readers of books.
    2. +
+ + + + + + + -- cgit v1.2.3