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 <title>The Right to Read
 - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
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 <div class="article">
 <h2 class="center">The Right to Read</h2>
 
 <address class="byline center">
 by <a href="https://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a></address>
 
 <p class="infobox c">
 	     From <cite>The Road To Tycho</cite>, a collection of
 	     articles about the antecedents of the Lunarian
 	     Revolution, published in Luna City in 2096.
 </p>
 <hr class="thin" />
 
 <div class="columns">
 <p>
 For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college&mdash;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.</p>
 
 <p>
 This put Dan in a dilemma.  He had to help her&mdash;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&mdash;something that only pirates would do.</p>
 
 <p>
 And there wasn't much chance that the SPA&mdash;the Software
 Protection Authority&mdash;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&mdash;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>
 </div>
 <div class="column-limit"></div>
 
 <div class="columns">
 <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&mdash;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>
 </div>
 <div class="column-limit"></div>
 
 <div class="columns">
 <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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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>
 </div>
 <div class="column-limit"></div>
 
 <div class="columns">
 <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.</p>
 </div>
 
 <div class="announcement reduced-width comment" role="complementary">
 <hr class="no-display" />
 <p><a href="https://www.defectivebydesign.org/ebooks.html">
 Join our mailing list about the dangers of e-books</a>.</p>
 <hr class="no-display" />
 </div>
 
 <div id="AuthorsNote">
 <h3>Author's Notes</h3>
 
 <ul class="no-bullet">
 <li>
 <div class="reduced-width">
 <p>This story is supposedly a historical article that will be written in
 the future by someone else, describing Dan Halbert's youth under a
 repressive society shaped by the unjust forces that use &ldquo;pirate&rdquo; as
 propaganda. So it uses the terminology of that society.
 I have tried to project it forwards into something more visibly
 oppressive. See <a
 href="/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy">&ldquo;Piracy&rdquo;</a>.
 </p>
 </div>
 <div class="column-limit"></div>
 </li>
 
 <li>
 <div class="reduced-width">
 <p>Computer-enforced restrictions on lending or reading books (and other
 kinds of published works) are known as DRM, short for
 &ldquo;Digital Restrictions Management.&rdquo;  To
 eliminate DRM, the Free Software Foundation has
 established the <a href="https://www.defectivebydesign.org/">Defective by
 Design</a> campaign.  We ask for your support.</p>
 
 <p>The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a separate organization not
 related to the Free Software Foundation, also campaigns against
 DRM.</p>
 </div>
 <div class="column-limit"></div>
 </li>
 </ul>
 
 <p class="update">
 The following note has been updated several times since the first
 publication of the story.</p>
 
 <ul class="no-bullet">
 <li>
 <div class="columns">
 <p>
 The battle for the right to read is already being fought.  Although it
 may take 50 years for our past freedoms to fade into obscurity, most
 of the specific repressive laws and practices described above have
 already been proposed; some have been enacted into law in the US and
 elsewhere.  In the US, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act
 (DMCA) gave explicit government backing to the
 computer-enforced restrictions known as DRM, by making the
 distribution of programs that can break DRM a crime.  The European
 Union imposed similar restrictions in a 2001 copyright directive, in a
 form not quite as strong.</p>
 
 <p>
 The US campaigns to impose such rules on the rest of the world through
 so-called &ldquo;free trade&rdquo; treaties.
 <a href="https://stallman.org/business-supremacy-treaties.html">
 Business-supremacy treaties</a> is a more fitting term for them, since
 they are designed to give business dominion over nominally democratic
 states.  The DMCA's policy of criminalizing programs that
 break DRM is one of many unjust policies that these treaties impose
 across a wide range of fields.</p>
 
 <p>
 The US has imposed DMCA requirements on Australia, Panama, Colombia
 and South Korea through bilateral agreements, and on countries such as
 Costa Rica through another treaty, CAFTA.  Obama has escalated the
 campaign with two new proposed treaties, the TPP and the TTIP.  The
 TPP would impose the DMCA, along with many other wrongs, on 12
 countries on the Pacific Ocean.  The TTIP would impose similar
 strictures on Europe.  All these treaties must be defeated, or
 abolished.</p>
 
 <p>
 Even the World Wide Web Consortium has fallen under the shadow of the
 copyright industry; it is on the verge of approving a DRM system as an
 official part of the web specifications.</p>
 </div>
 <div class="column-limit"></div>
 </li>
 
 <li>
 <div class="table">
 <div class="table-cell left">
 <p class="emph-box">
 Nonfree software tends to have <a href="/proprietary/">abusive
 features of many kinds</a>, which lead to the conclusion that
 <a href="/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html">you can
 never trust a nonfree program</a>.  We must insist on free (libre)
 software only, and reject nonfree programs.</p>
 </div>
 
 <p class="table-cell right">
 With Windows Vista, Microsoft admitted it had built in a back door:
 Microsoft can use it to forcibly install software
 &ldquo;upgrades,&rdquo; even if users consider them rather to be
 downgrades.  It can also order all machines running Vista to refuse to
 run a certain device driver.  The main purpose of Vista's clampdown on
 users was to impose DRM that users can't overcome.  Of course, Windows
 10 is no better.</p>
 </div>
 <div class="column-limit"></div>
 </li>
 
 <li>
 <div class="columns">
 <p>
 One of the ideas in the story was not proposed in reality until 2002.
 This is the idea that the 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 gave early versions names such as
 &ldquo;trusted computing&rdquo; and &ldquo;Palladium,&rdquo; but as
 ultimately put into use, it is called &ldquo;secure boot.&rdquo;</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 per own computer.  Microsoft is likely to use that
 control on behalf of the FBI when asked: it
 already <a href="/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html">shows
 the NSA security bugs in Windows</a> to exploit.</p>
 
 <p>
 Secure boot can be implemented in a way that permits the user to
 specify the signature key and decide what software to sign.  In
 practice, PCs designed for Windows 10 carry only Microsoft's key, and
 whether the machine's owner can install any other system (such as
 GNU/Linux) is under Microsoft's control.  We call this <em>restricted
 boot</em>.</p>
 </div>
 <div class="column-limit"></div>
 </li>
 
 <li>
 <div class="columns">
 <p>
 In 1997, when this story was first published, the SPA was
 threatening small Internet service providers, demanding they permit
 the SPA to monitor all users.  Most ISPs surrendered when
 threatened, because they could not afford to fight back in court.  One
 ISP, Community ConneXion in Oakland, California, refused the demand
 and was actually sued.  The SPA later dropped the suit,
 but the DMCA gave it the power it sought.</p>
 
 <p>
 The SPA, which actually stands for Software Publishers
 Association, has been replaced in its police-like role by the Business
 Software Alliance.  The BSA is not, today, an official
 police force; unofficially, it acts like one.  Using methods
 reminiscent of the erstwhile Soviet Union, it invites people to inform
 on their coworkers and friends.  A BSA terror campaign in
 Argentina in 2001 made slightly veiled threats that people sharing
 software would be raped in prison.</p>
 </div>
 <div class="column-limit"></div>
 </li>
 
 <li>
 <div class="reduced-width">
 <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><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 Fourth Amendment: pressure most
 everyone to agree, in advance, to waive their rights under it.</p>
 </div>
 </li>
 </ul>
 <div class="column-limit"></div>
 </div>
 
 <div id="BadNews">
 <h3>Bad News</h3>
 
 <p class="reduced-width">
 The battle for the right to read is going against us so far.
 The enemy is organized, and we are not.
 </p>
 
 <div class="columns">
 <p>Today's commercial
 e-books <a href="/philosophy/the-danger-of-ebooks.html"> abolish
 readers' traditional freedoms</a>.  Amazon's e-book reader product,
 which I call the &ldquo;<a
 href="/philosophy/why-call-it-the-swindle.html">Amazon
 Swindle</a>&rdquo; because it's designed to
 swindle readers out of the traditional freedoms of readers of books,
 is run by software with several
 demonstrated <a href="/proprietary/malware-kindle-swindle.html">Orwellian
 functionalities</a>.  Any one of them calls for rejecting the product
 completely:</p>
 
 <ul class="no-bullet">
 <li><p>It spies on everything the user does: it reports which book the
 user is reading, and which page, and it reports when the user highlights
 text, and any notes the user enters.</p></li>
 
 <li><p>It has DRM, which is intended to block users from
 sharing copies.</p></li>
 
 <li><p>It has a back door with which Amazon can remotely erase any book.
 In 2009, it erased thousands of copies of 1984, by George Orwell.</p></li>
 
 <li><p class="inline-block">In case all that isn't Orwellian enough, there is a universal
 back door with which Amazon can remotely change the software, and
 introduce any other form of nastiness.</p></li>
 </ul>
 
 <p>Amazon's e-book distribution is oppressive, too.  It identifies the
 user and records what books the user obtains.  It also requires users
 to agree to an antisocial contract that they won't share copies with
 others.  My conscience tells me that, if I had agreed to such a
 contract, the lesser evil would be to defy it and share copies anyway;
 however, to be entirely good, I should not agree to it in the first
 place.  Therefore, I refuse to agree to such contracts, whether for
 software, for e-books, for music, or for anything else.</p>
 
 <p class="emph-box">
 If we want to stop the bad news and create some good news, we need
 to organize and fight.  Subscribe to the
 FSF's <a href="https://www.defectivebydesign.org/"> Defective by Design</a>
 campaign to lend a hand.  You
 can <a href="https://www.fsf.org/associate">join the FSF</a> to support
 our work more generally.  There is also a <a href="/help/help.html">list of ways
 to participate in our work</a>.
 </p>
 </div>
 </div>
 <div class="column-limit"></div>
 
 <h3 class="footnote">References</h3>
 
 <ul>
   <li>The administration's &ldquo;White Paper&rdquo;: Information
        Infrastructure Task Force, Intellectual Property [<a
        href="/philosophy/not-ipr.html">sic</a>] and the
        National Information Infrastructure: The Report of the Working
        Group on Intellectual Property [sic] Rights (1995).</li>
 
   <li><a href="https://www.wired.com/1996/01/white-paper/">An
        explanation of the White Paper:
        The Copyright Grab</a>, Pamela Samuelson, <cite>Wired</cite>,
        January 1st, 1996.</li>
 
   <li><a href="https://law.duke.edu/boylesite/sold_out.htm">Sold Out</a>,
        James Boyle, <cite>New York Times</cite>, March 31, 1996.</li>
 
   <li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130508120533/http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199611/msg00012.html">Public Data or Private Data</a>, 
        Dave Farber, <cite>Washington Post</cite>, November 4, 1996.</li>
  
   <li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151113122141/http://public-domain.org/">Union for the Public
        Domain</a>&mdash;an organization which aims to resist and
        reverse the overextension of copyright and patent powers.</li>
 </ul>
 
 <div class="infobox extra" role="complementary">
 <hr />
 <p>This article appeared in the February 1997 issue of <cite>Communications
 of the ACM</cite> (Volume 40, Number 2).</p>
 </div>
 
 <div class="edu-note c"><p id="fsfs">This essay is published in
 <a href="https://shop.fsf.org/product/free-software-free-society/"><cite>Free
 Software, Free Society: The Selected Essays of Richard
 M. Stallman</cite></a>.</p></div>
 </div>
 
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 <p>Copyright &copy; 1996, 2002, 2007, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2021
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 <p class="unprintable">Updated:
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