18 ms·
The Right to Read (1997)
- quickben 9y agoFunny, as time goes on, that story is gaining in popularity and relevance. Went straight from SF to Contemporary in a decade.
- mod 9y agoFWIW it's 20 years old now
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- 13of40 9y agoNext let's talk about the right to live on a piece of land without paying someone else for the privilege.
- sangnoir 9y agoStep 1. Get the biggest, baddest gun Step 2. Plant a flag[0] Step 3. Declare the land now belongs to you and a descendants. 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTduy7Qkvk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTduy7Qkvk8
- branchless 9y agoLove this: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COQgS0MUcAA7-RK.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COQgS0MUcAA7-RK.png
- cousin_it 9y agoI have a lot of sympathy for that argument, but what if the land was bought, not inherited?
- branchless 9y agoRecently? They can be compensated, up to a point. We can change this mess.
- cousin_it 9y agoThe difficulty of transition seems to be one of the main reasons why Georgism rarely gets implemented in practice. It's having a bit of internet revival lately though, I hope more people become aware of it.
- branchless 9y agoAgreed. One day owning land in perpetuity will be seen in the same way as owning a slave. It's an absurd context, you own a wedge of the earth because your great-granddad took it.
- ue_ 9y agoI very much agree, I think that the concept of property, the concept of possession, and the abolishment of the former should be discussed more, though it's strange that it's often taken for a given in political discussions, despite the work of Proudhon (What is Property?) and further by Bakunin, Kropotkin and Marx (who was very much in admiration of and inspired by Proudhon's book). If anyone is interested in reading the book, which I can only describe as captivating and cutting, you can read it here: https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/proudhon/property/ https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/proudho... Thank you for mentioning this, I hope more people become interested in the idea.
- duncan_bayne 9y agoSo do I - I hope they study the history of countries that were the victims of Marxist revolutions, and come to recognise it for the monstrous evil that it is. Communists killed an order of magnitude more people than the Fascists did. The Khmer Rouge killed around a quarter of their entire population. As well as Marx, interested people should read Mises as well, and decide for themselves which approach is the moral one: https://mises.org/library/liberalism-classical-tradition https://mises.org/library/liberalism-classical-tradition
- ue_ 9y agoThey should also study the history of Communist thinkers during these regimes. I mentioned in another comment a while ago: >Socialist critics [during the time of the USSR and others] include George Orwell (known for his criticism of totalitarian Socialism in Animal Farm), economist I.I Rubin, the anarchists which the USSR suppressed, Luxemburg, Bordiga, Bookchin, and later on Hobsbawm, Trotsky (to some extent), Sylvia Pankhurt (and various other feminists) etc. Furthermore, Communism does not necessarily entail Marxism-Leninism or even Marxism. Do you not think it should be the responsibility of modern day Marxists to find problems with previous attempted implementations, and find ways to fix those problems? Marxism is after all a method of analysis, and can be recursively applied to itself. Mises is an interesting choice for a 'moral' theory, given the theory of primitive accumulation, property acquired through barbarism, and the exploitative and environmentally damaging nature of capitalism itself, regardless of application. Marx's theory does not rely upon notions of morality, though - it posits merely what is in the interest of the workers themselves. This is why Marx and Engels hoped to advance a scientific theory of Socialism. Edit: it's also rather comical that the term 'libertarian' was transformed to be about some narrow form of property ownership rather than freedom itself, ironically not realising the tyranny of property and its contrast with the ideas of equality, freedom and justice (Proudhon talks about this in the link in my previous comment). Bookchin and Chomsky have talked about this change, too.
- wolfgke 9y agoRelevant: Nick Middleton - An Atlas of Countries That Don't Exist: A Compendium of Fifty Unrecognized and Largely Unnoticed States
- teddyh 9y agoNo. You are advocating for a communist/anarchist idea, which has no relevance to this topic.
- tanderson92 9y agoMany of the people discussing it do think it is directly relevant, myself included. Consider downvoting and moving along if you find it off-topic? And by the way, communism isn't exactly a word you have to be afraid of, and accusing someone of opposing capitalism doesn't shut down the conversation nor mean they are incorrect.
- teddyh 9y agoIt was not my intention to use “communist/anarchist” as something people ought to be afraid of; it is merely completely irrelevant to this issue. I doubt that Stallman himself would consider them relevant since he, in my experience, takes every opportunity to disassociate himself from communism and anarchism; he is instead concerned with copyright, software patents, and other impediments to scientific progress. Therefore, to try to drag those former kinds of ideas into a thread specifically about the latter is to deliberately cause inflammatory and irrelevant discussion, and also to cause opponents of these former ideologies to connect the two in their minds, creating FUD about the latter.
- tanderson92 9y agoWhy must the bounds of our discourse be drawn by the interests of the author of a piece? I don't see any reason to do that and it certainly isn't the determinant of what is 'relevant'
- teddyh 9y agoUltimately, of course, the decision falls to the moderators. In the mean time, however, we are all of us allowed to express our opinions on what is relevant and what is not.
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- gech 9y agoAs a conservative, your story does not obligate me to ensure other's right to read
- H4CK3RM4N 9y agoAre you honestly not concerned in the slightest about a future in which people have to go into debt in order to read textbooks?
- tanderson92 9y agoThey have freedom! They have "access" to books and reading in that they can pay for it if they can afford to do so. Not reading, whether due to disinterest or lack of financies, is simply a life choice. Hm, It sounds similar to a contemporary debate, I just can't place it... /s
- perfmode 9y agoNo one ever remained illiterate because they didn't have access to books! /s
- supremesaboteur 9y agoYeah, we should have "free" books. Government should produce and distribute books. It saves us the time and effort from having to think for ourselves too!
- tanderson92 9y agoAre you opposed to the public school system and public libraries in general, or just for the purposes of this joke?
- supremesaboteur 9y agoI don't like the idea of any government controlling how I think. Also I feel that governments are not very good at their jobs. If those problems can be addressed I am OK with the policies you put forward. But my main problem was you caricaturing an entire political spectrum of opinions to make a point
- mjw1007 9y agoI forgot that « sell personal interest profiles to retailers » line was there. As a futurologist he's not bad at all.
- hkmurakami 9y agoA friend put it succinctly: "Stallman is crazy, but he is not wrong."
- moxious 9y agoStallman as the Walter Sobchak of the Internet?
- zeamaize 9y agoRalph Nader is crazy and wrong.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- forinti 9y agoI think this is unfair. Stallman is seen this way, I think, because of his appearance. If he cut his hair and wore a suit, he would be the Ralph Nader of software. If you watch his interviews, he is very calm, precise, and careful to explain his ideas. Maybe I'm radical, but he seems a very reasonable person to me.
- vinceguidry 9y agoI think that, on the whole, his eccentricity and out-there image has helped his cause and not hurt it. He's far more instantly-relatable to both geeks and normal people, whereas someone like Bruce Schneier really only relates to geeks.
- qntty 9y agoOn the one hand, sometimes I think that Stallman's predictions of where technology is going aren't so novel because they're just a special case of where capitalism always goes. On the other hand, I remember reading someone who said that one property of brilliant ideas is that when other people hear them, they think "well I could have thought of that."
- candiodari 9y ago> where capitalism always goes. Unfortunately that's just another way of saying "what people want". Even more than just want, because it's not like world peace, where people want it, they just don't want to pay for it. This, they're looking to pay for (perhaps not the product itself, but the other qualities of the product that get made in order to promote their DRMed format they certainly want, and authors want the DRM. Yes, authors. Not just publishers) But people want to pay for these products that only get made if DRM protections are made for them. And I wonder if you can kill one without the other.
- rexpop 9y agoNooo, noo, markets claim to offer information about what people want but the way they are laid out right now, with all the manufactured consent peppering choices, it's not really fair to claim that capitalism reflects "what people want" in the industrialized world, today.
- edanm 9y agoErrrr, why? I mean, I don't think markets literally tell us what everybody wants in that there are plenty of coordination problems, ridge cases, etc. But on the whole I think markets do a great job and, more importantly, I don't know of a better mechanism.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThe basic mechanism of market economy does in fact an excellent job of figuring out what people want at the very moment, and how much they want it relative to each other. The important thing is, this mechanism does not exist in vacuum. It doesn't really distinguish between sources of "wants", i.e. whether a consumer wants something because that is their genuine need, or because it's a manufactured marketing-based need, or whether they're forced by circumstances into choosing this particular product (e.g. lack of choice). I think we should both appreciate the effectiveness of this system and also talk about its failure modes when employed in the wider context of human society.
- the_greyd 9y agoHere's another good one about self driving cars and the right to modify its code - "Car Wars" by Cory Doctorow : http://this.deakin.edu.au/culture/car-wars http://this.deakin.edu.au/culture/car-wars
- userbinator 9y agoWhenever Cory Doctorow is mentioned in this context I feel obligated to post these articles of his: http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html
- merpnderp 9y agoGiven the nearly hundred million people murdered by their own communist governments, people would be wise to be afraid of that word.
- GavinMcG 9y agoThe idea that atrocity is aligned with ideology, rather than orthogonal to it, needs significant defense before being trotted out like that.
- wrycoder 9y agoBut it seems to work out that way, doesn't it. It's not a matter of logic, but of human experience.
- GavinMcG 9y agoNo, not really. Genghis Khan killed more people than Stalin did, for example. Famines in British India did as well. The conquest of America by Europe exterminated millions of native Americans. As our population grows, we have more opportunities to kill massive numbers of people. And at various times throughout history, atrocity has been directed both inwards and outwards. The fact that you learned about more recent upheavals in school, or even lived through them, doesn't make them definitive.
- wrycoder 9y agoCommon definitions of atrocity associate it with intention. That leaves Genghis Khan, another totalitarian.
- GavinMcG 9y agoAhh, but now we're talking about totalitarianism. That probably is better supported, historically, than what had been posited. (Also, I'd argue, totalitarianism is largely orthogonal to political organization.) In terms of data points for drawing these sorts of conclusions, our history as a species isn't all that long.
- BlindWanderer 9y agoI remember reading this in the 90's and thinking it was yet another piece of dystopian speculative science fiction. Once or twice a decade I reread it to refresh my memory or when I cite it. Each time I'm struck by how it's gotten closer and closer to truth; and yet the story has not changed.
- Arizhel 9y agoYou should try watching "The Running Man" from 1987, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. At the time, it was a somewhat silly dystopian movie, extremely loosely based on some Stephen King story, with a really unique cast including Jesse Ventura, Mick Fleetwood, Dweezil Zappa, and Richard Dawson from "Family Feud". Now, 30 years later, it seems remarkably prescient.
- jstewartmobile 9y agoThis thing reads like FSF for kindergarteners. Stallman would make more headway with his politics if he had a little less contempt for his audience.
- skrebbel 9y agoI think you're reading too much into it. He's just not a very good novelist.
- thomastjeffery 9y agoHow is it contemptible to describe a problem as simply and comprehensibly as possible? You would learn more if you had a little less contempt for good writing.
- MarkMc 9y agoShallow Response: Why couldn't Dan just create a new user account for Lissa? It would allow her to use his computer without giving her access to his books. Deeper Response: I'm not really convinced by Richard Stallman's argument here. When a movie studio sells Blu-ray discs, the studio can place restrictions on how you use that disc: the studio will charge you much more to play the movie in a cinema than at home. This is a good thing because it allows the studio to receive an income much closer to the total value that people receive from watching the movie. If the the studio was unable to place restrictions on how people watch the movie, maybe the movie would not get made in the first place and everyone loses. Books are in the same category. If the writer can sell you the right to read a book but not to share it with other people then the writer will receive a larger income in total. Without that larger income the book may not get written at all.
- gkya 9y agoIf I buy a book it is MINE. Or, more broadly, when I buy something, I insist on it being mine. And once a thing is legally mine, I don't want any interference whatsoever from anybody in how I use it or whom I give it to or share it with. If I buy a Blu-Ray disc, the magnetic dents physically present in the matter that represent the ones and zeroes that make up the sights on my abyss belong to me. If a movie company want to restrict the use of their magnetic dents they better screen at theatres only as when I have the magnetic dents, I have the moral rights and the technology to reproduce and redistribute them. Also, in this day and age, disc sales probably mostly benefit disc sellers, and the best idea is to put your movie on YouTube/Vimeo/sth. after theatrical releases. Spinning disx with magnetic dents are by now primitive, and their use is to limit the consumption and sell peripherals. WRT books, I'm among those who prefer dead tree, because that's part of how I work, and I believe digital can't replace print books, but that does not mean no innovation is possible: Printing-press-on-demand should be introduced where I can order a printed copy of a book and then the seller prints one from a digital copy and sends me that. If book shops want to continue, they can just bulk-order print copies and put them on their shelves. Lots of money goes to intermediaries in book business and if you're not a world-wide best-seller, as an author you don't earn much if anything at all. And you're worse off if you want to be like Kafka or Calvino instead of J. K. Rowling.
- dandare 9y agoI am perplexed: is the author against DRM itself or only against the ways it is being misused? Should everyone have the right to read Harry Potter without paying Rowling a dime? Because overpriced textbooks is a problem of US' universities, not of the fact that you should not use someone else's work for free.
- dandelion_lover 9y agoThe author is Richard Stallman [0]. Yes, he is against DRM itself. Consider this FAQ: https://defectivebydesign.org/faq https://defectivebydesign.org/faq [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
- jordigh 9y agoThere is a false dichotomy. It's not either DRM or poverty. The only way to make sure Rowling gets paid isn't to DRM e-books. In fact, I'd venture that the vast majority of her fortune isn't due to DRM.
- thomastjeffery 9y agoThe issue at hand is not one-sided. The side most often heard is the side in favor of copyright and DRM. This is a cautionary tale. Not only does it eloquently explain the potential problems with copyright enforcement, it poignantly predicted the ones that exist today.
- Arizhel 9y ago>Should everyone have the right to read Harry Potter without paying Rowling a dime? If they get a library card at their local library, they can do just that. Are you in favor of banning libraries?