4 ms·

I want to agree with you, but I worry about the long term effect of this. If we don't fight the laws and just use technology to prevent enforcement, they are go

I want to agree with you, but I worry about the long term effect of this. If we don't fight the laws and just use technology to prevent enforcement, they are going to continue to push for more and more draconian laws to enforce their copyright... they will point to these technological bypasses and say "they are breaking the law! We must stop them"... and if the tech can't be stopped without outlawing general purpose computing, they might outlaw general purpose computing before they admit defeat. Yes, develop technology that is censorship resistant, but we ALSO need to fight for more sane copyright rules.

matheusmoreira 6y ago
You're absolutely right. I always support any effort to fight these laws. I just don't think they're likely to succeed. > we ALSO need to fight for more sane copyright rules I don't think there will ever be "sane" copyright rules. Copyright itself is insane. It was sane before computers existed. Back then you had to be a major industry player in order to infringe copyright at scale. You had to own things like printing presses. Now copying data is trivial. All software has access to a memcpy function. All you need to do to copy files is hold down Ctrl + V until your hard drive is completely filled with copies. It's trivial to send these copies to anyone over the internet or sneakernet. Copyright is insane and utterly incompatible with the era of information and computers. I hope it's abolished within my lifetime. > and if the tech can't be stopped without outlawing general purpose computing, they might outlaw general purpose computing before they admit defeat This is a given in my opinion. The copyright battle is really a battle for computing freedom. It's our computers, if we want to copy data it's our choice and nobody cares about some made up copyright monopoly. The computer obeys us. The only way they can possibly enforce copyright is by making it so computers obey them instead. This will destroy free software and free computing as we know it today. I'd rather the entire copyright industry goes bankrupt than lose that. It's not just copyright either. Governments the world over have an obvious interest in controlling computers because of cryptography. It used to be a military tool and because of computers it became democratized, widely available and used by every citizen. Cryptography can defeat governments, militaries, judges... It's subversive technology. They think it's too powerful for mere citizens to have access to.
- alexvoda 6y ago
  I completely agree with you. However, on the point of copyrights opposition of free software, even though I agree with you, you will find the most surprising of people disagreeing. I, holding the opinion that all copyright is obsolete, once foolishly tried to debate RMS at a conference. For some free software advocates, copyright is essential to the existence of copyleft and copyleft is essential for free software.
  - matheusmoreira 6y ago
    It's not surprising that Stallman disagrees. He depends on copyright. The entire free software movement he started depends on copyright. The GPL depends on copyright. Like all copyrighted works, free software suffers from the exact same infringement problems. People violate licenses every day. Nobody is gonna go to court over it. The best people can hope for is for some organization dedicated to GPL enforcement to do it for them. Resources are scarce so they're only gonna enforce the GPL strategically for important projects and against important violators. I don't agree with Stallman on this subject. He depends on copyright but at the same time condemns the hardware features designed by the copyright industry to enforce copyright. I feel like I can't believe in both at the same time.
    - foerbert 6y ago
      I probably lean more towards your side of things (or even just outright agree with you), though I can see how RMS's position isn't inherently inconsistent. There's a difference between the legal construct of copyright and the technical enforcement measures foisted on buyers or computing hardware. Wanting to rely on the legal construct while avoiding the later strikes me as excessively idealistic... but we're talking about RMS here. It's not exactly analogous, but it seems somewhat similar to supporting enforceable stop signs and being against using a camera to do so.
    - jfim 6y ago
      They're not irreconcilable positions though. One can support authors having rights over the distribution of their works, while believing at the same time that the different DRM technologies are an overreach.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

You're absolutely right. I always support any effort to fight these laws. I just don't think they're likely to succeed. > we ALSO need to fight for more sane copyright rules I don't think there will ever be "sane" copyright rules. Copyright itself is insane. It was sane before computers existed. Back then you had to be a major industry player in order to infringe copyright at scale. You had to own things like printing presses. Now copying data is trivial. All software has access to a memcpy function. All you need to do to copy files is hold down Ctrl + V until your hard drive is completely filled with copies. It's trivial to send these copies to anyone over the internet or sneakernet. Copyright is insane and utterly incompatible with the era of information and computers. I hope it's abolished within my lifetime. > and if the tech can't be stopped without outlawing general purpose computing, they might outlaw general purpose computing before they admit defeat This is a given in my opinion. The copyright battle is really a battle for computing freedom. It's our computers, if we want to copy data it's our choice and nobody cares about some made up copyright monopoly. The computer obeys us. The only way they can possibly enforce copyright is by making it so computers obey them instead. This will destroy free software and free computing as we know it today. I'd rather the entire copyright industry goes bankrupt than lose that. It's not just copyright either. Governments the world over have an obvious interest in controlling computers because of cryptography. It used to be a military tool and because of computers it became democratized, widely available and used by every citizen. Cryptography can defeat governments, militaries, judges... It's subversive technology. They think it's too powerful for mere citizens to have access to.

alexvoda 6y ago
I completely agree with you. However, on the point of copyrights opposition of free software, even though I agree with you, you will find the most surprising of people disagreeing. I, holding the opinion that all copyright is obsolete, once foolishly tried to debate RMS at a conference. For some free software advocates, copyright is essential to the existence of copyleft and copyleft is essential for free software.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  It's not surprising that Stallman disagrees. He depends on copyright. The entire free software movement he started depends on copyright. The GPL depends on copyright. Like all copyrighted works, free software suffers from the exact same infringement problems. People violate licenses every day. Nobody is gonna go to court over it. The best people can hope for is for some organization dedicated to GPL enforcement to do it for them. Resources are scarce so they're only gonna enforce the GPL strategically for important projects and against important violators. I don't agree with Stallman on this subject. He depends on copyright but at the same time condemns the hardware features designed by the copyright industry to enforce copyright. I feel like I can't believe in both at the same time.
  - foerbert 6y ago
    I probably lean more towards your side of things (or even just outright agree with you), though I can see how RMS's position isn't inherently inconsistent. There's a difference between the legal construct of copyright and the technical enforcement measures foisted on buyers or computing hardware. Wanting to rely on the legal construct while avoiding the later strikes me as excessively idealistic... but we're talking about RMS here. It's not exactly analogous, but it seems somewhat similar to supporting enforceable stop signs and being against using a camera to do so.
  - jfim 6y ago
    They're not irreconcilable positions though. One can support authors having rights over the distribution of their works, while believing at the same time that the different DRM technologies are an overreach.