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With all due respect to him, however, Stallman's position seems contradictory now. At first, when developers sent us information and it was on our computers, S

With all due respect to him, however, Stallman's position seems contradictory now. At first, when developers sent us information and it was on our computers, Stallman said that we should be able to use this information in any way we chose, since it was our freedom to use our property that was at stake. I agree with this. Now, however, when we send information to the developers, it seems that Stallman has switched sides, and doesn't believe that that recipient or holder of the information should be free to do as they will with it. In light of this, maybe it was never freedom to use information we had that was important to Stallman, but something else that coincided.

stcredzero 18y ago
Yes, but me sending you my friend network graph and SSN versus, you sending me the source code of a GPL'ed app -- these are not symmetrical! Also, in Stallman's world, if you don't want to share your source, you're free to keep it to yourself. Likewise, he urges users to keep their information to themselves.
- randallsquared 18y ago
  If you specify a non-GPL'ed app, they seem symmetrical to me; they're both information that the sender may have put a value on the recipient not distributing. In both cases, the sender is welcome to not send it, and to not receive the benefit of doing so. But in both cases, once the recipient has the information, it should be theirs to do with as they wish (absent specific contract). Given that you have to give your SSN for all kinds of miscellaneous stuff where you don't particularly trust the recipient, these days (credit apps, etc), I don't think anyone has the illusion that their SSN is private, do they? Still? Privacy is effectively dead, and the only substitute we have is secrecy, which can be destroyed by any party to the secret. This is the world we live in, now, and I can't see any way to reverse course, no matter what the law says.
  - stcredzero 18y ago
    If you specify a non-GPL'ed app, they seem symmetrical to me Yes, but remember, I'm talking about the situation in Stallman's world. No one would use non-open software, and no one would send their personal information. As far as privacy being dead, "dead" is a misleading term here. Privacy is a concept, and as such has no vital signs. It can be alive again as easily as a comic book character. The transition from the time before universal suffrage is just as big as the change from the current situation to privacy as a right. If you ask ordinary people about these topics, you'll find that many, if not most people out there have some sort of expectation about privacy. I think that these are rights waiting to be discovered. Just as my downloading a GPL'ed app or marking the checkbox under the Terms of Service means I agree to a specific contract, I think that there should be certain implicit contract going the other direction. Just as no one should be able to, say, sell kitchen utensils that blow up and kill people. The SSN as a secret is in trouble. However, there are more robust protocols than the secret number.
    - randallsquared 18y ago
      No one would use non-open software, and no one would send their personal information. In that case, both my blathering and Stallman's would be irrelevant, on this subject. I think that universal suffrage is not in the same category as privacy, because nothing about technological advance really dictated it. Privacy and copyright are more like slavery (not making a moral statement here!), in that after certain technological advances, it's just not possible to sustain them and continue competing economically. That's what I mean when I say that privacy is dead: without some unforeseen technological problem (or solution, if you're so inclined) that makes it possible to control other people's computers with your software against their will, it's only a matter of time until societal mores catch up and recognize the de facto situation.
      - stcredzero 18y ago
        without some unforeseen technological problem (or solution, if you're so inclined) that makes it possible to control other people's computers with your software against their will Actually, what you're talking about is Digital Rights Management. IF DRM worked, it could be used in the other direction, and your private information could be distributed in the form of software agents. Big if here, granted. However, I suspect that something like Vernor Vinge's "Trusted Computing Environment" will eventually exist. It's too useful not to. There is another mechanism that already can "control other people's computers with your software against their will" using legal means. Namely the GPL. Something like the GPL combined with simple protocols can protect private information, say, like a number. Using one-time proxy-numbers, I can already shop with my credit card, but without revealing my account number. Craigslist also has a similar mechanism to protect emails. If this were built into email clients, then it would be easy for users to register, and always know exactly who sold their email address to spammers. Better yet, why not build registration protocols into browsers in the same way RSS reading and SSL session key negotiation is? This sort of thing will not completely prevent the aggregation and inference of private data. But combine these mechanisms with legal protections of privacy, and it will make it very hard for corporations to use the data they aggregate illegally. only a matter of time until societal mores catch up and recognize the de facto situation There was a time when the US was very cavalier about copyright, and we just up and published our own editions of books without paying royalties. Societal mores were fine with this. (Dickens had to go on tour and do readings of _A Christmas Carol_ to make money from it in the US!) Somehow, the situation shifted the other direction in this case.

stcredzero 18y ago

Yes, but me sending you my friend network graph and SSN versus, you sending me the source code of a GPL'ed app -- these are not symmetrical! Also, in Stallman's world, if you don't want to share your source, you're free to keep it to yourself. Likewise, he urges users to keep their information to themselves.

randallsquared 18y ago
If you specify a non-GPL'ed app, they seem symmetrical to me; they're both information that the sender may have put a value on the recipient not distributing. In both cases, the sender is welcome to not send it, and to not receive the benefit of doing so. But in both cases, once the recipient has the information, it should be theirs to do with as they wish (absent specific contract). Given that you have to give your SSN for all kinds of miscellaneous stuff where you don't particularly trust the recipient, these days (credit apps, etc), I don't think anyone has the illusion that their SSN is private, do they? Still? Privacy is effectively dead, and the only substitute we have is secrecy, which can be destroyed by any party to the secret. This is the world we live in, now, and I can't see any way to reverse course, no matter what the law says.
- stcredzero 18y ago
  If you specify a non-GPL'ed app, they seem symmetrical to me Yes, but remember, I'm talking about the situation in Stallman's world. No one would use non-open software, and no one would send their personal information. As far as privacy being dead, "dead" is a misleading term here. Privacy is a concept, and as such has no vital signs. It can be alive again as easily as a comic book character. The transition from the time before universal suffrage is just as big as the change from the current situation to privacy as a right. If you ask ordinary people about these topics, you'll find that many, if not most people out there have some sort of expectation about privacy. I think that these are rights waiting to be discovered. Just as my downloading a GPL'ed app or marking the checkbox under the Terms of Service means I agree to a specific contract, I think that there should be certain implicit contract going the other direction. Just as no one should be able to, say, sell kitchen utensils that blow up and kill people. The SSN as a secret is in trouble. However, there are more robust protocols than the secret number.
  - randallsquared 18y ago
    No one would use non-open software, and no one would send their personal information. In that case, both my blathering and Stallman's would be irrelevant, on this subject. I think that universal suffrage is not in the same category as privacy, because nothing about technological advance really dictated it. Privacy and copyright are more like slavery (not making a moral statement here!), in that after certain technological advances, it's just not possible to sustain them and continue competing economically. That's what I mean when I say that privacy is dead: without some unforeseen technological problem (or solution, if you're so inclined) that makes it possible to control other people's computers with your software against their will, it's only a matter of time until societal mores catch up and recognize the de facto situation.
    - stcredzero 18y ago
      without some unforeseen technological problem (or solution, if you're so inclined) that makes it possible to control other people's computers with your software against their will Actually, what you're talking about is Digital Rights Management. IF DRM worked, it could be used in the other direction, and your private information could be distributed in the form of software agents. Big if here, granted. However, I suspect that something like Vernor Vinge's "Trusted Computing Environment" will eventually exist. It's too useful not to. There is another mechanism that already can "control other people's computers with your software against their will" using legal means. Namely the GPL. Something like the GPL combined with simple protocols can protect private information, say, like a number. Using one-time proxy-numbers, I can already shop with my credit card, but without revealing my account number. Craigslist also has a similar mechanism to protect emails. If this were built into email clients, then it would be easy for users to register, and always know exactly who sold their email address to spammers. Better yet, why not build registration protocols into browsers in the same way RSS reading and SSL session key negotiation is? This sort of thing will not completely prevent the aggregation and inference of private data. But combine these mechanisms with legal protections of privacy, and it will make it very hard for corporations to use the data they aggregate illegally. only a matter of time until societal mores catch up and recognize the de facto situation There was a time when the US was very cavalier about copyright, and we just up and published our own editions of books without paying royalties. Societal mores were fine with this. (Dickens had to go on tour and do readings of _A Christmas Carol_ to make money from it in the US!) Somehow, the situation shifted the other direction in this case.