As this thread progresses, I'm certain we'll find that a lot of people whine about and take cheap shots at RMS. Coincidentally, these are typically people who haven't accomplished anything useful in their entire lives except post witty one-liners and flames of others here on Slashdot. RMS' legacy is the GPL and a fast-growing freedom movement, mine is having Excellent Karma on a News for Nerds site.
RMS actually tries to protect our freedoms, which is more than I can say for 99% of us, including myself. We mostly seem to care about what's the best DRM or how easily we can adapt to the corporations' new demands on us. We act like a slave nation. I remember reading a book about slavery in the Old South, and the amazing thing was that many slaves believed that slavery was ethical because they had been taught that they were an inferior people, and that the white overlords were justified in beating wayward slaves because it was their plantations and their profitability that would suffer from lazy slaves. The masters managed to get the slaves to see it from their perspective, and in the process, to forget the reality that was their own perspective. We are the same. This is fast becoming our way of thinking. We're not looking out to protect ourselves, but to be "fair" to the companies we have to deal with. The RIAA cries about lost sales. Software companies cry about free alternatives or piracy. Pretty much everyone cries about people making products similar to what they've already released, even though their design was just common sense. And we hear their cries, and often feel bad for the poor Multinationals whose sales are down 7%, leaving them with a meagre profit of about 5 billion dollars (after hiding some with crooked accounting, of course). Needless to say, the companies don't have this self-doubt and ethical dilemma. If they can get us to cave in and start down that "slippery slope of compromise" at all, they can continually and slowly take our consumer rights from us. Look at fair use, already on its deathbed. Timeshifting, which will soon be legislated to death. Copying, sharing, tinkering; all dying. Public domain vs. copyright.There's even crazy talk about the US outlawing free software. The balances are shifting hard and fast in favor of the corporations and against consumer rights. We the people generally have no ethical problem with proprietary software, spyware, or restrictions on our freedom as long as it is inobtrusive. Because we have bought the line that we don't OWN anything. We're only LICENSING our possessions AT THE SAME PRICE AS WE USED TO BUY THEM FOR. Pretty soon, we'll only be able to license our computer hardware. Since we won't own it, we will have NO legal right to privacy on it. And you know what? Give us a better media player or smoother GUI and we'll line up for it like lemmings.
We tend to begin from the assumption that the corporations are right and ethical in their thinking. They spend massive advertising dollars to promote their claim that they occupy the moral high ground. This is often incorrect. We should always begin by doubting every position, but especially the status quo. I got a chance to talk to a few fairly famous musicians at Juno afterparties a few years ago, and yes, they were all thankful that the record companies supported them, but at the same time agreed that they were taking too big of a cut, had too much artistic control, and that the RIAA-type organizations were all crooked and greedy as hell. Some of the artists WANTED to put free songs online to get their names out or to reward faithful fans, but they were forbidden by their corporate masters. They aren't even allowed to play guitar and sing around a campfire without the Company's permission. So whose ethical viewpoint should we be listening to -- the artists themselves, or the middleman who packages the artists music? In a digital age, why are these middlemen even still around? If we keep them around and move to the digital download model, we've just added another layer of middlemen (Apple, Napster or whoever) into the mix. I know Apple/Napster wants their cut, and the RIAA wants their cut, and the individual record companies want their cut, and all of this comes out of what SHOULD be the artist's money. I understand that Apple needs 30 cents of every dollar to pay Akamai. Okay, that's a bit high, but acceptable. But what is the RIAA doing to earn their money here? Everybody thought that the new model would obsolete that layer of middlemen. Instead, it's just fattened up the profits and cut costs, but maintained the status quo. The artist still gets next to nothing.
This has mostly focused on the RIAA, whose behaviors RMS doesn't really deal with directly in his work. I merely used them as an example of how corporations think -- they're a good example of the creeping control of the corporations on our lives. Other corporations will follow in their footsteps, if we let them. Like I said, every corporation seeks to sway the balance of power in their favor at the expense of the consumers where they can. This is what RMS is fighting, and this is what WE should be fighting. Unless we want every corporation to get the control over us the RIAA has, we need to draw a line in the sand. But most of us don't give a damn.
This is why WE NEED RMS. We need to get out of his way and let him do his work without us hassling him and slowing him down. We're like the drowning person who flails at his rescuer. And until someone else steps up to carry the torch, RMS is our rescuer. RMS is the King. We're just too sedated to know it.
RMS, Slavery, and Corporate Slime (RIAA Example) (Score:3, Insightful)
RMS actually tries to protect our freedoms, which is more than I can say for 99% of us, including myself. We mostly seem to care about what's the best DRM or how easily we can adapt to the corporations' new demands on us. We act like a slave nation. I remember reading a book about slavery in the Old South, and the amazing thing was that many slaves believed that slavery was ethical because they had been taught that they were an inferior people, and that the white overlords were justified in beating wayward slaves because it was their plantations and their profitability that would suffer from lazy slaves. The masters managed to get the slaves to see it from their perspective, and in the process, to forget the reality that was their own perspective. We are the same. This is fast becoming our way of thinking. We're not looking out to protect ourselves, but to be "fair" to the companies we have to deal with. The RIAA cries about lost sales. Software companies cry about free alternatives or piracy. Pretty much everyone cries about people making products similar to what they've already released, even though their design was just common sense. And we hear their cries, and often feel bad for the poor Multinationals whose sales are down 7%, leaving them with a meagre profit of about 5 billion dollars (after hiding some with crooked accounting, of course). Needless to say, the companies don't have this self-doubt and ethical dilemma. If they can get us to cave in and start down that "slippery slope of compromise" at all, they can continually and slowly take our consumer rights from us. Look at fair use, already on its deathbed. Timeshifting, which will soon be legislated to death. Copying, sharing, tinkering; all dying. Public domain vs. copyright.There's even crazy talk about the US outlawing free software. The balances are shifting hard and fast in favor of the corporations and against consumer rights. We the people generally have no ethical problem with proprietary software, spyware, or restrictions on our freedom as long as it is inobtrusive. Because we have bought the line that we don't OWN anything. We're only LICENSING our possessions AT THE SAME PRICE AS WE USED TO BUY THEM FOR. Pretty soon, we'll only be able to license our computer hardware. Since we won't own it, we will have NO legal right to privacy on it. And you know what? Give us a better media player or smoother GUI and we'll line up for it like lemmings.
We tend to begin from the assumption that the corporations are right and ethical in their thinking. They spend massive advertising dollars to promote their claim that they occupy the moral high ground. This is often incorrect. We should always begin by doubting every position, but especially the status quo. I got a chance to talk to a few fairly famous musicians at Juno afterparties a few years ago, and yes, they were all thankful that the record companies supported them, but at the same time agreed that they were taking too big of a cut, had too much artistic control, and that the RIAA-type organizations were all crooked and greedy as hell. Some of the artists WANTED to put free songs online to get their names out or to reward faithful fans, but they were forbidden by their corporate masters. They aren't even allowed to play guitar and sing around a campfire without the Company's permission. So whose ethical viewpoint should we be listening to -- the artists themselves, or the middleman who packages the artists music? In a digital age, why are these middlemen even still around? If we keep them around and move to the digital download model, we've just added another layer of middlemen (Apple, Napster or whoever) into the mix. I know Apple/Napster wants their cut, and the RIAA wants their cut, and the individual record companies want their cut, and all of this comes out of what SHOULD be the artist's money. I understand that Apple needs 30 cents of every dollar to pay Akamai. Okay, that's a bit high, but acceptable. But what is the RIAA doing to earn their money here? Everybody thought that the new model would obsolete that layer of middlemen. Instead, it's just fattened up the profits and cut costs, but maintained the status quo. The artist still gets next to nothing.
This has mostly focused on the RIAA, whose behaviors RMS doesn't really deal with directly in his work. I merely used them as an example of how corporations think -- they're a good example of the creeping control of the corporations on our lives. Other corporations will follow in their footsteps, if we let them. Like I said, every corporation seeks to sway the balance of power in their favor at the expense of the consumers where they can. This is what RMS is fighting, and this is what WE should be fighting. Unless we want every corporation to get the control over us the RIAA has, we need to draw a line in the sand. But most of us don't give a damn.
This is why WE NEED RMS. We need to get out of his way and let him do his work without us hassling him and slowing him down. We're like the drowning person who flails at his rescuer. And until someone else steps up to carry the torch, RMS is our rescuer. RMS is the King. We're just too sedated to know it.