Richard Stallman UC-Berkeley EECS Talk: "Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks"

Arrival commentary (skip if only interested in talk below):

Leaving our car at a public parking structure on Center Street, we walked east to Shattuck and waited about one block north for the UC-Berkley Perimeter Bear Shuttle ('P' Bus). The bus arrived at 3:50PM, two minutes behind schedule. We discovered at this point that the shuttle costs $1/person without proper identification (we had exactly enough for the trip up, happily). It carried us up the hill to the Cory Hall stop, with Soda Hall facing us across the street.

Soda Hall's Coca-Cola bottle-colored tile base and multi-hued green tile upper reminds one immediately of the effervescent nature of it's namesake (/poetic ;). As we left the bus stop, we noticed a student walking in front of us with a backpack sporting a small circle-slash-RIAA button. "Let's follow him," I remarked to Dawn, "He'll take us right to where we want to go." And he did. We walked down the hill along Hearst for about 50 feet and then into a courtyard between Soda Hall and another hall to the east. We entered the building through the side entrance and a greeter motioned us inside a 75-seat auditorium. Since we arrived right at 4:00PM, the scheduled start time, we got seats four rows back, but dead center.

As we waited, we overheard a conversation between the man to my right and his female friend behind me. She mentioned that Mr. Stallman's visit to the campus in 2006 represented his first visit in 25 years. Apparently (her assertion) he visited in 1981 and found the campus too "crazy."

The talk started at 4:15PM, by which time the room had filled completely with mostly male students, some sitting in the two aisles. Mr. Stallman wore an orange knit shirt with khakis, and a two-inch silver button with the words "Impeach God" on the front. His full-frontal beard extended down to the base of his neck, and his hair reached past his shoulders.

Abstract (from internet):

Copyright developed in the age of the printing press, and was designed to fit with the system of centralized copying imposed by theprinting press. But the copyright system does not fit well with computer networks, and only draconian punishments can enforce it.

The global corporations that profit from copyright are lobbying for draconian punishments, and to increase their copyright powers, while suppressing public access to technology. But if we seriously hope to serve the only legitimate purpose of copyright--to promote progress, for the benefit of the public--then we must make changes in the other direction.

Rough outline of the talk (my notes, transcribing his thoughts, without comment):

• Brief history of copyright law: from earliest copies thousands of years ago, through the middle ages, to the founding of the US, to the present day
• Purpose of copyright law: two main points -- 1) to advance the public good, and 2) it has to end
• History of contemporary restrictions to copyright and freedoms to copy: copyright no longer painless, easy to enforce, or beneficial.
• Power over public wielded in name of authors, and power over authors wielded in name of public
• Copyright causes problems for digital media and digital media causes problems for copyright
• Dig on Sonny Bono and Church of Scientology's efforts to enforce copyright to prevent dissemination of church teachings
• Overview of current DRM
• DMCA: open conspiracy among companies
• AACS: don't buy Blue-Ray/HD-DVD products until DRM removed
• E-books: companies have two-pronged approach to removing freedoms regarding reading material:
• Take away rights to copy via DMCA
• Migrate everyone to e-books
• E-paper
• Solutions
• Shorten copyright to ten years starting from the date of publication
• Most titles out-of-print within three years
• Publisher (in one case) would not admit book out-of-print because they'd have to turn over right-to-publish rights to the author
• Reform breadth of activities covered to expand freedoms: three main categories
• Pratical use (to do a job): recipes, software
• Certain parties views or thoughts: biographies
• Art and entertainment (things that impact how we look at or how we use): maintain diversity
• Establish compromise copyright system
• Taxes
• Involuntary: taxes on connect time to the internet, blank discs
• Voluntary: A button to send $1 to artist to support their works

One Liners:

• "GNU software forms the core of this thing people often call Linux."
• "How does extending copyright 20 years convince 1920's authors to make more?" -- in reference to Disney's successful 1998 extension of (then) 70-year copyright law to protect the characters portrayed in the 1928 cartoon "Steamboat Willie" from entering the public domain.
• "Like tomorrow, that never comes." In reference to Disney bit above.
• "Absurd length" -- in regards to how long copyright currently lasts
• "Time ain't money, when all you got is time" (Iowa-native Greg Brown's "Just a Bum," from his 1985 album "In the Dark With You" on the Red House label). I don't remember the context.
• "Corrupt discs" (instead of compact discs) because they don't follow standards
• "Of the people, by the flunkies, for the corporations." In reference to DRM/DMCA/AACS
• Hollywood movie studios produces "utter crap." Read "Save the Cat" by Blake Snyder to understand the process (ISBN-10: 1932907009; ISBN-13: 978-1932907001)
• "To attack sharing is to attack society"
• "I'm not for open source. The term open source is used to hush up the ethical ideals of the free software movement."

Mannerisms during pauses in talk:

• rubs nose
• drinks from water bottles
• clasps hands, look at knuckles
• Never says "uh" or "um"

Mr. Stallman handed out one-inch square GNU+Linux stickers and oval-FSF stickers after the event, and offered to sell lapel pins, a GNU hat, and key chains outside on the street afterward (since he couldn't do it in the auditorium per UC-Berkeley rules). I walked up afterward and asked him about his button, and he replied, "I started wearing it when they impeached Nixon. I figured, why stop at him, let's go all the way to the top!"

If anyone wants to watch the video of the talk, apparently the UC-Berkeley EECS department plans to post it to the EECS department homepage sometime within seven days:

• Link: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/ (under section EECS Colloquium)
• For an example video, see the Feb 16 talk by Yoram Bresler (WMV format x_x).