Re: Stallman Admits to Copyright Infringement
On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 01:44:46AM -0500, Paul Serice wrote:
> It bothers me to no end. I would like to see Debian take active
> measures to distance itself from these statements.
[snip]
>
> Q: What do you think about people who love music sharing files with
> their neighbors?
>
> A: I do that. I do that. I will let anybody borrow and copy my records
> and tapes. I love music, and therefore I loathe the music industry.
>
> As "loathsome" as the music industry may be, at least it respects
> Stallman's copyrights (which is more than Stallman can say).
And?
I can honestly say that, as far as I know, everyone I know in person
has some copied music.
As it happens, I personally disapprove slightly. But I don't feel
strongly --- to do so would force me to consider all of my friends,
and indeed relatives, criminals.
There's such a thing as laws getting out of touch with what the people
need. It is a fairly well accepted fact that widestream taping of
music has totally failed to cripple the record industry, despite its
dire predictions. There's also such a thing as civil disobedience, and
the people showing the government its laws are out of date, knowing
that the government is beholden to corporate pressure and some
standard democratic measures are ineffective.
But more to the point, what has this got to do with whether or not
free software is a good thing, or whether debian supports RMS in his
stances on free software (which we normally do)?
I have a friend who regularly breaks the speed limit in his car, which
is illegal in this country. Am I to think his values worthless and
his contributions to programming worthless?
Jules
[with apologies to -devel for responding to a troll, but points needed
to be made]
--
Jules Bean | Any sufficiently advanced
jules@{debian.org,jellybean.co.uk} | technology is indistinguishable
jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk | from a perl script
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