Friday 72-year-old Richard Stallman made a two-hour-and-20-minutes appearance at the Georgia Institute of Technology, talking about everything from AI and connected cars to smartphones, age verfication laws, and his favorite Linux distro. But early on, Stallman also told the audience how "I despise DRM...I don't want any copy of anything with DRM. Whatever it is, I never want it so badly that I would bow down to DRM." (So he doesn't use Spotify or Netflix...)

This led to an interesting moment when someone asked him later if we have an ethical obligation to avoid piracy.. First Stallman swapped in his preferred phrase, "forbidden sharing"...

I won't use the word piracy to refer to sharing. Sharing is good and it should be lawful. Those laws are wrong. Copyright as it is now is an injustice.

Stallman said "I don't hesitate to share copies of anything," but added that "I don't have copies of non-free software, because I'm disgusted by it." After a pause, he added this. "Just because there is a law to to give some people unjust power, that doesn't mean breaking that law becomes wrong....

Dividing people by forbidding them to help each other is nasty.

And later Stallman was asked how he watches movies, if he's opposed to DRM-heavy sites like Netflix, and the DRM in Blu-ray discs? "The only way I can see a movie is if I get a file — you know, like an MP4 file or MKV file. And I would get that, I suppose, by copying from somebody else."

Sharing is good. Stopping people from sharing is evil.

Abstract credit: https://slashdot.org/story/451774

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[+] 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip -30 points 1 week ago (36 children)

stallman was also asked if pedophilia is okey and he said yes, so take him with a grain of salt, i guess 😂

[–] Spectrism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 week ago (27 children)

To be fair, the question (if it was asked verbatim) doesn't even make sense. Pedophilia can't really be okay or not okay, it just is.

[+] 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip -8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (20 children)

The Daily Beast first reported that Stallman wrote in 2003, "I think that everyone age 14 or above ought to take part in sex, though not indiscriminately. (Some people are ready earlier.)" In 2006, he wrote, "I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily [sic] pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing."

he also said this on account of epstein's victim Virginia Giuffre:

"We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing." When a person on the email chain noted that the girl was 17 at the time, and that sex with a minor is statutory rape, Stallman replied, "I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17."

https://www.google.com/search?q=stallman+pedophilia

edit: jeez, that's a lot of pedophiles we have here on lemmy.

you sick f.cks carefully choose fraction of the quotes i presented and try to spin it and you are not good at it.

all of you trying to steer the debate about 17 or 18 and "oh, each limit is kind of arbitrary, i see where he is coming from": the 17 girl was victim of rape and human trafficking, her age does not matter at all; on top of that he dismisses her with "she presented herself to him as entirely willing". i wouldn't touch this asshole with 10 meter pole.

he also uses term "voluntarily pedophilia", pedophilia is when adult person is attacted to kid. and there is no such thing as vuluntary pedophilia because the kid cannot give informed consent.

pedophilia is not case of [age of consent] + 1 having sex with [age of consent] - 1. it is adult person having sex with 14 yo (and some of them are ready sooner!) - his words.

whatever is in your heads guys, please know it is not acceptable for adult man to fuck a kid younger than 14 years, under any circumstances.

[–] super_user_do@feddit.it 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think you're missing the point. Stallman meant that it would be absurd to classify something as rape just for their age, the most important thing is of course context. Moreover, all of this argument about someone needing to reach the complete state of neurological development in order to have sex is flawed since men don't develop to their full extent until their 30s. You can absolutely make a choice for yourself even before that age and therefore before reaching that point of brain development. If it wasn't like that, we also wouldn't allow people to vote, get guns, work etc. The age of consent exists in order not to criminalize sex between teenagers and also allow to shades and case to case evaluation. Of course it is not perfect, but it is the best tool we have

[–] 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The age of consent exists in order not to criminalize sex between teenagers

no, the age of consent exists to protect 12 yo kids from 70 yo creeps who think it is okey to fuck these 12 year olds.

[–] super_user_do@feddit.it 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah it's also for that but it's not the main purpose. If it was like that, they could have just placed an age limit, while the concept itself of "age of consent" starts from the assumption that even a minor at some point reaches the minimum level of emotional and cerebral maturity in order to give full consent. Moreover, the age of consent also has other clauses in most countries. For example, in Italy the technical age of consent is 14 (which also brings other things such as individual penal responsibility if the kid does something illegal, the freedom to be heard in court as a witness etc) but when there's specific power dynamics involved the age of consent rises to 16

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