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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[–] veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 15 hours ago

In a world where capitalism is and makes the law, software piracy can not ever be ethically wrong.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 56 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

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.

Once again, I'm impress by Stallman's focus on not accepting a bad faith arguement at face value.

We didn't always have shitty laws about when we can copy a file.

Some of us remember when creators had to get creative how they monetized their work, instead of bludgeoning fans with the threat of jail time.

[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 28 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Copyright as it is now is an injustice.

At best, copyright with a limit of 25 years, the law before Mark Twain fucked all of us over, would suck a lot less.

At worst, corporations would still exploit it to totality, because they have money, and you don't.

Copyright was created with an agreement that the public would receive their public domain dues in a timely manner. The corpos broke that contract with the public. Therefore, piracy is not only justified, but a moral duty to preserve what corporations casually throw away, or exploit with mindless memberberries.

I would not be sad at all to see the entirety of copyright completely abolished. Open source is already doing a damn good job, and AI might end up hammering the final nail.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 4 points 20 hours ago

I dont use Spotify or Netflix either but I also dont walk around naked. Some things are just bad for us.

[–] idriss@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 day ago

Dude, he saved humanity with the GNU project and FSF. I want myself and my kids to be that and not Gates, Musk, ...

[–] potatoguy@lemmy.eco.br 32 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why do anti piracy people come to a piracy community in a pro piracy instance just to post anti piracy arguments?

[–] CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org 36 points 1 day ago

that way we know we're not in an echo chamber

[–] cybernihongo@reddthat.com 17 points 1 day ago

No, it's not. It's extra not wrong if the "legal" method includes DRM or forces you into any DRM platform.

[–] mech@feddit.org -3 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

I disagree on his stance regarding blu-ray discs.
A movie is not software. It can't control the device you own. You can't feasibly modify it to make it better.
You pay money in exchange for a physical object you can use to watch that movie as often as you like.
That's the deal. If it breaks, you have to buy it again if you still want it. Just like you would with any other physical object you buy.
There's nothing wrong with that.

[–] bobby@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 14 hours ago

I disagree on his stance regarding blu-ray discs. A movie is not software.

Java technology is a critical part of the new high-definition video standard, the Blu-ray Disc standard. This is a great time to be Java developer.

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

A movie is not software. It can’t control the device you own.

Ha you have no idea. They use new BluRay releases to distribute key revocation databases that block your BluRay drive from decrypting disks with older host keys.

Edit: I suggest starting here if you want to know more: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Blu-ray

[–] heftig@beehaw.org 5 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

A BR disc contains much more than just video data. The BR player device contains user-hostile functionality.

For example, firmware updates for various parts of DRM, like HDCP key revocation lists, are distributed with commercial BR discs.

Your playback setup could become permanently broken because you inserted the wrong movie and now your player refuses to send a video signal to your TV, or it suddenly stops accepting discs it did before.

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