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
In a world where capitalism is and makes the law, software piracy can not ever be ethically wrong.
I dont use Spotify or Netflix either but I also dont walk around naked. Some things are just bad for us.
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.I disagree on his stance regarding blu-ray discs. A movie is not software.
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
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.
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 impressed 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.
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.
Dude, he saved humanity with the GNU project and FSF. I want myself and my kids to be that and not Gates, Musk, …
No, it’s not. It’s extra not wrong if the “legal” method includes DRM or forces you into any DRM platform.
Why do anti piracy people come to a piracy community in a pro piracy instance just to post anti piracy arguments?
that way we know we’re not in an echo chamber
Fuck stallman
Why don’t you like him?
stallman was also asked if pedophilia is okey and he said yes, so take him with a grain of salt, i guess 😂
Nice ad hominem fallacy bro
Edit: sorry it’s straw man
let me take you to school, kid.
see, you can’t just randomly drop few latin words without understanding what they mean, the chance you would drop them into sentence correctly by pure chance is quite small.
so ad hominem is when you attack the speaker instead of their argument. as if i started shouting “you commie”, or “you libtard”, at you instead of explaining why what you said is nonsense.
let me do exactly that.
now, by a funny coincidence, this whole post is actually example of sort of reverse ad hominem. we call it argument by authority (or argumentum ad verecundiam, so we can appear smart!).
it is when you present your argument in a form of “famous person thinks x, therefor x must be true”. which is of course not how it works, famous person’s opinion is largely irrelevant, unless the discussion is in their field of expertise.
and in such case, it is perfectly logical to point out that said famous person has some really shitty takes and they are by no means an arbiter of moral; and that is the point of the discussion, because it s you (the one who made the argument, not literal you) who tried to make them the arbiter.
hope this helps in your future keyboard wars, bro 😂
Oh, that’s right, what you did is a straw man argument not an ad hominem one. I also never stated that he’s right just because he’s famous, don’t put in the mouth of others things they’ve never said
You’re a bit out of date on that one.
Because you’re thinking when he said that in 2006. It took until 2019 that he changed his perspective. Now granted that’s quite a time gap between 2006 and 2019 in believing pedophilia is okay. But he seems to have changed his tune on that. And people did make it known to him.
he seems to have changed his tune on that. And people did make it known to him.
Changing his tune is a very different thing from changing opinions. It clearly was just a reaction to public pressure, not inner reflection.
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.
It’s like asking if schizophrenia is okay.
Now, if you’re talking about child molestation, that is clearly and unequivocally wrong, but if that’s what you mean, you should say that.
It should never even be questioned. Pedophilia will never be okay. Children cannot reasonably consent and if anyone thinks they do, don’t care to know what ‘grooming’ is or probably is a groomer to make a child believe that.
I don’t think that is what he meant. Perhaps some more nuance might show you both to be correct. Cronophilia is not a choice, it just is, to OP’s point. However acting on those urges is always unequivocally morally wrong, reprehensible and criminal. Children cannot consent.
Precisely what I meant, thank you. People seem to have troubles differentiating between thoughts and actions when it comes to paraphilias.
You’re going beyond the meaning of the word. Pedophilia is just the attraction itself, there can’t be anything okay or not okay with it, it just is. That’s like asking “Is psychopathy okay?”. There’s no answer for asking if the state of something is okay or not okay, because like I said, it just is.
Huh?
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.
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
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.
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
And that’s why I was wondering if the question was asked verbatim. Stallman doesn’t seem to know what the word means either.
I don’t get what’s supposed to be so controversial about the first part, though. Many countries already have their age of consent somewhere around 14, often including Romeo and Juliet laws (i.e. not indiscriminately), so not really an unpopular take, and I can’t say I disagree with him there.
“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.”
Seems logical. The real issue in her case was human trafficking, which is illegal irrespective of age.
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.
Funny how you criticised ad hominem attacks in another comment, while resorting to the same tactic. And yeah, pedophiles are everywhere, including Lemmy, so what? Then again, I don’t see any around here.
he also uses term “voluntarily pedophilia”, pedophilia is when adult person is attacted to kid.
Correct. Though “voluntary pedophilia” is a nonsensical term.
and there is no such thing as vuluntary pedophilia because the kid cannot give informed consent.
Incorrect. There is no such thing as voluntary pedophilia because pedophilia only refers to the attraction, which not a choice. What you mean is simply “there is no such thing as (voluntary) consent by children”.
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.
I don’t see anyone here making the claim that it is.
Coming from a country with an age of consent lower than 18 and possibly one of the few people who acknowledge even the US - famous for its stance on 18 - has an AoC under 18 in more than half of ots States, I understand where he’s coming from in that quote. Choosing to care only about an arbitrary age - one that so very few actually agree on outside of puritan cultures - is flawed.
Age of consent is 16 in Australia and many other western nations. Governments need to set an age to say what is too young, but whether that age is 16 or 18 is somewhat arbitrary. Some 16yos are very ready for sex and some 20yos aren’t. Different people develop at different rates. So any age you set will limit the freedom of some unfairly and not protect others who need it.
often including Romeo and Juliet laws
except romeo was not 70 yo creep secretly longing to fuck 12 years old.
so not really an unpopular take, and I can’t say I disagree with him there.
it is actually quite an unpopular take and you agreeing with him is something you should really keep for yourself. i am done with you.
except romeo was not 70 yo creep secretly longing to fuck 12 years old.
No, he was a 20yo creep secretly longing to fuck a 12yo.
incorrect. juliet is 13, and romeo’s age is never explicitly stated, but is generally understood to be between 16-18. which is something that might have been acceptable at that time, while stallman is not acceptable today.
Do you even know what Romeo and Juliet laws are? Because with those, you’re scenario is not legally possible.
Basically all countries in South America have their age of consent at 14, plus some in Africa and Asia, and Europe is also pretty evenly split between 14-15 and 16. This is not unpopular at all, but go ahead and scream at everyone with a differing opinion because yours is the only “correct” one.
Just out of curiosity: Are you US American by chance?
Do you even know what Romeo and Juliet laws are? Because with those, you’re scenario is not legally possible.
this discussion is not and never was about romeo and juliet, why are you so desperately trying to steer it there?
he specifically uses term “voluntarily pedophilia”, pedophilia is when adult person is attracted to a kid. and there is no such thing as voluntary 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.
Are you US American by chance?
i am not, how is that relevant?
Can you even read? I did explain that in the very first sentence, by mentioning that your scenario would not be legally possible.
And I was just wondering, because US Americans online are often extremely prudish and self-centered, which matches your attitude.
Yeah, Stallman needs to educate himself on human brain development. The decision-making centers of the brain don’t stop developing at 17 or 18 but 25. So, a lot of people are wrong on this, unfortunately.
whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.”
I kind of get what he’s saying here, especially when draconian California laws can put 18-year-olds in prison for daring to have sex with a 17-year-old, when they are both in high school. (I think they finally fixed that legal gap, but it existed for a long time.)
But, completely outside the whole age and human brain development “debate”, there’s also power dynamics at play here that aren’t even considered. Epstein is a powerful man that used his influence to coerce girls to have sex with other powerful men. Even if she was 18 or 25, a woman in that position is still being exploited, with human trafficking in the mix.
Yes, that’s worth pointing out. Human trafficking is illegal no matter what age the victim is. What Epstein did would’ve still been wrong (and criminal) even if none of the women had been minors.
You got the point blud
Was he asked how he ensures the people creating the media he consumes are able to afford food and housing?
No a pro-piracy argument, but most artists get fractions of a penny from the sales of media anyway. Only the biggest stars are paid a fair share of the profits. I always try to find a way to support directly or use a platform (bandcamp, steam) that adds some value and gives a majority to the creator.
They’re not going to starve when my friends share their media which I wouldn’t have bought anyway with me.
The answers to both are easy and the US could start to fix it tomorrow if there was the will. Hell New York is already making motions in that direction.
Red Vienna style public housing, public transit, and large scale decomodification of staples. Not letting crops rot in fields and silos etc. We could feed the world. Not just our population. There’s no profit in that or society in general. That’s why the wealthy are working hard to destroy both.
sharing I guess
donations and commissions. That’s how modern artists operate, for example
Massive public financing coming from the government. Damn, I don’t know know how many Italian movies are turning a profit from sales - but I doubt it gets to 1%. Still, they keep making movies.
The same way people who make millions ensure I’m able to afford food and housing. They don’t. We don’t. Everyone’s in it for themselves to some extent, because in some situations, nobody’s going to reach out and lift you up if you need it. We’re all just trying to survive.
There are a lot of people who make movies, music, and games who bust their ass and deserve to eat and be sheltered. That’s fine, but those people, just like you and me, have the means of taking care of themselves. You are not ethically or morally obligated to care about a stranger’s welfare, especially if the stranger does not care about yours. It’s fine to be altruistic; I’m not saying it isn’t, but it’s not an ethical imperative either.
Most people buy what they can and share/borrow what they can’t.
If someone working in entertainment goes without a meal because I bought my meal rather than starving to buy a Blu-ray they were in, I’m not their problem. That one sale isn’t going to put a meal on their table. A hundred Blu-ray sales might not even do that.
Only from free and open source sustenance, he is disgusted by anything else.
