Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!mordor!sri-spam!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!PREP.AI.MIT.EDU!rms From: rms@PREP.AI.MIT.EDU ("Richard M. Stallman") Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Swedish copyright laws Message-ID: <8612160134.AA08428@prep.ai.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 15-Dec-86 20:34:35 EST Article-I.D.: prep.8612160134.AA08428 Posted: Mon Dec 15 20:34:35 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 16-Dec-86 23:24:42 EST References: <961981.861214.KFL@MX.LCS.MIT.EDU> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 42 Why should the author of a program be allowed control over the future actions of other people? Why should all of us tolerate a practice where some people (software "owners") pressure members of the public (software buyers) to promise to refuse to cooperate with other members of the public? This practice, where a wealthy few turn people against their neighbors so that in the end we sign away our rights, erodes the public spirit that is vital for us all. Our weath today comes from cooperation. The more we can cooperate, the more wealthy we can all be. Occasionally a few will see ways to profit from being uncooperative. Society can sustain the direct effect of a certain amount of this. But it has a long term effect that is even worse. When a few become rich by dividing the others, everyone else tries to imitate them. Eventually, everyone is looking for ways to obstruct other people and thus blackmail them. Nobody cooperates, nothing works as it is supposed to, and we all become poorer. This is social decay. This is how the US is going. Look at Boesky. Look at all the office buildings and hotels being built in Boston, and then look at the homeless people. Even if we decide, in the name of personally liberty, to tolerate such activity on a small scale by individuals, we can still discourage it on large scales through industrial regulations, and keep our personal freedom intact. We can still raise the public consciousness as to the wrongness of hoarding information and thus inspire a general refusal of consumers to accept it. Right now, however, the government does exactly the opposite: it encourages hoarding by laws that give authors undeserved power over the public. This is suicide for society. But it has one happy consequence: we have no conflict between personal liberty and discouraging hoarding, because by eliminating government intervention on the hoarders' side we can discourage hoarding and expand personal liberty at the same time. If we think that some software author deserves X dollars, we are much better off simply handing him X dollars from the treasury and making the software free, than arranging for him to get X dollars through a mechanism that promotes social decay and creates a financial disincentive discouraging use of the program.