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.