[Top][All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
[fsf-community-team] Introduction: Blaise Alleyne
From: |
Blaise Alleyne |
Subject: |
[fsf-community-team] Introduction: Blaise Alleyne |
Date: |
Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:30:45 -0500 |
User-agent: |
Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (X11/20090817) |
Hello,
My name is Blaise Alleyne. I'm a programmer, musician, writer and free
software / culture advocate. I just graduated from the University of
Toronto in the Spring, earning my Bachelors of Science degree with a
major in computer science and minors in English and philosophy. I work
for Alleyne Inc., doing web development, system administration and a bit
of consulting. I'm a songwriter who plays violin for lots of other
songwriters, and I release all of my own music under free licenses. I
also blog actively at http://blaise.ca/blog, and I'm a contributor to
the Techdirt blog ( http://techdirt.com/ ). Over the summer, I had the
opportunity to work on the Creative Commons Drupal module through the
Google Summer of Code, and I continue to be increasingly involved in
both Drupal development and with the Creative Commons.
I'm active on the Canadian music scene, especially among folk and
songwriter circles. I'm an associate member of the FSF, and I've
volunteer to run the FSF booth at the Ontario GNU Linux Fest a couple
times. I'm read a wide variety of blogs related to free software, free
culture, and free as in price economics, as well as blogs about the
music industry. I'm active on Identi.ca, and a lurker in IRC channels
and mailing lists for groups like autonomo.us, libre.fm, and the
Creative Commons. I'm particularly interested in the intersection of
culture and technology, in the effects of free software on free culture,
the effects of free culture on music. I'm also Roman Catholic and I've
been building a Catholic case for free culture.
In the summer of July 2007, after hearing RMS speak at the University of
Toronto, I read pretty much all of the essays at gnu.org/philosophy (and
proceeded to become a member of the FSF). Here's a recent sample of my
writing about free software:
http://blaise.ca/blog/2009/11/18/free-software-paves-the-way-for-open-source/
Here are some quick (not throughly proofread -- apologies for any typos)
responses to the excerpts presented:
"""
Excerpt: Richard Stallman started the FSF in order to promote open
source software like the Linux operating system, as an alternative to
expensive software like Windows.
"""
Actually, the "free" in the Free Software Foundation refers to freedom,
not price. Richard Stallman started the Free Software Foundation to
defend the freedom of computer users to use, study, modify and share
software. He started the GNU project to build a free operating system
before Windows was around, and actually *sold* free software to raise
funds and support himself. Free software is not about price, but about
freedom.
The Linux kernel came later as one of the final pieces needed for the
GNU operating system to run, and it accounts only for a small, though
core, part of the code -- thus, the operating system is more accurately
called GNU/Linux in most cases. The open source software movement
emerged a decade later and it focuses on the technical benefits of free
software, but Richard Stallman and the FSF made it possible by stressing
the ethical importance of software that respects a user's freedom.
"""
Excerpt: Now with cloud computing and web-based applications, even Linux
users can use the same software as everyone else, through their
browsers. With other popular programs like Skype and Adobe Flash
producing Linux versions, the Linux desktop may finally be catching on!
"""
It would be a sad irony if the success of the GNU/Linux desktop came
alongside proprietary software on the web. "Cloud" computer and
web-based applications offer tremendous opportunities to software users,
but that software also needs to be free. Programs such as Skype and
Adobe Flash are proprietary, and software users don't have control over
those tools. There are better alternatives to Skype, like SIP
applications (such as Ekiga or WengoPhone).
Would you buy a phone from a company if you could only call other
customers of that company with it? That'd be pretty useless, and
insulting! But, why then would we accept that for softphones? Just like
with analogy telephones, mail, or with email, free software SIP clients
allow you to call another person regardless of which softphone he or she
is using or which company's he or she is a customer of.
Likewise, services like Twitter provide new and exciting ways to
communicate with other people, but this kind of communication is too
important to leave to a single company to control entirely. There are
alternatives out there, like StatusNet, which function much the same way
as Twitter, but they allow you to communicate with users on other
micrblogging services, and they let you take your data out of the system
if you want to.
It's no use for the GNU/Linux desktop to catch on if we have to give up
our freedom in the process! Web-based software offers great potential,
but it also can present an even greater loss of freedom. We need to
think hard about what software freedom means on the web.
"""
When combined with the other chapters that include statutory damages,
search and seizure powers for border guards, anti-camcording rules, and
mandatory disclosure of personal information requirements, it is clear
that there is no bigger intellectual property issue today than the
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated behind closed doors
this week in Korea.
"""
ACTA is the very embodiment of maximalist copyright, copyright unhinged
from it's true foundations. Copyright is supposed to be a set of social
relationship between the public, the government, and creators (or the
organizations to which they've assigned their rights). It's supposed to
be about maximizing the benefit for everyone involved, not about beating
consumers over the head with draconian measures to protect dying
industries who can't adapt their business models. ACTA is the
anti-thesis of democracy, being negotiated behind closed doors. Here in
Canada, we've seen the pressure that comes from the American government
after Hollywood and the record industry get their wish lists bundled up
into international trade agreements. It's a threat to our ability to
craft effective copyright laws that make sense for Canada to have these
treaties negotiated in secret without the broader interests of citizens
and the country in mind.
Also, it's important that we be careful with our language. In order to
get others to understand the importance of a properly calibrated
copyright system, we need to be careful not to promote false frameworks
of thinking. The term "intellectual property" assumes what needs to be
proven -- that ideas should be treated like property. It also clumps
together totally separate areas of law, like copyright, patent, and
trademark law, which only serves to further confuse these important
issues. The lobbyists pushing for ACTA have totally confused the notion
of counterfeiting with copyright infringement, blurring the lines
between stealing and sharing. We need to be careful not to reinforce
these confused ways of looking at things. We're better off to talk about
copyright law, or patent law, or counterfeiting directly, rather than
make general statements across categories that aren't really the same.
If lobbyists get us to think of ideas as property, then they simply
invoke "thou shalt not steal" to impose restrictions on our freedom.
Copying is not the same as stealing -- legally, ethically, morally,
socially, technically. It may well be wrong in some cases, but that
should be a separate question open for debate. The term "intellectual
property" is counter-productive, if we want to be able to have a clear,
honest debate about the fundamentals.
I hope I can be a part of this initiate!
Thanks,
Blaise Alleyne
--
http://blaise.ca/
[Prev in Thread] |
Current Thread |
[Next in Thread] |
- [fsf-community-team] Introduction: Blaise Alleyne,
Blaise Alleyne <=