Richard Stallman, A Free Digital Society (© cc-by-nd)

Thank you. Congratulations to the students
[of the Digital Freedoms association]

who organized this meeting.

They are right, not only
because Richard is famous

but also because the subject
is very interesting to us.

They are especially interesting
here at Sciences Po

since first, we try to study
controversies;

some of you here have studied
controversies

and Richard himself
is a controversial character.

I have not found anything on the Web
that allows to find consensus

nor about what he does, nor what he says, nor
the words he uses, so he's an ideal case study

for us who study cartographies of
controversies in this institution.

Somehow we have a controversial character

on subjects that are important to us.

Second, obviously, is the subject itself

and the question of how much
freedom and control

that are at the core of all these
digital innovations

are directly interesting, for political science

sociology, also law.

All questions that interest us
in this institution.

It's by the way interesting that
Richard comes here

a few days after Steve Jobs died, a death that
he celebrated in his own way if I dare to say

explaining that his loss was not
a huge disaster

for all those questions of
digital freedoms

because - even though Steve Jobs
could be esteemed

the control he had on software

and its domination make us
in some way free

but under the form, as he says it
in several opinions,

of a "jail made cool" --
a jail that I like myself

since I am myself an adept
of the Macintosh

but this is obviously not
the kind of character

or the kind of freedom that Richard
is thinking about.

The third reason is that, obviously

for a lot of questions
that are directly interesting to us

in this institution about
scientific humanities

is the link between technical innovation

and political devices
that interests us directly.

So we have at least, anyway myself
at the scientific direction

three reasons to enjoy
the initiative of the students group

which organized this meeting

and I am happy to let
Richard Stallman speak

and please applause him before.

Projects with the goal of digital
inclusion are making a big assumption.

They are assuming that participating
in a digital society is good;

but that’s not necessarily true.

Being in a digital society can be good or bad

depending on whether that
digital society is just or unjust.

There are many ways in which our freedom
is being attacked by digital technology.

Digital technology can make things worse,
and it will, unless we fight to prevent it.

Therefore, if we have an unjust digital society

we should cancel these projects
for digital inclusion

and launch projects for digital extraction.

We have to extract people from digital society
if it doesn’t respect their freedom;

or we have to make it respect their freedom.

So, what are the threats? First, surveillance.

Computers are Stalin’s dream.

They are ideal tools for surveillance

because anything we do with computers,
the computers can record.

They can record the information

in a perfectly indexed
searchable form in a central database

ideal for any tyrant
who wants to crush opposition.

Surveillance is sometimes done
with our own computers.

For instance, if you have a computer
that’s running Microsoft Windows

that system is doing surveillance.

There are features in Windows
that send data to some server.

Data about the use of the computer.

A surveillance feature was discovered
in the iPhone a few months ago

and people started calling it
the “spy-phone”.

Flash player has a surveillance feature too

and so does the Amazon “Swindle”.

They call it the Kindle,
but I call it the Swindle, l’escroc

because it’s meant to swindle
users out of their freedom.

It makes people identify themselves
whenever they buy a book

and that means Amazon has a giant list
of all the books each user has read.

And such a list must not exist anywhere.

Most portable phones
will transmit their location

computed using GPS, on remote command.

And the phone company is accumulating
a giant list of places that the user has been.

A German from the Green Party
asked the phone company

to give him the data it had
about where he was.

He had to sue, he had to go
to court to get this information.

And when he got it, he received
forty-four thousand location points

for a period of six months.

That’s more than two hundred per day.

So what that means is someone could form
a very good picture of his activities

just by looking at that data.

We can stop our own computers
from doing surveillance on us

if we have control
of the software that they run.

But the software these people are running,
they don’t have control over.

It’s non-free software and that’s why
it has malicious features, such as surveillance.

However, the surveillance is not
always done with our own computers

it’s also done at one remove.

For instance ISPs in Europe are required

to keep data about the user’s
internet communications for a long time

in case the State decides to investigate
that person later

for whatever imaginable reason.

And with a portable phone,
even if you can stop the phone

from transmitting your GPS location

the system can determine
the phone’s location approximately

by comparing the time when
the signals arrive at different towers.

So the phone system can do surveillance

even without special cooperation
from the phone itself.

Likewise, the bicycles
that people rent in Paris.

Of course the system knows
where you get the bicycle

and it knows where you return the bicycle

and I’ve heard reports
that it tracks the bicycles

as they are moving around as well.

So they are not something we can really trust.

But there are also systems that have nothing
to do with us that exist only for tracking.

For instance, in the UK
all car travel is monitored.

Every car’s movements
are being recorded in real time

and can be tracked by the State in real time.

This is done with cameras on the side of the road.

Now, the only way we can prevent surveillance

that’s done at one remove
or by unrelated systems

is through political action
against increased government power

to track and monitor everyone.

Which means of course we have to reject
whatever excuse they come up with.

For doing such systems, no excuse
is valid to monitor everyone.

In a free society, when you go out
in public you are not guaranteed anonymity.

It’s possible for someone
to recognize you and remember.

And later that person could say
that he saw you at a certain place.

But that information is diffuse.

It’s not conveniently assembled to track
everybody and investigate what they did.

To collect that information is a lot of work

so it’s only done in special cases
when it’s necessary.

But computerized surveillance
makes it possible

to centralize and index all this information

so that an unjust regime can find it all
and find out all about everyone.

If a dictator takes power,
which could happen anywhere

people realize this and they recognize

that they should not
communicate with other dissidents

in a way that the State could find out about.

But if the dictator
has several years of stored records

of who talks with whom, it’s too late
to take any precautions then.

Because he already has
everything he needs to realize

“OK this guy is a dissident and he spoke
with him. Maybe he is a dissident too.”

“Maybe we should grab him and torture him.”

So we need to campaign to put
an end to digital surveillance now.

You can’t wait until there is a dictator
and it would really matter.

And besides, it doesn’t take an outright
dictatorship to start attacking human rights.

I wouldn’t quite call
the government of the UK a dictatorship.

It’s not very democratic and one way
it crushes democracy is using surveillance.

A few years ago, people believed to be
on their way to a protest

they were going to protest.

They were arrested before
they could get there

because their car was tracked through
this universal car tracking system.

The second threat is censorship.

Censorship is not new,
it existed long before computers.

But 15 years ago, we thought that
the Internet would protect us from censorship

that it would defeat censorship.

Then, China and some other obvious tyrannies

went to great lengths to impose
censorship on the Internet, and we said:

“well that’s not surprising, what else
would governments like that do?”

But today we see censorship
imposed in countries

that are not normally
thought of as dictatorships

such as for instance the UK, France,
Spain, Italy, Denmark…

They all have systems of
blocking access to some websites.

Denmark established a system

that blocks access to a long list
of webpages, which was secret.

The citizens were not supposed to know
how the government was censoring them

but the list was leaked,
and posted on WikiLeaks.

At that point, Denmark added
the WikiLeaks page to its censorship list.

So, the whole rest of the world can find out

how Danes are being censored,
but Danes are not supposed to know.

A few months ago, Turkey,
which claims to respect some human rights

announced that every Internet user

would have to choose between
censorship and more censorship.

Four different levels of censorship
they get to choose!

But freedom is not one of the options.

Australia wanted to impose filtering
on the Internet but that was blocked.

However Australia has a
different kind of censorship.

It has censorship of links.

That is, if a website in Australia has a link

to some censored site outside Australia

the one in Australia can be punished.

Electronic Frontier Australia

which is an organization
that defends human rights

in the digital domain in Australia

posted a link to
a foreign political website.

It was ordered to delete the link
or face a penalty of $11,000 a day.

So they deleted it,
what else could they do?

This is a very harsh system of censorship.

In Spain, the censorship
that was adopted earlier this year

allows officials to arbitrarily
shut down an Internet site in Spain

or impose filtering to block access
to a site outside of Spain.

And they can do this
without any kind of trial.

This was one of the motivations
for the Indignados

who have been protesting in the street.

There were protests in the street
in Turkey as well after that announcement

but the government refused to change its policy.

We must recognize that a country

that imposes censorship on the Internet
is not a free country.

And is not a legitimate government either.

The next threat to our freedom comes
from data formats that restrict the users.

Sometimes it’s because the format is secret.

There are many application programs

that save the user’s data in a secret format

which is meant to prevent the user

from taking that data and using it
with some other program.

The goal is to prevent interoperability.

Now evidently, if the program
implements a secret format

that’s because the program
is not free software.

So this is another kind of malicious feature.

Surveillance is one kind of malicious feature

that you find in some non-free programs;

using secret formats to restrict the users

is another kind of malicious feature

that you also find in some non-free programs.

But if you have a free program
that handles a certain format

ipso facto that format is not secret.

This kind of malicious feature
can only exist in a non-free program.

Surveillance features could theoretically
exist in a free program

but you don’t find them happening.

Because the users would fix it.

The users wouldn’t like this,
so they would fix it.

In any case, we also find secret data
formats in use for publication of works.

You find secret data formats
in use for audio

such as music, for video, for books…

And these secret formats are known as
Digital Restrictions Management, or DRM

or digital handcuffs (les menottes numériques).

So, the works are published in secret formats

so that only proprietary
programs can play them

so that these proprietary programs can have
the malicious feature of restricting the users

stopping them from doing something
that would be natural to do.

And this is used even by public entities
to communicate with the people.

For instance Italian public television
makes its programs available on the net

in a format called VC-1

which is a standard supposedly,
but it’s a secret standard.

Now I can’t imagine how any
publicly supported entity

could justify using a secret format
to communicate with the public.

This should be illegal.

In fact I think all use of Digital
Restrictions Management should be illegal.

No company should be allowed to do this.

There are also formats that are not secret

but almost might as well be
secret, for instance Flash.

Flash is not actually secret but Adobe keeps
making new versions, which are different

faster than anyone can keep up
and make free software to play those files.

So it has almost the same effect as being secret.

Then there are the patented formats,
such as MP3 for audio.

It’s bad to distribute audio in MP3 format!

There is free software to handle MP3 format,
to play it and to generate it

but because it’s patented in many countries

many distributors of free software
don’t dare include those programs.

So if they distribute the GNU+Linux system

their system doesn’t include a player for MP3.

As a result if anyone
distributes some music in MP3

that’s putting pressure on people
not to use GNU/Linux.

Sure, if you’re an expert you can find
a free software and install it

but there are lots of non experts

and they might see that
they installed a version of GNU/Linux

which doesn’t have that software
and it won’t play MP3 files

and they think it’s the system’s fault.

They don’t realize it’s MP3′s fault.
But this is the fact.

Therefore, if you want to support freedom,
don’t distribute MP3 files.

That’s why I say if you’re recording my speech
and you want to distribute copies

don’t do it in a patented format
such as MPEG-2, or MPEG-4, or MP3.

Use a format friendly to free software,
such as the Ogg format or WebM.

And by the way, if you are going
to distribute copies of the recording

please put on it the
Creative Commons-No derivatives license.

This is a statement of my personal views.

If it were a lecture for a course,
if it were didactic

then it ought to be free,
but statements of opinion are different.

Now this leads me to the next threat

which comes from software
that the users don’t have control over.

In other words: software
that isn’t free, that is not “libre”.

In this particular point
French is clearer than English.

The English word free
means ‘libre’ and ‘gratuit’

but what I mean when I say free software
is ‘logiciel libre‘. I don’t mean ‘gratuit’.

I’m not talking about price.

Price is a side issue, just a detail,
because it doesn't matter ethically.

You know if I have a copy of a program

and I sell it to you for one euro
or a hundred euros, who cares?

Why should anyone think
that that’s good or bad?

Or suppose I gave it to you ‘gratuitement’…
still, who cares?

But whether this program respects
your freedom, that’s important!

So free software is software
that respects users’ freedom.

What does this mean?

Ultimately there are just
two possibilities with software:

either the users control the program
or the program controls the users.

If the users have certain essential freedoms

then they control the program

and those freedoms are
the criterion for free software.

But if the users don’t fully
have the essential freedoms

then the program controls the users.

But somebody controls that program
and, through it, has power over the users.

So, a non-free program is an instrument

to give somebody power
over a lot of other people

and this is unjust power
that nobody should ever have.

This is why non-free software, les logiciels
privateurs, qui privent de la liberté

why proprietary software is
an injustice and should not exist?

Because it leaves the users without freedom.

Now, the developer who has
control of the program

often feels tempted
to introduce malicious features

to further exploit or abuse those users.

He feels a temptation because
he knows he can get away with it:

because his program controls the users

and the users do not have
control of the program.

If he puts in a malicious feature,
the users can’t fix it;

they can’t remove the malicious feature.

I’ve already told you about
two kinds of malicious features:

surveillance features,
such as are found in Windows

and the iPhone and Flash player
and the “Swindle”.

And there are also
features to restrict users

which work with secret data formats

and those are found in Windows,
Macintosh, the iPhone, Flash player

the Amazon “Swindle”, the Playstation 3
and lots and lots of other programs.

The other kind of malicious
feature is the backdoor.

That means something in that program

is listening for remote
commands and obeying them

and those commands can mistreat the user.

We know of backdoors in Windows,
in the iPhone, in the Amazon “Swindle”.

The Amazon “Swindle” has a backdoor
that can remotely delete books.

We know this by observation,
because Amazon did it:

in 2009 Amazon remotely deleted
thousands of copies of a particular book.

Those were authorized copies, people
had obtain them directly from Amazon

and thus Amazon knew exactly where they were.

Which is how Amazon knew where
to send the commands to delete those books.

You know which book Amazon deleted?

It’s a book everyone should read
because it discusses a totalitarian state

that did things like
delete books it didn’t like.

Everybody should read it,
but not on the Amazon “Swindle”.

Anyway, malicious features are present
in the most widely used non-free programs

but they are rare in free software, because
with free software the users have control:

they can read the source code
and they can change it.

So, if there were a malicious feature

somebody would sooner or later
spot it and fix it.

This means that somebody who is considering

introducing a malicious feature
does not find it so tempting

because he knows he might
get away with it for a while

but somebody will spot it, will fix it

and everybody will loose
trust in the perpetrator.

It’s not so tempting when
you know you’re going to fail.

And that’s why we find that malicious
features are rare in free software

and common in proprietary software.

Now the essential freedoms are four.

Freedom 0 is the freedom
to run the program as you wish.

Freedom 1 is the freedom to study
the source code and change it

so the program does
your computing the way you wish.

Freedom 2 is the freedom to help others.

That’s the freedom to make exact copies
and redistribute them when you wish.

Freedom 3 is the freedom
to contribute to your community.

That’s the freedom to make copies
of your modified versions

if you have made any, and then
distribute them to others when you wish.

These freedoms, in order to be adequate,
must apply to all activities of life.

For instance if it says: “This is free
for academic use”, it’s not free.

Because that’s too limited.
It doesn’t apply to all areas of life.

In particular, if a program is free

that means it can be modified
and distributed commercially

because commerce is an area of life,
an activity in life.

And this freedom has to apply to all activities.

Now however, it’s not obligatory
to do any of these things.

The point is you’re free to do them
if you wish, when you wish.

But you never have to do them.
You don’t have to do any of them.

You don’t have to run the program.

You don’t have to study
or change the source code.

You don’t have to make any copies.

You don’t have to distribute
your modified versions.

The point is you should be free
to do those things if you wish.

Now, freedom number 1, the freedom to study
and change the source code

to make the program do
your computing as you wish

includes something
that might not be obvious at first.

If the program comes in a product

and a developer can provide
an upgrade that will run

then you have to be able to make
your version run in that product.

If the product would only run
the developer’s versions

and refuses to run yours, the executable
in that product is not free software.

Even if it was compiled from free source code

it’s not free because
you don’t have the freedom

to make the program do your computing
the way you wish.

So, freedom 1 has to be real,
not just theoretical.

It has to include the freedom
to use your version

not just the freedom to make
some source code that won’t run.

I launched the free software movement in 1983

when I announced the plan to develop

a free software operating system
whose name is GNU.

Now GNU, the name GNU, is a joke.

Because part of the hacker’s spirit

is to have fun even when
you’re doing something very serious.

Now I can’t think of anything more seriously
important than defending freedom.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t give
my system a name that’s a joke.

So GNU is a joke because
it’s a recursive acronym

it stands for “GNU is Not Unix”,
so G.N.U.: GNU’s Not Unix.

So the G in GNU stands for GNU.

Now in fact this was
a tradition at the time.

The tradition was:
if there was an existing program

and you wrote something
similar to it, inspired by it

you could give credit
by giving your program a name

that’s a recursive acronym
saying it’s not the other one.

So I gave credit to Unix for
the technical ideas of Unix

but with the name GNU, because I decided
to make GNU a Unix-like system

with the same commands, the same system calls
so that it would be compatible

so that people who used Unix
can switch over easily.

But the reason for developing GNU,
that was unique.

GNU is the only operating system,
as far as I know

ever developed for the purpose of freedom.

Not for technical motivations,
not for commercial motivations.

GNU was written for your freedom.

Because without a free operating system

it’s impossible to have
freedom and use a computer.

And there were none, and
I wanted people to have freedom

so it was up to me to write one.

Nowadays there are millions of users
of the GNU operating system

and most of them don’t know
they are using the GNU operating system

because there is a widespread
practice which is not nice.

People call the system “Linux”.

Many do, but some people don’t
and I hope you’ll be one of them.

Please, since we started this

since we wrote the biggest piece of the code

please give us equal mention

please call the system GNU+Linux
or GNU/Linux. It’s not much to ask!

But there is another reason to do this.

It turns out that the person who wrote Linux

which is one component of the
system as we use it today

he doesn’t agree with
the free software movement.

And so if you call the whole system Linux

in effect you’re steering people towards
his ideas and away from our ideas.

Because he’s not gonna say to them
that they deserve freedom.

He’s going to say to them that he likes
convenient, reliable, powerful software.

He’s going to tell people that
those are the important values.

But if you tell them the system is GNU+Linux,
the GNU operating system plus Linux the kernel

then they’ll know about us
and then they might listen to what we say.

You deserve freedom, and since freedom
will be lost if we don’t defend it —

there’s always going to be
a Sarkozy to take it away —

we need above all to teach
people to demand freedom

to be ready to stand up for their freedom

the next time someone threatens to take it away.

Nowadays, you can tell who doesn't want
to discuss these ideas of freedom

because they don’t say “logiciel libre”.

They don’t say “libre”,
they say “open source”.

That term was coined by
the people like Mr Torvalds

who would prefer that these
ethical issues don’t get raised.

And so the way you can help us
raise them is by saying libre.

You know, it’s up to you where you stand
you’re free to say what you think.

If you agree with them,
you can say open source.

If you agree with us, show it: say libre!

Now the most important
point about free software

is that schools must teach
exclusively free software.

All levels of schools from
kindergarten to university

it’s their moral responsibility to teach
only free software in their education

and all other educational activities as well

including those that say that
they’re spreading digital literacy.

A lot of those activities teach Windows,
which means they’re teaching dependence.

To teach people the use of proprietary
software is to teach dependence

and educational activities must never do that
because it’s the opposite of their mission.

Educational activities have
a social mission to educate good citizens

of a strong, capable, cooperating,
independent and free society.

And in the area of computing,
that means: teach free software.

Never teach a proprietary program
because that’s inculcating dependence.

Why do you think some proprietary developers
offer gratis copies to schools?

They want the schools
to make the children dependent.

And then, when they graduate,
they’re still dependent

and you know the company is not going
to offer them gratis copies.

And some of them get jobs
and go to work for companies.

Not many of them anymore,
but some of them.

And those companies are not going
to be offered gratis copies.

Oh no! The idea is if the school
directs the students

down the path of permanent dependence

they can drag the rest of society
with them into dependence.

That’s the plan! It’s just like
giving the school gratis needles

full of addicting drugs, saying

“inject this into your students,
the first dose is gratis.”

Once you’re dependent,
then you have to pay.

Well, the school would reject the drugs

because it isn’t right to teach
the students to use addictive drugs

and it’s got to reject
the proprietary software also.

Some people say “let’s have the school teach
both proprietary software and free software”

“so the students become familiar with both.”

That’s like saying “for lunch
lets give the kids spinach and tobacco”

“so that they become accustomed to both.”

No! The schools are only supposed
to teach good habits, not bad ones!

So there should be no Windows in a school

no Macintosh, nothing
proprietary in the education.

But also, for the sake
of educating good programmers.

You see, some people have
a talent for programming.

At ten to thirteen years old,
typically, they’re fascinated

and if they use a program, they want
to know “how does it do this?”

But when they ask the teacher,
if it’s proprietary, the teacher has to say

“I’m sorry, it’s a secret, we can’t find out.”

Which means education is forbidden.

A proprietary program is
the enemy of the spirit of education.

It’s knowledge withheld, so
it should not be tolerated in a school

even though there may be
plenty of people in the school

who don’t care about programming,
don’t want to learn this.

Still, because it’s the enemy
of the spirit of education

it shouldn’t be there in the school.

But if the program is free,
the teacher can explain what he knows

and then give out copies
of the source code, saying:

“read it and you’ll understand everything.”

And those who are really
fascinated, they will read it!

And this gives them an opportunity
to start to learn how to be good programmers.

To learn to be a good programmer,
you’ll need to recognize

that certain ways of writing code, even if
they make sense to you and they are correct

they’re not good because other people
will have trouble understanding them.

Good code is clear code that others
will have an easy time working on

when they need to make further changes.

How do you learn to write good clear code?

You do it by reading lots of code,
and writing lots of code.

And only free software offers the chance

to read the code of large
programs that we really use.

And then you have to write lots of code

which means you have
to write changes in large programs.

How do you learn to write
good code for large programs?

You have to start small, which
does not mean small programs, oh no!

The challenges of the code for large programs
don’t even begin to appear in small programs.

So the way you start small at
writing code for large programs

is by writing small
changes in large programs.

And only free software
gives you the chance to do that!

So, if a school wants to offer the possibility
of learning to be a good programmer

it needs to be a free software school.

But there is an even deeper reason

and that is for the sake of moral education

education in citizenship.

It’s not enough for a school
to teach facts and skills

it has to teach the spirit of goodwill,
the habit of helping others.

Therefore, every class should have this rule:

“Students, if you bring software to class,
you may not keep it for yourself”

”you must share copies
with the rest of the class”

”including the source code
in case anyone here wants to learn!”

”Because this class is a place
where we share our knowledge.”

”Therefore, bringing a proprietary program
to class is not permitted.”

The school must follow
its own rule to set a good example.

Therefore, the school must bring
only free software to class

and share copies, including the source code
with anyone in the class that wants copies.

Those of you who have
a connection with a school

it’s your duty to campaign and pressure
that school to move to free software.

And you have to be firm.

It may take years, but you can succeed
as long as you never give up.

Keep seeking more allies among the students,
the faculty, the staff, the parents, anyone!

And always bring it up as an ethical issue.

If someone else wants
to sidetrack the discussion

into this practical advantage
and this practical disadvantage

which means they’re ignoring the most
important question, then you have to say:

“this is not about how to do
the best job of educating“

“this is about how to do a good
education instead of an evil one.“

“It’s how to do education right
instead of wrong“

“not just how to make it
a little more effective or less.”

So don’t get distracted with those secondary
issues and ignore what really matters!

So, moving on to the next menace.

There are two issues that arise
from the use of internet services.

One of them is that the server
could abuse your data

and another is that
it could take control of your computing.

The first issue, people already know about.

They are aware that, if you
upload data to an internet service

there is a question of what
it will do with that data.

It might do things that mistreat you.

What could it do? It could lose the data,
it could change the data

it could refuse to let you get the data back.

And it could also show the data to
someone else you don’t want to show it to.

Four different possible things.

Now, here, I’m talking about the data
that you knowingly gave to that site.

Of course, many of those
services do surveillance as well.

For instance, consider Facebook.

Users send lots of data to Facebook,
and one of the bad things about Facebook

is that it shows a lot of
that data to lots of other people

and even if it offers them a setting
to say “no!”, that may not really work.

After all, if you say “some other people
can see this piece of information,”

one of them might publish it.

Now, that’s not Facebook’s fault

there is nothing they could do to
prevent that but it ought to warn people.

Instead of saying “mark this as only
to your so-called friends”

“it should say “keep in mind that your
so-called friends are not really your friends”

“and if they want to make trouble
for you, they could publish this.”

Every time, it should say that, if
they want to deal with people ethically.

As well as all the data users of Facebook
voluntarily give to Facebook

Facebook is collecting through data
about people’s activities on the net

through various methods of surveillance.
But that was the first menace.

For now I am talking about the data
that people know they are giving to these sites.

Losing data is something that
could always happen by accident.

That possibility is always there,
no matter how careful someone is.

Therefore, you need to keep
multiple copies of data that matters.

If you do that, then, even if someone
decided to delete your data intentionally

it wouldn’t hurt you that much,
because you’d have other copies of it.

So, as long as you are
maintaining multiple copies

you don’t have to worry too much
about someone’s losing your data.

What about whether you can get it back.

Well, some services make it possible to get
back all the data that you sent, and some don’t.

Google services will let the user
get back the data the user has put into them.

Facebook, famously, does not.

Of course in the case of Google, this only
applies to the data the user knows Google has.

Google does lots of surveillance, too
and that data is not included.

But in any case, if you
can get the data back

then you could track
whether they have altered it.

And they are not very likely to start
altering people’s data if the people can tell.

So maybe we can keep a track
on that particular kind of abuse.

But the abuse of showing the data to someone
you don’t want it to be shown to

is very common and almost
impossible for you to prevent

especially if it’s a US company.

You see, the most hypocritically
named law in US history

the so-called USA Patriot Act,
says that Big Brother’s police

can collect just about all the data
that companies maintain about individuals.

Not just companies, but other
organizations too, like public libraries.

The police can get this massively,
without even going to court.

Now, in a country that was
founded on an idea of freedom

there is nothing more unpatriotic
than this. But this is what they did.

So you mustn’t ever trust any
of your data to a US company.

And they say that foreign subsidiaries
of US companies are subject to this as well

so the company you are directly
dealing with may be in Europe

but if it’s owned by a US company,
you got the same problem to deal with.

However, this is mainly a concern

when the data you are sending
to the service is not for publication.

There are some services
where you publish things.

Of course, if you publish something,
you know everybody is gonna be able to see it.

So, there is no way they can hurt you

by showing it to somebody
who wasn’t supposed to see it.

There is nobody who wasn’t supposed
to see it if you published it.

So in that case the problem doesn’t exist.

So these are four sub-issues
of this one threat of abusing our data.

The idea of the Freedom Box project is
you have your own server in your own home

and when you want to do something remotely
you do it with your own server

and the police have to get a court order
in order to search your server.

So you have the same rights this way that you
would have traditionally in the physical world.

The point here and in
so many other issues is:

as we start doing things
digitally instead of physically

we shouldn’t lose any of our rights, because
the general tendency is that we do lose rights.

Basically, Stallman’s law says

that in an epoch when governments
work for the mega-corporations

instead of reporting to their citizens

every technological change can be taken
advantage of to reduce our freedom.

Because reducing our freedom is what
these governments want to do.

So the question is: when
do they get an opportunity?

Well, any change that happens for some
other reason is a possible opportunity

and they will take advantage of it
if that’s their general desire.

But the other issue
with internet services

is that they can take
control of your computing

and that’s not so commonly known.
But It’s becoming more common.

There are services that offer to do
computing for you on data supplied by you

things that you should do
in your own computer

but they invite you to let somebody else’s
computer do that computing work for you.

And the result is you lose control over it.
It’s just as if you used a non-free program.

Two different scenarios
but they lead to the same problem.

If you do your computing
with a non-free program

well, the users don’t control
the non-free program

it controls the users,
which would include you.

So you’ve lost control of
the computing that’s being done.

But if you do your computing in his server

well, the programs that are doing it
are the ones he chose.

You can’t touch them or see them,
so you have no control over them.

He has control over them, maybe.

If they are free software and he installs
them then he has control over them.

But even he might not have control.

He might be running a proprietary
program in his server

in which case it’s somebody else who has control
of the computing being done in his server.

He doesn’t control it and you don’t.

But suppose he installs a free program

then he has control over the computing
being done in his computer, but you don’t.

So, either way, you don’t!

So the only way to have
control over your computing

is to do it with
your copy of a free program.

This practice is called
“Software as a Service”.

It means doing your computing with
your data in somebody else’s server.

And I don’t know of anything
that can make this acceptable.

It’s always something
that takes away your freedom

and the only solution
I know of is to refuse.

For instance, there are servers that
will do translation or voice recognition

and you are letting them have
control over this computing activity

which we shouldn’t ever do.

Of course, we are also
giving them data about ourselves

which they shouldn’t have.

Imagine if you had
a conversation with somebody

through a voice-recognition translation
system that was Software as as Service

and it’s really running
on a server belonging to some company.

That company also gets to know what
was said in the conversation

and if it’s a US company that means
Big Brother also gets to know. This is no good.

The next threat to our freedom in a digital
society is using computers for voting.

You can’t trust computers for voting.

Whoever controls the software
in those computers

has the power to commit
undetectable fraud.

Elections are special. Because there’s
nobody involved that we dare trust fully.

Everybody has to be checked,
crosschecked by others

so that nobody is in the position
to falsify the results by himself.

Because if anybody is in a position
to do that he might do it!

So our traditional systems
for voting were designed

so that nobody was fully trusted,
everybody was being checked by others.

So that nobody could easily commit fraud.

But once you introduce a program,
this is impossible!

How can you tell if a voting machine
would honestly count the votes?

You’d have to study the program that’s
running in it during the election

which of course nobody can do, and most
people wouldn’t even know how to do.

But even the experts who might theoretically
be capable of studying the program

they can’t do it while people are voting.

They’d have to do it in advance

and then how do they know
that the program they studied

is the one that’s running while
people vote? Maybe it’s been changed.

Now, if this program is proprietary,
that means some company controls it.

The election authority can’t even
tell what that program is doing.

Well, this company then
could rig the election.

There are accusations that this was done
in the US within the past ten years

that election results were falsified this way.

But what if the program is free software?

That means the election authority

who owns this voting machine
has control over the software in it

so the election authority
could rig the election.

You can’t trust them either.

You don’t dare trust anybody in voting

and the reason is, there’s no way
that the voters can verify for themselves

that their votes were correctly counted,
nor that false votes were not added.

In other activities of life, you can usually
tell if somebody is trying to cheat you.

Consider for instance buying
something from a store.

You order something, maybe
you give a credit card number.

If the product doesn’t come,
you can complain

and you can, of course if you got
a good enough memory,

you will notice if that product doesn’t come.

You’re not just giving total blind trust
to the store, because you can check.

But in elections you can’t check.

I saw once a paper where someone described

a theoretical system for voting

which uses some sophisticated mathematics

so that people could check
that their votes had been counted

even though everybody’s vote was secret

and they could also verify
that false votes hadn’t been added.

It was very exciting, powerful mathematics;

but even if that mathematics is correct

that doesn’t mean the system
would be acceptable to use in practice

because the vulnerabilities of a real
system might be outside of that mathematics.

For instance, suppose you’re
voting over the Internet

and suppose you’re using
a machine that’s a zombie.

It might tell you that
the vote was sent for A

while actually sending a vote for B.
Who knows whether you’d ever find out?

In practice, the only way to see
if these systems work and are honest

is through years, in fact decades, of trying
them and checking in other ways what happened.

I wouldn’t want my country
to be the pioneer in this.

So, use paper for voting. Make sure
there are ballots that can be recounted.

The next threat to our freedom in a digital
society comes from the war on sharing.

One of the tremendous benefits
of digital technology

is that it is easy to copy published works
and share these copies with others.

Sharing is good, and with
digital technology, sharing is easy.

So, millions of people share.

Those who profit by having power

over the distribution of these
works don’t want us to share.

And since they are businesses,
governments which have betrayed their people

and work for the empire of mega-corporations
try to serve those businesses

they are against their own people, they are
for the businesses, for the publishers.

Well, that’s not good.
And with the help of these governments

the companies have been waging war on sharing

and they’ve proposed a series
of cruel draconian measures.

Why do they propose cruel draconian measures?

Because nothing less has a chance of success:

when something is good
and easy, people do it.

And the only way to stop them
is by being very nasty.

So of course, what they propose is nasty,
nasty, and the next one is nastier.

So they tried suing teenagers for hundreds
of thousands of dollars — that was pretty nasty.

And they tried turning
our technology against us

Digital Restrictions Management
that means, digital handcuffs.

But among the people
there were clever programmers too

and they found ways to break the handcuffs.

For instance, DVDs were designed to have
encrypted movies in a secret encryption format

and the idea was that all
the programs to decrypt the video

would be proprietary with digital handcuffs.

They would all be designed
to restrict the users.

And their scheme worked okay for a while.

But some people in Europe
figured out the encryption

and they released a free program that
could actually play the video on a DVD.

Well, the movie companies
didn’t leave it there.

They went to the US congress and bought
a law making that software illegal.

The United States invented
censorship of software in 1998

with the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act [DMCA].

So the distribution of that free program
was forbidden in the United States.

Unfortunately it didn’t stop
with the United States.

The European Union adopted a directive
in 2003 I believe, requiring such laws.

The directive only says that
commercial distribution has to be banned

but just about every country in
the European Union has adopted a nastier law.

In France, the mere possession
of a copy of that program

is an offense punished by
imprisonment, thanks to Sarkozy.

I believe that was done by the law DADVSI.

I guess he hoped that with
an unpronounceable name

people wouldn’t be able to criticize it.

So, elections are coming.
Ask the candidates in the parties:

will you repeal the DADVSI?
And if not, don’t support them.

You mustn’t give up lost
moral territory forever.

You’ve got to fight to win it back.

So, we still are fighting
against digital handcuffs.

The Amazon “Swindle” has digital handcuffs

to take away the traditional freedoms
of readers to do things such as:

give a book to someone else,
or lend a book to someone else.

That’s a vitally important social act.

That is what builds society
among people who read: lending books.

Amazon doesn’t want to let
people lend books freely.

And then there is also selling a book, perhaps
to a used bookstore. You can’t do that either.

It looked for a while as if
DRM had disappeared on music

but now they’re bringing it back
with streaming services such as Spotify.

These services all require
proprietary client software

and the reason is so they can put
digital handcuffs on the users.

So, reject them! They already
showed quite openly

that you can’t trust them,
because first they said:

“you can listen as much as you like”,
and then they said:

“Oh, no! You can only listen
a certain number of hours a month.”

The issue is not whether that particular
change was good or bad, just or unjust;

the point is, they have the power
to impose any change in policies.

So don’t let them have that power.

You should have your own copy
of any music you want to listen to.

And then came the next assault on our freedom:
HADOPI, basically punishment on accusation.

It was started in France but it’s been
exported to many other countries.

The United States now demand such unjust
policies in its free exploitation treaties.

A few months ago, Columbia adopted such a law
under orders from its masters in Washington.

Of course, the ones in Washington
are not the real masters

they’re just the ones who control the
United States on behalf of the Empire.

But they’re the ones who also dictate
to Columbia on behalf of the Empire.

In France, since the
Constitutional Council

objected to explicitly giving
people punishment without trial

they invented a kind of trial
which is not a real trial

which is just a form of a trial

so they can pretend that people
have a trial before they’re punished.

But in other countries
they don’t bother with that

it’s explicit punishment on accusation only.

Which means that for the sake
of their war on sharing

they’re prepared to abolish
the basic principles of justice.

It shows how thoroughly
anti-freedom, anti-justice they are.

These are not legitimate governments.

And I’m sure they’ll
come up with more nasty ideas

because they’re paid to defeat
the people no matter what it takes.

Now, when they do this, they always say
that it’s for the sake of the artists

that they have “protect” the “creators”.

Now those are both propaganda terms.

I‘m convinced that the reason
they love the word “creators“

is because it is a comparison with a deity.

They want us to think of artists as super-human

and thus deserving special
privileges and power over us

which is something I disagree with.

In fact though, the only artists that benefit
very much from this system are the big stars.

The other artists are getting
crushed into the ground

by the heels of these same companies.

But they treat the stars very well,
because the stars have a lot of clout.

If a star threatens to move to
another company, the company says:

“oh, we’ll give you what you want.”

But for any other artist they say: “you don’t
matter, we can treat you any way we like.”

So the superstars have been corrupted by the
millions of dollars or euros that they get

to the point where they’ll do
almost anything for more money.

For instance, J. K. Rowling is a good example.

J. K. Rowling, a few years ago,
went to court in Canada

and obtained an order that people who
had bought her books must not read them.

She got an order telling
people not to read her books.

Here’s what happened. A bookstore put
the books on display for sale too early

before the day they
were supposed to go on sale.

And people came into the store and said:

“oh, I want that!” and they bought it
and took away their copies.

Then, they discovered the mistake
so they took the copies off of display.

But Rowling wanted to crush any circulation
of any information from those books

so she went to court, and the court ordered

those people not to read
the books that they now owned.

In response, I call for a total
boycott of Harry Potter.

But I don’t say you shouldn’t read
those books or watch the movies

I only say you shouldn’t buy
the books or pay for the movies.

I leave it to Rowling to tell
people not to read the books.

As far as I’m concerned, if you borrow
the book and read it, that’s okay.

Just don’t give her any money!
But this happened with paper books.

The court could make this order
but it couldn’t get the books back

from the people who had bought them.

Imagine if they were ebooks. Imagine if
they were ebooks on the “Swindle”.

Amazon could send commands to erase them.

So, I don’t have much respect for stars
who will go to such lengths for more money.

But most artists aren’t like that, they
never got enough money to be corrupted.

Because the current system of copyright
supports most artists very badly.

And so, when these companies demand
to expand the war on sharing

supposedly for the sake of the artists

I’m against what they want but I would
like to support the artists better.

I appreciate their work and I realize if we
want them to do more work we should support them.

I have two proposals
for how to support artists

methods that are compatible with sharing.

That would allow us to end the war
on sharing and still support artists.

One method uses tax money.

We get a certain amount of public
funds to distribute among artists.

But, how much should each artist get?
We have to measure popularity.

The current system supposedly supports
artists based on their popularity.

So I’m saying let’s keep that, let’s
continue on this system based on popularity.

We can measure the popularity
of all the artists

with some kind of polling or sampling,
so that we don’t have to do surveillance.

We can respect people’s anonymity.

We get a raw popularity figure for each artist.

How do we convert that into an amount of money?

The obvious way is: distribute
the money in proportion to popularity.

So if A is a thousand times as popular as B
A will get a thousand times as much money as B.

That’s not efficient distribution of the money.

It’s not putting the money to good use.

It’s easy for a star A to be a thousand times
as popular as a fairly successful artist B.

If we use linear proportion, we’ll give A
a thousand times as much money as we give B.

And that means that, either we have
to make A tremendously rich

or we are not supporting B enough.

The money we use to make
A tremendously rich

is failing to do an effective job of
supporting the arts; so, it’s inefficient.

Therefore I say: let’s use the cube root.
Cube root looks sort of like this.

The point is: if A is a thousand
times as popular as B

with the cube root A
will get ten times as much as B

not a thousand times as much,
just ten times as much.

The use of the cube root
shifts a lot of the money

from the stars to the artists
of moderate popularity.

And that means, with less money we can adequately
support a much larger number of artists.

There are two reasons why this system
would use less money than we pay now.

First of all because it would be
supporting artists but not companies.

Second because it would shift the money from
the stars to the artists of moderate popularity.

Now, it would remain the case that the more
popular you are, the more money you get.

So the star A would still get more
than B, but not astronomically more.

That’s one method, and because
it won’t be so much money

it doesn’t matter so much
how we get the money.

It could be from a special tax
on Internet connectivity

it could just be some of the general budget
that gets allocated to this purpose.

We won’t care because
it won’t be so much money;

much less than we’re paying now.

The other method I’ve proposed
is voluntary payments.

Suppose each player had a button
you could use to send one euro.

A lot of people would send it,
after all it’s not that much money.

I think a lot of you might
push that button every day

to give one euro to some artist
who had made a work that you liked.

But nothing would demand this

you wouldn’t be required or ordered
or pressured to send the money;

you would do it because you felt like it.

But there are some people
who wouldn’t do it

because they’re poor and they
can’t afford to give one euro.

And it’s good that they won’t give it.

We don’t have to squeeze money
out of poor people to support the artists.

There are enough non poor people
who’ll be happy to do it.

Why wouldn’t you give one euro to some
artists today, if you appreciated their work?

It’s too inconvenient to give it to them.
So my proposal is to remove the inconvenience.

If the only reason not to give that euro is
you would have one euro less

you would do it fairly often.

So these are my two proposals
for how to support artists

while encouraging sharing
because sharing is good.

Let’s put an end to the war on sharing,
laws like DADVSI and HADOPI.

It’s not just the methods
that they propose that are evil

their purpose is evil.

That’s why they propose
cruel and draconian measures.

They’re trying to do something
that’s nasty by nature.

So let’s support artists in other ways.

The last threat to our freedom
in digital society is the fact

that we don’t have a firm right
to do the things we do, in cyberspace.

In the physical world,
if you have certain views

and you want to give people copies
of a text that defends those views

you’re free to do so. You could
even buy a printer to print them

and you’re free to hand them out on the street

or you’re free to rent
a store and hand them out there.

If you want to collect
money to support your cause

you can just have a can and people
could put money into the can.

You don’t need to get somebody else’s
approval or cooperation to do these things.

But, in the Internet, you do need that.

For instance if you want
to distribute a text on the Internet

you need companies to help you do it.
You can’t do it by yourself.

So if you want to have a website, you need
the support of an ISP or a hosting company

and you need a domain name registrar.

You need them to continue
to let you do what you’re doing.

So you’re doing it effectively
on sufferance, not by right.

And if you want to receive money,
you can’t just hold out a can.

You need the cooperation
of a payment company.

And we saw that this makes all of our
digital activities vulnerable to suppression.

We learned this when the United States government

launched a distributed denial of service
attack [DDoS] against WikiLeaks.

Now I’m making a bit of a joke because
the words “distributed denial of service attack”

usually refer to a different kind of attack.

But they fit perfectly with
what the United States did.

The United States went to the various kinds
of network services that WikiLeaks depended on

and told them to cut off
service to WikiLeaks. And they did.

For instance, WikiLeaks had rented
a virtual Amazon server

and the US government told Amazon: “cut off
service for WikiLeaks.” And it did, arbitrarily.

And then, Amazon had certain domain names
such as wikileaks.org

the US government tried to get
all those domains shut off.

But it didn’t succeed, some of them were
outside its control and were not shut off.

Then, there were the payment companies.
The US went to PayPal and said:

“Stop transferring money to WikiLeaks
or we’ll make life difficult for you.”

And PayPal shut off payments to WikiLeaks.

And then it went to Visa and Mastercard and
got them to shut off payments to WikiLeaks.

Others started collecting money on WikiLeaks
behalf and their accounts were shut off too.

But in this case, maybe something can be done.

There’s a company in Iceland which began
collecting money on behalf of WikiLeaks

and so Visa and Mastercard shut off its account;

it couldn’t receive money
from its customers either.

Now, that business is suing Visa and
Mastercard apparently under European Union law

because Visa and Mastercard
together have a near-monopoly.

They’re not allowed to arbitrarily
deny service to anyone.

Well, this is an example
of how things need to be

for all kinds of services
that we use in the Internet.

If you rented a store to hand out
statements of what you think

or any other kind of information
that you can lawfully distribute

the landlord couldn’t kick you out just
because he didn’t like what you were saying.

As long as you keep paying the rent,
you have the right to continue in that store

for a certain agreed-on period
of time that you signed.

So you have some rights
that you can enforce.

And they couldn’t shut off
your telephone line

because the phone company
doesn’t like what you said

or because some powerful entity didn’t like
what you said and threatened the phone company.

No! As long as you pay the bills
and obey certain basic rules

they can’t shut off your phone line.
This is what it’s like to have some rights!

Well, if we move our activities from
the physical world to the virtual world

then either we have the same rights in the
virtual world, or we have been harmed.

So, the precarity of all our Internet activities
is the last of the menaces I wanted to mention.

Now I’d like to say that for more information
about free software, look at GNU.org.

Also look at fsf.org, which is the website
of the Free Software Foundation.

You can go there and find many ways
you can help us, for instance.

You can also become a member of the Free
Software Foundation through that site

if you're going to do e-commerce.
If you'd like to join and pay cash

right here you can do that too.
I've got cards you can fill out.

There is also the Free Software Foundation
of Europe fsfe.org. You can join FSFE also.

Can you accept membership in cash?

Is there someone who wants to join right now?

Ok, so you can join FSFE also
paying with cash.

Now it's time and, by the way

I know the case of the FSF
we get most of our funds from members

so joining is really important
and probably for FSFE as well.

Now it's time for me to raise funds
in another way.

This is an adorable gnu
that needs a home.

And I'm going to auction it on behalf
of the Free Software Foundation.

If you buy the gnu, I'll sign
a card for you, if you like

and if you have a penguin
you need to get a gnu

because as we all know a penguin
can hardly function without a gnu.

When you bid, please wave your arm
and shout the quantity you are bidding

so that I notice you.

If you are bidding, I think you
want me to notice that you're bidding.

The FSF can accept payments
either in cash or with a credit card.

If the credit card works for ordering
by telephone then it won't work with us.

So, I'm going to start with 20 euros.
Do I get 20 euros?

I've got 20 euros, do I have 25?

How much?

Trente?
Ok, I've got 30 euros, do I have 35?

How much?
I've got 35, do I get 40?

I have 42

I have 42 euros, do I have 50?

How much?
I've got 50, do I get 60?

I've got 60, do I get 70?

How much?
I've got 70, do I get 80?

I've got 80, do I get 90?

I've got 80 euros, do I get 90
for this adorable gnu?

How much?
I've got 100 euros, do I get 110?

I've got 110, do I get 120?

I've got 120, do I get 130?

I've got 130, do I get 140?

How much?
I've got 140, do I get 150?

I've got 150, do I get 160?

I've got 160, do I get 170?

How much?
I've got 170, do I get 180?

Do you bid?
I've got 200

I've got 200, do I get 210?

I've got 210, do I get 220?

I've got 220, do I get 230?

Do I get 230 for this adorable gnu
that needs a home?

Do I get 230 to the Free Software
Foundation to defend freedom?

Last chance to bid. How much?

I've got 230, do I get 240?

I've got 240, do I get 250?

For this adorable gnu
to defend freedom?

How much?
I've got 300

I've got 300, do I get 320 for this
adorable gnu to defend freedom?

I've got 320, do I get 340?

How much? 340?
I've got 340, do I get 360?

What? I've got 340.

No, no I don't want to go up by such
small increments, we'll be here all night

I've got 340, do I get 360?

I've got 360, do I get 380?

I've got 380, do I get 400?

to defend freedom?
for this adorable gnu, do I get 400?

I've got 380, do I get 400?
Last chance to bid, 400 or more.

Last chance, going...

I've got 400, do I get 420?

How much?
I've got 420, do I get 440?

Last chance to bid 440 or more
for this adorable gnu.

Do I get 440?
Last chance, going, going

sold for 420.

Please note that there are stickers
which are gratuit to take.

Please take as many as you can
and make good use of.

There are also various small things
to sell, like badges and elegant pins

and the money supports
the Free Software Foundation.

Anyway now it's time for me
to answer questions.