The New Freedom

Jump to Comments

Woah! I didn’t expect such a huge response from that last post at all! Most unexpectedly, it was featured on the wonderful and popular BoingBoing.net. I think the coolest part about that, besides the huge spike in traffic and readers, was that the article was read (and liked!) by geek-legend Cory Doctorow, author of Overclocked and contributing writer for Wired magazine.

To follow-up on what happened with the original story, I received an email from Jim Stone the day after I posted the article. The tone was much more civil, even complementing my blog. I don’t know how he found it, I figure he used my Facebook profile, or perhaps he or one of his underlings is a BoingBoing reader. Anyway, because two of my ‘violations’ for for the same infringement, he will stop considering it as two separate incidents. He also pointed out that Matlab is available for loan for free
to any undergraduate who has obtained a signed application from one of their professors. He even offered to wave the signature requirement. I don’t quite know how he has the power to do this, but it does seem like he is actually trying to help me now. However, I have also been informed that, although I should have checked before, there are two Octave and one called SciLab. In future, I will be using Octave for all my matrix multiplication needs.

The last post received more than 70 comments, some supporting me and some attacking me, which I think is great. I was, again, accused of being arrogant and an asshole. Well, the fact of the matter is that yes, I am at times an arrogant asshole. I don’t mind being called out as such. What does bother me is being called a theif. From Hound:

“You stole something. If you had gotten caught taking a soda from 7-11 without paying for it, do you think you could argue civil disobedience?”

For the last time, copying is not stealing. I thought this was something we all figured out during the Napster era. Stealing is a matter of taking another’s possession. In the digital realm (this is the key difference), when you take something from a peer, they still retain the original copy. Nobody is harmed, nobody loses out. About the civil disobedience issue, I’d like to refer you to an older post, specifically to the section detailing the interview with John Perry Barlow. We do not agree with the law, and we will continue to break it, simply because we can. Filesharing will not go away. When we share our files, we make it easier to obtain things which we think other people should be allowed to obtain. The easier this is, the sooner general acceptance of filesharing will be absorbed into mainstream culture.

Another thing which kept coming up in the comments which I’d like to address is the wellbeing of the programmers at MathWorks. When I copy software which I would not pay for anyway, they do not lose profit. Something I’d like to have some statistics on (even informally, maybe a Slashdot poll?) is what percentage of programmers actually work on for-sale software. All of the professional programmers I have ever met do in-house work for companies. I feel that this is probably how the vast majority of professional coders operate, and that the job market would not suddenly dry up if all software was free.

What is more important is that tools of creation are available to everybody. Just a few years ago, the tools needed to create visual art, music and science were restricted just to those that could afford them. Any one in the masses with an innovative artistic or scientific idea who could not afford those tools would simply have to let it sit inside of them. Now, in our new age, they can easily acquire those tools. The power of creation is now in everybody’s hands. This is the very idea behind a lot of the internet’s most popular websites like YouTube and Flickr. People made fun of them for it, but even TIME magazine had the insight to make ‘You’ their Man-Of-The-Year cover story. At the end of the day, total availability of the tools of art and science is far, far more important than megacorporate profit. Will this have an impact on global economics? You bet. And that’s a good thing.

(Argh, lost a paragraph! Again! WordPress is awful.)

That’s about all I have to say for now, I think I’ll just let the debate in the comments speak for itself. I’d like to point out the support of John Emory, who wrote about me in 425nanometers, summarizing the situation and throwing in some interesting personal opinion on the matter.

Here are some other highlights:

Anonymous
Looks like typical BU. Its a shame I was kind of hoping they would have more scruples than that. But what do you expect when a former (?) board member is a head honcho at Dreamworks?

Nick
That ID number is assigned by BayTSP, the enforcement company that caught you sharing. The first three digits correspond with the specific client (eg Disney will be 420-, ESA will be 666-, etc), and the last portion is the individual ID#.
It’s funny that you ask how many notices they send out: The RIAA notices through MediaSentry skip most numbers for some reason, but are issued linearly. I haven’t examined BayTSPs, perhaps I should…

Chris
I can see your point at how BU ignores the political dimension of the DMCA, but the sad thing is that, from the open-source point of view, you just should refuse to use Matlab. As a programming language, it’s crap that is not fit to be taught at a university, even if engineers tend to believe differently. They are plenty of open-source alternatives (Python/Scipy is the industry standard, but Octave even offers you Matlab’s syntax, for what it is worth), and by using them you can even contribute and improve. You’ll learn much more useful things than cracking Matlab’s copy protection, and if enough peeple do so, Mathwork’s will happily remember the times when people at least pirated their software :-)

se
Heh, I used to work for BU-IT many years ago, and had a run-in with Jim Stone when a friend of mine and I decided to ‘demonstrate’ a sendmail vulnerability on the ACS and CGL clusters that we had notified IT staff about, and they hadn’t patched. My experience in his office somewhat mirrors your own.
Jim is a scary asshole, but he’s pretty good at what he does. You pirated Matlab, you got caught, and then tried to rant at a guy that’s heard it all before. I’m not really convinced this portrayal of him as a jackbooted thug, doing the will of the RIAA/BSA/MPAA is really, well, accurate.
Pay the $99. If you’re in the game, don’t bitch when you lose.

doggo
Leaving aside the moral considerations of pirating software and content, what irks me is the ignorance of the “DMCA Enforcer”. If that’s your job, and you are going to call yourself that, then it behooves you to be familiar with the moral, political, and philosophical issues surrounding the matter. Not to mention the technologies used.
Another point is how unprofessional it is to call someone a “smartass”, etc. What the hell is that? And who, in this day and age, has a bottle of liquor on their desk in the work place? Inappropriate. He needs to be let go. Doesn’t understand the issues or technologies, and engages in inappropriate behavior.

Macon Stoneburner
I think it’s pretty funny that you complain about Mr. Stone participating in “evil” things while also admitting that you steal software.
Stealing is evil.
You’re a thief and a hypocrite and I hope you get nailed to the wall.

Mike
Some copyright infringement notices are ACTUALLY crap. I got a notice once (At RPI) for downloading Firewall before it came out. In German.
The school official in charge allowed me to contest it in the terms that I don’t even speak German.
I got another notice a few months later. Apparently my X-Box was illegally downloading music. Who knew!
The school official again let me contest it due to the fact that the IP assigned was to an X-Box. He also said he’s sick of the crap notices.

winter
Yeah, your pretty much an ass. All justification. No substance.

David
Yeah, I hate the DMCA too, but I don’t download or use pirated software, which you are amazingly admitting to.
I think it’s hilarious that you write this whole rant, badmouthing this guy, and then admit you did exactly what they were accusing you of.
Your rant just makes you sound like a tool and adds fuel to the fire of DMCA supporters. Thanks pal!

Matthew Miller
We include Octave in BU Linux, our mini-distribution targeted at the Boston University Community. If you’re in a BU class that requires Matlab and want to use Octave instead, and the professor isn’t amenable, please send a message to linux (dash) help (at) bu (dot) edu and I’ll see what I can do.
That’s how you *really* fight for freedom.

wishiwasrich
Also Macon I think you are pretty comical with statements like.
“Stealing is evil.”
Really?
http://www.shorpy.com/node/55
Guess these kids are evil because they don’t want to freeze to death.
( I am in no way trying to equate needing Matlab with freezing to death just showing the ridiculousness of the statement “stealing is evil” )

Mr Whoosis
As BU has already paid for Matlab licences for classroom use, whom does it actually harm if someone downloads a copy to use rather than using the paid-for one?
Does it in some way affect anyone? I’m having trouble seeing who the victim is. If the choice is between someone not paying $99 and having no Matlab, or someone not paying $99 and having Matlab, then from a strictly utilitarian point of view, the latter is preferable.
He who lights his taper at my flame does not lessen my flame.

Alex Cline
I took a class which needed MATLAB and I convinced my professor to let us use Scilab, which is an open-source equivalent. The other way to beat Them is to avoid Them.

epp_b
Looking back at the comments here, I am amazed at how many people the copyright thought police and their ilk have managed to brainwash into thinking that “copyright infringement” is equivalent to “stealing”.
And “civil disobedience” is exactly what he did. Defined, it means to actively and peacefully disobey a law because it is absurd, illegitimate and/or immoral. Copyright is absurd: the “right” to put an arbitrary value (read: any number you pull from your backside) for “time and effort”. If someone can find way around it, it’s your problem. Not the government’s, not the public’s, it’s yours. And if you don’t find a way to work with how the public wants it, someone else will. That’s business. Boo-hoo.
If I put time and effort into rubbing two sticks together to make a fire (pretend that no one but me knows about this), and say that you have to pay me a dollar to light a piece of wood and take it home; but you do it without paying me, you’re not stealing my fire…you’re not stealing anything. There is nothing immoral about getting a free ride off of my effort! Illegal, in some cases, it may be; *that* is how this is civil disobedience.
Putting time and effort into something based on someone else’s time and effort is how every aspect of society advances. Do you really think the inventor of the wheel wanted to keep it for himself and find a way to wrench everyone over for it?
Copyright is a arbitrary law and right, not a natural one. You have a natural right not to be punched in the face. You do NOT have a natural right to put some time and effort into something and say that it cannot be copied.

http://www.thenewfreedom.net/wp/2007/03/21/a-meeting-with-jim-stone-dmca-enforcer/#comment-70

Michael (Mickey) Sattler
Wow, James H. Stone. What a blast from the past. “Jim” has been doing this sort of computer-usage administration since around 1981, when I and Ed “Andy” Greenberg came to his attention whilst improving some of the support software of the core VM services written at the university. He’s always been well-spoken but surely on the side of order and administration. (I actually miss him; he was a fun part of my time at BU.)

RW
This is the dumbest thing ever. You stole software. BU provides the software for free use at their clusters. Your laziness is no reason for you to go steal the software.
I am utterly amazed that you can’t see that you’re stealing. People work hard to make Matlab. A lot of people work hard to make Matlab. They’re not donating their time and all the years they put into their education just so that you can have a free piece of software. You may not like the software, but Matlab does have the right to charge you a fee to use it.
You’re not even copyright infringing, you’re stealing something outright. I may not like having to pay for my groceries, but I do. By your logic since I have the right to eat, I should just be able to walk into a restaurant, order and eat what ever I want and just walk out without paying.
By the way, if you’re so incredibly lazy to not walk to the various computer clusters around the BU campus, nudge your mouse around, look for cygwin, and install their X-windows client. Log into their Unix servers (call IT, I’m sure Jim would be glad to tell you what servers to use), and use it remotely.
You give college students a bad name and should be head shotted.

Paul D
Wow, the jerks sure appeared in force on their high horse to call you a “thief” and other nasty things, as if copying ideas were akin to depriving old ladies of their pensions.
Keep up the blogging! Our fascist copyright regime sucks, and the sooner we ditch it the better.

Cathy
The fact of the matter is that the law is a mess. Copyright was supposed to be a system of limited terms of monopoly of certain (not all) rights in the author of an original work. Today the law has somehow turned out to be (a) not limited (was 10 years, now 70+ despite data showing that the increase in the term offers no greater incentive for works to be created), (b) a monopoly on nearly *all* rights (see, e.g., the DMCA that prevents the public from enjoying their traditional fair use rights), and (c) and an award of rights based on “mere sweat of the brow,” meaning that simply by having exerted effort in producing something a monopoly can get awarded, even if that effort resulted in little or no originality. Meanwhile, the courts have not quite figured out how to handle something like software, which inherently gets copied every time it’s used, and some very strange case law has emerged where the courts tried to treat it exactly like they would a book.
To the extent that any of the above is “the law,” it may or may not be consistent, it may or may not make sense, it may or may not be Constitutional, and it may or may not be a legal absolute. Therefore, any “education” that would seem to treat any of this as a definitive is inherently wrong.
In other words, “illegal downloading is wrong” = rhetoric, not law. It is the position promulgated by powerful, wealthy parties who have already caused the law to evolve from the balance it once had to a system skewed disproportionately in their favor, and who would still assert that they have rights beyond what the system already generously provides them.
So if we’re going to throw around the term, “wrong,” there are far more appropriate things we can apply it to than people using the fungible tools they need to further “promote the progress of the Arts and Sciences,” as the Constitution commands. Indeed, isn’t that what a university itself is supposed to promote? Allowing itself to instead be co-opted into an agent of political brainwashing by the content cartels is completely inconsistent with that mission (and that’s what it is, political brainwashing, just like it would be if the university tried to “educate” its students on why Democrats or Republicans were right or wrong) and completely inappropriate for a college or university to do.

Noone:
Stick to your guns.
Fuck The Man.

Anonymous:
I write commerical software for a living, so I get very peeved when I read about someone downloading a copy of a commercial software package without paying for it — but, even I understand that it is not theft. Nor is it the moral equivalent of theft. It is just as sickening to me to hear someone compare downloading Matlab to a starving man stealing a loaf of bread as it is to hear someone compare it to stealing a CD-ROM from the local CompUSA. Neither comparison is particularly valid.

Phew! Thanks to everybody who read and wrote! Agree or disagree, I’m glad you’re thinking about an issue which is very important to me. Hopefully a few people are a bit more open minded now. Sorry I didn’t do this earlier, this is the first time I’ve had free time all week.

Namaste!,
Rich.

---

Stumble! | Save This Page! |