Episode: 490
Title: HPR0490: TIT Radio Ep 13.1ec
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0490/hpr0490.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 21:37:53

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Yeah, you're listening to WBAI New York 99.5 FM. It is now 8 p.m. exactly, and it is July the 22nd,
2009, and this is the personal computer shoe.
And good evening, this is Joe King. Here in the studio with me tonight is Hank Kear, my co-host,
and from the sky box, high above downtown Perkisee, PA, the Dalcitan dancing melodies of Dr. Alfred Poor. Good evening, Alfred.
Good evening, gentlemen.
We're going to have an interesting show tonight. We have a special guest coming to us from deep in the heart of Venezuela,
Dr. Richard Stoeman.
That is opposed to the founder and head of the Free Software Foundation.
And he is in the forefront of Gnu, and yes, they are the people who did Gnu.
You know, a lot of people say they use Linux, but really they're using Gnu and the Linux kernel.
We're not going to talk about that tonight, though. We're going to talk about literature. Richard, are you there?
Stevie is our, Richard, are you there to show me? Sure, I'm here.
Here you go. Good. Here we go. Here we go. Hank, Richard has been talking about some of the difficulties with the,
not with the Kindle as such, but with the things that the Kindle causes in essence. Richard, why don't you tell us a little bit about your position on the Kindle?
Well, the reason I condemn the Amazon Swindle, which is the only name I'm willing to call it,
is that it's an attempt to take away the traditional freedoms of readers of books.
Traditionally, we are free to do things such as borrow a book from the Public Library,
lend it to a friend, sew it to a used bookstore, buy it anonymously by paying cash,
which is the way I normally will buy a book, and to keep the book for as long as we like,
and then read it as many times as we like, and we can even pass it on to our heirs,
who can then read it and keep it and do all those other things with it.
The Swindle Impliments DRM, Digital Restrictions Management,
that is the malicious feature of refusing to let you do things,
it's designed to restrict the user. Specifically, I'm not talking about bugs now,
I'm talking about intentionally programmed restrictions,
and DRM in general is an attack on the user, and you should never accept any product with DRM,
unless you have the means to break the DRM, unless you personally have access to those things.
Wait a minute, Richard, stop, you're not really suggesting that people should violate
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by breaking DRM, are you?
Of course, of course I am, and unjust laws don't deserve to be obeyed.
The DMCA, at least that part of the DMCA, is clearly unjust.
It just shows the power of the copyright megacorporations over the U.S. Congress.
I don't believe that just because corporations pay money to Congress to get a law,
changes what's right or wrong.
Well, let me ask you, has this been constitutionally tested?
I don't know, not that I ever heard of, but I'm not an expert on that.
I couldn't tell you if there's any reason to expect the Supreme Court to reject the DMCA.
They don't seem to have been very inclined to be to apply strict limits to copyright
was in other areas, and other questions.
So, I would, if I had to guess, I would guess that they wouldn't care, but I really don't know.
Let me ask, is there anything about, let's skip the phrase Kindle as such,
and just talk about an e-book reader.
Is there anything about the e-book reader concept that you're in favor of?
Well, I wouldn't mind an e-book reader if it didn't impose digital restrictions management.
All right, because the DRM is what attacks our freedom.
Exactly.
The reader book on a screen isn't necessarily good, but if that's accompanied by DRM,
it means it will be a lot worse off.
I mean, right now if you visit your friend's house, you'll see a shelf of books,
and you can look at them, and you could ask, could I borrow this one?
But that'll be impossible if your friend's books are inside of an e-book reader with DRM.
Unless he's willing to give you his book reader.
His whole library, he could lend you.
But that's a problem with the e-book.
But that's a problem with Congress and not the product, though.
Well, it's a problem with both.
And just because there's an unjust law that makes a certain thing legally possible,
that doesn't mean that those who do it are excused of all blame for what they're doing.
Amazon is totally responsible for what it's doing, and the U.S. Congress is responsible for the DMCA.
There's a line of reasoning which says, if what a company is doing is lawful,
you can't blame it at all.
I reject that line of political thinking completely.
I know that you're out of the country right now.
You're done in Venezuela.
But some news came out yesterday about Barnes & Noble entering the e-book fray
with a very much larger library, even than Amazon,
but a great part of their library will be coming from the Google library of public domain books.
And it will be not locked down to a single mechanical reader,
but will be in a more open format.
I think the PDF format, but I'm not sure about that.
Well, if they're really just PDFs and not PDFs encapsulated in DRM,
I have nothing against that.
I don't mind reading PDF files.
There's free software to read PDF files.
The secondary consequence of DRM is that the only software you can use to do the job
that's not censored is proprietary software and proprietary software is injustice itself.
But if these are really unencrypted PDFs that you can read with free software
and read on any sort of computer, I don't have any criticism of that.
Does Adobe have one of those?
And you say, can I borrow it? He'll just make you a copy.
To the best of your knowledge, does the Adobe e-book reader have DRM built into it?
I don't know.
I would expect it does because I think actually, isn't that what occasioned the arrest
of Dmitriy Skryanov, the Russian computer scientist when he visited the U.S. to give a talk at a conference?
I don't recall what occasion.
It was Adobe that had him arrested.
And then Adobe turned around and said, oh, we didn't mean for him to be arrested,
but they didn't pay his defense costs.
You know, if you spilled soup on somebody's jacket and you said, oh, I didn't mean to do that.
The next thing to do would be to make up for the harm you did.
But Adobe didn't really want him to be freed.
They just wanted to pretend they weren't to blame.
Well, what about the use of this unit outside the United States because they are not such DRM laws?
Well, if somebody managed to break the DRM, whether it's in the United States,
that would go a long way to solving the problem of people there to use the free software
that could then give them full unrestricted access to their own files.
Richard, is this your position or is this the official position of the free software foundation?
The free software foundation is against DRM because DRM mandates the use of non-free software.
And non-free software already tramples your freedom of users deserve to have control of their computing.
The users deserve to be free to share the software they use, and that means it's got to be free software.
It's interesting because if this is a slight takeoff beyond that,
but I'm sure it's something that concerns you as well,
I listen to a great many audiobooks.
That's one of the pleasures I have in life.
And if I take an audiobook, if I download an audiobook from the library,
it comes down in a format with DRM on it that precludes my using it on my iPod.
I have to use it on a Windows-based listening machine.
Well, this is an example of the injustice of DRM.
In order to forward an audio round that, I had to go over to Germany
where a lovely company named Audils has come up with a program called Tombite,
which they claim does not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,
but it's an extra two or three steps for me to listen to the book.
You know, I'm concerned with things that are more than just a couple of extra steps.
There's more at stake here.
I suspect that that program is proprietary software from the way you described it.
I thought it really is.
Well, that's not a solution.
It doesn't enable people who live in freedom.
But yeah, we had a protest outside the Boston Public Library
because they are distributing files with DRM.
They shouldn't do that. They should stop.
The reason that this happens is because a company set out to use the public libraries
to turn them basically into its outlets.
And the outlaw libraries went along with it.
If they all said no, then they would end up distributing it without DRM.
But because a lot of them said yes, essentially they lay down and...
Richard didn't that also have something to do with the publishers
who said they wanted some sort of control before they would allow them.
Publishers would probably give in.
After all, the publishers will sell lots of paper books that don't have DRM.
And if a library said,
we'll take the audio books on CDs, and that's it.
It'd probably be available.
I suppose probably some are available in that way.
Well, Richard, let me see if I can wrap this up and just ask a question.
A very simple question, but probably very complex is,
how can we go about changing the law?
Well, the first step is we have to build public discussed and denunciation for DRM,
which means don't look at it in terms of how many steps do I have to go through to listen.
And instead say, this was designed to attack my freedom,
and I won't stand for it.
I won't judge it purely in the shortest possible term.
But instead I'll say this is a trend, a systematic way of attacking my freedom,
and it's going to get worse if I don't fight it.
And then visit defectivebydesign.org and sign up and participate in our protests.
And you have a product.
You don't have a protest going right now that you're organizing,
and do you have a website that people can go to to find out about this?
It's defectivebydesign.org.
Can you spell that out?
D-E-S-E-C-T-I-V-E.
Oh, defective.
D-E-S-R-H-E-N.org.
Do I win the spelling bee now?
You do, and I hope that Michael is listening,
because he will post that on our website as soon as he gets a chance.
By the way, I apologize if I asked him for the spelling bee,
because sometimes it's difficult to hear it over the year.
That's why.
Yeah, it's surprisingly hard to spell it vocally, although the type it, of course, is totally easy.
Well, the thing is, we're going to put on a website and direct people to it,
and those will have questions on it.
Well, thank you very much for bringing us up to date on the DRM situation.
You did not use the phrase digital rights management when you referred to DRM.
You used a different one.
Of course, because, well, you see, from the point of view of the people trying to impose it on it,
on us, they call it digital rights management,
from our point of view, these are restrictions.
So you choose one term or the other, and you choose your side.
Right, we've been calling it here on the air, digitally restricted media.
DRM.
That's a good term too.
But we'll take yours as well.
Thank you very much for joining us, Richard Salman, of the free software foundation.
Why do I have trouble saying free software foundation?
Because I don't get much free software, that's why.
And Richard, please join us again one day soon.
I'll be happy to.
We'll talk about this again, have a pleasant trip back from Venezuela.
Thank you for joining us. Good night.
Thank you.
Feel free to give us a call or follow up or to send us email at PCRadio at PCRadioShow.org.
Remind us that you are on the air and we'll try and answer more quickly.
For the rest of you, if you write into us, Gold card members get answers first.
Everybody gets an answer eventually.
This is Joe King.
I want to thank you all for listening.
Hanky and Alfred.
Poor will be joining Stevie and me again next week, I think.
And until then, we'll be hearing various noises coming out from Stevie's board.
Mm-hmm.
And that effectively concludes the personal computer show here at WBAI, New York 99.5,
also streaming on the web at WBAI.org and pick up the stream at the PCRadioShow.org.
All right, have a good evening out there in Redidio Land, like Joe said.
And listen to this.
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Thank you very much.
