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| 2 | <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN" "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd" [
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| 3 | ]>
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| 4 | <article lang="bg">
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| 5 | <title>Триумфиращият анархизъм</title>
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| 6 | <articleinfo>
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| 7 | <releaseinfo>$Id: anarchism.bg.xml 1148 2007-06-02 04:37:43Z ash $</releaseinfo>
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| 8 | </articleinfo>
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| 9 |
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| 10 | <!-- <html><head> -->
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| 11 | <!-- base
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| 12 | href="http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_8/moglen/index.html"
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| 13 | -->
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| 14 |
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| 15 | <!--
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| 16 | <meta name="Description" content="This paper shows why free software, far from
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| 17 | being a marginal participant in the commercial software market, is the
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| 18 | first step in the withering away of the intellectual property system.">
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| 19 | <meta name="Keywords" content="anarchism triumphant, free software, death of copyright, Linux operating system kernel, software as property, article">
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| 20 | <meta name="DC.Title" content="Anarchism triumphant">
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| 21 | <meta name="DC.Title" content="Free software and the death of copyright">
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| 22 | <meta name="DC.Creator" content="Moglen, Eben">
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| 23 | <meta name="DC.Subject" content="anarchism triumphant, free software, death of copyright, Linux operating system kernel, software as property, article">
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| 24 | <meta name="DC.Description" content="This paper shows why free software, far from being a marginal participant in the commercial software market, is the
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| 25 | first step in the withering away of the intellectual property system.">
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| 26 | <meta name="DC.Publisher" content="Valauskas, Edward J.">
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| 27 | <meta name="DC.Publisher" content="Dyson, Esther">
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| 28 | <meta name="DC.Publisher" content="Ghosh, Rishab Aiyer">
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| 29 | <meta name="DC.Date" content="1999-08-02">
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| 30 | <meta name="DC.Type" content="text">
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| 31 | <meta name="DC.Format" content="text/html">
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| 32 | <meta name="DC.Identifier" content="http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_8/moglen/index.html">
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| 33 | <meta name="DC.Language" content="en">
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| 34 | <meta name="DC.Relation" content="IsPartOf First Monday, vol 4, no. 8"></head><body alink="#ffee99" bgcolor="#ffffff" link="#bb7777" text="#000000" vlink="#7777bb">
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| 35 |
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| 36 | <blockquote><img src="anarchism_files/logo.gif" alt="First Monday" align="bottom" border="0" height="40" width="256"><br>
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| 37 |
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| 38 | </blockquote>
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| 39 | -->
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| 40 |
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| 41 |
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| 42 | <para><ulink url="http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_8/moglen/index.html#author"><!-- <img src="anarchism_files/moglen.gif" alt="Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright" border="0">--> </ulink></para>
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| 43 |
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| 44 | <blockquote><para>Разпространението на ядрото за операционни системи
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| 45 | Линукс насочи вниманието към движението за свободен софтуер. Това есе
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| 46 | показва защо свободният софтуер, който далеч не е нищожен участник в
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| 47 | пазара на комерсиален софтуер, е важната първа стъпка в премахването
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| 48 | на системата на интелектуална собственост.</para></blockquote>
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| 49 |
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| 50 | <section>
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| 51 | <title>Софтуерът като собственост: Теоретичният парадокс</title>
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| 52 |
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| 53 | <para><emphasis>Софтуер</emphasis>: никоя друга дума не въплъщава
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| 54 | толкова пълно рактическите и социалните ефекти на цифровата революция.
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| 55 | Първоначално терминът е бил чисто технически и е означавал частите на
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| 56 | една компютърна система, която за разлика от "хардуера" -- направен
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| 57 | непроменим от производителя си в електрониката на системата, е можел
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| 58 | свободно да бъде променян. Първият софтуер е представлявал начина на
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| 59 | включване на кабели и прекъсвачи на външните панели на електронни
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| 60 | устройства, но още с появата на езикови средства за промяната на
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| 61 | поведението на компютъра, "софтуер" започнал да обозначава предимно
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| 62 | изразяванията в повече или по-малко понятех за хората език, който
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| 63 | както описвал, така и контролирал поведението на машината<footnote>
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| 64 | <para>1. Тази отлика е била само приблизителна в първоначалния
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| 65 | контекст. В края на 60-те определена част от основните операции
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| 66 | на хардуера са контролирани от програми, които са цифрово кодирани
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| 67 | в електрониката на компютърното оборудване, които не могат да
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| 68 | бъдат променяни веднъж след като продукцията е излязла от
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| 69 | фабриката. Такива символни, но непроменими компоненти, са били
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| 70 | известни като "микрокод" на жаргона на индустрията, но стана
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| 71 | обичайно те да се наричат "фърмуеър". Изменчивостта, както бе
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| 72 | показано от термина "фърмуеър" (# БЕЛЕЖКА ЗА ЗНАЧЕНИЕТО НА
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| 73 | КОРЕНИТЕ НА ДУМИТЕ СОФТУЕР, ХАРДУЕР, ФЪРМУЕР),се отнася главно към
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| 74 | възможността на потребителите да изменят символите, които
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| 75 | определят поведението на машината. Понеже цифровата революция
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| 76 | доведе до широката употреба на компютрите от технически
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| 77 | некомпетентни лица, повечето от традиционния софтуер -- приложни
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| 78 | програми, операционни системи, инструкции за числово управление и
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| 79 | т. н. -- е, за повечето от потребителите си, фърмуер. Може да е
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| 80 | символен, а не електронен в начина, по който е направен, но те не
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| 81 | могат да го променят, дори и да искат, нещо което те често, но
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| 82 | безсилно и с негодуванние правят. Това "затвърдяване на софтуера"
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| 83 | е основното условие на собственическия подход към законовата
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| 84 | организация на цифровото обществео, което е темата на този
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| 85 | доклад.</para></footnote>.</para>
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| 86 |
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| 87 | <para>Така е било тогава, а сега е така: технологиите базирани на
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| 88 | обработката на информация кодирана в цифров вид сега е социално
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| 89 | доминираща в повечето аспекти на човешката култура в "развитите"
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| 90 | общества. <footnote><para>2. В рамките на сегашното поколение,
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| 91 | самата концепция за социално "равитие" се измества от притежанието
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| 92 | на индустрия основана на двигател с вътрешно горене към
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| 93 | "пост-индустрия" базирана на цифровите комуникации и свързаните с
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| 94 | тях форми на икономическа дейност, основани на
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| 95 | "знания".</para></footnote>. Преминаването от аналогово към
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| 96 | цифрово представяне -- във видеото, музиката, печатането,
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| 97 | телекомуникациите и дори хореографията, религиозните церемонии и
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| 98 | сексуалното задоволяване (# religious worship, sexual
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| 99 | gratification) -- потенциално превръща всички форми на човешката
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| 100 | символна дейност във софтуер, то ест -- променими инструкции за
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| 101 | описание и управление на поведението на машините. Чрез
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| 102 | концептуално постформиране, характено за западното научно мислене,
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| 103 | разделението между хардуера и софтуера се наблюдава в природния
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| 104 | или социалния свят и е станал нов начин за изразяване на конфликта
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| 105 | между идеите на детерминизъм и свободната воля, природата и
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| 106 | възпитанието, или гените и културата. (# Какво е backformation?
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| 107 | Аналог на transformation ли? By a conceptual back-formation
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| 108 | characteristic of Western scientistic thinking, the division
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| 109 | between hardware and software is now being observed in the natural
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| 110 | or social world, and has become a new way to express the conflict
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| 111 | between ideas of determinism and free will, nature and nurture, or
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| 112 | genes and culture.) Нашият "хардуер", който е генетично зададен е
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| 113 | нашата природа и ни определя. Нашето възпитание е "софтуера",
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| 114 | който задава културното ни прграмиране, което е нашата относителна
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| 115 | свобода. И така нататък, за неразумно дърдорещите. (# And so on,
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| 116 | for those reckless of blather).<footnote><para>3. Всъщност, едно
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| 117 | бързо замисляне ще разкрие, че нашите гени са фърмуеър.
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| 118 | Еволюцията направи прехода от аналогово към цифрово още преди
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| 119 | периода на първите вкаменелости. Но ние не притежавахме властта
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| 120 | за управлявани, преки промени. До завчера. През следващото
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| 121 | столетие гените също ще се превърнат в софтуер и въпреки че не
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| 122 | разглеждам проблема по нататък в това есе, политиеските
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| 123 | последствия на несвободността на софтуера в този контекст са още
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| 124 | по-плашещи в сравнение с културните артефакти.</para></footnote>
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| 125 | Този "софтуер" се превръща в жизнеспособна метафора за цялата
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| 126 | символна активност, която очевидно е разведена (еманципирана) от
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| 127 | техническия контекст на произхода на думата, въпреки неудобството,
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| 128 | което се появява в технически компетентните, когато термина влиза
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| 129 | в устите на хората, като се изпуска концептуалното значение на
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| 130 | неговия произход.<footnote><para>4. <emphasis>Виж
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| 131 | напр.:</emphasis> J. M. Balkin, 1998. <emphasis>Cultural Software:
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| 132 | a Theory of Ideology.</emphasis> New Haven: Yale University
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| 133 | Press.</para></footnote></para>
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| 134 |
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| 135 |
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| 136 | <para>Но широкото възприемане на използването на цифровите
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| 137 | технологии от тези, които не разбират принципите на действието им,
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| 138 | въпреки, че лицензира (#позволява, licenses) широкото метафорично
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| 139 | наемане на "софтуера", всъщност не ни позволява да забравим, че
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| 140 | сега компютрите са навсякъде под нашата социална кожа. Движението
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| 141 | от аналогово към цифрово е по-важно за структурата на социалните и
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| 142 | юридическите отношения отколкото по известното, но по-несигурно
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| 143 | преминаване от статс към договор (# from status to contract)
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| 144 | <footnote><para>5. <emphasis>Виж</emphasis> Henry Sumner Maine,
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| 145 | 1861. <emphasis>Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History
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| 146 | of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Idea.</emphasis> First
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| 147 | edition. London: J. Murray.</para></footnote>. Това са лоши
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| 148 | новини за тези правни мислители, които не го разбират, и което е
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| 149 | причината толкова много преструване на разбиране така добре да
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| 150 | процъфтява. Потенциално обаче, нашето велико преминаване е много
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| 151 | добра новина за тези, които могат да превърнат новооткритата земя
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| 152 | в своя собственост. Това е и причината текущите "притежатели" на
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| 153 | софтуера толкова силно да поддържат и насърчават невежеството на
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| 154 | всички останали. За тяхно нещастие -- по причини известни на
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| 155 | правните теоретици, които все още не са разбрали как да прилагат
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| 156 | традиционната си логика в тази сфера -- трикът няма да се
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| 157 | задейства. Това есе обяснява защо<footnote><para>6. По принцип не
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| 158 | харесвам вмъкването на автобиография в изследователската дейност.
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| 159 | Но понеже това тук е мое тъжно задължение, а и голямо удоволствие
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| 160 | да оспоря квалифицираността или <emphasis>bona fide-то</emphasis>
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| 161 | на кажи-речи всеки, трябва да си позволя преценка на себе си. За
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| 162 | първи път бях изложен на занаята (#вещината - craft) на
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| 163 | компютърното програмиране през 1971г. Започнах да получавам
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| 164 | надник като комерсиален програмист през 1973г. -- на възраст от 13
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| 165 | г. и продълавах така в разнообразие от компютърни услуги,
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| 166 | инжинерство и многонационални технологически предрпиятия
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| 167 | (#enerprises) до 1985г. През 1975 спомогнах за написването на
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| 168 | една от първите системи за електронна поща в САЩ. От 1979г. бях
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| 169 | зает с проучването и разработката на висши компютърни езици за
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| 170 | програмиране в Ай Би Ем. Тези дейности направиха икономически
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| 171 | възможно за мен да изучавам и I was
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| 172 | engaged in research and development of advanced computer
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| 173 | programming languages at IBM. These activities made it
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| 174 | economically possible for me to study the arts of historical
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| 175 | scholarship and legal cunning. My wages were sufficient to pay my
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| 176 | tuitions, but not - to anticipate an argument that will be made by
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| 177 | the econodwarves further along - because my programs were the
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| 178 | intellectual property of my employer, but rather because they made
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| 179 | the hardware my employer sold work better. Most of what I wrote
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| 180 | was effectively free software, as we shall see. Although I
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| 181 | subsequently made some inconsiderable technical contributions to
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| 182 | the actual free software movement this paper describes, my primary
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| 183 | activities on its behalf have been legal: I have served for the
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| 184 | past five years (without pay, naturally) as general counsel of the
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| 185 | Free Software Foundation.</para></footnote>.</para>
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| 186 |
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| 187 | <para>Трябва да започнем като разгледаме техническата същност на
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| 188 | подобните устройства, които ни заобикалят в ерата на
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| 189 | <quote>софтуера в културата</quote>. CD плеърът е добър пример.
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| 190 | Основният мъ вход е поток от битове, който се чете от оптичен диск
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| 191 | за съхрание на дании. Този поток описва музиката във вид на
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| 192 | замервания, които се правят 44000 пъти в секунда на честотата и
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| 193 | амплитудата на два аудио канала. Основният изход на плеъра е
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| 194 | аналоговия аудио изход. <footnote><para>7. Естествено - плеърът
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| 195 | има вторични входове и изходи на контролни канали - бутоните и
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| 196 | инфрачервения датчик за дистанционното управление са входове, а
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| 197 | дисплея за времето и поредната песен са
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| 198 | изходи..</para></footnote>. Както всичко друго в цифровия свят,
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| 199 | музиката както бива видяна от CD плеъра, е просто информация във
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| 200 | вид на исла - един популярен запис на Деветата симфония на
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| 201 | Бетовен, записана от Артуро Тосканини и Симфоничния оркестър и хор
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| 202 | на Ен Би Си е (като пропуснем няколко незначителни цифри)
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| 203 | 1276749873424, а особенно перверзният последен запис на Глен Гуд
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| 204 | на Вариациите на Голдбърг е (в също доста съкратен вид)
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| 205 | 767459083268.</para>
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| 206 |
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| 207 | <para>Колкото и да е странно, тези две числа са <quote>покрити от
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| 208 | авторското право</quote>. Това хипотетично (би трябвало/разбираш
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| 209 | ли/supposedly FIXME) да означава, че не можете да притежавате
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| 210 | друго копие на тези числа след като веднъж са въплатени в някаква
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| 211 | физическа форма, освен ако не сте ги лицензирали. А и не можете
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| 212 | да преобразувате 767459083268 в 2347895697 за вашите приятели (за
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| 213 | да поправите нелепия избор на Гуд за темпото), без да създадете
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| 214 | <quote>творба основана на друга</quote> (derivative
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| 215 | work FIXME), за което е необходим лиценз.</para>
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| 216 |
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| 217 | <para>По същото време (FIXME At the same time) пообен оптичен диск
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| 218 | за съхранение на данни съдържа друго число, нека това да е
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| 219 | 7537489532. Това е алгоритъмът за линейно програмиране на големи
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| 220 | системи с множество ограничения, който е полезен например, когато
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| 221 | искате да постигнете оптимално ползване на оборотните запаси
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| 222 | (FIXNE rolling stock) при управлението на товарна железница. Това
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| 223 | число (в САЩ) е <quote>патентовано</quote>, което означава, че не
|
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| 224 | можете да получите числото 7537489532 за себе си или по някакъв
|
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| 225 | друг начин да <quote>упражнявате занаята</quote> (FIXME "practice
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| 226 | the art") на патента що се отнася до решаването на проблеми в
|
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| 227 | областта на линейното програмиране, независимо как сте достигнали
|
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| 228 | до идеята, дори и сами да сте се сетили, освен ако нямате лиценз
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| 229 | от притежателя на числото.</para>
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| 230 |
|
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| 231 | <para>А идва и 9892454959483. Това е изходния код на програмата
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| 232 | Word на Майкрософт. Освен че <quote>подналежи на авторско
|
|---|
| 233 | право</quote>, числото е й търговска тайна, което означава, че ако
|
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| 234 | го вземете от Майкрософт и го дадете на някой друг, можете да
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| 235 | бъдете наказан.</para>
|
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| 236 |
|
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| 237 | <para>И най-накрая - ето го и числото 588832161316. То не прави
|
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| 238 | нищо и е просто 767354 на квадрат. Доколкото ми е известно, то не
|
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| 239 | е притежавано по горнит параграфи от никой. Поне засега.</para>
|
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| 240 |
|
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| 241 | <para>At this point we must deal with our first objection from the
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| 242 | learned. It comes from a creature known as the IPdroid. The droid has
|
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| 243 | a sophisticated mind and a cultured life. It appreciates very much the
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| 244 | elegant dinners at academic and ministerial conferences about the
|
|---|
| 245 | TRIPs, not to mention the privilege of frequent appearances on MSNBC.
|
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| 246 | It wants you to know that I'm committing the mistake of confusing the
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|---|
| 247 | embodiment with the intellectual property itself. It's not the number
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|---|
| 248 | that's patented, stupid, just the Kamarkar algorithm. The number
|
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| 249 | <emphasis>can</emphasis> be copyrighted, because copyright covers the
|
|---|
| 250 | expressive qualities of a particular tangible embodiment of an idea
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| 251 | (in which some functional properties may be mysteriously merged,
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| 252 | provided that they're not too merged), but not the algorithm. Whereas
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| 253 | the number isn't patentable, just the "teaching" of the number with
|
|---|
| 254 | respect to making railroads run on time. And the number representing
|
|---|
| 255 | the source code of Microsoft Word can be a trade secret, but if you
|
|---|
| 256 | find it out for yourself (by performing arithmetic manipulation of
|
|---|
| 257 | other numbers issued by Microsoft, for example, which is known as
|
|---|
| 258 | "reverse engineering"), you're not going to be punished, at least if
|
|---|
| 259 | you live in some parts of the United States.</para>
|
|---|
| 260 |
|
|---|
| 261 | <para>This droid, like other droids, is often right. The condition of
|
|---|
| 262 | being a droid is to know everything about something and nothing about
|
|---|
| 263 | anything else. By its timely and urgent intervention the droid has
|
|---|
| 264 | established that the current intellectual property system contains
|
|---|
| 265 | many intricate and ingenious features. The complexities combine to
|
|---|
| 266 | allow professors to be erudite, Congressmen to get campaign
|
|---|
| 267 | contributions, lawyers to wear nice suits and tassel loafers, and
|
|---|
| 268 | Murdoch to be rich. The complexities mostly evolved in an age of
|
|---|
| 269 | industrial information distribution, when information was inscribed in
|
|---|
| 270 | analog forms on physical objects that cost something significant to
|
|---|
| 271 | make, move, and sell. When applied to digital information that moves
|
|---|
| 272 | frictionlessly through the network and has zero marginal cost per
|
|---|
| 273 | copy, everything still works, mostly, as long as you don't stop
|
|---|
| 274 | squinting.</para>
|
|---|
| 275 |
|
|---|
| 276 | <para>But that wasn't what I was arguing about. I wanted to point out
|
|---|
| 277 | something else: that our world consists increasingly of nothing but
|
|---|
| 278 | large numbers (also known as bitstreams), and that - for reasons
|
|---|
| 279 | having nothing to do with emergent properties of the numbers
|
|---|
| 280 | themselves - the legal system is presently committed to treating
|
|---|
| 281 | similar numbers radically differently. No one can tell, simply by
|
|---|
| 282 | looking at a number that is 100 million digits long, whether that
|
|---|
| 283 | number is subject to patent, copyright, or trade secret protection, or
|
|---|
| 284 | indeed whether it is "owned" by anyone at all. So the legal system we
|
|---|
| 285 | have - blessed as we are by its consequences if we are copyright
|
|---|
| 286 | teachers, Congressmen, Gucci-gulchers or Big Rupert himself - is
|
|---|
| 287 | compelled to treat indistinguishable things in unlike ways.</para>
|
|---|
| 288 |
|
|---|
| 289 | <para>Now, in my role as a legal historian concerned with the secular
|
|---|
| 290 | (that is, very long term) development of legal thought, I claim that
|
|---|
| 291 | legal regimes based on sharp but unpredictable distinctions among
|
|---|
| 292 | similar objects are radically unstable. They fall apart over time
|
|---|
| 293 | because every instance of the rules' application is an invitation to
|
|---|
| 294 | at least one side to claim that instead of fitting in ideal category A
|
|---|
| 295 | the particular object in dispute should be deemed to fit instead in
|
|---|
| 296 | category B, where the rules will be more favorable to the party making
|
|---|
| 297 | the claim. This game - about whether a typewriter should be deemed a
|
|---|
| 298 | musical instrument for purposes of railway rate regulation, or whether
|
|---|
| 299 | a steam shovel is a motor vehicle - is the frequent stuff of legal
|
|---|
| 300 | ingenuity. But when the conventionally-approved legal categories
|
|---|
| 301 | require judges to distinguish among the identical, the game is
|
|---|
| 302 | infinitely lengthy, infinitely costly, and almost infinitely offensive
|
|---|
| 303 | to the unbiased bystander <footnote><para>8. This is not an insight
|
|---|
| 304 | unique to our present enterprise. A closely-related idea forms one of
|
|---|
| 305 | the most important principles in the history of Anglo-American law,
|
|---|
| 306 | perfectly put by Toby Milsom in the following terms:</para>
|
|---|
| 307 | <blockquote><para>The life of the common law has been in the abuse of
|
|---|
| 308 | its elementary ideas. If the rules of property give what now seems an
|
|---|
| 309 | unjust answer, try obligation; and equity has proved that from the
|
|---|
| 310 | materials of obligation you can counterfeit the phenomena of
|
|---|
| 311 | property. If the rules of contract give what now seems an unjust
|
|---|
| 312 | answer, try tort. ... If the rules of one tort, say deceit, give what
|
|---|
| 313 | now seems an unjust answer, try another, try negligence. And so the
|
|---|
| 314 | legal world goes round.</para></blockquote><para>S.F.C. Milsom,
|
|---|
| 315 | 1981. <emphasis>Historical Foundations of the Common Law.</emphasis>
|
|---|
| 316 | Second edition. London: Butterworths, p. 6.</para> </footnote>.</para>
|
|---|
| 317 |
|
|---|
| 318 | <para>Thus parties can spend all the money they want on all the
|
|---|
| 319 | legislators and judges they can afford - which for the new "owners" of
|
|---|
| 320 | the digital world is quite a few - but the rules they buy aren't going
|
|---|
| 321 | to work in the end. Sooner or later, the paradigms are going to
|
|---|
| 322 | collapse. Of course, if later means two generations from now, the
|
|---|
| 323 | distribution of wealth and power sanctified in the meantime may not be
|
|---|
| 324 | reversible by any course less drastic than a <emphasis>bellum
|
|---|
| 325 | servile</emphasis> of couch potatoes against media magnates. So
|
|---|
| 326 | knowing that history isn't on Bill Gates' side isn't enough. We are
|
|---|
| 327 | predicting the future in a very limited sense: we know that the
|
|---|
| 328 | existing rules, which have yet the fervor of conventional belief
|
|---|
| 329 | solidly enlisted behind them, are no longer meaningful. Parties will
|
|---|
| 330 | use and abuse them freely until the mainstream of "respectable"
|
|---|
| 331 | conservative opinion acknowledges their death, with uncertain
|
|---|
| 332 | results. But realistic scholarship should already be turning its
|
|---|
| 333 | attention to the clear need for new thoughtways.</para>
|
|---|
| 334 |
|
|---|
| 335 | <para>When we reach this point in the argument, we find ourselves
|
|---|
| 336 | contending with the other primary protagonist of educated idiocy: the
|
|---|
| 337 | econodwarf. Like the IPdroid, the econodwarf is a species of hedgehog,
|
|---|
| 338 | <footnote><para>9. <emphasis>See</emphasis> Isaiah Berlin,
|
|---|
| 339 | 1953. <emphasis>The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View
|
|---|
| 340 | of History.</emphasis> New York: Simon and Schuster.</para>
|
|---|
| 341 | </footnote> but where the droid is committed to logic over experience,
|
|---|
| 342 | the econodwarf specializes in an energetic and well-focused but
|
|---|
| 343 | entirely erroneous view of human nature. According to the econodwarf's
|
|---|
| 344 | vision, each human being is an individual possessing "incentives,"
|
|---|
| 345 | which can be retrospectively unearthed by imagining the state of the
|
|---|
| 346 | bank account at various times. So in this instance the econodwarf
|
|---|
| 347 | feels compelled to object that without the rules I am lampooning,
|
|---|
| 348 | there would be no incentive to create the things the rules treat as
|
|---|
| 349 | property: without the ability to exclude others from music there would
|
|---|
| 350 | be no music, because no one could be sure of getting paid for creating
|
|---|
| 351 | it.</para>
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| 352 |
|
|---|
| 353 | <para>Music is not really our subject; the software I am considering
|
|---|
| 354 | at the moment is the old kind: computer programs. But as he is
|
|---|
| 355 | determined to deal at least cursorily with the subject, and because,
|
|---|
| 356 | as we have seen, it is no longer really possible to distinguish
|
|---|
| 357 | computer programs from music performances, a word or two should be
|
|---|
| 358 | said. At least we can have the satisfaction of indulging in an
|
|---|
| 359 | argument <emphasis>ad pygmeam</emphasis>. When the econodwarf grows
|
|---|
| 360 | rich, in my experience, he attends the opera. But no matter how often
|
|---|
| 361 | he hears <emphasis>Don Giovanni</emphasis> it never occurs to him that
|
|---|
| 362 | Mozart's fate should, on his logic, have entirely discouraged
|
|---|
| 363 | Beethoven, or that we have <emphasis>The Magic Flute</emphasis> even
|
|---|
| 364 | though Mozart knew very well he wouldn't be paid. In fact,
|
|---|
| 365 | <emphasis>The Magic Flute</emphasis>, <emphasis>St. Matthew's
|
|---|
| 366 | Passion</emphasis>, and the motets of the wife-murderer Carlo Gesualdo
|
|---|
| 367 | are all part of the centuries-long tradition of free software, in the
|
|---|
| 368 | more general sense, which the econodwarf never quite
|
|---|
| 369 | acknowledges.</para> <!--<center><img
|
|---|
| 370 | src="anarchism_files/mog1.gif"></center> --> <para> The dwarf's basic
|
|---|
| 371 | problem is that "incentives" is merely a metaphor, and as a metaphor
|
|---|
| 372 | to describe human creative activity it's pretty crummy. I have said
|
|---|
| 373 | this before, <footnote> <para>10. <emphasis>See</emphasis> <ulink
|
|---|
| 374 | url="http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/nospeech.html">The
|
|---|
| 375 | Virtual Scholar and Network Liberation.</ulink></para> </footnote> but
|
|---|
| 376 | the better metaphor arose on the day Michael Faraday first noticed
|
|---|
| 377 | what happened when he wrapped a coil of wire around a magnet and spun
|
|---|
| 378 | the magnet. Current flows in such a wire, but we don't ask what the
|
|---|
| 379 | incentive is for the electrons to leave home. We say that the current
|
|---|
| 380 | results from an emergent property of the system, which we call
|
|---|
| 381 | induction. The question we ask is "what's the resistance of the wire?"
|
|---|
| 382 | So Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law says that if you
|
|---|
| 383 | wrap the Internet around every person on the planet and spin the
|
|---|
| 384 | planet, software flows in the network. It's an emergent property of
|
|---|
| 385 | connected human minds that they create things for one another's
|
|---|
| 386 | pleasure and to conquer their uneasy sense of being too alone. The
|
|---|
| 387 | only question to ask is, what's the resistance of the network?
|
|---|
| 388 | Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Ohm's Law states that the
|
|---|
| 389 | resistance of the network is directly proportional to the field
|
|---|
| 390 | strength of the "intellectual property" system. So the right answer to
|
|---|
| 391 | the econodwarf is, resist the resistance.</para>
|
|---|
| 392 |
|
|---|
| 393 | <para>Естествено, всичко това звучи много добре на теория.
|
|---|
| 394 | „Съпротивлявай се на съпротивата“ звучи добре, но ще се окажем
|
|---|
| 395 | пред сериозен проблем, каквато и да е теорията, ако открием, че не
|
|---|
| 396 | се произвежда достатъчно софтуерна стока, ако не позволяваме на
|
|---|
| 397 | хората да я притежават. Но джуджетатат и дроидите са формалисти
|
|---|
| 398 | от различно естество, предимството на реализма е, че ако започнеш
|
|---|
| 399 | с фактитв, те винаги са на твоя страна. Оказва се, че да се
|
|---|
| 400 | отнасяме към софтуера като съм собственост, води до правенето на
|
|---|
| 401 | лош софтуер.</para>
|
|---|
| 402 |
|
|---|
| 403 | </section>
|
|---|
| 404 | <section>
|
|---|
| 405 | <title>II. Software as Property: The Practical Problem</title>
|
|---|
| 406 |
|
|---|
| 407 | <para>In order to understand why turning software into property
|
|---|
| 408 | produces bad software, we need an introduction to the history of the
|
|---|
| 409 | art. In fact, we'd better start with the word "art" itself. The
|
|---|
| 410 | programming of computers combines determinate reasoning with literary
|
|---|
| 411 | invention.</para>
|
|---|
| 412 |
|
|---|
| 413 | <para>At first glance, to be sure, source code appears to be a
|
|---|
| 414 | non-literary form of composition <footnote><para>11. Some basic
|
|---|
| 415 | vocabulary is essential. Digital computers actually execute numerical
|
|---|
| 416 | instructions: bitstrings that contain information in the "native"
|
|---|
| 417 | language created by the machine's designers. This is usually referred
|
|---|
| 418 | to as "machine language." The machine languages of hardware are
|
|---|
| 419 | designed for speed of execution at the hardware level, and are not
|
|---|
| 420 | suitable for direct use by human beings. So among the central
|
|---|
| 421 | components of a computer system are "programming languages," which
|
|---|
| 422 | translate expressions convenient for humans into machine language. The
|
|---|
| 423 | most common and relevant, but by no means the only, form of computer
|
|---|
| 424 | language is a "compiler." The compiler performs static translation, so
|
|---|
| 425 | that a file containing human-readable instructions, known as "source
|
|---|
| 426 | code" results in the generation of one or more files of executable
|
|---|
| 427 | machine language, known as "object code."</para> </footnote>. The
|
|---|
| 428 | primary desideratum in a computer program is that it works, that is to
|
|---|
| 429 | say, performs according to specifications formally describing its
|
|---|
| 430 | outputs in terms of its inputs. At this level of generality, the
|
|---|
| 431 | functional content of programs is all that can be seen.</para>
|
|---|
| 432 |
|
|---|
| 433 | <para>But working computer programs exist as parts of computer
|
|---|
| 434 | systems, which are interacting collections of hardware, software, and
|
|---|
| 435 | human beings. The human components of a computer system include not
|
|---|
| 436 | only the users, but also the (potentially different) persons who
|
|---|
| 437 | maintain and improve the system. Source code not only communicates
|
|---|
| 438 | with the computer that executes the program, through the intermediary
|
|---|
| 439 | of the compiler that produces machine-language object code, but also
|
|---|
| 440 | with other programmers.</para>
|
|---|
| 441 |
|
|---|
| 442 | <para>The function of source code in relation to other human beings is
|
|---|
| 443 | not widely grasped by non-programmers, who tend to think of computer
|
|---|
| 444 | programs as incomprehensible. They would be surprised to learn that
|
|---|
| 445 | the bulk of information contained in most programs is, from the point
|
|---|
| 446 | of view of the compiler or other language processor, "comment," that
|
|---|
| 447 | is, non-functional material. The comments, of course, are addressed to
|
|---|
| 448 | others who may need to fix a problem or to alter or enhance the
|
|---|
| 449 | program's operation. In most programming languages, far more space is
|
|---|
| 450 | spent in telling people what the program does than in telling the
|
|---|
| 451 | computer how to do it.</para>
|
|---|
| 452 |
|
|---|
| 453 | <para>The design of programming languages has always proceeded under
|
|---|
| 454 | the dual requirements of complete specification for machine execution
|
|---|
| 455 | and informative description for human readers. One might identify
|
|---|
| 456 | three basic strategies in language design for approaching this dual
|
|---|
| 457 | purpose. The first, pursued initially with respect to the design of
|
|---|
| 458 | languages specific to particular hardware products and collectively
|
|---|
| 459 | known as "assemblers," essentially separated the human- and
|
|---|
| 460 | machine-communication portions of the program. Assembler instructions
|
|---|
| 461 | are very close relatives of machine-language instructions: in general,
|
|---|
| 462 | one line of an assembler program corresponds to one instruction in the
|
|---|
| 463 | native language of the machine. The programmer controls machine
|
|---|
| 464 | operation at the most specific possible level, and (if
|
|---|
| 465 | well-disciplined) engages in running commentary alongside the machine
|
|---|
| 466 | instructions, pausing every few hundred instructions to create "block
|
|---|
| 467 | comments," which provide a summary of the strategy of the program, or
|
|---|
| 468 | document the major data structures the program manipulates.</para>
|
|---|
| 469 |
|
|---|
| 470 | <para>A second approach, characteristically depicted by the language
|
|---|
| 471 | COBOL (which stood for "Common Business-Oriented Language"), was to
|
|---|
| 472 | make the program itself look like a set of natural language
|
|---|
| 473 | directions, written in a crabbed but theoretically human-readable
|
|---|
| 474 | style. A line of COBOL code might say, for example "MULTIPLY PRICE
|
|---|
| 475 | TIMES QUANTITY GIVING EXPANSION." At first, when the Pentagon and
|
|---|
| 476 | industry experts began the joint design of COBOL in the early 1960's,
|
|---|
| 477 | this seemed a promising approach. COBOL programs appeared largely
|
|---|
| 478 | self-documenting, allowing both the development of work teams able to
|
|---|
| 479 | collaborate on the creation of large programs, and the training of
|
|---|
| 480 | programmers who, while specialized workers, would not need to
|
|---|
| 481 | understand the machine as intimately as assembler programs had to. But
|
|---|
| 482 | the level of generality at which such programs documented themselves
|
|---|
| 483 | was wrongly selected. A more formulaic and compressed expression of
|
|---|
| 484 | operational detail "expansion = price x quantity," for example, was
|
|---|
| 485 | better suited even to business and financial applications where the
|
|---|
| 486 | readers and writers of programs were accustomed to mathematical
|
|---|
| 487 | expression, while the processes of describing both data structures and
|
|---|
| 488 | the larger operational context of the program were not rendered
|
|---|
| 489 | unnecessary by the wordiness of the language in which the details of
|
|---|
| 490 | execution were specified.</para>
|
|---|
| 491 |
|
|---|
| 492 | <para>Accordingly, language designers by the late 1960s began
|
|---|
| 493 | experimenting with forms of expression in which the blending of
|
|---|
| 494 | operational details and non-functional information necessary for
|
|---|
| 495 | modification or repair was more subtle. Some designers chose the path
|
|---|
| 496 | of highly symbolic and compressed languages, in which the programmer
|
|---|
| 497 | manipulated data abstractly, so that "A x B" might mean the
|
|---|
| 498 | multiplication of two integers, two complex numbers, two vast arrays,
|
|---|
| 499 | or any other data type capable of some process called
|
|---|
| 500 | "multiplication," to be undertaken by the computer on the basis of the
|
|---|
| 501 | context for the variables "A" and "B" at the moment of execution
|
|---|
| 502 | <footnote> <para>12. This, I should say, was the path that most of my
|
|---|
| 503 | research and development followed, largely in connection with a
|
|---|
| 504 | language called APL ("A Programming Language") and its successors. It
|
|---|
| 505 | was not, however, the ultimately-dominant approach, for reasons that
|
|---|
| 506 | will be suggested below.</para> </footnote> . Because this approach
|
|---|
| 507 | resulted in extremely concise programs, it was thought, the problem of
|
|---|
| 508 | making code comprehensible to those who would later seek to modify or
|
|---|
| 509 | repair it was simplified. By hiding the technical detail of computer
|
|---|
| 510 | operation and emphasizing the algorithm, languages could be devised
|
|---|
| 511 | that were better than English or other natural languages for the
|
|---|
| 512 | expression of stepwise processes. Commentary would be not only
|
|---|
| 513 | unnecessary but distracting, just as the metaphors used to convey
|
|---|
| 514 | mathematical concepts in English do more to confuse than to
|
|---|
| 515 | enlighten.</para>
|
|---|
| 516 |
|
|---|
| 517 | <section>
|
|---|
| 518 | <title>How We Created the Microbrain Mess</title>
|
|---|
| 519 |
|
|---|
| 520 | <para>Thus the history of programming languages directly reflected the
|
|---|
| 521 | need to find forms of human-machine communication that were also
|
|---|
| 522 | effective in conveying complex ideas to human readers. "Expressivity"
|
|---|
| 523 | became a property of programming languages, not because it facilitated
|
|---|
| 524 | computation, but because it facilitated the collaborative creation and
|
|---|
| 525 | maintenance of increasingly complex software systems.</para>
|
|---|
| 526 |
|
|---|
| 527 | <para>At first impression, this seems to justify the application of
|
|---|
| 528 | traditional copyright thinking to the resulting works. Though
|
|---|
| 529 | substantially involving "functional" elements, computer programs
|
|---|
| 530 | contained "expressive" features of paramount importance. Copyright
|
|---|
| 531 | doctrine recognized the merger of function and expression as
|
|---|
| 532 | characteristic of many kinds of copyrighted works. "Source code,"
|
|---|
| 533 | containing both the machine instructions necessary for functional
|
|---|
| 534 | operation and the expressive "commentary" intended for human readers,
|
|---|
| 535 | was an appropriate candidate for copyright treatment.</para>
|
|---|
| 536 |
|
|---|
| 537 | <para>True, so long as it is understood that the expressive component
|
|---|
| 538 | of software was present solely in order to facilitate the making of
|
|---|
| 539 | "derivative works." Were it not for the intention to facilitate
|
|---|
| 540 | alteration, the expressive elements of programs would be entirely
|
|---|
| 541 | supererogatory, and source code would be no more copyrightable than
|
|---|
| 542 | object code, the output of the language processor, purged of all but
|
|---|
| 543 | the program's functional characteristics.</para>
|
|---|
| 544 |
|
|---|
| 545 | <para>The state of the computer industry throughout the 1960's and
|
|---|
| 546 | 1970's, when the grundnorms of sophisticated computer programming were
|
|---|
| 547 | established, concealed the tension implicit in this situation. In that
|
|---|
| 548 | period, hardware was expensive. Computers were increasingly large and
|
|---|
| 549 | complex collections of machines, and the business of designing and
|
|---|
| 550 | building such an array of machines for general use was dominated, not
|
|---|
| 551 | to say monopolized, by one firm. IBM gave away its software. To be
|
|---|
| 552 | sure, it owned the programs its employees wrote, and it copyrighted
|
|---|
| 553 | the source code. But it also distributed the programs - including the
|
|---|
| 554 | source code - to its customers at no additional charge, and encouraged
|
|---|
| 555 | them to make and share improvements or adaptations of the programs
|
|---|
| 556 | thus distributed. For a dominant hardware manufacturer, this strategy
|
|---|
| 557 | made sense: better programs sold more computers, which is where the
|
|---|
| 558 | profitability of the business rested.</para>
|
|---|
| 559 |
|
|---|
| 560 | <para>Computers, in this period, tended to aggregate within particular
|
|---|
| 561 | organizations, but not to communicate broadly with one another. The
|
|---|
| 562 | software needed to operate was distributed not through a network, but
|
|---|
| 563 | on spools of magnetic tape. This distribution system tended to
|
|---|
| 564 | centralize software development, so that while IBM customers were free
|
|---|
| 565 | to make modifications and improvements to programs, those
|
|---|
| 566 | modifications were shared in the first instance with IBM, which then
|
|---|
| 567 | considered whether and in what way to incorporate those changes in the
|
|---|
| 568 | centrally-developed and distributed version of the software. Thus in
|
|---|
| 569 | two important senses the best computer software in the world was free:
|
|---|
| 570 | it cost nothing to acquire, and the terms on which it was furnished
|
|---|
| 571 | both allowed and encouraged experimentation, change, and improvement
|
|---|
| 572 | <footnote><para>13. This description elides some details. By the
|
|---|
| 573 | mid-1970's IBM had acquired meaningful competition in the mainframe
|
|---|
| 574 | computer business, while the large-scale antitrust action brought
|
|---|
| 575 | against it by the U.S. government prompted the decision to "unbundle,"
|
|---|
| 576 | or charge separately, for software. In this less important sense,
|
|---|
| 577 | software ceased to be free. But - without entering into the now-dead
|
|---|
| 578 | but once-heated controversy over IBM's software pricing policies - the
|
|---|
| 579 | unbundling revolution had less effect on the social practices of
|
|---|
| 580 | software manufacture than might be supposed. As a fellow responsible
|
|---|
| 581 | for technical improvement of one programming language product at IBM
|
|---|
| 582 | from 1979 to 1984, for example, I was able to treat the product as
|
|---|
| 583 | "almost free," that is, to discuss with users the changes they had
|
|---|
| 584 | proposed or made in the programs, and to engage with them in
|
|---|
| 585 | cooperative development of the product for the benefit of all
|
|---|
| 586 | users.</para> </footnote>. That the software in question was IBM's
|
|---|
| 587 | property under prevailing copyright law certainly established some
|
|---|
| 588 | theoretical limits on users' ability to distribute their improvements
|
|---|
| 589 | or adaptations to others, but in practice mainframe software was
|
|---|
| 590 | cooperatively developed by the dominant hardware manufacturer and its
|
|---|
| 591 | technically-sophisticated users, employing the manufacturer's
|
|---|
| 592 | distribution resources to propagate the resulting improvements through
|
|---|
| 593 | the user community. The right to exclude others, one of the most
|
|---|
| 594 | important "sticks in the bundle" of property rights (in an image
|
|---|
| 595 | beloved of the United States Supreme Court), was practically
|
|---|
| 596 | unimportant, or even undesirable, at the heart of the software
|
|---|
| 597 | business <footnote> <para>14. This description is highly compressed,
|
|---|
| 598 | and will seem both overly simplified and unduly rosy to those who also
|
|---|
| 599 | worked in the industry during this period of its
|
|---|
| 600 | development. Copyright protection of computer software was a
|
|---|
| 601 | controversial subject in the 1970's, leading to the famous CONTU
|
|---|
| 602 | commission and its mildly pro-copyright recommendations of 1979. And
|
|---|
| 603 | IBM seemed far less cooperative to its users at the time than this
|
|---|
| 604 | sketch makes out. But the most important element is the contrast with
|
|---|
| 605 | the world created by the PC, the Internet, and the dominance of
|
|---|
| 606 | Microsoft, with the resulting impetus for the free software movement,
|
|---|
| 607 | and I am here concentrating on the features that express that
|
|---|
| 608 | contrast.</para></footnote>.</para>
|
|---|
| 609 |
|
|---|
| 610 | <para>After 1980, everything was different. The world of mainframe
|
|---|
| 611 | hardware gave way within ten years to the world of the commodity PC.
|
|---|
| 612 | And, as a contingency of the industry's development, the single most
|
|---|
| 613 | important element of the software running on that commodity PC, the
|
|---|
| 614 | operating system, became the sole significant product of a company
|
|---|
| 615 | that made no hardware. High-quality basic software ceased to be part
|
|---|
| 616 | of the product-differentiation strategy of hardware
|
|---|
| 617 | manufacturers. Instead, a firm with an overwhelming share of the
|
|---|
| 618 | market, and with the near-monopolist's ordinary absence of interest in
|
|---|
| 619 | fostering diversity, set the practices of the software industry. In
|
|---|
| 620 | such a context, the right to exclude others from participation in the
|
|---|
| 621 | product's formation became profoundly important. Microsoft's power in
|
|---|
| 622 | the market rested entirely on its ownership of the Windows source
|
|---|
| 623 | code.</para>
|
|---|
| 624 |
|
|---|
| 625 | <para>To Microsoft, others' making of "derivative works," otherwise
|
|---|
| 626 | known as repairs and improvements, threatened the central asset of the
|
|---|
| 627 | business. Indeed, as subsequent judicial proceedings have tended to
|
|---|
| 628 | establish, Microsoft's strategy as a business was to find innovative
|
|---|
| 629 | ideas elsewhere in the software marketplace, buy them up and either
|
|---|
| 630 | suppress them or incorporate them in its proprietary product. The
|
|---|
| 631 | maintenance of control over the basic operation of computers
|
|---|
| 632 | manufactured, sold, possessed, and used by others represented profound
|
|---|
| 633 | and profitable leverage over the development of the culture <footnote>
|
|---|
| 634 | <para>15. I discuss the importance of PC software in this context, the
|
|---|
| 635 | evolution of "the market for eyeballs" and "the sponsored life" in
|
|---|
| 636 | other chapters of my forthcoming book, <emphasis>The Invisible
|
|---|
| 637 | Barbecue</emphasis>, of which this essay forms a part.</para>
|
|---|
| 638 | </footnote>.; the right to exclude returned to center stage in the
|
|---|
| 639 | concept of software as property.</para>
|
|---|
| 640 |
|
|---|
| 641 | <para>The result, so far as the quality of software was concerned, was
|
|---|
| 642 | disastrous. The monopoly was a wealthy and powerful corporation that
|
|---|
| 643 | employed a large number of programmers, but it could not possibly
|
|---|
| 644 | afford the number of testers, designers, and developers required to
|
|---|
| 645 | produce flexible, robust and technically-innovative software
|
|---|
| 646 | appropriate to the vast array of conditions under which increasingly
|
|---|
| 647 | ubiquitous personal computers operated. Its fundamental marketing
|
|---|
| 648 | strategy involved designing its product for the least
|
|---|
| 649 | technically-sophisticated users, and using "fear, uncertainty, and
|
|---|
| 650 | doubt" (known within Microsoft as "FUD") to drive sophisticated users
|
|---|
| 651 | away from potential competitors, whose long-term survivability in the
|
|---|
| 652 | face of Microsoft's market power was always in question.</para>
|
|---|
| 653 |
|
|---|
| 654 | <para>Without the constant interaction between users able to repair
|
|---|
| 655 | and improve and the operating system's manufacturer, the inevitable
|
|---|
| 656 | deterioration of quality could not be arrested. But because the
|
|---|
| 657 | personal computer revolution expanded the number of users
|
|---|
| 658 | exponentially, almost everyone who came in contact with the resulting
|
|---|
| 659 | systems had nothing against which to compare them. Unaware of the
|
|---|
| 660 | standards of stability, reliability, maintainability and effectiveness
|
|---|
| 661 | that had previously been established in the mainframe world, users of
|
|---|
| 662 | personal computers could hardly be expected to understand how badly,
|
|---|
| 663 | in relative terms, the monopoly's software functioned. As the power
|
|---|
| 664 | and capacity of personal computers expanded rapidly, the defects of
|
|---|
| 665 | the software were rendered less obvious amidst the general increase of
|
|---|
| 666 | productivity. Ordinary users, more than half afraid of the technology
|
|---|
| 667 | they almost completely did not understand, actually welcomed the
|
|---|
| 668 | defectiveness of the software. In an economy undergoing mysterious
|
|---|
| 669 | transformations, with the concomitant destabilization of millions of
|
|---|
| 670 | careers, it was tranquilizing, in a perverse way, that no personal
|
|---|
| 671 | computer seemed to be able to run for more than a few consecutive
|
|---|
| 672 | hours without crashing. Although it was frustrating to lose work in
|
|---|
| 673 | progress each time an unnecessary failure occurred, the evident
|
|---|
| 674 | fallibility of computers was intrinsically reassuring <footnote>
|
|---|
| 675 | <para>16. This same pattern of ambivalence, in which bad programming
|
|---|
| 676 | leading to widespread instability in the new technology is
|
|---|
| 677 | simultaneously frightening and reassuring to technical incompetents,
|
|---|
| 678 | can be seen also in the primarily-American phenomenon of Y2K
|
|---|
| 679 | hysteria.</para> </footnote> .</para>
|
|---|
| 680 |
|
|---|
| 681 | <para>None of this was necessary. The low quality of personal computer
|
|---|
| 682 | software could have been reversed by including users directly in the
|
|---|
| 683 | inherently evolutionary process of software design and implementation.
|
|---|
| 684 | A Lamarckian mode, in which improvements could be made anywhere, by
|
|---|
| 685 | anyone, and inherited by everyone else, would have wiped out the
|
|---|
| 686 | deficit, restoring to the world of the PC the stability and
|
|---|
| 687 | reliability of the software made in the quasi-propertarian environment
|
|---|
| 688 | of the mainframe era. But the Microsoft business model precluded
|
|---|
| 689 | Lamarckian inheritance of software improvements. Copyright doctrine,
|
|---|
| 690 | in general and as it applies to software in particular, biases the
|
|---|
| 691 | world towards creationism; in this instance, the problem is that BillG
|
|---|
| 692 | the Creator was far from infallible, and in fact he wasn't even
|
|---|
| 693 | trying.</para> <!--<center><img src="anarchism_files/mog2.gif"
|
|---|
| 694 | hspace="0" vspace="0"></center>--> <para>To make the irony more
|
|---|
| 695 | severe, the growth of the network rendered the non-propertarian
|
|---|
| 696 | alternative even more practical. What scholarly and popular writing
|
|---|
| 697 | alike denominate as a thing ("the Internet") is actually the name of a
|
|---|
| 698 | social condition: the fact that everyone in the network society is
|
|---|
| 699 | connected directly, without intermediation, to everyone else
|
|---|
| 700 | <footnote> <para>17. The critical implications of this simple
|
|---|
| 701 | observation about our metaphors are worked out in "How Not to Think
|
|---|
| 702 | about 'The Internet'," in <emphasis>The Invisible Barbecue</emphasis>,
|
|---|
| 703 | forthcoming.</para> </footnote>. The global interconnection of
|
|---|
| 704 | networks eliminated the bottleneck that had required a centralized
|
|---|
| 705 | software manufacturer to rationalize and distribute the outcome of
|
|---|
| 706 | individual innovation in the era of the mainframe.</para>
|
|---|
| 707 |
|
|---|
| 708 | <para>And so, in one of history's little ironies, the global triumph
|
|---|
| 709 | of bad software in the age of the PC was reversed by a surprising
|
|---|
| 710 | combination of forces: the social transformation initiated by the
|
|---|
| 711 | network, a long-discarded European theory of political economy, and a
|
|---|
| 712 | small band of programmers throughout the world mobilized by a single
|
|---|
| 713 | simple idea.</para>
|
|---|
| 714 |
|
|---|
| 715 | </section>
|
|---|
| 716 | <section>
|
|---|
| 717 |
|
|---|
| 718 | <title>Software Wants to Be Free; or, How We Stopped Worrying and
|
|---|
| 719 | Learned to Love the Bomb</title>
|
|---|
| 720 |
|
|---|
| 721 | <para>Long before the network of networks was a practical reality,
|
|---|
| 722 | even before it was an aspiration, there was a desire for computers to
|
|---|
| 723 | operate on the basis of software freely available to everyone. This
|
|---|
| 724 | began as a reaction against propertarian software in the mainframe
|
|---|
| 725 | era, and requires another brief historical digression.</para>
|
|---|
| 726 |
|
|---|
| 727 | <para>Even though IBM was the largest seller of general purpose
|
|---|
| 728 | computers in the mainframe era, it was not the largest designer and
|
|---|
| 729 | builder of such hardware. The telephone monopoly, American Telephone
|
|---|
| 730 | & Telegraph, was in fact larger than IBM, but it consumed its
|
|---|
| 731 | products internally. And at the famous Bell Labs research arm of the
|
|---|
| 732 | telephone monopoly, in the late 1960's, the developments in computer
|
|---|
| 733 | languages previously described gave birth to an operating system
|
|---|
| 734 | called Unix.</para>
|
|---|
| 735 |
|
|---|
| 736 | <para>The idea of Unix was to create a single, scalable operating
|
|---|
| 737 | system to exist on all the computers, from small to large, that the
|
|---|
| 738 | telephone monopoly made for itself. To achieve this goal meant writing
|
|---|
| 739 | an operating system not in machine language, nor in an assembler whose
|
|---|
| 740 | linguistic form was integral to a particular hardware design, but in a
|
|---|
| 741 | more expressive and generalized language. The one chosen was also a
|
|---|
| 742 | Bell Labs invention, called "C" <footnote> <para>18. Technical readers
|
|---|
| 743 | will again observe that this compresses developments occurring from
|
|---|
| 744 | 1969 through 1973.</para> </footnote>. The C language became common,
|
|---|
| 745 | even dominant, for many kinds of programming tasks, and by the late
|
|---|
| 746 | 1970's the Unix operating system written in that language had been
|
|---|
| 747 | transferred (or "ported," in professional jargon) to computers made by
|
|---|
| 748 | many manufacturers and of many designs.</para>
|
|---|
| 749 |
|
|---|
| 750 | <para>AT&T distributed Unix widely, and because of the very design
|
|---|
| 751 | of the operating system, it had to make that distribution in C source
|
|---|
| 752 | code. But AT&T retained ownership of the source code and
|
|---|
| 753 | compelled users to purchase licenses that prohibited redistribution
|
|---|
| 754 | and the making of derivative works. Large computing centers, whether
|
|---|
| 755 | industrial or academic, could afford to purchase such licenses, but
|
|---|
| 756 | individuals could not, while the license restrictions prevented the
|
|---|
| 757 | community of programmers who used Unix from improving it in an
|
|---|
| 758 | evolutionary rather than episodic fashion. And as programmers
|
|---|
| 759 | throughout the world began to aspire to and even expect a personal
|
|---|
| 760 | computer revolution, the "unfree" status of Unix became a source of
|
|---|
| 761 | concern.</para>
|
|---|
| 762 |
|
|---|
| 763 | <para>Between 1981 and 1984, one man envisioned a crusade to change
|
|---|
| 764 | the situation. Richard M. Stallman, then an employee of MIT's
|
|---|
| 765 | Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, conceived the project of
|
|---|
| 766 | independent, collaborative redesign and implementation of an operating
|
|---|
| 767 | system that would be true free software. In Stallman's phrase, free
|
|---|
| 768 | software would be a matter of freedom, not of price. Anyone could
|
|---|
| 769 | freely modify and redistribute such software, or sell it, subject only
|
|---|
| 770 | to the restriction that he not try to reduce the rights of others to
|
|---|
| 771 | whom he passed it along. In this way free software could become a
|
|---|
| 772 | self-organizing project, in which no innovation would be lost through
|
|---|
| 773 | proprietary exercises of rights. The system, Stallman decided, would
|
|---|
| 774 | be called GNU, which stood (in an initial example of a taste for
|
|---|
| 775 | recursive acronyms that has characterized free software ever since),
|
|---|
| 776 | for "GNU's Not Unix." Despite misgivings about the fundamental design
|
|---|
| 777 | of Unix, as well as its terms of distribution, GNU was intended to
|
|---|
| 778 | benefit from the wide if unfree source distribution of Unix. Stallman
|
|---|
| 779 | began Project GNU by writing components of the eventual system that
|
|---|
| 780 | were also designed to work without modification on existing Unix
|
|---|
| 781 | systems. Development of the GNU tools could thus proceed directly in
|
|---|
| 782 | the environment of university and other advanced computing centers
|
|---|
| 783 | around the world.</para>
|
|---|
| 784 |
|
|---|
| 785 | <para>The scale of such a project was immense. Somehow, volunteer
|
|---|
| 786 | programmers had to be found, organized, and set to work building all
|
|---|
| 787 | the tools that would be necessary for the ultimate construction.
|
|---|
| 788 | Stallman himself was the primary author of several fundamental tools.
|
|---|
| 789 | Others were contributed by small or large teams of programmers
|
|---|
| 790 | elsewhere, and assigned to Stallman's project or distributed
|
|---|
| 791 | directly. A few locations around the developing network became
|
|---|
| 792 | archives for the source code of these GNU components, and throughout
|
|---|
| 793 | the 1980's the GNU tools gained recognition and acceptance by Unix
|
|---|
| 794 | users throughout the world. The stability, reliability, and
|
|---|
| 795 | maintainability of the GNU tools became a by-word, while Stallman's
|
|---|
| 796 | profound abilities as a designer continued to outpace, and provide
|
|---|
| 797 | goals for, the evolving process. The award to Stallman of a MacArthur
|
|---|
| 798 | Fellowship in 1990 was an appropriate recognition of his conceptual
|
|---|
| 799 | and technical innovations and their social consequences.</para>
|
|---|
| 800 |
|
|---|
| 801 | <para>Project GNU, and the Free Software Foundation to which it gave
|
|---|
| 802 | birth in 1985, were not the only source of free software
|
|---|
| 803 | ideas. Several forms of copyright license designed to foster free or
|
|---|
| 804 | partially free software began to develop in the academic community,
|
|---|
| 805 | mostly around the Unix environment. The University of California at
|
|---|
| 806 | Berkeley began the design and implementation of another version of
|
|---|
| 807 | Unix for free distribution in the academic community. BSD Unix, as it
|
|---|
| 808 | came to be known, also treated AT&T's Unix as a design
|
|---|
| 809 | standard. The code was broadly released and constituted a reservoir of
|
|---|
| 810 | tools and techniques, but its license terms limited the range of its
|
|---|
| 811 | application, while the elimination of hardware-specific proprietary
|
|---|
| 812 | code from the distribution meant that no one could actually build a
|
|---|
| 813 | working operating system for any particular computer from BSD. Other
|
|---|
| 814 | university-based work also eventuated in quasi-free software; the
|
|---|
| 815 | graphical user interface (or GUI) for Unix systems called X Windows,
|
|---|
| 816 | for example, was created at MIT and distributed with source code on
|
|---|
| 817 | terms permitting free modification. And in 1989-1990, an undergraduate
|
|---|
| 818 | computer science student at the University of Helsinki, Linus
|
|---|
| 819 | Torvalds, began the project that completed the circuit and fully
|
|---|
| 820 | energized the free software vision.</para>
|
|---|
| 821 |
|
|---|
| 822 | <para>What Torvalds did was to begin adapting a computer science
|
|---|
| 823 | teaching tool for real life use. Andrew Tannenbaum's MINIX kernel
|
|---|
| 824 | <footnote> <para>19. Operating systems, even Windows (which hides the
|
|---|
| 825 | fact from its users as thoroughly as possible), are actually
|
|---|
| 826 | collections of components, rather than undivided unities. Most of what
|
|---|
| 827 | an operating system does (manage file systems, control process
|
|---|
| 828 | execution, etc.) can be abstracted from the actual details of the
|
|---|
| 829 | computer hardware on which the operating system runs. Only a small
|
|---|
| 830 | inner core of the system must actually deal with the eccentric
|
|---|
| 831 | peculiarities of particular hardware. Once the operating system is
|
|---|
| 832 | written in a general language such as C, only that inner core, known
|
|---|
| 833 | in the trade as the kernel, will be highly specific to a particular
|
|---|
| 834 | computer architecture.</para> </footnote> , was a staple of Operating
|
|---|
| 835 | Systems courses, providing an example of basic solutions to basic
|
|---|
| 836 | problems. Slowly, and at first without recognizing the intention,
|
|---|
| 837 | Linus began turning the MINIX kernel into an actual kernel for Unix on
|
|---|
| 838 | the Intel x86 processors, the engines that run the world's commodity
|
|---|
| 839 | PCs. As Linus began developing this kernel, which he named Linux, he
|
|---|
| 840 | realized that the best way to make his project work would be to adjust
|
|---|
| 841 | his design decisions so that the existing GNU components would be
|
|---|
| 842 | compatible with his kernel.</para>
|
|---|
| 843 |
|
|---|
| 844 | <para>The result of Torvalds' work was the release on the net in 1991
|
|---|
| 845 | of a sketchy working model of a free software kernel for a Unix-like
|
|---|
| 846 | operating system for PCs, fully compatible with and designed
|
|---|
| 847 | convergently with the large and high-quality suite of system
|
|---|
| 848 | components created by Stallman's Project GNU and distributed by the
|
|---|
| 849 | Free Software Foundation. Because Torvalds chose to release the Linux
|
|---|
| 850 | kernel under the Free Software Foundation's General Public License, of
|
|---|
| 851 | which more below, the hundreds and eventually thousands of programmers
|
|---|
| 852 | around the world who chose to contribute their effort towards the
|
|---|
| 853 | further development of the kernel could be sure that their efforts
|
|---|
| 854 | would result in permanently free software that no one could turn into
|
|---|
| 855 | a proprietary product. Everyone knew that everyone else would be able
|
|---|
| 856 | to test, improve, and redistribute their improvements. Torvalds
|
|---|
| 857 | accepted contributions freely, and with a genially effective style
|
|---|
| 858 | maintained overall direction without dampening enthusiasm. The
|
|---|
| 859 | development of the Linux kernel proved that the Internet made it
|
|---|
| 860 | possible to aggregate collections of programmers far larger than any
|
|---|
| 861 | commercial manufacturer could afford, joined almost non-hierarchically
|
|---|
| 862 | in a development project ultimately involving more than one million
|
|---|
| 863 | lines of computer code - a scale of collaboration among geographically
|
|---|
| 864 | dispersed unpaid volunteers previously unimaginable in human history
|
|---|
| 865 | <footnote> <para>20. A careful and creative analysis of how Torvalds
|
|---|
| 866 | made this process work, and what it implies for the social practices
|
|---|
| 867 | of creating software, was provided by Eric S. Raymond in his seminal
|
|---|
| 868 | 1997 paper, <ulink
|
|---|
| 869 | url="http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_3/raymond/index.html">The
|
|---|
| 870 | Cathedral and the Bazaar,</ulink> which itself played a significant
|
|---|
| 871 | role in the expansion of the free software idea.</para>
|
|---|
| 872 | </footnote>.</para>
|
|---|
| 873 |
|
|---|
| 874 | <para>By 1994, Linux had reached version 1.0, representing a usable
|
|---|
| 875 | production kernel. Level 2.0 was reached in 1996, and by 1998, with
|
|---|
| 876 | the kernel at 2.2.0 and available not only for x86 machines but for a
|
|---|
| 877 | variety of other machine architectures, GNU/Linux - the combination of
|
|---|
| 878 | the Linux kernel and the much larger body of Project GNU components -
|
|---|
| 879 | and Windows NT were the only two operating systems in the world
|
|---|
| 880 | gaining market share. A Microsoft internal assessment of the situation
|
|---|
| 881 | leaked in October 1998 and subsequently acknowledged by the company as
|
|---|
| 882 | genuine concluded that "Linux represents a best-of-breed UNIX, that is
|
|---|
| 883 | trusted in mission critical applications, and - due to it's [sic] open
|
|---|
| 884 | source code - has a long term credibility which exceeds many other
|
|---|
| 885 | competitive OS's." <footnote> <para>21. This is a quotation from what
|
|---|
| 886 | is known in the trade as the "Halloween memo," which can be found, as
|
|---|
| 887 | annotated by Eric Raymond, to whom it was leaked, at <ulink
|
|---|
| 888 | url="http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween1.html">
|
|---|
| 889 | http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween1.html</ulink>.</para></footnote>
|
|---|
| 890 | GNU/Linux systems are now used throughout the world, operating
|
|---|
| 891 | everything from Web servers at major electronic commerce sites to
|
|---|
| 892 | "ad-hoc supercomputer" clusters to the network infrastructure of
|
|---|
| 893 | money-center banks. GNU/Linux is found on the space shuttle, and
|
|---|
| 894 | running behind-the-scenes computers at (yes) Microsoft. Industry
|
|---|
| 895 | evaluations of the comparative reliability of Unix systems have
|
|---|
| 896 | repeatedly shown that Linux is far and away the most stable and
|
|---|
| 897 | reliable Unix kernel, with a reliability exceeded only by the GNU
|
|---|
| 898 | tools themselves. GNU/Linux not only out-performs commercial
|
|---|
| 899 | proprietary Unix versions for PCs in benchmarks, but is renowned for
|
|---|
| 900 | its ability to run, undisturbed and uncomplaining, for months on end
|
|---|
| 901 | in high-volume high-stress environments without crashing.</para>
|
|---|
| 902 |
|
|---|
| 903 | <para>Other components of the free software movement have been equally
|
|---|
| 904 | successful. Apache, far and away the world's leading Web server
|
|---|
| 905 | program, is free software, as is Perl, the programming language which
|
|---|
| 906 | is the lingua franca for the programmers who build sophisticated Web
|
|---|
| 907 | sites. Netscape Communications now distributes its Netscape
|
|---|
| 908 | Communicator 5.0 browser as free software, under a close variant of
|
|---|
| 909 | the Free Software Foundation's General Public License. Major PC
|
|---|
| 910 | manufacturers, including IBM, have announced plans or are already
|
|---|
| 911 | distributing GNU/Linux as a customer option on their top-of-the-line
|
|---|
| 912 | PCs intended for use as Web- and file servers. Samba, a program that
|
|---|
| 913 | allows GNU/Linux computers to act as Windows NT file servers, is used
|
|---|
| 914 | worldwide as an alternative to Windows NT Server, and provides
|
|---|
| 915 | effective low-end competition to Microsoft in its own home market. By
|
|---|
| 916 | the standards of software quality that have been recognized in the
|
|---|
| 917 | industry for decades - and whose continuing relevance will be clear to
|
|---|
| 918 | you the next time your Windows PC crashes - the news at century's end
|
|---|
| 919 | is unambiguous. The world's most profitable and powerful corporation
|
|---|
| 920 | comes in a distant second, having excluded all but the real victor
|
|---|
| 921 | from the race. Propertarianism joined to capitalist vigor destroyed
|
|---|
| 922 | meaningful commercial competition, but when it came to making good
|
|---|
| 923 | software, anarchism won.</para>
|
|---|
| 924 |
|
|---|
| 925 |
|
|---|
| 926 | </section>
|
|---|
| 927 | </section>
|
|---|
| 928 | <!--<para><img src="anarchism_files/quad.gif"></para><a name="m3"></a>-->
|
|---|
| 929 | <section>
|
|---|
| 930 | <title>III. Anarchism as a Mode of Production</title>
|
|---|
| 931 |
|
|---|
| 932 | <para>It's a pretty story, and if only the IPdroid and the econodwarf
|
|---|
| 933 | hadn't been blinded by theory, they'd have seen it coming. But though
|
|---|
| 934 | some of us had been working for it and predicting it for years, the
|
|---|
| 935 | theoretical consequences are so subversive for the thoughtways that
|
|---|
| 936 | maintain our dwarves and droids in comfort that they can hardly be
|
|---|
| 937 | blamed for refusing to see. The facts proved that something was wrong
|
|---|
| 938 | with the "incentives" metaphor that underprops conventional
|
|---|
| 939 | intellectual property reasoning <footnote> <para>22. As recently as
|
|---|
| 940 | early 1994 a talented and technically competent (though Windows-using)
|
|---|
| 941 | law and economics scholar at a major U.S. law school confidently
|
|---|
| 942 | informed me that free software couldn't possibly exist, because no one
|
|---|
| 943 | would have any incentive to make really sophisticated programs
|
|---|
| 944 | requiring substantial investment of effort only to give them
|
|---|
| 945 | away.</para> </footnote> . But they did more. They provided an initial
|
|---|
| 946 | glimpse into the future of human creativity in a world of global
|
|---|
| 947 | interconnection, and it's not a world made for dwarves and
|
|---|
| 948 | droids.</para>
|
|---|
| 949 |
|
|---|
| 950 | <para>My argument, before we paused for refreshment in the real world,
|
|---|
| 951 | can be summarized this way: Software - whether executable programs,
|
|---|
| 952 | music, visual art, liturgy, weaponry, or what have you - consists of
|
|---|
| 953 | bitstreams, which although essentially indistinguishable are treated
|
|---|
| 954 | by a confusing multiplicity of legal categories. This multiplicity is
|
|---|
| 955 | unstable in the long term for reasons integral to the legal process.
|
|---|
| 956 | The unstable diversity of rules is caused by the need to distinguish
|
|---|
| 957 | among kinds of property interests in bitstreams. This need is
|
|---|
| 958 | primarily felt by those who stand to profit from the socially
|
|---|
| 959 | acceptable forms of monopoly created by treating ideas as
|
|---|
| 960 | property. Those of us who are worried about the social inequity and
|
|---|
| 961 | cultural hegemony created by this intellectually unsatisfying and
|
|---|
| 962 | morally repugnant regime are shouted down. Those doing the shouting,
|
|---|
| 963 | the dwarves and the droids, believe that these property rules are
|
|---|
| 964 | necessary not from any overt yearning for life in Murdochworld -
|
|---|
| 965 | though a little luxurious co-optation is always welcome - but because
|
|---|
| 966 | the metaphor of incentives, which they take to be not just an image
|
|---|
| 967 | but an argument, proves that these rules - despite their lamentable
|
|---|
| 968 | consequences - are necessary if we are to make good software. The only
|
|---|
| 969 | way to continue to believe this is to ignore the facts. At the center
|
|---|
| 970 | of the digital revolution, with the executable bitstreams that make
|
|---|
| 971 | everything else possible, propertarian regimes not only do not make
|
|---|
| 972 | things better, they can make things radically worse. Property
|
|---|
| 973 | concepts, whatever else may be wrong with them, do not enable and have
|
|---|
| 974 | in fact retarded progress.</para>
|
|---|
| 975 |
|
|---|
| 976 | <para>
|
|---|
| 977 | But what is this mysterious alternative? Free software exists, but
|
|---|
| 978 | what are its mechanisms, and how does it generalize towards a
|
|---|
| 979 | non-propertarian theory of the digital society?</para>
|
|---|
| 980 |
|
|---|
| 981 | </section>
|
|---|
| 982 | <section>
|
|---|
| 983 |
|
|---|
| 984 | <title>The Legal Theory of Free Software</title>
|
|---|
| 985 |
|
|---|
| 986 | <para>There is a myth, like most myths partially founded on reality,
|
|---|
| 987 | that computer programmers are all libertarians. Right-wing ones are
|
|---|
| 988 | capitalists, cleave to their stock options, and disdain taxes, unions,
|
|---|
| 989 | and civil rights laws; left-wing ones hate the market and all
|
|---|
| 990 | government, believe in strong encryption no matter how much nuclear
|
|---|
| 991 | terrorism it may cause, <footnote> <para>23. This question too
|
|---|
| 992 | deserves special scrutiny, encrusted as it is with special pleading on
|
|---|
| 993 | the state-power side. See my brief essay <ulink
|
|---|
| 994 | url="http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/yu-encrypt.html">"<emphasis>So
|
|---|
| 995 | Much for Savages</emphasis>: Navajo 1, Government 0 in Final Moments of
|
|---|
| 996 | Play."</ulink></para> </footnote> and dislike Bill Gates because he's
|
|---|
| 997 | rich. There is doubtless a foundation for this belief. But the most
|
|---|
| 998 | significant difference between political thought inside the digirati
|
|---|
| 999 | and outside it is that in the network society, anarchism (or more
|
|---|
| 1000 | properly, anti-possessive individualism) is a viable political
|
|---|
| 1001 | philosophy.</para>
|
|---|
| 1002 |
|
|---|
| 1003 | <para>The center of the free software movement's success, and the
|
|---|
| 1004 | greatest achievement of Richard Stallman, is not a piece of computer
|
|---|
| 1005 | code. The success of free software, including the overwhelming success
|
|---|
| 1006 | of GNU/Linux, results from the ability to harness extraordinary
|
|---|
| 1007 | quantities of high-quality effort for projects of immense size and
|
|---|
| 1008 | profound complexity. And this ability in turn results from the legal
|
|---|
| 1009 | context in which the labor is mobilized. As a visionary designer
|
|---|
| 1010 | Richard Stallman created more than Emacs, GDB, or GNU. He created the
|
|---|
| 1011 | General Public License.</para>
|
|---|
| 1012 |
|
|---|
| 1013 | <!-- <center><img src="anarchism_files/mog3.gif" hspace="0"
|
|---|
| 1014 | vspace="0"></center> --> <para>The GPL, <footnote>
|
|---|
| 1015 | <para>24. <emphasis>See</emphasis> <ulink
|
|---|
| 1016 | url="http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/gpl.txt">GNU General Public License,
|
|---|
| 1017 | Version 2, June 1991.</ulink></para> </footnote> also known as the
|
|---|
| 1018 | copyleft, uses copyright, to paraphrase Toby Milsom, to counterfeit
|
|---|
| 1019 | the phenomena of anarchism. As the license preamble expresses
|
|---|
| 1020 | it:</para>
|
|---|
| 1021 |
|
|---|
| 1022 | <blockquote><para>When we speak of free software, we are referring to
|
|---|
| 1023 | freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make
|
|---|
| 1024 | sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software
|
|---|
| 1025 | (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source
|
|---|
| 1026 | code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or
|
|---|
| 1027 | use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do
|
|---|
| 1028 | these things.</para>
|
|---|
| 1029 |
|
|---|
| 1030 | <para>To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that
|
|---|
| 1031 | forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the
|
|---|
| 1032 | rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for
|
|---|
| 1033 | you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify
|
|---|
| 1034 | it.</para>
|
|---|
| 1035 |
|
|---|
| 1036 | <para>For example, if you distribute copies of such a program,
|
|---|
| 1037 | whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the
|
|---|
| 1038 | rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or
|
|---|
| 1039 | can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they
|
|---|
| 1040 | know their rights.</para>
|
|---|
| 1041 |
|
|---|
| 1042 | <para>Many variants of this basic free software idea have been
|
|---|
| 1043 | expressed in licenses of various kinds, as I have already
|
|---|
| 1044 | indicated. The GPL is different from the other ways of expressing
|
|---|
| 1045 | these values in one crucial respect. Section 2 of the license provides
|
|---|
| 1046 | in pertinent part:</para>
|
|---|
| 1047 |
|
|---|
| 1048 | <para>You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any
|
|---|
| 1049 | portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
|
|---|
| 1050 | distribute such modifications or work ..., provided that you also meet
|
|---|
| 1051 | all of these conditions: </para>
|
|---|
| 1052 |
|
|---|
| 1053 | <para>...</para>
|
|---|
| 1054 |
|
|---|
| 1055 | <para>b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish,
|
|---|
| 1056 | that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or
|
|---|
| 1057 | any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
|
|---|
| 1058 | parties under the terms of this License.</para></blockquote>
|
|---|
| 1059 |
|
|---|
| 1060 | <para>Section 2(b) of the GPL is sometimes called "restrictive," but
|
|---|
| 1061 | its intention is liberating. It creates a commons, to which anyone may
|
|---|
| 1062 | add but from which no one may subtract. Because of §2(b), each
|
|---|
| 1063 | contributor to a GPL'd project is assured that she, and all other
|
|---|
| 1064 | users, will be able to run, modify and redistribute the program
|
|---|
| 1065 | indefinitely, that source code will always be available, and that,
|
|---|
| 1066 | unlike commercial software, its longevity cannot be limited by the
|
|---|
| 1067 | contingencies of the marketplace or the decisions of future
|
|---|
| 1068 | developers. This "inheritance" of the GPL has sometimes been
|
|---|
| 1069 | criticized as an example of the free software movement's
|
|---|
| 1070 | anti-commercial bias. Nothing could be further from the truth. The
|
|---|
| 1071 | effect of §2(b) is to make commercial distributors of free software
|
|---|
| 1072 | better competitors against proprietary software businesses. For
|
|---|
| 1073 | confirmation of this point, one can do no better than to ask the
|
|---|
| 1074 | proprietary competitors. As the author of the Microsoft "Halloween"
|
|---|
| 1075 | memorandum, Vinod Vallopillil, put it:</para>
|
|---|
| 1076 |
|
|---|
| 1077 | <blockquote><para>The GPL and its aversion to code forking reassures
|
|---|
| 1078 | customers that they aren't riding an evolutionary `dead-end' by
|
|---|
| 1079 | subscribing to a particular commercial version of Linux.</para>
|
|---|
| 1080 |
|
|---|
| 1081 | <para>The "evolutionary dead-end" is the core of the software
|
|---|
| 1082 | FUD argument <footnote> <para>25. <ulink
|
|---|
| 1083 | url="http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween1.html">V. Vallopillil,
|
|---|
| 1084 | Open Source Software: A (New?) Development Methodology.</ulink></para>
|
|---|
| 1085 | </footnote> .</para></blockquote>
|
|---|
| 1086 |
|
|---|
| 1087 | <para>Translated out of Microspeak, this means that the strategy by
|
|---|
| 1088 | which the dominant proprietary manufacturer drives customers away from
|
|---|
| 1089 | competitors - by sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt about other
|
|---|
| 1090 | software's long-term viability - is ineffective with respect to GPL'd
|
|---|
| 1091 | programs. Users of GPL'd code, including those who purchase software
|
|---|
| 1092 | and systems from a commercial reseller, know that future improvements
|
|---|
| 1093 | and repairs will be accessible from the commons, and need not fear
|
|---|
| 1094 | either the disappearance of their supplier or that someone will use a
|
|---|
| 1095 | particularly attractive improvement or a desperately necessary repair
|
|---|
| 1096 | as leverage for "taking the program private."</para>
|
|---|
| 1097 |
|
|---|
| 1098 | <para>This use of intellectual property rules to create a commons in
|
|---|
| 1099 | cyberspace is the central institutional structure enabling the
|
|---|
| 1100 | anarchist triumph. Ensuring free access and enabling modification at
|
|---|
| 1101 | each stage in the process means that the evolution of software occurs
|
|---|
| 1102 | in the fast Lamarckian mode: each favorable acquired characteristic of
|
|---|
| 1103 | others' work can be directly inherited. Hence the speed with which the
|
|---|
| 1104 | Linux kernel, for example, outgrew all of its proprietary
|
|---|
| 1105 | predecessors. Because defection is impossible, free riders are
|
|---|
| 1106 | welcome, which resolves one of the central puzzles of collective
|
|---|
| 1107 | action in a propertarian social system.</para>
|
|---|
| 1108 |
|
|---|
| 1109 | <para>Non-propertarian production is also directly responsible for the
|
|---|
| 1110 | famous stability and reliability of free software, which arises from
|
|---|
| 1111 | what Eric Raymond calls "Linus' law": With enough eyeballs, all bugs
|
|---|
| 1112 | are shallow. In practical terms, access to source code means that if I
|
|---|
| 1113 | have a problem I can fix it. Because I can fix it, I almost never have
|
|---|
| 1114 | to, because someone else has almost always seen it and fixed it
|
|---|
| 1115 | first.</para>
|
|---|
| 1116 |
|
|---|
| 1117 | <para>For the free software community, commitment to anarchist
|
|---|
| 1118 | production may be a moral imperative; as Richard Stallman wrote, it's
|
|---|
| 1119 | about freedom, not about price. Or it may be a matter of utility,
|
|---|
| 1120 | seeking to produce better software than propertarian modes of work
|
|---|
| 1121 | will allow. From the droid point of view, the copyleft represents the
|
|---|
| 1122 | perversion of theory, but better than any other proposal over the past
|
|---|
| 1123 | decades it resolves the problems of applying copyright to the
|
|---|
| 1124 | inextricably merged functional and expressive features of computer
|
|---|
| 1125 | programs. That it produces better software than the alternative does
|
|---|
| 1126 | not imply that traditional copyright principles should now be
|
|---|
| 1127 | prohibited to those who want to own and market inferior software
|
|---|
| 1128 | products, or (more charitably) whose products are too narrow in appeal
|
|---|
| 1129 | for communal production. But our story should serve as a warning to
|
|---|
| 1130 | droids: The world of the future will bear little relation to the world
|
|---|
| 1131 | of the past. The rules are now being bent in two directions. The
|
|---|
| 1132 | corporate owners of "cultural icons" and other assets who seek
|
|---|
| 1133 | ever-longer terms for corporate authors, converting the "limited Time"
|
|---|
| 1134 | of Article I, §8 into a freehold have naturally been whistling music
|
|---|
| 1135 | to the android ear <footnote> <para>26. The looming expiration of
|
|---|
| 1136 | Mickey Mouse's ownership by Disney requires, from the point of view of
|
|---|
| 1137 | that wealthy "campaign contributor," for example, an alteration of the
|
|---|
| 1138 | general copyright law of the United States. See "Not Making it Any
|
|---|
| 1139 | More? Vaporizing the Public Domain," in <emphasis>The Invisible
|
|---|
| 1140 | Barbecue</emphasis>, forthcoming.</para> </footnote> . After all, who bought
|
|---|
| 1141 | the droids their concert tickets? But as the propertarian position
|
|---|
| 1142 | seeks to embed itself ever more strongly, in a conception of copyright
|
|---|
| 1143 | liberated from the minor annoyances of limited terms and fair use, at
|
|---|
| 1144 | the very center of our "cultural software" system, the anarchist
|
|---|
| 1145 | counter-strike has begun. Worse is yet to befall the droids, as we
|
|---|
| 1146 | shall see. But first, we must pay our final devoirs to the
|
|---|
| 1147 | dwarves.</para>
|
|---|
| 1148 |
|
|---|
| 1149 | </section>
|
|---|
| 1150 | <section>
|
|---|
| 1151 | <title>Because It's There: Faraday's Magnet and Human Creativity</title>
|
|---|
| 1152 |
|
|---|
| 1153 | <para>After all, they deserve an answer. Why do people make free
|
|---|
| 1154 | software if they don't get to profit? Two answers have usually been
|
|---|
| 1155 | given. One is half-right and the other is wrong, but both are
|
|---|
| 1156 | insufficiently simple.</para>
|
|---|
| 1157 |
|
|---|
| 1158 | <para>The wrong answer is embedded in numerous references to "the
|
|---|
| 1159 | hacker gift-exchange culture." This use of ethnographic jargon
|
|---|
| 1160 | wandered into the field some years ago and became rapidly, if
|
|---|
| 1161 | misleadingly, ubiquitous. It reminds us only that the
|
|---|
| 1162 | economeretricians have so corrupted our thought processes that any
|
|---|
| 1163 | form of non-market economic behavior seems equal to every other
|
|---|
| 1164 | kind. But gift-exchange, like market barter, is a propertarian
|
|---|
| 1165 | institution. Reciprocity is central to these symbolic enactments of
|
|---|
| 1166 | mutual dependence, and if either the yams or the fish are
|
|---|
| 1167 | short-weighted, trouble results. Free software, at the risk of
|
|---|
| 1168 | repetition, is a commons: no reciprocity ritual is enacted there. A
|
|---|
| 1169 | few people give away code that others sell, use, change, or borrow
|
|---|
| 1170 | wholesale to lift out parts for something else. Notwithstanding the
|
|---|
| 1171 | very large number of people (tens of thousands, at most) who have
|
|---|
| 1172 | contributed to GNU/Linux, this is orders of magnitude less than the
|
|---|
| 1173 | number of users who make no contribution whatever <footnote>
|
|---|
| 1174 | <para>27. A recent industry estimate puts the number of Linux systems
|
|---|
| 1175 | worldwide at 7.5 million. <emphasis>See</emphasis> Josh McHugh, 1998. <ulink
|
|---|
| 1176 | url="http://www.forbes.com/forbes/98/0810/6203094s1.htm">"Linux: The
|
|---|
| 1177 | Making of a Global Hack,"</ulink> <emphasis>Forbes</emphasis> (August 10). Because the
|
|---|
| 1178 | software is freely obtainable throughout the Net, there is no simple
|
|---|
| 1179 | way to assess actual usage.</para> </footnote>.</para>
|
|---|
| 1180 |
|
|---|
| 1181 | <para>A part of the right answer is suggested by the claim that free
|
|---|
| 1182 | software is made by those who seek reputational compensation for their
|
|---|
| 1183 | activity. Famous Linux hackers, the theory is, are known all over the
|
|---|
| 1184 | planet as programming deities. From this they derive either enhanced
|
|---|
| 1185 | self-esteem or indirect material advancement <footnote> <para>28. Eric
|
|---|
| 1186 | Raymond is a partisan of the "ego boost" theory, to which he adds
|
|---|
| 1187 | another faux-ethnographic comparison, of free software composition to
|
|---|
| 1188 | the Kwakiutl potlatch. <emphasis>See</emphasis> Eric S. Raymond, 1998. <ulink
|
|---|
| 1189 | url="http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_10/raymond/index.html">Homesteading
|
|---|
| 1190 | the Noosphere.</ulink>. But the potlatch, certainly a form of status
|
|---|
| 1191 | competition, is unlike free software for two fundamental reasons: it
|
|---|
| 1192 | is essentially hierarchical, which free software is not, and, as we
|
|---|
| 1193 | have known since Thorstein Veblen first called attention to its
|
|---|
| 1194 | significance, it is a form of conspicuous waste. <emphasis>See</emphasis> Thorstein
|
|---|
| 1195 | Veblen, 1967. <emphasis>The Theory of the Leisure Class.</emphasis> New York:
|
|---|
| 1196 | Viking, p. 75. These are precisely the grounds which distinguish the
|
|---|
| 1197 | anti-hierarchical and utilitiarian free software culture from its
|
|---|
| 1198 | propertarian counterparts.</para></footnote>. But the programming
|
|---|
| 1199 | deities, much as they have contributed to free software, have not done
|
|---|
| 1200 | the bulk of the work. Reputations, as Linus Torvalds himself has often
|
|---|
| 1201 | pointed out, are made by willingly acknowledging that it was all done
|
|---|
| 1202 | by someone else. And, as many observers have noted, the free software
|
|---|
| 1203 | movement has also produced superlative
|
|---|
| 1204 | documentation. Documentation-writing is not what hackers do to attain
|
|---|
| 1205 | cool, and much of the documentation has been written by people who
|
|---|
| 1206 | didn't write the code. Nor must we limit the indirect material
|
|---|
| 1207 | advantages of authorship to increases in reputational capital. Most
|
|---|
| 1208 | free software authors I know have day jobs in the technology
|
|---|
| 1209 | industries, and the skills they hone in the more creative work they do
|
|---|
| 1210 | outside the market no doubt sometimes measurably enhance their value
|
|---|
| 1211 | within it. And as the free software products gained critical mass and
|
|---|
| 1212 | became the basis of a whole new set of business models built around
|
|---|
| 1213 | commercial distribution of that which people can also get for nothing,
|
|---|
| 1214 | an increasing number of people are specifically employed to write free
|
|---|
| 1215 | software. But in order to be employable in the field, they must
|
|---|
| 1216 | already have established themselves there. Plainly, then, this motive
|
|---|
| 1217 | is present, but it isn't the whole explanation.</para>
|
|---|
| 1218 |
|
|---|
| 1219 | <para>Indeed, the rest of the answer is just too simple to have
|
|---|
| 1220 | received its due. The best way to understand is to follow the brief
|
|---|
| 1221 | and otherwise unsung career of an initially-grudging free software
|
|---|
| 1222 | author. Microsoft's Vinod Vallopillil, in the course of writing the
|
|---|
| 1223 | competitive analysis of Linux that was leaked as the second of the
|
|---|
| 1224 | famous "Halloween memoranda," bought and installed a Linux system on
|
|---|
| 1225 | one of his office computers. He had trouble because the (commercial)
|
|---|
| 1226 | Linux distribution he installed did not contain a daemon to handle the
|
|---|
| 1227 | DHCP protocol for assignment of dynamic IP addresses. The result was
|
|---|
| 1228 | important enough for us to risk another prolonged exposure to the
|
|---|
| 1229 | Microsoft Writing Style:</para>
|
|---|
| 1230 |
|
|---|
| 1231 | <blockquote><para>A small number of Web sites and FAQs later, I found an FTP
|
|---|
| 1232 | site with a Linux DHCP client. The DHCP client was developed by an
|
|---|
| 1233 | engineer employed by Fore Systems (as evidenced by his e-mail address;
|
|---|
| 1234 | I believe, however, that it was developed in his own free time). A
|
|---|
| 1235 | second set of documentation/manuals was written for the DHCP client by
|
|---|
| 1236 | a hacker in <emphasis>Hungary</emphasis> which provided relatively simple
|
|---|
| 1237 | instructions on how to install/load the client.</para>
|
|---|
| 1238 |
|
|---|
| 1239 | <para>I downloaded & uncompressed the client and typed two
|
|---|
| 1240 | simple commands:</para>
|
|---|
| 1241 |
|
|---|
| 1242 | <para>Make - compiles the client binaries</para>
|
|---|
| 1243 |
|
|---|
| 1244 | <para>Make Install -installed the binaries as a Linux Daemon</para>
|
|---|
| 1245 |
|
|---|
| 1246 | <para>Typing "DHCPCD" (for DHCP Client Daemon) on the command
|
|---|
| 1247 | line triggered the DHCP discovery process and voila, I had IP
|
|---|
| 1248 | networking running. </para>
|
|---|
| 1249 |
|
|---|
| 1250 | <para>Since I had just downloaded the DHCP client code, on an
|
|---|
| 1251 | impulse I played around a bit. Although the client wasn't as
|
|---|
| 1252 | extensible as the DHCP client we are shipping in NT5 (for example, it
|
|---|
| 1253 | won't query for arbitrary options & store results), it was obvious
|
|---|
| 1254 | how I could write the additional code to implement this functionality.
|
|---|
| 1255 | The full client consisted of about 2,600 lines of code.</para>
|
|---|
| 1256 |
|
|---|
| 1257 | <para>One example of esoteric, extended functionality that was
|
|---|
| 1258 | clearly patched in by a third party was a set of routines to that
|
|---|
| 1259 | would pad the DHCP request with host-specific strings required by
|
|---|
| 1260 | Cable Modem / ADSL sites.</para>
|
|---|
| 1261 |
|
|---|
| 1262 | <para>A few other steps were required to configure the DHCP
|
|---|
| 1263 | client to auto-start and auto-configure my Ethernet interface on boot
|
|---|
| 1264 | but these were documented in the client code and in the DHCP
|
|---|
| 1265 | documentation from the Hungarian developer.</para>
|
|---|
| 1266 |
|
|---|
| 1267 | <para>I'm a poorly skilled UNIX programmer but it was
|
|---|
| 1268 | immediately obvious to me how to incrementally extend the DHCP client
|
|---|
| 1269 | code (the feeling was exhilarating and addictive).</para>
|
|---|
| 1270 |
|
|---|
| 1271 | <para>Additionally, due directly to GPL + having the full development
|
|---|
| 1272 | environment in front of me, I was in a position where I could write up
|
|---|
| 1273 | my changes and e-mail them out within a couple of hours (in contrast
|
|---|
| 1274 | to how things like this would get done in NT). Engaging in that
|
|---|
| 1275 | process would have prepared me for a larger, more ambitious Linux
|
|---|
| 1276 | project in the future <footnote><para>29. Vinod Vallopillil, <ulink
|
|---|
| 1277 | url="http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween2.html">Linux OS
|
|---|
| 1278 | Competitive Analysis (Halloween II).</ulink> Note Vallopillil's
|
|---|
| 1279 | surprise that a program written in California had been subsequently
|
|---|
| 1280 | documented by a programmer in Hungary.</para>
|
|---|
| 1281 | </footnote>.</para></blockquote>
|
|---|
| 1282 |
|
|---|
| 1283 | <para>"The feeling was exhilarating and addictive." Stop the presses:
|
|---|
| 1284 | Microsoft experimentally verifies Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to
|
|---|
| 1285 | Faraday's Law. Wrap the Internet around every brain on the planet and
|
|---|
| 1286 | spin the planet. Software flows in the wires. It's an emergent
|
|---|
| 1287 | property of human minds to create. "Due directly to the GPL," as
|
|---|
| 1288 | Vallopillil rightly pointed out, free software made available to him
|
|---|
| 1289 | an exhilarating increase in his own creativity, of a kind not
|
|---|
| 1290 | achievable in his day job working for the Greatest Programming Company
|
|---|
| 1291 | on Earth. If only he had e-mailed that first addictive fix, who knows
|
|---|
| 1292 | where he'd be now?</para>
|
|---|
| 1293 |
|
|---|
| 1294 | <para>So, in the end, my dwarvish friends, it's just a human thing.
|
|---|
| 1295 | Rather like why Figaro sings, why Mozart wrote the music for him to
|
|---|
| 1296 | sing to, and why we all make up new words: Because we can. Homo
|
|---|
| 1297 | ludens, meet Homo faber. The social condition of global
|
|---|
| 1298 | interconnection that we call the Internet makes it possible for all of
|
|---|
| 1299 | us to be creative in new and previously undreamed-of ways. Unless we
|
|---|
| 1300 | allow "ownership" to interfere. Repeat after me, ye dwarves and men:
|
|---|
| 1301 | Resist the resistance!</para>
|
|---|
| 1302 |
|
|---|
| 1303 | </section>
|
|---|
| 1304 | <!--<para><img src="anarchism_files/quad.gif"></para><a name="m4"></a>-->
|
|---|
| 1305 |
|
|---|
| 1306 | <section>
|
|---|
| 1307 | <title>IV. Their Lordships Die in the Dark?</title>
|
|---|
| 1308 |
|
|---|
| 1309 | <para>For the IPdroid, fresh off the plane from a week at Bellagio
|
|---|
| 1310 | paid for by Dreamworks SKG, it's enough to cause indigestion.</para>
|
|---|
| 1311 |
|
|---|
| 1312 | <para>Unlock the possibilities of human creativity by connecting
|
|---|
| 1313 | everyone to everyone else? Get the ownership system out of the way so
|
|---|
| 1314 | that we can all add our voices to the choir, even if that means
|
|---|
| 1315 | pasting our singing on top of the Mormon Tabernacle and sending the
|
|---|
| 1316 | output to a friend? No one sitting slack-jawed in front of a televised
|
|---|
| 1317 | mixture of violence and imminent copulation carefully devised to
|
|---|
| 1318 | heighten the young male eyeball's interest in a beer commercial? What
|
|---|
| 1319 | will become of civilization? Or at least of copyright teachers?</para>
|
|---|
| 1320 |
|
|---|
| 1321 | <para>But perhaps this is premature. I've only been talking about
|
|---|
| 1322 | software. Real software, the old kind, that runs computers. Not like
|
|---|
| 1323 | the software that runs DVD players, or the kind made by the Grateful
|
|---|
| 1324 | Dead. "Oh yes, the Grateful Dead. Something strange about them, wasn't
|
|---|
| 1325 | there? Didn't prohibit recording at their concerts. Didn't mind if
|
|---|
| 1326 | their fans rather riled the recording industry. Seem to have done all
|
|---|
| 1327 | right, though, you gotta admit. Senator Patrick Leahy, isn't he a
|
|---|
| 1328 | former Deadhead? I wonder if he'll vote to extend corporate authorship
|
|---|
| 1329 | terms to 125 years, so that Disney doesn't lose The Mouse in 2004. And
|
|---|
| 1330 | those DVD players - they're computers, aren't they?"</para>
|
|---|
| 1331 |
|
|---|
| 1332 | <para>In the digital society, it's all connected. We can't depend for
|
|---|
| 1333 | the long run on distinguishing one bitstream from another in order to
|
|---|
| 1334 | figure out which rules apply. What happened to software is already
|
|---|
| 1335 | happening to music. Their recording industry lordships are now
|
|---|
| 1336 | scrambling wildly to retain control over distribution, as both
|
|---|
| 1337 | musicians and listeners realize that the middlepeople are no longer
|
|---|
| 1338 | necessary. The Great Potemkin Village of 1999, the so-called Secure
|
|---|
| 1339 | Digital Music Initiative, will have collapsed long before the first
|
|---|
| 1340 | Internet President gets inaugurated, for simple technical reasons as
|
|---|
| 1341 | obvious to those who know as the ones that dictated the triumph of
|
|---|
| 1342 | free software <footnote> <para>30. See "They're Playing Our Song: The
|
|---|
| 1343 | Day the Music Industry Died," in <emphasis>The Invisible Barbecue</emphasis>,
|
|---|
| 1344 | forthcoming.</para> </footnote> . The anarchist revolution in music is
|
|---|
| 1345 | different from the one in software <emphasis>tout court</emphasis>, but here too -
|
|---|
| 1346 | as any teenager with an MP3 collection of self-released music from
|
|---|
| 1347 | unsigned artists can tell you - theory has been killed off by the
|
|---|
| 1348 | facts. Whether you are Mick Jagger, or a great national artist from
|
|---|
| 1349 | the third world looking for a global audience, or a garret-dweller
|
|---|
| 1350 | reinventing music, the recording industry will soon have nothing to
|
|---|
| 1351 | offer you that you can't get better for free. And music doesn't sound
|
|---|
| 1352 | worse when distributed for free, pay what you want directly to the
|
|---|
| 1353 | artist, and don't pay anything if you don't want to. Give it to your
|
|---|
| 1354 | friends; they might like it.</para>
|
|---|
| 1355 |
|
|---|
| 1356 | <para>
|
|---|
| 1357 | What happened to music is also happening to news. The wire services,
|
|---|
| 1358 | as any U.S. law student learns even before taking the near-obligatory
|
|---|
| 1359 | course in Copyright for Droids, have a protectible property interest
|
|---|
| 1360 | in their expression of the news, even if not in the facts the news
|
|---|
| 1361 | reports <footnote><para>31. International News Service v. Associated
|
|---|
| 1362 | Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918). With regard to the actual terse, purely
|
|---|
| 1363 | functional expressions of breaking news actually at stake in the
|
|---|
| 1364 | jostling among wire services, this was always a distinction only a
|
|---|
| 1365 | droid could love.</para></footnote>. So why are they now giving all
|
|---|
| 1366 | their output away? Because in the world of the Net, most news is
|
|---|
| 1367 | commodity news. And the original advantage of the news gatherers, that
|
|---|
| 1368 | they were internally connected in ways others were not when
|
|---|
| 1369 | communications were expensive, is gone. Now what matters is collecting
|
|---|
| 1370 | eyeballs to deliver to advertisers. It isn't the wire services that
|
|---|
| 1371 | have the advantage in covering Kosovo, that's for sure. Much less
|
|---|
| 1372 | those paragons of "intellectual" property, their television
|
|---|
| 1373 | lordships. They, with their overpaid pretty people and their massive
|
|---|
| 1374 | technical infrastructure, are about the only organizations in the
|
|---|
| 1375 | world that can't afford to be everywhere all the time. And then they
|
|---|
| 1376 | have to limit themselves to ninety seconds a story, or the eyeball
|
|---|
| 1377 | hunters will go somewhere else. So who makes better news, the
|
|---|
| 1378 | propertarians or the anarchists? We shall soon see.</para>
|
|---|
| 1379 |
|
|---|
| 1380 | <para>Oscar Wilde says somewhere that the problem with socialism is
|
|---|
| 1381 | that it takes up too many evenings. The problems with anarchism as a
|
|---|
| 1382 | social system are also about transaction costs. But the digital
|
|---|
| 1383 | revolution alters two aspects of political economy that have been
|
|---|
| 1384 | otherwise invariant throughout human history. All software has zero
|
|---|
| 1385 | marginal cost in the world of the Net, while the costs of social
|
|---|
| 1386 | coordination have been so far reduced as to permit the rapid formation
|
|---|
| 1387 | and dissolution of large-scale and highly diverse social groupings
|
|---|
| 1388 | entirely without geographic limitation <footnote> <para>32. See "No
|
|---|
| 1389 | Prodigal Son: The Political Theory of Universal Interconnection," in
|
|---|
| 1390 | <emphasis>The Invisible Barbecue</emphasis>, forthcoming.</para> </footnote> . Such
|
|---|
| 1391 | fundamental change in the material circumstances of life necessarily
|
|---|
| 1392 | produces equally fundamental changes in culture. Think not? Tell it to
|
|---|
| 1393 | the Iroquois. And of course such profound shifts in culture are
|
|---|
| 1394 | threats to existing power relations. Think not? Ask the Chinese
|
|---|
| 1395 | Communist Party. Or wait 25 years and see if you can find them for
|
|---|
| 1396 | purposes of making the inquiry.</para>
|
|---|
| 1397 |
|
|---|
| 1398 | <para>In this context, the obsolescence of the IPdroid is neither
|
|---|
| 1399 | unforseeable nor tragic. Indeed it may find itself clanking off into
|
|---|
| 1400 | the desert, still lucidly explaining to an imaginary room the
|
|---|
| 1401 | profitably complicated rules for a world that no longer exists. But at
|
|---|
| 1402 | least it will have familiar company, recognizable from all those
|
|---|
| 1403 | glittering parties in Davos, Hollywood, and Brussels. Our Media Lords
|
|---|
| 1404 | are now at handigrips with fate, however much they may feel that the
|
|---|
| 1405 | Force is with them. The rules about bitstreams are now of dubious
|
|---|
| 1406 | utility for maintaining power by co-opting human creativity. Seen
|
|---|
| 1407 | clearly in the light of fact, these Emperors have even fewer clothes
|
|---|
| 1408 | than the models they use to grab our eyeballs. Unless supported by
|
|---|
| 1409 | user-disabling technology, a culture of pervasive surveillance that
|
|---|
| 1410 | permits every reader of every "property" to be logged and charged, and
|
|---|
| 1411 | a smokescreen of droid-breath assuring each and every young person
|
|---|
| 1412 | that human creativity would vanish without the benevolent aristocracy
|
|---|
| 1413 | of BillG the Creator, Lord Murdoch of Everywhere, the Spielmeister and
|
|---|
| 1414 | the Lord High Mouse, their reign is nearly done. But what's at stake
|
|---|
| 1415 | is the control of the scarcest resource of all: our
|
|---|
| 1416 | attention. Conscripting that makes all the money in the world in the
|
|---|
| 1417 | digital economy, and the current lords of the earth will fight for
|
|---|
| 1418 | it. Leagued against them are only the anarchists: nobodies, hippies,
|
|---|
| 1419 | hobbyists, lovers, and artists. The resulting unequal contest is the
|
|---|
| 1420 | great political and legal issue of our time. Aristocracy looks hard
|
|---|
| 1421 | to beat, but that's how it looked in 1788 and 1913 too. It is, as Chou
|
|---|
| 1422 | En-Lai said about the meaning of the French Revolution, too soon to
|
|---|
| 1423 | tell.</para>
|
|---|
| 1424 |
|
|---|
| 1425 | </section>
|
|---|
| 1426 | <section>
|
|---|
| 1427 | <title>About the Author</title>
|
|---|
| 1428 |
|
|---|
| 1429 | <para>Eben Moglen is Professor of Law & Legal History, Columbia Law School.
|
|---|
| 1430 | E-mail: <ulink url="mailto:moglen@columbia.edu">Mail: moglen@columbia.edu</ulink></para>
|
|---|
| 1431 |
|
|---|
| 1432 | <para>Acknowledgments</para>
|
|---|
| 1433 |
|
|---|
| 1434 | <para>This paper was prepared for delivery at the Buchmann
|
|---|
| 1435 | International Conference on Law, Technology and Information, at Tel
|
|---|
| 1436 | Aviv University, May 1999; my thanks to the organizers for their kind
|
|---|
| 1437 | invitation. I owe much as always to Pamela Karlan for her insight and
|
|---|
| 1438 | encouragement. I especially wish to thank the programmers throughout
|
|---|
| 1439 | the world who made free software possible.</para>
|
|---|
| 1440 |
|
|---|
| 1441 |
|
|---|
| 1442 | <blockquote>
|
|---|
| 1443 | <para>
|
|---|
| 1444 | <ulink url="http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_8/index.html"><!--<img src="anarchism_files/contents.gif" alt="Contents" align="bottom" border="0">--></ulink> </para>
|
|---|
| 1445 | <para>
|
|---|
| 1446 | <ulink url="http://firstmonday.org/issues/index.html"><!--<img src="anarchism_files/index.gif" alt="Index" border="0">--></ulink>
|
|---|
| 1447 | </para>
|
|---|
| 1448 | <para>Copyright <ulink url="http://firstmonday.org/copy.html">©</ulink> 1999, First Monday</para></blockquote>
|
|---|
| 1449 |
|
|---|
| 1450 |
|
|---|
| 1451 | </section>
|
|---|
| 1452 | </article>
|
|---|
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