Richard M. Stallman, known succinctly as RMS in many technology circles, is one of those EF Hutton types; when he talks, people listen. Of course, as the founder of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation, this is to be expected, but his magnetic pull is also enhanced by a punchy attitude that usually takes the form of a rain cloud forming over a parade. Sometimes this can be good; there can be little doubting his importance in the early years of the open source "boom (if you will), even if the entire Linux versus GNU versus GNU/Linux debacle seemed a little pointless. Sometimes, however, taking on the air of a grand provocateur hurts more than it helps.
Stallman recently decided to do an e-mail interview with LinuxP2P.com, touching on P2P, DRM, the GPL, Creative Commons, and a handful of other topics primarily relating to the world of intellectual property. The interview touches on a number of topics that I won't repeat here, but I do want to just briefly comment on one trend that I see solidifying in discussions of intellectual property law that is coincidentally represented by Stallman's comments.
Knowing Stallman's rather extremist views on the property classified often as intellectual in nature, I wasn't surprised to see him respond to a question about the merits of DRM with a quick and dismissive "it is fundamentally unjust." He followed with an auto-hagiographical account of his refusal to purchase DRMed CDs and DVDs. Just in case you were worried, he has never bought a DVD with CSS encryption. Awww, yeah. The appropriate emoticon is: m/ (>.<) m/
All spirited ribbing aside, Stallman does have some interesting things to say about Creative Commons, the open license for content that bloggers love to talk about, but don't love to adopt. Creative Commons is a powerful idea, and an interesting non-profit organization. It's also rejected by Stallman, though the reasons may surprise you.
Stallman told LinuxP2P.com that "people have a tendency to disregard the differences between the various Creative Commons licenses, lumping them together as a single thing." He adds, "some Creative Commons licenses are free licenses; most permit at least noncommercial verbatim copying. But some, such as the Sampling Licenses and Developing Countries Licenses, don't even permit that, which makes them unacceptable to use for any kind of work. All these licenses have in common is a label, but people regularly mistake that common label for something substantial."
Stallman here is getting at one of the best features of Creative Commons: choice. If you publish the written word, for instance, you can use Creative Commons to devise a license that fits your needs. Do you allow commercial reuse or not? What about modifications, sharing, or performance? Creative Commons is an attempt to put tools in the hands of creators so that they can feel legally safe and competent to specify how they would like their works to be treated. Stallman is correct: there is no single license, and if someone says that they have their writings available under Creative Commons, it's not entirely clear what that means. For Stallman, however, this is a bad thing.
Stallman continues, "I no longer endorse Creative Commons. I cannot endorse Creative Commons as a whole, because some of its licenses are unacceptable. It would be self-delusion to try to endorse just some of the Creative Commons licenses, because people lump them together; they will misconstrue any endorsement of some as a blanket endorsement of all. I therefore find myself constrained to reject Creative Commons entirely."
Stallman's comments admittedly surprise me. Is pedestrian confusion coupled with flexible licensing options really grounds for rejecting something like Creative Commons?
In a word, no. As a historian, I look at the balkanized state of Creative Commons licensing and cannot help but see something rather exciting: everyday people have different expectations of how their work should be valued, protected, and distributed. This manifests itself in different licensing decisions made by content producers, which on the 'net includes anyone who wants to create. In the past, you could slap the old © on your work and that was about it. Creative Commons, on the other hand, starts with the general protections afforded by copyright, and then allows users to build licenses that are less restrictive. A Creative Commons license can't be more restrictive than standard copyright affords, but it can certainly be less restrictive. And this is something to reject? Of course not.
While it may be fashionable to bash the pro-DRM lobby as economically fascist (you vill like zee HDCP!), is it any better to assert that opinions over the quality and nature of licenses are ethically absolute matters? As I mentioned above, there is a solidifying approach to copyright and intellectual property issues that is merely dismissive. "I don't buy those things, so it doesn't matter." "I reject such a scheme, for it is unjust!" "The flying spaghetti monster says it must be so!" They're also all, I would submit, myopic and dangerous.
Without a doubt, Stallman's views are extreme (generally speaking), but hardly unique. My concern with this brand of engagement, though, is that it is ultimately polarizing, and runs close to being another "baby with bathwater" approach to the problem. In our own discussions here on Ars, debates on intellectual property often end up between the two poles of "copyright is dead, screw the big corporations, long live piracy because it's my right," and "why don't you try working for free and see how you like it, loser." Sure, that's a caricature, but if you have ventured into our discussions, you've probably seen the evidence of this polarization. It's nothing shameful; indeed, looking at the state of the country as a whole, it's de rigueur. But that's what has me concerned. If you've been paying attention, then you know that getting caught up in the extremes means that you miss most of what constitutes reality.
Most of our representatives in government are already poised to take the views of Big Content more seriously than those of the citizenry. An impractical, "my way or the highway" approach to the problems of intellectual property is becoming dangerously common, partially on account of our representatives' relative lack of action, and partially on account of the rhetorical successes of the content industry. As so-called consumers, we all risk running into the trap unwittingly when we're too eager to attack progress for not being progressive enough.
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