A slave does not really want freedom. He is incapable of appreciating
freedom.
Outside discipline makes men as slaves inferiors, masochists. They hug their
chains. They claim for copyright, for censorship. They are among that man who
gets up at a meeting and says: "I was thrashed as a kid and it did me a hell
of a lot of good" is virtually saying: "Look at me. I’m a success in spite
of - even because of my early thrashings." Enslaved woman must give her son
to the wars that man calls "defensive wars, patriotic wars, wars to save
democracy, wars to end wars."
But freedom means the conquest of ignorance. A free people would need no
censor of plays or of costumes. For a free people would have no interest in a
shocking thing, because a free people could not be shocked. Free people are
unshockable - not because they are advanced in sin, but because they have
lived out their interests in shocking things and have no more use for them as
subjects of conversation or wit. Free people are free souls and they are free
to share things. Copyright would restrict their lives. It is the law that
makes the crime.
"But how will your free children ever adapt themselves to the drudgery of
life?" I hope that these free children, free people will be pioneers in
abolishing the drudgery of life, that also means abolishing copyright, for to
restrict sharing things is antisocial.
For example "they" tell you: "If you want freedom, write your congressman."
Why do you have to write them? He should know all those things. When you fly
on an airplane, you don't have to write the pilot, say, "you've been flying
at an angle for a half an hour. Straighten up." They know their business. The
same for government. They should know everything about modern technology,
human behavior... If you "steal" just a little (like to share a books) - they
will put you in jail. If you steal a lot - they put you in government.
When you put a man in prison, say, he stole a watch that costs 150 dollars.
And that's the fourth time he committed that crime. So you put him in jail
for seven years. Figure the costs of that (not to mention how cruel is to put
somebody in jail). Feeding him, medical care for seven years... That's a hell
of a lot of watches you can give him!? Let him have the watch! Let him have
the books they want to! It's much easier and cheaper to give people the thing
they need than to restrict or to kill them. "They" understand this, and they
want you to believe that copyright is important - and it will distract a
millions of people from real problems.
If people are free, and they need things - they will share things, and will
have things they want to. In the 1980's Richard Stallman used to sell
programs on the magnetic tapes for quite a bunch of dollars, but at the same
time he put same programs at the ftp server so taht people could download it
in any time. And he did the job, because he is able to do things, to create
things, to make something to make our world better place to live. But, in the
other hand, if you are slave - you cannot do any thing. Slave can only to
conform and to take away things. So slaves have to invent rules/"rights"
which will help them to keep in power, to keep the things they have stole.
They invent copyright and censorship. Our criminal code is a long record of
cruelty disguised as justice.
To support copyright, means to support ignorance. You support to keep
spreading the sort of people that goes out with neither ideas nor ideals.
They would join up as cannon fodder in any war, never stopping to consider
what the war was about and why they were fighting.
So, what about to make our world such a place where things like copyright
wouldn't even appear?
"Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books
was nasty and wrong—something that only pirates would do."
from "The Right To Read" written by Richard Stallman.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
Slave is not capable to take much broader look at our world. For example
he/she
do not think about where America got America from. You think the Indians
said: "Come on over and enjoy yourself, take all the land you want"? No, we
kill thousands of Indians. We starved 50 million buffalo to make it tough for
the Indians. And the Indians have fought back. They really tried to take some
land back. But the government decided that they want to get rid of those
aggressive Indians. That wouldn't conform to what we wanted. So they offered
10 bucks for every Indian you killed. And the guy walked over and said: "I
just killed 10 Indians." Then government says: "How do we know that? Bring
back a piece of the Indian." So they started scalping. Americans, not the
Indians. And we brought back 10 scalps to collect 10 bucks for every Indian
you killed.
Tell me now, how did one ask for copyright or any other right in such a
situation? It is the law that makes the crime. If you support such a "rights"
that keeps people divided from sharing things, then you support ignorance,
you support all the problems we have on Earth today.
Some children get terrified by the biblical story of the children who were
eaten by bears, yet no one advocates the censorship of the Bible. Many
children read the Bible searching for obscene passages. Many small boys know
them all, chapter and verse. Why nobody explain all these events? Why just
about copyright? Your are clapping the mosquito whereas the tiger is going to
tear you to pieces. Is this really so much of importance to support
copyright, to support censorship, to support to forbid sharing Summerhill
books?.. If you forbid sharing these books, you take away a people's chance
to get understand their own pains, to recognize what freedom means. Because
if they don't understand what freedom means, then freedom will fall, because
they will not bother to close their hands, if they don't know why. Let people
have a chance to grow in freedom. We are all looking for love. Let people
have a change to share these love. Neill share love to us. Please, read this
book "Summerhill - A Radical Approach To Child Rearing"... you don't even
need to translate it. It's already translated at least to 16 languages. And,
yet, Summrehill book is very relevant to Trisquel as software development.
Freedom is what is all about. Free Software is not about elimination blobs in
the kernel, it's about free society and being good neigbour.
