Copyleft isn’t about power over others
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- There are, says Crosbie Fitch, “always those in pursuit of power who will corrupt the meaning of freedom toward that end.”
With that thought in mind, “I am dismayed to read an example of this corruption in a comment by Thomas Lord as blogged by Michel Bauwens in Why We Need Free Network Services, and not just Copyleft,” he says in Digital Productions, going on »»»
Freedom is not about having power over someone else (or what someone else has), it’s about oneself (and one’s possessions) being free of someone else’s power.
Copyright and patent are privileges that give holders power over others (and what they may or may not do with their possessions). Copyleft is about restoring the individual’s freedoms suspended by these privileges. Copyleft is not about giving the author, recipient or user of software, power over others or others’ computers.
There is admittedly a misguided movement in pursuit of that end (qv Affero), but instead of corrupting the meaning of the term ‘freedom’ they’d be more honest to label the power they covet as a privilege: to control others’ computers upon which certain software runs and to place constraints and obligations upon the owners of those computers. The means of simulating such a privilege may well be found within the privilege of copyright, but simply because a license that obtains a specific power operates in a similar way to copyleft doesn’t make such a license wholly ethical or solely a pursuit of freedom rather than freedom+power. And the argument that the power sought is ethical because it is socially beneficial is the same as the one used about the power to prevent copying.
In general, simply prefixing a power with ‘freedom to’ doesn’t mean the would be recipient of that power has a natural right to it. This is one of the problems with the term ‘freedom’, it can be abused as a carte blanche entitlement to power, e.g. “I should have the freedom to control the software I run even if it runs on your computer” should actually be read as “I should have the power to control the software I run even if it runs on your computer”. Sadly, ‘freedom’ can be used as a weasel word.
If the term ‘freedom’ is going to be used ethically it should be used to indicate the seeking of escape from someone else’s unnatural power, not to indicate the pursuit of unnatural power over someone else. We often see this when people suggest the BSD is freer than the GPL, e.g. “Unlike the GPL, the BSD license permits me the freedom to re-apply copyright to my derivatives, which is the power to prevent you making copies.”
So, if we don’t start looking a little more deeply into what is meant by ‘freedom’ (escape from another’s privilege) we might as well redescribe copyright in the same corrupt language, e.g. “I should have the freedom to prevent the reproduction and public performance of my original work by those to whom I distribute it”. And, unfortunately, there are many people who would see nothing wrong with granting such privilege, nor anything jarring in the use of the term ‘freedom to’ in place of ‘power to’.
You should be free to do what you are naturally free to do, which is that which you would be free to do but for unnatural privileges granted to others that suspend that freedom. In other words, you should be free from another’s unnatural power over you. For example, you may be prevented from operating someone else’s computer not by any unnatural power they have in the form of a state granted monopoly, but by their natural right to privacy. To seek freedom from someone else’s privilege is the ethical pursuit of liberty, to seek freedom to do something that is prevented by another’s natural right is to seek privilege, and is the unethical pursuit of unnatural power.
But, back to the title of the article. I agree that copyleft is not enough, but what is deficient about it is not its inability to give the individual more power to control the software they use and the computers it’s run on, but its inability to restore the public’s freedom from copyright and patent completely. To completely restore the public’s liberty requires more than a copyleft license, it requires abolition. It requires that those privileges of copyright and patent are abolished.
- If you don’t want someone else to be able to make copies of your work then don’t give it to them.
- If you want to control the software that you use or the computer upon which it is run then run it on your own computer.
You don’t need, and shouldn’t have, “any unnatural power to control someone else or stipulate what they can or cannot do with their own property,” Crosbie adds.
Digital Productions – Copyleft Is Not Enough, June 11, 2009
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June 11th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Excellent clarification Crosbie. I never thought to carefully examine the language like that before, as clearly there are those who look for such loopholes to exert power and control.
June 11th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Great article, Crosbie:
Agreed, 100%
June 12th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Glad to hear I’m not the only one that believes that Affero GPL represents a divergent path from protecting freedom. http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/4977 I have been a decades long supporter of the FSF, but their support of this license and inclusion of these anti-freedom clauses in a GPLv3 derivative has forced me to largely stand down from that long term support.
June 12th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Yes Russell, just as copyright holders will do anything to convince themselves that it is right that people shouldn’t make copies of their work, so the Afferro proponents will do anything to convince themselves that it is right that people who let others use AGPL software must be forced to provide their modifications. I’ve written several articles trying to explain the error in this (and in the GPLv3 drafting process), e.g. Ethics vs Economy .
It all comes from the elevation of Stallman’s 4 freedoms into holy dogma: Flawed Freedoms and The Seduction of Social Sanctity.
I’ve read your article you linked to and completely agree (you will no doubt recognise that as a principled agreement rather than just a placatory gesture). The natural right to privacy doesn’t warrant violation just because the users of software believe they are deserving of what’s on the other side. Sure, copyright already violates privacy, but that doesn’t establish sanction for others to piggy-back upon it for what they pretend is a noble cause.
Undo copyright, but don’t be tempted to go further and not only restore the public’s liberty, but also grant them a little power. In other words take back what was stolen, but don’t be tempted to steal what was not.
Copyright (C) is like Sauron’s ring. If you’re extremely pure and resolute you can neutralise it and create copyleft from it, but its evil is always there, always tempting you to use its power to do a little more ‘good’. The AGPL represents that corrupt departure, a direction that the likes of Boromir would take it in. Throw it into mount doom I say. Abolish copyright before it’s too late.
June 12th, 2009 at 10:58 am
For me it’s not just about copyright holders not wanting people to copy their works, as opposed to wanting to get rewarded for their creativity, given these are different issues that are getting more different over time. We all know that getting rewards for creativity (money or otherwise) often involves recognizing the nature of knowledge being very different than tangible things.
My main concern is the extreme measures they are trying to engage society in for the purposes of fulfilling their misguided goals. Proposals such as legal protection for DRM is like a doctor proposing amputation or decapitation every time a patient complained of a paper cut. Not only is it not a valid solution to the real problem (health of patent), but the severity of the solution is totally out of touch with the severity of the problem.
June 12th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Hi Crosbie,
I’m Thomas Lord, whom you accuse of corruption (or of corrupting the idea of freedom).
There seems to be some confusion in your response to my comment which I would like to address.
My comment on the O’Reilly Radar blog is an argument that for a wide range of popular network services, there is no technical need for users not to have server control and therefore we should design systems that give users server control in these areas. That’s a pretty simple proposition, really. As an example, it is a useful feature of a document management system to host the documents on a web server and for that server to provide, for example, an in-browser word processor for changing the documents. What if the user wants to modify the word processor? What if the user wants to change the program that manages the database of documents? When we design the server software we have a technical choice: we can design it in such a way that users can freely control the server (for their own documents) or we can design it in such a way that control of the server is given to a third party. These are different choices about how the program is structured and I argued that we should, where we can, choose to write programs in ways that give users server control.
I mention licensing and copyright in my comment simply to point out that licensing tricks like “copyleft” can not, in and of themselves, give users that kind of server control. If the server I write is copyleft (even Affero GPL) but is technically designed to separate users from server control, the user’s software freedom is still lost. You seem to be responding as if I had argued in support of Affero GPL when, in fact, I argued that copyleft schemes of any sort don’t help – we need to write the software differently.
That said, there is a good question of whether or not Affero GPL’s restrictions represent a loss of freedom. I understand your argument to be along the lines that since Affero requires someone running a server to provide a link to the source that, therefore, Affero restricts the “natural” freedoms of that user. As you put it, Affero GPL arguably attempts to gain power over third parties by forcing a constraint on how they run their own servers with their own copies of the program. Is that a reasonable summary?
I think that that is a superficially attractive but ultimately flawed argument:
Affero balances two competing freedoms. Sometimes people’s freedoms come into conflict (as in the old “your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”). Affero constrains one “natural liberty”: users operating servers must preserve (in good working order) a feature that offers downloads of complete source. Affero protects and preserves a second liberty: the freedom of users running clients to that server to “take their business elsewhere” by installing and running a separate, perhaps modified version of the same server program on a server of their own choice.
We make similar trade offs all of the time and have made them for as long as their has been copyright. For example, a BSD or MIT style public license on source code allows anyone to share the program, but forbids removing the copyright notices that give credit to the copyright owners and convey the license. Your right to share the program (”swing your fist”) ends where my right to not have my work attributed to others (”my nose”) begins.
The particular demands of Affero, that a user’s right not to be “locked in” to a particular service provider be preserved, is simply realistic. No server operator is particularly harmed, other than in purely abstract ways, by having to preserve the link to source. On the other hand, taking away a user’s right not to be locked in encourages very real, material threats such as subjecting users to irresistible surveillance by server operators.
It’s that kind of “reality check” that I think your analysis is missing: the reality of material problems such as surveillance, or inability to fix server-side bugs vs. the mild inconvenience of providing a link to download server source code (with freedom to modify it and run it elsewhere).
I think that if you want to take your arguments to their conclusion, you will have to go down a slippery slope and first eliminate copyright and patents entirely (which you sound as though you might favor) and then ultimately do away entirely with the rule of law. At the bottom of that slope you will have no freedoms whatsoever but only such power as you can muster. If history is any indication that means that you will be statistically most likely to become a full-out slave. Presumably, that is not your goal.
Freedom, since the dawn of history, has always been a civic construct and a construct that necessarily has to strike balances – fist/nose. Restrictions and regulations are not the opposite of freedom they are they framework within which freedom may or may not arise. Different systems of restrictions and regulations create different regimes of freedoms so we must as societies pick and choose, and strike our balances.
All of that said, I would say that I’m not sure that Affero GPL is terribly important in the long run. Much more important is how we organize markets on which server-cycles are bought and sold and how we technically structure the (free) software designed to run on those servers. Affero may, in the long run, prove to be a huge convenience but it does not in and of itself secure freedom for users (freedom from surveillance, freedom to fix bugs, etc.). Time will tell. I see no harm in using and, indeed, plan to use Affero GPL for some of the programs I write.
I like the trade-offs it makes.
-t
June 13th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
My problem isn’t with any particular “derivative” of the GPL, so much as with the entire framework of “licenses”, and the implicit mentality upon which it rests.
See, the GPL and Creative Commons licenses claim to “restore freedom”, because they impose relatively lenient conditions. The problem is, this obscures the fact that they’ve “restored” no “freedom” of any kind — merely permitted things which other licenses would explicitly forbid.
Crosbie even succumbs to this mistake when he says that “Copyright and patent are privileges that give holders power over others (and what they may or may not do with their possessions). Copyleft is about restoring the individual’s freedoms suspended by these privileges. Copyleft is not about giving the author, recipient or user of software, power over others or others’ computers.”
Copyright and patent ARE privileges, certainly, but “copyleft” licenses — whether GPL, BSD, Creative-commons, or any other kind — are most definitely NOT about “restoring freedom”, rhetoric notwithstanding.
They ARE about having the ability to look “righteous”, by being lenient and permissive, while still keeping the whip-hand of copy”right” available should it be “needed.”
Think about it:
The mere fact that the GPL exists, and can impose ANY “conditions” whatsoever, puts it squarely in agreement with what some of us like to call copyright “maximallists”, in that both “sides” believe in a hierarchy where the “rights-holder” IS in a position to permit, or forbid, uses.
Now, it may be that monopolies like copy”right” and patent actually do serve a legitimate purpose, if correctly limited.
But what I do know, is that “permissive” licenses ARE still licenses, and lying to ourselves — and everybody else — about how they “restore freedom” is morally dubious at best. I, for one, am willing to call “bullshit” on that, and call ‘em what they are: permissive licenses.
That’s what’s so interesting to me: “Free culture” activists crusade for permissive licenses, when the REAL battle is to preserve any areas of culture that don’t REQUIRE licenses.
(This isn’t to say that I don’t think”permissive” licenses are better than restrictive ones — but NO license is infinitely preferable to both.)
Think about it.
June 14th, 2009 at 7:02 am
Thomas, I cited your comment as an example of the corruption of freedom. You continue to corrupt its meaning in your use of the term.
You originally proposed that “Software freedom is the principle that users should always have complete control of the programs they run”. I tried to explain that such ‘Freedom to control’ is actually ‘Power to control’, but the term ‘freedom’ is abused to make it sound as if the principle describes the liberation of the user from someone else’s unnatural power, instead of the granting of the user with power over someone else.
Requiring that users are given control is blatantly a power grab, not an emancipation. It is not a restoration of control that the user naturally had, but a commandeering of control that they don’t naturally have.
Conferring freedom (instead of power) would actually be to neutralise one person’s ability to control another, such as the copyright holder’s unnatural power over others, i.e. their power to prevent the recipients of software from making copies. But for you, that it is not enough, you would redefine freedom as empowerment (to be given control). And that is what I mean by corruption. The very last thing freedom is about is obtaining unnatural power over others, it is instead about escaping that power.
I referred to the Affero movement as an example of a very similar corruption of freedom, that the user of a computer, who wasn’t in receipt of a copy of any software and so not even constrained by copyright in the first place, should be given someone else’s hard work (their improvements) without payment. This is ‘free beer’, and so contrary to the ‘not as in free beer’ aphorism. Now, of course, it seems to be rather generous of Affero to seek to impose this obligation, but then it’s always easy to be generous with other people’s liberty or labour. It is actually a compulsory distribution and nothing to do with liberty. There might as well a requirement that users of modified Affero licensed software must be offered a free cup of tea by the owner of the computer upon which it is run.
Freedom is not about forcing one person to give something to another. Of course the recipient is happy and likely to agree, but the person who is forced to give something has lost their liberty (and what they’re required to give). Copyright is the same kind of do-good delusion, that the recipient of a copy is forced to give up their freedom to make copies or derivatives for the benefit of the publisher (and supposedly, ultimately the public). Of course the publisher is happy and likely to agree.
So this is why to achieve freedom completely would necessitate the abolition of privilege, of copyright and patent. It is amusing that you suggest this implies that we must “ultimately do away entirely with the rule of law”. On the contrary, legislation should protect everyone’s natural rights, and should not be used to grant unnatural privileges. In the meantime, copyleft provides a very good approximation of how the market for software would behave in the absence of copyright (and to some extent patent).
Now as to whether users of software on other computers should be given that software free of charge, or should be given control of that software, I suggest that this is actually a decision for the developer of that software or the owner of the computer upon which it is run. If it is a good thing to do then it will no doubt tend to be done. But, the important thing is that all are free to do as they will, to make their own decision, their own bargain – no misguided do-gooder has made that decision for them, nor given one person unnatural power over another.
This is all symptomatic of the eternal struggle between freedom and power, between liberty and dictatorship, between the individual’s natural rights and the social engineer’s public good. Copyright and patent are what you get if you let social engineers loose at the legislature. The Affero license is what you get if you let social engineers tweak the text of the GPL. Liberty is what you get if you remove all the social engineers’ meddling from the statute books and licenses. So this is why I advocate abolishing copyright and patent, and in the interim using a copyleft license, not the Affero or any other corruption of freedom.
June 14th, 2009 at 7:50 am
And landlords should not have their liberty constrained in the name of the freedoms of tenants.
The fact that we don’t pay directly for Web 2.0 software, and the fact that we do not physically possess the computing resources that we are using does not effect the fact that we *are* using software, and our use of the software is therefore a matter of personal liberty.
The Affero licence is what you get if you try to reclaim the freedom to use software from those who would claim that although telnet users should be free, http users shouldn’t.
June 14th, 2009 at 9:08 am
Rob, unlike other people’s buildings people do not inhabit other people’s computers, much as it is fun to sometimes pretend that.
Just because you are at liberty to use someone else’s computer that doesn’t mean you have a right to seize the software that’s being used. Rather than confiscate it for the public good, in a free society one offers something equivalent in exchange (money perhaps), and even then it is still up to the possessor of what is covetted as to whether the exchange occurs – or even provided as a gift.
The Affero license is what you get when people lose sight of liberating individuals from the control of copyright holders, and start believing they must liberate software from private possession. It is the individual who must have liberty – not software. Let’s not make the mistake of anthropomorphising the free software movement.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:10 am
Serious flaw in your reasoning here, Crosbie:
“Just because you are at liberty to use someone else’s computer that doesn’t mean you have a right to seize the software that’s being used. Rather than confiscate it for the public good, in a free society one offers something equivalent in exchange (money perhaps), and even then it is still up to the possessor of what is covetted as to whether the exchange occurs – or even provided as a gift.”
How exactly (other than some equivalent of DRM), is someone to prevent such an “exchange” from taking place?
Remember, Crosbie, that everything we commonly think of as “data transfer” is, in the broadest sense of the term, copying — when I “move” a file from one hard drive to another, what really happens is I make a COPY of the file at the new location, and delete it from the old location. This is one way in which “things” like files are radically different from physical structures.
So, say I’m a “user” of a system. What’s to stop me from making a COPY of a file — ANY file, in principle — without it’s “owner’s” consent? After all, lacking a coercive monopoly privilege like copy”right”, he’s not privileged over me, in terms of “authority” over the file.
Plus — and here’s where it gets sorta hairy — merely making a copy — “authorized” or not — doesn’t destroy the original file. The only way you could claim that somebody had been “deprived” of something, is if such copying inevitably deleted the original file.
So, really, I’m interested to know: what sort of “protections” would potential data-monopolists have, lacking the coercive, State-backed privilege of “copyright”? DRM? What if it’s circumvented?
Basic right to privacy? But where’s the line beyond “authorized” or “unahthorized” use of the system?
Remember also that from a certain point of view, data is “published” whenever it is made “public” — shared among two or more people.
That’s what copy”right” attempts to do — grant a coercive monopoly privilege, such that non-material “content” is treated like physical matter.
So if the original file is still there, the original “owner” has been deprived of NOTHING — HE still has the original, somebody else just has a copy of it.
Same goes for program functionality: barring some kind of explicit anti-circumvention bullshit (which would violate everybody’s “freedom to tinker”, so to speak): how do would-be function-monopolists monopolize system control?
(To my admittedly somewhat low-tech way of thinking, the system of “permissions” used in Unix and Linux system provides a pretty good template for how to deal with such issues.
Just a clarification, sorry if it’s off-topic or weird.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:55 am
Henry, in the information age we have to recognise the nature of communication of information as well as movement of matter and information. Theft of intellectual property is the removal of an identifiable intellectual work from someone’s private domain without their permission. So, without copyright there’s nothing to stop you copying anything on my web site, however, my privacy prevents you copying my software that resides on my web server (unless I give you permission).
Theft or property isn’t the natural right. Privacy is the natural right. Theft is simply a term used to describe a particular class of violation. Property derives from privacy.
The problem with the Affero license is that it uses copyright in an attempt to seize an author’s private work for the benefit of the public. That is quite unethical and tantamount to theft. Usually, if someone wanted an author’s work they’d offer them money and the author would give it to them in exchange (if both considered the deal equitable).
The abolition of copyright abolishes the reproduction monopoly. It doesn’t cease recognition of an individual’s natural right to privacy (an author or inventor’s exclusive right to their writings or designs), and so it doesn’t stop people exchanging their intellectual work for money. However, it would be terrible if some do-gooders decided that all intellectual work should be made available to the public without charge. In assuming that exchanges can’t occur without monopolies, such people then start thinking that there’s no good reason for authors to keep their work to themselves. There is, it’s called ‘exchanging your labour in a free market’.
June 15th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
remember, I am a ‘don’t know’..
I wouldn’t actually have a problem with the MAFIAA having a very restricted (read 15 years) monopoly on their content, I think this would be a legitimate business model, if AND ONLY IF, they released the content afterwards, like they promised. This would promote creation upon creation and improve the diversity of ‘content’, mainly from other, new players OTHER than the MAFIAA. To consistently demand payment after payment after payment for content 50 years old is insulting. No wonder the current view of copyright is negative.
just my 2 pence.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Crosbie: I don’t have time to help you much. You don’t defend yourself well and don’t strike me as having a coherent position and you seem interested not in discussion but in having last words or just muddying waters in your forum so, such are your choices. I guess I would suggest trying to learn to read other people’s writing more carefully but I suspect that is meaningless to you or falls on deaf ears. Sorry. Pardon me for butting in.
-t
June 17th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
“Requiring that users are given control is blatantly a power grab, not an emancipation” : I think this sentence is key and I disagree with it. Someone will obviously have control, you cannot make it disappear so the best way to respect freedom is to make sure that users are in control. Therefore I see no problem with Affero GPL at all. Besides, if you don’t like that license you’re free to not use software distributed under it and pay money for some proprietary stuff (or stuff under a permissive license which may well end-up being proprietary at some point) and keep your beloved control. Your call, but saying that Affero GPL doesn’t protect freedom is plain wrong IMHO.