Richard Stallman's personal site.

https://stallman.org

For current political commentary, see the daily political notes.

RMS's Bio | The GNU Project


2012-09-19

This page explains how Internet music distribution "services" trash your freedom, compared with buying a CD in a physical store. In other words, they are an attack against the public. I refuse to use any of them.

Many of these disservices require users to run non-free/libre software to access them; this is software that the users do not control.

The CD bought in a store is a good standard of comparison for judging these systems, but it is not an adequate standard of freedom, because copyright law by itself is too restrictive. Everyone should be free to share copies of published music — where sharing means noncommercial redistribiution of exact copies. In addition, remix (making a totally new work using parts of various works) should be legal. We must fight for these freedoms; in the mean time, we must reject these attempts by music sellers to change things for the worse.

If you listen to music in a way such that you don't have a copy, that makes you antisocial, because you don't have a copy to share with others.

Copyright (c) 2012, 2013 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire page are permitted provided this notice is preserved.