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[fsf-community-team] Introduction: Blaise Alleyne


From: Blaise Alleyne
Subject: [fsf-community-team] Introduction: Blaise Alleyne
Date: Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:30:45 -0500
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (X11/20090817)

Hello,

My name is Blaise Alleyne. I'm a programmer, musician, writer and free software / culture advocate. I just graduated from the University of Toronto in the Spring, earning my Bachelors of Science degree with a major in computer science and minors in English and philosophy. I work for Alleyne Inc., doing web development, system administration and a bit of consulting. I'm a songwriter who plays violin for lots of other songwriters, and I release all of my own music under free licenses. I also blog actively at http://blaise.ca/blog, and I'm a contributor to the Techdirt blog ( http://techdirt.com/ ). Over the summer, I had the opportunity to work on the Creative Commons Drupal module through the Google Summer of Code, and I continue to be increasingly involved in both Drupal development and with the Creative Commons.

I'm active on the Canadian music scene, especially among folk and songwriter circles. I'm an associate member of the FSF, and I've volunteer to run the FSF booth at the Ontario GNU Linux Fest a couple times. I'm read a wide variety of blogs related to free software, free culture, and free as in price economics, as well as blogs about the music industry. I'm active on Identi.ca, and a lurker in IRC channels and mailing lists for groups like autonomo.us, libre.fm, and the Creative Commons. I'm particularly interested in the intersection of culture and technology, in the effects of free software on free culture, the effects of free culture on music. I'm also Roman Catholic and I've been building a Catholic case for free culture.

In the summer of July 2007, after hearing RMS speak at the University of Toronto, I read pretty much all of the essays at gnu.org/philosophy (and proceeded to become a member of the FSF). Here's a recent sample of my writing about free software:
http://blaise.ca/blog/2009/11/18/free-software-paves-the-way-for-open-source/


Here are some quick (not throughly proofread -- apologies for any typos) responses to the excerpts presented:

"""
Excerpt: Richard Stallman started the FSF in order to promote open source software like the Linux operating system, as an alternative to expensive software like Windows.
"""

Actually, the "free" in the Free Software Foundation refers to freedom, not price. Richard Stallman started the Free Software Foundation to defend the freedom of computer users to use, study, modify and share software. He started the GNU project to build a free operating system before Windows was around, and actually *sold* free software to raise funds and support himself. Free software is not about price, but about freedom.

The Linux kernel came later as one of the final pieces needed for the GNU operating system to run, and it accounts only for a small, though core, part of the code -- thus, the operating system is more accurately called GNU/Linux in most cases. The open source software movement emerged a decade later and it focuses on the technical benefits of free software, but Richard Stallman and the FSF made it possible by stressing the ethical importance of software that respects a user's freedom.


"""
Excerpt: Now with cloud computing and web-based applications, even Linux users can use the same software as everyone else, through their browsers. With other popular programs like Skype and Adobe Flash producing Linux versions, the Linux desktop may finally be catching on!
"""

It would be a sad irony if the success of the GNU/Linux desktop came alongside proprietary software on the web. "Cloud" computer and web-based applications offer tremendous opportunities to software users, but that software also needs to be free. Programs such as Skype and Adobe Flash are proprietary, and software users don't have control over those tools. There are better alternatives to Skype, like SIP applications (such as Ekiga or WengoPhone).

Would you buy a phone from a company if you could only call other customers of that company with it? That'd be pretty useless, and insulting! But, why then would we accept that for softphones? Just like with analogy telephones, mail, or with email, free software SIP clients allow you to call another person regardless of which softphone he or she is using or which company's he or she is a customer of.

Likewise, services like Twitter provide new and exciting ways to communicate with other people, but this kind of communication is too important to leave to a single company to control entirely. There are alternatives out there, like StatusNet, which function much the same way as Twitter, but they allow you to communicate with users on other micrblogging services, and they let you take your data out of the system if you want to.

It's no use for the GNU/Linux desktop to catch on if we have to give up our freedom in the process! Web-based software offers great potential, but it also can present an even greater loss of freedom. We need to think hard about what software freedom means on the web.


"""
When combined with the other chapters that include statutory damages, search and seizure powers for border guards, anti-camcording rules, and mandatory disclosure of personal information requirements, it is clear that there is no bigger intellectual property issue today than the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated behind closed doors this week in Korea.
"""

ACTA is the very embodiment of maximalist copyright, copyright unhinged from it's true foundations. Copyright is supposed to be a set of social relationship between the public, the government, and creators (or the organizations to which they've assigned their rights). It's supposed to be about maximizing the benefit for everyone involved, not about beating consumers over the head with draconian measures to protect dying industries who can't adapt their business models. ACTA is the anti-thesis of democracy, being negotiated behind closed doors. Here in Canada, we've seen the pressure that comes from the American government after Hollywood and the record industry get their wish lists bundled up into international trade agreements. It's a threat to our ability to craft effective copyright laws that make sense for Canada to have these treaties negotiated in secret without the broader interests of citizens and the country in mind.

Also, it's important that we be careful with our language. In order to get others to understand the importance of a properly calibrated copyright system, we need to be careful not to promote false frameworks of thinking. The term "intellectual property" assumes what needs to be proven -- that ideas should be treated like property. It also clumps together totally separate areas of law, like copyright, patent, and trademark law, which only serves to further confuse these important issues. The lobbyists pushing for ACTA have totally confused the notion of counterfeiting with copyright infringement, blurring the lines between stealing and sharing. We need to be careful not to reinforce these confused ways of looking at things. We're better off to talk about copyright law, or patent law, or counterfeiting directly, rather than make general statements across categories that aren't really the same. If lobbyists get us to think of ideas as property, then they simply invoke "thou shalt not steal" to impose restrictions on our freedom. Copying is not the same as stealing -- legally, ethically, morally, socially, technically. It may well be wrong in some cases, but that should be a separate question open for debate. The term "intellectual property" is counter-productive, if we want to be able to have a clear, honest debate about the fundamentals.


I hope I can be a part of this initiate!

Thanks,
Blaise Alleyne

--
http://blaise.ca/





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