"Democracy is sick in the US, government monitors your Internet"

RT is sitting down with Richard Stallman, American software freedom activist

Thank you for sitting down with us today, you are the founder of the software freedom foundation

in the United States. What is free software, why is it important?

Free software is software that respects the users freedom, and the social solidarity of the users community.

specifically, it means you have four essential freedoms.

Freedom zero is the freedom to run the program as you wish.

There are proprietary programs that restrict the use of authorized copies even

and you have freedom one, which is the freedom to study the source code and then change it, to make the program to do as you wish.

This means you control it, instead of it controlling you

And you have freedom two, which is the freedom to help your neighbor

that is the freedom to redistribute exact copies, so you are free to share

free to republish, and you have freedom 3, which is the freedom to contribute to your community

that is the freedom to distribute copies of your modified version, so if you studied the source code and changed it,

to make something you like better, you can distribute that, give it away or sell it to others

so the result is, the users are in control, both individually and collectivly

You campaign against the extension of copyright laws in the united states

whats wrong with copyright law in the us?

copyright law in the US is far too strict, now in the case...software is a special case cause there is

many things that developers do to make software propreitary

and restrict the users.

copyright is just one, and not the main one

but for lots of other things, copyright is what stops users from fully utilizing the publish works they

have copies of. but theres a minimum freedom we must have, which is the freedom to non-commercially

share copies of any published works

and likewise, there are works of art and entertainment, which is different category serving society in a different way

but for those also, i think we must have that minimum freedom to non-commercially share

exact copies, and the copyright on art should expire in 10 years, and people should be free to

publish modified versions which are new works of art, and contribute to art

in your work, you come up with the notion of copyleft, what is that exactly?

copyleft is a way that i use copyright law, to guarantee freedom for all users for all versions of a work

i started using it on free software, i wanted to be able to write a free program

and hand out, give or sell copies to other people, and i wanted them to have the 4 freedoms

but what happens when they redistribute a copy to you?

what happens if john changes the programs a then, gives or sells you a copy?

do you get the 4 freedoms also?

i wanted to make sure you would get the 4 freedoms. so i wrote a copyright based license, to make sure you get the 4 freedoms

and that technique of writing licenses, that is copy left

lets talk about ACTA, the anti counterfeiting trade agreement, the US government is said to be working

on the agreement with a range of other countries in secrecy.

one of the things this act will allow the US government to to, is to go through peoples computers

how do you feel about this?

this is an assault on our freedom, and it demonstrates that we dont have real democracy. the US government

is on the side of the mega corporations that pay the congressman, and pay the presidents campaign

basically, they rule us. we have a corporatocracy

as long as business has more political power than people, democracy is sick

and you have to expect injustice as the result

lets talk about privacy of a computer, some people say theres basically no privacy

whatever you do on the Internet can be found out, it can be accessed, is this true?

its partly true and partly not, if you are using windows, microsoft can examine what you do

there are spy features known in windows

and whats more, Microsoft has the power to forcibly change the software without asking you, so anything

they are not spying on today they could put in a feature tomorrow to spy on that and they don't have to

ask your approval before they install it

similar problems exist in MacOS. i don't know of any existing spy features in MacOS, but it has a similar backdoor

allowing apple to forcible change the software at any time so if it doesn't spy today, it could start tomorrow

now, as a separate matter, a lot of Internet traffic is being monitored for instance by the us government.

and in Europe Internet service providers are required to keep records for two years of what websites someone contacts

and so on, so a lot of things are being monitored, but not necessarily everything

and in particular, the substance of what you are sending someone can be protected using encryption

and theres free software such as GNU privacy guard and SSH

which can be used to send encrypted files

or maintain an encrypted connection with another computer

they will know you are talking with another computer they will know you are sending email to a certain address

but they won't know what you said

one of the thing you talk about on your personal web site, is that you warn American citizens about

not buying printers that report their activities to the police, what exactly are you talking about there?

a lot of laser printers are designed so that they print little yellow dots that state which printer printed and when

and as i see that, thats an assault on peoples privacy

the stated reason for putting on those yellow dots is to stop people from using those printers from

counterfeiting money. i think that is a legitimate purpose

but they could very easy limit the yellow dots to thinks who look a little bit like a bank note

and thus avoid attacking our privacy for everything else

in your work you say copying and sharing material is not piracy, can you explain that?

Piracy is attacking ships, and it something very bad. but sharing with your neighbor is very good

so i refuse to smear sharing and cooperation using a propaganda term like "piracy"

now, you also often talk about the patriot act

in America, and its been causing alot of controversy over the last several years

how do you feel about it?

i refuse to call that law by the name that those...undemocratic and tyrannical legislators gave it

cause theres nothing patriotic in a country whos existence is based

the idea of freedom, in a law designed to attack peoples freedom

i call it the U-SAP-AT-RIOT ACT, which is the same initials, i just put spaces different places

instead of USAPATRIOT ACT i call it U-SAP-AT-RIOT ACT

but what is so bad about it? for one thing it gives the police the power to go to a business and say to the business

give us all their records about Richard Stallman or Anastasea or anyone else

without even getting a court order, they can collect all these records everyday.

they can go to the library and find out what books you borrowed without a court order

there are just no limits on what they can demand in information about you and me, that is tyranny

what should people do to make sure that, what they do with their personal computer and what they do in the Internet, remains private

is there anything one can do?

if you're not doing anything illegal, if your just getting your work done or researching information

or whatever it is, how can you ensure that whatever you do remains private

there are a number of things you have to do

one thing is make sure you're using a free operating system, because they have generally much better security

they have better security against unknown third parties

and in addition the proprietary operating systems have no security at all against the developer of the system

and as i explained before, those developers introduce a lot of malware into the systems they make

so your completely unsafe if you're using proprietary operating systems

you have to worry about governments who practice censorship

to the point where the even arrest people for what they read

like the government of Britain which arrested i believe 2 people at a university

because they downloaded a document from a US government website

they were studying terrorism, academically

they downloaded a document that al qaeda had published

and the us government put it up to show what al qaeda was saying, and these people in Britain downloaded it

they got arrested just for looking at it. Now people dealing with governments like that have to protect themselves

you gotta get out of the habit of thinking if i'm know doing anything wrong, i have nothing to fear

that might be true under some government that respected human rights

richard stallman thank you so much for sitting down