The Right to Read, Richard M. Stallman [ebook and pdf reader .txt] 📗

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The Right to Read

by Richard M. Stallman

Copyright 1996 Richard Stallman

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

The Right to Read - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

 

November, 1999 [Etext #1981]

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Copyright 1996 Richard Stallman

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Copyright 1996 Richard Stallman

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

 

The Right to Read - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

 

The Right to Read

by Richard Stallman

Copyright 1996 Richard Stallman

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

 

Table of Contents

Author’s Note References Other Texts to Read

 

This article appeared in the February 1997 issue of Communications of the ACM (Volume 40, Number 2).

 

The Right to Read

by Richard Stallman

Copyright 1996 Richard Stallman

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

 

(from “The Road To Tycho”, a collection of articles about the antecedents of the Lunarian Revolution, published in Luna City in 2096)

 

For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college—when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she dared ask, except Dan.

 

This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her—but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong—something that only pirates would do.

 

And there wasn’t much chance that the SPA—the Software Protection Authority—would fail to catch him. In his software class, Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing. (They used this information to catch reading pirates, but also to sell personal interest profiles to retailers.) The next time his computer was networked, Central Licensing would find out. He, as computer owner, would receive the harshest punishment—for not taking pains to prevent the crime.

 

Of course, Lissa did not necessarily intend to read his books. She might want the computer only to write her midterm. But Dan knew she came from a middle-class family and could hardly afford