Talk - Eben Moglen - Free and Open Software: Paradigm for a New Intellectual Commons

Have you read Eben Moglen's writings per chance? Your thoughts? If you haven't looked into his work, here's something (in line with topic) to get started on: link to this video -- I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. It's 1 hour 11 minutes, but I promise every second is worth watching. Moglen is an excellent communicator. Near 8 minutes in, he says this: This is the introduction to the free software movement. This is the purpose of the free software movement. This is the aim not only of the free software movement, but of a large number of the other things we are doing that arise from the fact that the digital revolution means that knowledge no longer has a non-zero marginal cost, that when you have th…

…get your attention to advertising and enough value that you don't mind. This is then continued by their recommendation of AdBlock which blocks ads (but not Google's by default, because Google pays them), and not tracking. Their message seems somewhat to what we have already been hearing from Richard Stallman and Eben Molgen for the past 30 years — link to this video — Aral Balkan from Indie for the past 5-10 years — link — but packaged up for consumers, blaming tech. However their delivery seems more at targeting consumers, with the illusion of targeting designers, by blaming those dam malicious tech folk because it is not the consumer's job to accept responsibility of how they spend their time - and…

“Most of you have browsers, and most of those browsers show you advertisements, and I’m very puzzled about why. The advertisements are annoying most of the time, they slow you down, they injure the concentration that you bring to whatever task it is that you’re doing, and there’s no reason why they show you advertisements; my browser doesn’t show me any advertisements. I don’t see any ads when I read The New York Times, or go to wherever it is that you are happy going to, because my browser has Adblock in it, and that pretty much ends the story. Even in this town, many of you, indeed, I would guess, most of you are probably using the Firefox browser. That means you’re two clicks away from no…