tag archive: eben moglen

I saw an item pop up in my feed reader from the Freedom Now blog. It took me a moment to remember that this is Eben Moglen’s blog. I added it a while back but he hasn’t posted since April 2007, so the title looked unfamiliar in my reader’s “A” list.

I’m happy to see that he intends to start posting again. Eben is right there with Richard Stallman in providing inspiration for a free society, where all knowledge and information is freely available to everyone. There in his post are the kind of bold and sweeping claims I enjoy finding in his writing and speeches:

The movement I now realize it’s clear I’m giving my life to is on the verge of irreversibly changing humanity. I may yet live to see the world I have been dreaming of since I was a boy.

And then again, you think at fifty, maybe I won’t. But billions of people now living are going to live in a world in which …

I’m still reading Franklin’s autobiography and wasn’t surprised to learn of his position on patents. I right away wanted to post the blurb here for the world to see, although a Google search quickly revealed that this is an often-quoted passage:

In order of time, I should have mentioned before, that having, in 1742, invented an open stove for the better warming of rooms, and at the same time saving fuel, as the fresh air admitted was warmed in entering, I made a present of the model to Mr. Robert Grace, one of my early friends, who, having an iron-furnace, found the casting of the plates for these stoves a profitable thing, as they were growing in demand. To promote that demand, I wrote and published a …

Welcome to my street corner. I recently listened to a speech by Eben Moglen called “Freedom and the Future of the Net: Why We Win.” It’s good stuff. Very interesting. I unfortunately haven’t been able to find a transcript of it, but as a value-added service to the MTF community, I transcribed this, where he is discussing how the “artificially large person” (e.g. Christina Aguilera) is manufactured for the purpose of selling things, and:

But all of this depends upon denial. Exclusion. You can’t have it unless you pay. And it’s not actually the best way if you are a musician, to distribute music, to refuse to let people have it. It’s not actually the best way if you are a writer, to …