Bonum Certa Men Certa

Losing the Battle for Rights/Justice, Freedom/Liberty, and Emancipation Potential

Not even free speech is honoured any longer (because it might 'offend' abusive corporations and rich sponsors with limitless avarice)

Tribunal de Justi'ca Building



Summary: We're losing our most basic rights amid transition to "digital"; too little is being done to push back against this worrisome trend, which necessarily means reduction in both our freedom and our fundamental human rights

THE name "Techrights" was chosen more than a decade ago (thanks, Tracy). As I recall it, RMS initially opposed it, thinking that it was missing the point of freedom, focusing instead on rights. The term "rights" typically alludes to law (something enforceable), which in turn can be connected to a system of justice. Tribunals apply law (in principle at least). The concept of freedom is broad and the word can be misused to mean deregulation (corporations taking people's freedom away) or even bombing countries in the name of "liberating" them from alleged tyrants. Emancipation is an act of turning the oppressed into lesser oppressed or "free", sometimes offering some "rights" in the process (to guard against future oppression).



"We have far too few rights protecting us from robotics and programmatic nihilism (the principles of human rights in relation to machines are grossly underdeveloped)."The semantics don't matter as much as the underlying concept/s. It's hard to find anyone who disagrees about technology becoming as harmful as it is beneficial (one frequently-explored aspect is the impact on people's privacy, however narrow a focal point). We have far too few rights protecting us from robotics and programmatic nihilism (the principles of human rights in relation to machines are grossly underdeveloped). The media keeps using or misusing buzzwords like "hey hi" (AI) and "clown computing" (outsourcing of our data and computation to surveillance giants, usually overseas). So it's not really helping. The media is a tool of oppression (big publishers, in the pockets of those very same surveillance giants). The word "smart" is nowadays being used to lure people into dumb practices (or shame those who refuse to play along). Hours ago I saw a puff piece promoting a wall clock which is actually an Amazon bug (listening device) and about 10 days ago I became aware of the most notorious former NSA chief joining the board of Amazon. This is the same guy who started PRISM with Microsoft almost a decade ago.

Computing won't be improved thanks to the 'goodwill' of corporations, masters of openwashing and greenwashing (we have the Linux Foundation to 'thank' for that). The popular struggle must come from below, it will never come from above. All we can expect "from above" are orders and crushing boots. People who wrongly assume that a corporations-led OSI or corporations-funded FSF/FSFE will save us (EFF as well for that matter, albeit EFF never cared about software freedom) haven't been paying attention to the corrupting influence of money -- including Google and Microsoft money -- inside key institutions. They gag critics (self-censorship and expulsions) while assuring us that they're all becoming "open" (whilst in fact pushing lots of proprietary software) and dropping laughable soundbites like "Open Source has won" (they mean to say it was taken over, not adopted).

Times may seem depressing at some level; on the one hand, Free software (including GNU and Linux) is everywhere, but on the other hand, this isn't how many of us envisioned it. Having a wall clock running Linux only to record us and send the recordings to Amazon (with NSA inside its Board of Directors) isn't freedom; it's pure, vulgar tyranny. Several years ago we already warned about the threat of Linux becoming a "cheap" (cost-free) option for some of the very worst elements of technology. Nothing in the GPL prevents that (free-as-in-deregulation), so people need to prevent that by rejecting such things and calling out the culprits. Not enough people are doing it. In an interview published less than 24 hours ago, RMS spoke about it to RT. Funnily enough, that RT interview with RMS (made public yesterday morning) asks him the very same questions we was planning to ask him next. It's like RT 'stole' questions we was planning to ask RMS (questions that he answered very well). We're joking of course. Nobody 'stole' anything. Whether or not he does an interview with us as well may depend on what he perceives to be the outcome, knowing that some fussy petitioners are still scheming from inside GNU to oust him. Many of them work for IBM and most of them (at least two thirds of the whole lot) develop on Microsoft servers (GitHub) -- a practice long condemned and discouraged by RMS.

We're up against powerful and well-funded forces. They're subversive. They shoot messengers. Days ago one of these petitioners (Garrett) entered our IRC channels, obviously digging for 'dirt' on us.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Lookout, It's Outlook
Outlook is all about the sharing!
Updated A Month Ago: Richard Stallman on Software Patents as Obstacles to Software Development
very recent update
Is BlueMail a Client of ZDNet Now?
Let's examine what BlueMail does to promote itself
OpenBSD Says That Even on Linux, Wayland Still Has a Number of Rough Edges (But IBM Wants to Make X Extinct)
IBM tries to impose unready software on users
 
The 'Smart' Attack on Power Grid Neutrality (or the Wet Dream of Tiered Pricing for Power, Essentially Punishing Poorer Households for Exercising Freedom Like Richer Households)
The dishonest marketing people tell us the age of disservice and discrimination is all about "smart" and "Hey Hi" (AI) as in algorithms akin to traffic-shaping in the context of network neutrality
Links 29/11/2023: VMware Layoffs and Too Many Microsofters Going Inside Google
Links for the day
Just What LINUX.COM Needed After Over a Month of Inactivity: SPAM SPAM SPAM (Linux Brand as a Spamfarm)
It's not even about Linux
Microsoft “Discriminated Based on Sexuality”
Relevant, as they love lecturing us on "diversity" and "inclusion"...
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 28, 2023
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Media Cannot Tell the Difference Between Microsoft and Iran
a platform with back doors
Links 28/11/2023: New Zealand's Big Tobacco Pivot and Google Mass-Deleting Accounts
Links for the day
Justice is Still the Main Goal
The skulduggery seems to implicate not only Microsoft
[Teaser] Next Week's Part in the Series About Anti-Free Software Militants
an effort to 'cancel' us and spy on us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Permacomputing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Professor Eben Moglen on How Social Control Media Metabolises Humans and Constraints Freedom of Thought
Nothing of value would be lost if all these data-harvesting giants (profiling people) vanished overnight
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 27, 2023
IRC logs for Monday, November 27, 2023
When Microsoft Blocks Your Access to Free Software
"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." [Chicago Sun-Times]
Techrights Statement on 'Cancel Culture' Going Out of Control
relates to a discussion we had in IRC last night
Stuff People Write About Linux
revisionist pieces
Links 28/11/2023: Rosy Crow 1.4.3 and Google Drive Data Loss
Links for the day
Links 27/11/2023: Australian Wants Tech Companies Under Grip
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Links 27/11/2023: Underwater Data Centres and Gemini, BSD Style!
Links for the day
[Meme] Leaning Towards the Big Corporate CoC
Or leaning to "the green" (money)
Software Freedom Conservancy Inc in 2022: Almost Half a Million Bucks for Three People Who Attack Richard Stallman and Defame Linus Torvalds
Follow the money
[Meme] Identity Theft and Forgery
Coming soon...
Microsoft Has Less Than 1,000 Mail (MX) Servers Left, It's Virtually Dead in That Area (0.19% of the Market)
Exim at 254,000 servers, Postfix at 150,774, Microsoft down to 824
The Web is Dying, Sites Must Evolve or Die Too
Nowadays when things become "Web-based" it sometimes means more hostile and less open than before
Still Growing, Still Getting Faster
Articles got considerably longer too (on average)
In India, the One Percent is Microsoft and Mozilla
India is where a lot of software innovations and development happen, so this kind of matters a lot
Feeding False Information Using Sockpuppet Accounts and Imposters
online militants try every trick in the book, even illegal stuff
What News Industry???
Marketing, spam, and chatbots
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 26, 2023
IRC logs for Sunday, November 26, 2023
The Software Freedom Law Center's Eben Moglen Explains That We Already Had Free Software Almost Everywhere Before (Half a Century Ago)
how code was shared in the 1970s and 80s