Summary: Dr. Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation's founder, talks about restrictions that exist when it comes to YouTube (the same still applies, except Flash, and it has gotten worse since)

7.0M

Direct download as Ogg

Transcript added:

[00:00]

(intro music)

RMS: YouTube requires running non-Free Software. Either you have to run Flash Player or you have to run a non-Free JavaScript program. To watch a WebM video from YouTube requires running a non-Free JavaScript program. Although that's

[00:30]

not inherently necessary. They could serve up the WebM files without that, but they don't. So I can't watch things on YouTube and I don't. I've seen other people do it and it seemed that it worked even some months ago without having to log in. Are you saying that they've changed that?

Roy: Not necessarily but Google has had other ways to try to

[01:00]

keep track of the users. Increasingly there is linkage even in Android between the Google profiles of people and now they're also linking the comments in YouTube to people's Google profile.

RMS: I don't think you should have a Google profile. At least if you do then you shouldn't use it for very much. Android is becoming oppressive in its requirements for users to make

[01:30]

an account with Google. But Android is not Free Software. There is the Android source code that Google releases which is Free Software, but that's quite different from the collection of software that comes in a phone that says it's running Android. So if you want to see all the details of this, cause there are a lot of details, look at www.gnu.org/philosophy/android-and-users-freedom.html