Richard Stallman's personal site.

https://stallman.org

For current political commentary, see the daily political notes.

RMS's Bio | The GNU Project

Political Articles

Beyond Intimidation of Journalists (August 2013)
The Apology That Calls For An Apology (August 2013)
Turkey has woken up from its sleep during the AKP's fascist regime. -- Cansu Colakoglu in Taksim Square, 1 June 2013 (Updated 26, June 2013)
Vote for Benjamin Kallos for New York City Council (March 2013).
Free Scientific Publishing (January 2013) French Translation, Brazilian Portuguese Translation
Why being able to watch your boss's life is no compensation for his being able to watch yours. (December 2012) (local copy)
Why I can't support Obama. (September 2012)
Why it is important not to have children. (September 2012) French Translation
A response to an inquiry about the September 11 note. (September 2012)
We need a new 911 investigation. (September 2012)
Response to Emily -- the NPR music intern. (July 2012)
Suggestions for National Constitutions. (Updated July 2013) Albanian Translation.
ACTA Threatens Your Freedom (first published in Poland, by Tygodnik Powszechny) (February 2012)
Internet Privacy (in German).
Italy's Choice: Sharing or Censorship (in Italian)
A video message in Spanish supporting the protests in Spain in 2011. Also in webm format. (June 2011)
Regarding Mark Vernon's attack on Peter Singer's philosophy. (May 2011)
How Egypt can help Libya. (Feb 2011)
Protect Your Friends — Protect Julian Assange (Jan 2011).
Global Patronage: This describes the Global Patronage system of supporting artists on the Internet. Francis Muguet and I were working on it together at the time of his death in September 2009. He sent me a draft for version 1.2.1, and I responded with this modified version which I call 1.3. The principal change was to describe correctly what sort of function would be used to calculate the shares of the non-attributed funds. I did not expect him to have any objections, but he died before responding. (French Translation)
Kettling Wikileaks: the Anonymous protests are the Internet equivalent of protests on the street. (Spanish Translation and Norwegian Translation)
Internet Sharing License in Brazil. Internet taxa de licença para o compartilhamento (Portuguese version). Spanish version. Also see compartilhamentolegal.org.
Response to the climate change email leak.
End the War on Sharing (Spanish translation).
A letter to Costa Rica (about the referendum on the proposed sweatshop treaty with the US).
An interview about the Steamed Bread Murder Case and what it implies about right and wrong and copyright. (This is the English version—it was also published in Chinese.)
A letter on the Animal Rights movement.
A response to Financial Times article on "intellectual property rights".
The Conundrum of the Bush Forces Soldier
Here are my responses to the consultation in this link. They might interest some readers.
Here's a recording of a radio show that I was on.
The Knife- Stupid Airport Security Tricks
What Should the US do in Iraq?
Biopiracy or Bioprivateering? (Spanish translation, French translation, and, German translation.
A slightly revised version of an article that appeared in Salon Magazine on 11 September 2002.
Dear President Musharraf...
On July 22, Israel killed a Hamas leader, Salah Shaheda, who was in charge of many Hamas attacks.
Is the US killing many Afghan civilians to save one US soldier?
Political fencing in Israel.
I got a message with a series of points criticizing Americans for blaming companies and institutions rather than themselves. I partly agree with the underlying message that people should take charge and solve problems, rather than just cast blame on others. However, the points go too far—they whitewash companies and institutions that really did something wrong.
British book publishers plan to put a microchip into every book to record who owns it — an unprecedented surveillance measure. Given the publishers' opposition to such institutions as free lending libraries and used book stores, we must suspect that this scheme is aimed at them. Will they try to collect a fee every time a used book is resold, as part of storing the new owner's name on the chip?
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors. I was shocked to learn recently that there is no border fence dividing Israel from the occupied Palestinian territories. The reason is that expansionists want to annex these territories permanently. In their eyes, a fence would be an admission that those territories are not part of Israel, so they won't allow it.
When President Chavez of Venezuela was ousted in a military coup, newspaper coverage in the US hinted that Chavez was mentally unstable. He thought he could make his country independent of the IMF. He thought that the generals of his Venezuela would be loyal to Venezuela instead of Washington. A man would have to be crazy to believe such things—or would he?
When police say "No witnesses", one must suspect they are up to some kind of dirty work that they don't want to admit to the public. An encounter in a Paris airport.
Human Rights in the US, and in China. The Chinese government has released a report detailing human rights violations in the US. The abuses include torture of detainees by police, sometimes resulting in death. All governments should be pressured to correct their abuses of human rights; from Bolivia to Spain, from the US to China, no government should escape.
Someone to watch over me. Nowadays, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you aren't really under surveillance.
Stopping terrorists before they start. Making sure that the CIA does not create new enemies to attack us tomorrow surely deserves high priority in any sincere "War on Terrorism".
Bush has proposed a large increase in military spending, including pay raises for soldiers, reserves to cover the expenses of possible combat, unmanned vehicles, and ballistic missile defense. Some of these make sense, more or less — but ballistic missile defense? It's clear what is happening here: Bush is at his old tricks.
The Injustice of Military Courts. Bush has a plan to try alleged terrorists in military courts—-courts where the prosecutor, the defense lawyer, and the judges all work for Bush. If we could only be sure that the accused are really guilty, shoddy trials would not matter—we wouldn't need trials at all. But accusations against innocent people happen with terrible regularity, and the danger of false convictions is immense.
Police State Minus One Day And Counting. In late October Congress signed an anti-terrorism bill that undermined basic protections against police intrusion. It also attacks freedom of assembly. This article was originally published on Newsforge the day before the bill (S.1510) was passed. The only proposed provision that Congress rejected was that for indefinite detention of noncitizens without trial; Bush then proposed military trials as a way to get the same job done.
Who watches the watchmen? Whenever police ask to be allowed to bypass search warrants, we must be on guard. First published on Newsforge.
If we are not careful, the deadly attacks on New York and Washington will lead to far worse secondary damage, if the U.S. Congress adopts "preventive measures" that take away the freedom that America stands for. Thousands are dead — but millions could be deprived of civil liberties. First published on Newsforge.
While traveling from South Africa to Sweden in June, I became a victim of the War on Drugs. First published on Newsforge.
Science must "push copyright aside." Written for a debate about electronic access to scientific literature. First published 8 June 2001.
The antidemocratic suppression of public protest is now a standard part of the effort to impose antidemocratic trade treaties.
Waiting for the Knock, an article about Britain's plans for secret police raids to seize decryption keys. First published in the Guardian (London), 25 November 1999.
Sad to say, this law was adopted in Britain in July 2000. Residents of the UK must now start using steganography to protect themselves from secret raids.
Although generally supportive of President Hugo Chávez, Stallman has criticised some policies on television broadcasting, free speech rights, and personal privacy rights, in meetings with Chávez and in public speeches in Venezuela.