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 …

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:

This pamphlet had a good effect. Gov’r. Thomas was so pleas’d with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin’d it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.

– Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography

So here I am on my street corner. I’m a scribbler instead of a musician, so I have a stack of pamphlets to push in to the hands of anyone who will take them. It is great to have the potential for millions and billions of people to read my little screeds, but it’s not so easy to establish myself on a busy corner. (And if I did, hoo boy, can you imagine the mess from millions of people throwing the piece of paper to the ground as they walk away?) My out-of-the-way corner begins with the few people I know personally whom I can coerce in to walking by and then humor me by saying, “It looks really nice.” And then, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about, but it looks nice.”