A Free Digital Society (Preston, UK 2011)--Richard Stallman Speech

For the first minute, or so, during the introduction, the audio has a strange buzz in it, but it corrects itself by the time Richard starts speaking.

This is the slightly longer version of the previous talk. This one delivered to an audience at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK on March 2, 2011.

We hear a lot about digital inclusion and "closing the digital divide" as if these things are automatically good things, but are they?

In this talk, given before an audience at the University of Pristina in Kosovo on June 4, 2010, Richard Stallman asserts that they are not good things, if the digital society is unjust and doesn't respect our freedoms. He identifies six problems with the current corporate digitocracy: surveillance, censorship, restrictive formats, proprietary software, software as a service, and the war on sharing; explains why they're harmful; and proposes solutions to them.

LEARN MORE:
"What Is Free Software?": https://gnuguru.wordpress.com/free-software/
"What Is the GNU Operating System": https://gnuguru.wordpress.com/2024/04/10/what-is-the-gnu-operating-system/
"Top 5 Reasons You Should Replace Windows & macOS with GNU": https://gnuguru.wordpress.com/2024/04/12/top-5-reasons-you-should-replace-windows-and-mac-os-x-with-gnu/
"Call Me GNU: The GNU/Linux Naming Debate, Revisited": https://gnuguru.wordpress.com/2024/04/15/call-me-gnu-the-gnu-linux-naming-debate-revisited/
"The Free Software Foundation’s Role in Promoting Software Freedom": https://gnuguru.wordpress.com/2024/04/17/the-free-software-foundations-role-in-promoting-software-freedom/

By: Richard Stallman
Date: March 2, 2011
Location: University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK
Language: English
Duration: 2h 11min

Copyright © 2011 Richard M. Stallman
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 3.0 (CC BY-ND 3.0)