Eben Moglen is a professor of law and legal history at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
, and is the founder, Director-Counsel and Chairman of
Software Freedom Law CenterThe Software Freedom Law Center is an organization that provides pro bono legal representation and related services to not-for-profit developers of free software/open source software. It was launched in February 2005 with Eben Moglen as Chairman. Initial funding of $4 million USD was pledged by...
, whose client list includes numerous
pro bonoPro bono publico is a phrase derived from Latin meaning "for the public good". The term is generally used to describe professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment as a public service. It is common in the legal profession and is increasingly seen in marketing, technology, and...
clients, such as the
Free Software FoundationThe Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to distribute and modify computer software...
.
Moglen started out as a computer programming language designer and then received his
bachelor's degreeA bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for four years, but can range from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
from
Swarthmore CollegeSwarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....
in 1980, where he won the Hicks Prize for Literary Criticism. In 1985, he received a
master's degreeA master's degree is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
in philosophy and a
JDJuris Doctor is a first professional degree.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century as a degree similar to the old European doctor of law degree...
from
Yale UniversityYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
.
Eben Moglen is a professor of law and legal history at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
, and is the founder, Director-Counsel and Chairman of
Software Freedom Law CenterThe Software Freedom Law Center is an organization that provides pro bono legal representation and related services to not-for-profit developers of free software/open source software. It was launched in February 2005 with Eben Moglen as Chairman. Initial funding of $4 million USD was pledged by...
, whose client list includes numerous
pro bonoPro bono publico is a phrase derived from Latin meaning "for the public good". The term is generally used to describe professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment as a public service. It is common in the legal profession and is increasingly seen in marketing, technology, and...
clients, such as the
Free Software FoundationThe Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to distribute and modify computer software...
.
Professional biography
Moglen started out as a computer programming language designer and then received his
bachelor's degreeA bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for four years, but can range from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
from
Swarthmore CollegeSwarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....
in 1980, where he won the Hicks Prize for Literary Criticism. In 1985, he received a
master's degreeA master's degree is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
in philosophy and a
JDJuris Doctor is a first professional degree.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century as a degree similar to the old European doctor of law degree...
from
Yale UniversityYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
. He has held visiting appointments at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
,
Tel Aviv UniversityTel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Israel. In 2006, it had 29,000 students.-History:...
and the
University of VirginiaThe University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
since 1987.
He was a
law clerkA law clerk or a judicial clerk is a person who provides assistance to a judge in researching issues before the court and in writing opinions. Law clerks are not court clerks or courtroom deputies, who are administrative staff for the court....
to Justice
Thurgood MarshallThurgood Marshall was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Before becoming a judge, he was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of...
(1986–87 term). He joined the faculty of
Columbia Law SchoolColumbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia is located in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. David Schizer is the dean....
in 1987, and was admitted to the New York bar in 1988. He received a
Ph.D.Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated PhD , for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", or alternatively, DPhil, for the equivalent , is an advanced academic degree awarded by universities...
in history from Yale University in 1993. Moglen serves as a director of the
Public Patent FoundationPublic Patent Foundation, or PUBPAT, is a nonprofit organization that seeks to limit perceived abuse of the United States patent system. It was founded in 2003 by Dan Ravicher. , there was growing concern by many technology professionals over the number of patents granted that are either too...
.
Moglen was part of Philip Zimmermann's defense team, when Zimmermann was being investigated over the export of
Pretty Good PrivacyPretty Good Privacy is a computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting e-mails to increase the security of e-mail communications...
, a public key encryption system, under US export laws.
In 2003 he received the
EFF Pioneer AwardThe EFF Pioneer Award is an annual prize for people who have made significant contributions to the empowerment of individuals in using computers. Until 1998 it was presented at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., USA. Thereafter it was presented at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference...
. In February 2005, he founded the Software Freedom Law Center.
Moglen is closely involved with the Free Software Foundation, serving as general counsel since 1994 and board member from 2000 to 2007. As counsel, Moglen was charged with enforcing the
GNU General Public LicenseThe GNU General Public License is a widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project....
on behalf of the FSF , and later became heavily involved with drafting version 3 of the GPL. On April 23, 2007 he announced in a blog post that he would be stepping down from the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation. Moglen stated that after the GPLv3 Discussion Draft 3 had been released, he wanted to devote more time to writing, teaching, and the Software Freedom Law Center.
Stances on free software
Moglen says that
free softwareFree software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also...
is a fundamental requirement for a democratic and free society in which we are surrounded by and dependent upon technical devices. Only if controlling these devices is open to all via free software, can we balance power equally.
Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's LawFaraday's law of induction is a basic law of electromagnetism, which is involved in the working of transformers, inductors, and many forms of electrical generators. The law states:...
is the idea that the information appearance and flow between the human minds connected via the Internet works like
inductionElectromagnetic induction is the production of voltage across a conductor situated in a changing magnetic field or a conductor moving through a stationary magnetic field....
. Hence Moglen's phrase "Resist the resistance!" (i.e. remove anything that inhibits the flow of information).
Statements and perspectives
While speaking in
New DelhiNew Delhi is the capital of India. It is situated within the metropolis of Delhi and serves as the seat of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi....
,
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
, in 2006, he remarked: "Anything that is worth copying is worth sharing." His other quotes: "The more we give away, the richer we become." And: "Note how even the smallest encounter with Free Software can make a man cheerful about the future of our judge" (said after hearing a judge of the Allahabad high court, India speak on the subject).
Moglen believes the idea of proprietary software is as ludicrous as having "proprietary mathematics" or "proprietary geometry". This would convert the subjects from "something you can learn" into "something you must buy", he has argued. He points out that software is among the "things which can be copied infinitely over and over again, without any further costs".
Moglen has criticized what he calls the "reification of selfishness". He has said, "A world full of computers which you can't understand, can't fix and can't use (because it is controlled by inaccessible proprietary software) is a world controlled by machines."
He has called on lawyers to help the Free Software movement, saying: "Those who want to share their code can make products and share their work without additional legal risks." He urged his legal colleagues, "It's worth giving up a little in order to produce a sounder ecology for all. Think kindly about the idea of sharing."
Moglen has criticized trends which result in "excluding people from knowledge". On the issue of Free Software versus proprietary software, he has argued that "much has been said by the few who stand to lose". Moglen calls for a "sensible respect for both the creators and users" of software code. In general, this concept is a part of what Moglen has termed a "revolution" against the privileged owners of media, distribution channels, and software. On March 13, 2009, in a speech given at
Seattle UniversitySeattle University is a Jesuit Catholic university located on Capitol Hill in Seattle, Wash. SU is the largest independent university in the Northwest with 7,500 students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs within eight schools, and is one of 28 member institutions of the Association...
, Moglen said of the free software movement that, "'When everybody owns the press, then freedom of the press belongs to everybody' seems to be the inevitable inference, and that’s where we are moving, and when the publishers get used to that, they’ll become us, and we’ll become them, and the
first amendmentThe First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the Congress from making laws "respecting an establishment of religion", prohibiting the free exercise of religion, infringing on the freedom of speech and infringing on the freedom of the...
will mean: '
CongressThe United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States of America, consisting of two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Both senators and representatives are chosen through direct election....
shall make no law […] abridging freedom of speech, or of the press […].',
not – as they have tended to argue in the course of the 20th century – 'Congress shall make no law infringing the sacred right of the Sulzbergers to be different.'.".
On the subject of
Digital Rights ManagementDigital rights management is a generic term for access control technologies that can be used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to try to impose limitations on the usage of digital content and devices...
, Moglen once said, "We also live in a world in which the right to tinker is under some very substantial threat. This is said to be because movie and record companies must eat. I will concede that they must eat. Though, like me, they should eat less."
External links
more links can be found on wikisource
- Eben Moglen's webpage at Columbia University
- Framing the Debate: Free Expression versus Intellectual Property, the Next Fifty Years - February 2007
- The dotCommunist Manifesto - January 2003 PDF
- Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright - August 1999 PDF
- ‘A lawyer who is also idealist - how refreshing’, March 30, 2006 interview in The Guardian
The Guardian is a British daily newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. Founded in 1821, it is unique among major British newspapers in being owned by a foundation .The Guardian Weekly, which circulates worldwide, provides a compact digest of four newspapers...
.
- The dotCommunist Manifesto: Video of talk at UNC-Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. The university is the oldest in, and flagship of, the University of North Carolina system...
, Howard W. Odum Institute, 51 min, November 1, 2001
- Opening keynote at Wizards of OS3, Berlin
Berlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union...
, June 10 2004, 57 min
- Video, 20 MiB and 131 MiB MPEG video
MPEG-4 is a patented collection of methods defining compression of audio and visual digital data. It was introduced in late 1998 and designated a standard for a group of audio and video coding formats and related technology agreed upon by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group under the formal...
s
- Audio, 64 kbit/s 26 MiB, 96 kbit/s 39 MiB MP3
MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression. It is a common audio format for consumer audio storage, as well as a de facto standard of digital audio compression for the transfer and playback of music on...
, and 88 kbit/s 36 MiB OggOgg is a free, open standard container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The creators of the Ogg format claim that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia.The name ‘Ogg’ refers to the...
VorbisVorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...
formats
- Text version, 42 KiB HTML
HTML, which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists etc as well as for links, quotes, and other items. It allows images...
, also available in PDFPortable Document Format is a file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. PDF is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system....
and PostScriptPostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. PostScript is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas....
formats