“With paper printed books, you have certain freedoms. You can acquire the book anonymously by paying cash, which is the way I always buy books. I never use a credit card. I don't identify to any database when I buy books. Amazon takes away that freedom.”
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If ebooks mean that readers' freedom must either increase or decrease, we must demand the increase.
In the US, you even lose legal rights if you store your data in a company's machines instead of your own. The police need to present you with a search warrant to get your data from you but if they are stored in a company's server, the police can get it without showing you anything.
When I launched the development of the GNU system, I explicitly said the purpose of developing this system is so we can use our computers and have freedom, thus if you use some other free system instead but you have freedom, then it's a success. It's not popularity for our code but it's success for our goal.
Free software is software that respects your freedom and the social solidarity of your community. So it's free as in freedom.
