Eben Moglen is a professor of law and history of law at Columbia University, serves pro bono as General Counsel for Free Software Foundation, and is the Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center.

Professional biography

Moglen received his bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College in 1980, where he won the Hicks Prize for Literary Criticism. In 1985, he received a master's degree in philosophy and a JD from Yale University.

He was a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall (1986-87 term).

He received a Ph.D. in history from Yale University in 1993.

He serves as a director of Public Patent Foundation.

In 2003 he received the EFF Pioneer Award.

In February 2005, he founded the Software Freedom Law Center.

Stances on free software

Moglen says that free software 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 Law is the idea that the Internet works like induction on the humans minds of the planet. Hence Moglen's phrase "Resist the resistance!".

Quotes

The great moral question of the twenty-first century is this: if all knowing, all culture, all art, all useful information can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone; if everyone can have everything, anywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone?

Publications

• Freeing the Mind: Free Software and the Death of Proprietary Culture - June 29, 2003 PDF
• The dotCommunist Manifesto - January 2003 PDF
• Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright - August 1999 PDF

External links

• Eben Moglen's webpage at Columbia University
• Freedom Now — Moglen's blog

Articles and Interviews

• Microsoft's Fatal Error, article in The Nation, November 11, 1999
• Microsoft: Judgment Day, article in The Nation, April 24, 2000
• Microsoft: Breaking Up Is Good to Do, article in The Nation, June 26, 2000
• "The Encryption Wars", interview Winter 2000 and Page 2 (The title is just one of many topics discussed)
• Liberation Musicology, article in The Nation, February 22, 2001
• "Ask Slashdot" interview February 2003
• SCO: Without Fear and Without Research, article in eWeek , November 24, 2003
• "Free Software, Free Hardware, Free Bandwidth", interview December 11 2003
• LinuxWorld interview - January 19, 2004
• Rewriting GPL No Easy Task, February 2 2005 interview. Page 2

Video and Audio Downloads

• A panel discussion including Moglen from the Conference on Public Domain at Duke University Law School , on November 10, 2001, 1h 11m, 172Mib, MPEG video. Moglen's contribution is 58m in.
  • Audio recording of Moglen's talk at the above event., 12m, 5Mib
• Talk to TriLUG and NC*SA on November 12, 2001, at NCSSM. 1h 54m, 21Mib
• The dotCommunist Manifesto: Video of talk at ibiblio in November, 2001
• Freedom and the Future of the Net: Why We Win. A talk at New York University, May 14 2002, 1h 15m, 13Mib
  • Q&A session from after the above talk. 49m, 8Mib
• A panel discussion in which Moglen took part. 1h 7m, 62Mib. Moglen's two main contributions are at 15:15 and 31:35 in.
• Speech for Harvard Journal of Law & Technology. February 23, 2004, 1h 25m, 8Mib Speex format.
  • Text version
• Open Source as a Social Movement: Talk at the Open Source Conference, KMDI, University of Toronto, May 9, 2004
• Opening keynote at Wizards of OS3, Berlin, June 10 2004, 57m
  • Video, 127Mib MPEG video
  • Audio, 36Mib
• Lecture at Multimedia institute - MAMA/CARNet in Zagreb, Croatia, December 14 2004, 1h 35m, 286Mib
• Lecture at The Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, Slovenia, December 21 2004, 1h 7m, 61Mib

Eben Moglen