Schlafly on Copyright

WildJoeWild writes "Copyright extremists are working to control as much information as possible. Almost every week we see a new example of how they are thwarting the free flow of information. Read the rest of the article here."

Comments

The wolf in sheep's clothing...

[MacAndrew]

...is still a wolf.

It is odd to see two sides of the ideological divide come together. But that doesn't mean they see eye-to-eye. I've been wondering what agenda might be wrapped up in an otherwise worthy attack on corporate profiteering. I thought, what's most closely associated with the Sonny Bono Act? Disney. Hmm. Schlafly spoke her mind on the Bono Act in 1998 (here at the bottom):

The new book Disney: The Mouse Betrayed by Peter & Rochelle Schweizer proves conclusively that Eisner's Disney Company is the enemy of all the family values which Republicans cherish. So, why did Judiciary Committee Republicans quietly put through legislation that hurts the public interest but is so immensely profitable to Disney?

So there's one theory. This anti-Disney thing is very very big with many "pro-family" partisans. She spends most of her essay attacking the stench of money given both parties to pass the Act, which is true, but what did she choose to come out so strongly on *this* crooked law? I can suggest a few more.

Take help wherever it's offered, but check what's in their other hand, too.

With Friends Like These...

[Euphonious Coward]

With friends like Phyllis Schlafly, who needs enemies?

Re:With Friends Like These...

[legLess]

Quoth the poster:

With friends like Phyllis Schlafly, who needs enemies?

Just as well say, "With enemies like Phyllis Schlafly, who needs friends?" It's bloody stupid to cast people who don't agree with you on some issues as "enemies." This is a big, complicated issue in a big, complicated world, and there are plenty of opinions to go around.

Orrin Hatch, for instance, is a fairly conservative and very Christian man. We disagree on many important issues, but we do agree that citizens have fair-use rights to copyrighted material. Orrin's a musician, so he sees this issue from a very different side than most conservatives.

If Phyllis writes an editorial with which you agree, send her mail and say, "You and I disagree about many issues, but we're on the same wavelength here. Thanks!" Take help where you can find it, folks.

Off-topic rant: one of the most insidious and dangerous intellectual crutches many people use is this false dichotomy of "good" or "bad" people or ideas. No person, and precious few ideas, are wholly good or bad - most are some sort of compromise. Hitler instigated some of the most horrible acts ever seen on this planet, but word has it he was good to his dog.

Using this crutch is easy and tempting, but it immediately requires you to build up all sorts of mental walls. Instead, see both sides of an issue. See the ideas with which you disagree are formed, how they propogate, and why people espouse them - then attack the root, not the manifestation.

Mr. Senator from Disney doesn't kiss the Mouse's ass because he's evil, but because the ass is gold-plated and some of it rubs off on him. And our political system requires those at the highest level (e.g. U.S. Congress) to gather and spend truly stunning amounts of money to stay in power.

You can call people "evil" or "enemies" and thus shut yourself out of the system, you can work within the system to defeat those people (or more to the point, their ideas), or you can change the system. The latter two options require the ability to see both sides of an issue, and the causes of a person's behavior.

People's actions have good or evil consequences (often both); ideas have good or evil implementations. Get beyond the juvenile labels and to the root causes and you'll be a lot better off.

Re:Hell just froze over

[macdaddy357]

There are people on the right and the left who completely agree with Phyllis Schlafley on this one, myself included. This isn't about right vs left, it's about right vs. wrong. Copyright law has been perverted. The term, "Intellectual property" is a product of this perversion. Copyright is supposed to be a loan to artists and authors from the public domain, to whom any idea once expressed, belongs. One thing consumers can do to fight back against entertainment robber barons is to refuse to buy their products.

Don't sound so surprised

[Henry V .009]

Everyone seems to be aghast that someone like Schlafly is joining them in the fight against the RIAA.

Well, get used to it. The only political pressure that I've seen being brought to bear against the RIAA has been from conservative politicians. Funny, but "let's go back to how things used to be when this country was just starting out," has a great deal of resonance with conservatives. Interesting how that works.

Moreover the Senators from Disney and Hollywood are all, well, Democrats. You aren't going to get any help from there, friends.

The fact that someone like Schlafly is signing on with us actually happens to be great news. Before long, with any luck, conservatives will realize that a major political issue amoung young urban professionals happens to be copyright. Hell, we create more press in a day on this one political issue than most other interest groups our size do in a year. Once we get the conservatives to sign on, then we'll start getting some major traction on our issues.

So, welcome aboard, Schlafly.

she's quite a smart lady.

[zogger]

--she's a smart lady. Reading the editorial she wrote, she's certainly not a "luddite" and her religious faith is her's, there's nothing in there that is trying to force it on anyone. I've listened to her a lot, she's pretty respectful of other's rights. And you'll also find that just plain old vanilla common sense and "decency" crosses political "party" lines. Our original Constitution was written for such a reason, to codify in "english" not lawyerese nonsense some "common sense". It's not a "republican" or "democrat" written document, either, thank goodness, if those guys tried to do it again today it would be FUBARed before they even set pen to paper.

Best advice I would have for anyone is to step away from the old paradigms of following any "party lines" rhetoric and even to cease getting sucked into the extremely limiting parameters of identifying one's self as "right" or "left" leaning and instead just differentiate "right" and "wrong". Makes things a lot easier to sort out.

I manage to catch her little two minute daily audio editorials listening to various net broadcasts carried on Genesis Communications, a pretty good collection of shows with a more traditional US constitutional (and common sense) "Independent" viewpoint as opposed to acting like most talk shows as pure propoganda arms of one or the other of the two dominant political for-profit gangs, err, I mean "partys", for example the two biggees of the "establishment" like Rush Limbeau and Larry King. I consider those shows to be more like political training wheels for people just starting to get any sort of political interest going, once you can get a balance and want to go further (which should take like one show apiece from those two gents to see it for what it is, establishment propoganda), the offerings from genesis are a lot more real and hardcore freedom-oriented, as are some of the other independent media outlets.

FWIW, here is Mrs. Schalfly's website, Eagle Forum.

Re:But she's our fruitcake

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

But she's our fruitcake (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 31, @01:26PM (#4990632)
She may be a few fries short of a happy meal, but on this issue she's on the right side.

If she's a fruitcake, make sure Anita Bryant doesn't hear about it!

If only...

[Tuxinatorium]

If only we could bridge the gap between right-libertarians and left-libertarians and present some sort of unified front to resist the downward pull towards more authoritarian government coming from both parties... The fiscally moderate Democrats need to split away from the socialists, and the people who call themselves conservatives but (unlike the republican party) want personal freedom need to renounce all ties with the fundies/authoritarians in their party.

Schlafly filed in Eldred vs Ashcroft

[phr1]

Schlafly isn't new to the copyright issue. Her "Eagle Forum" filed a pretty good amicus brief (pdf) supporting Eric Eldred in Eldred vs. Ashcroft. Check it out.

Re:More meat, please.

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

the statement should either qualified as purely editorial material or backed up with a whole lot more examples than the scant article contains.

Well, I counted 13 examples of abuse in the "scant" article ... not counting the warnings about three other abuses being quietly pushed. I think there's enough there to justify a little hyperbole.

My goodnes. Did I just defend Phyllis Schlafly? Must be part of that Twilight Zone marathon on SciFi... :)

Re:This must be difficult for some to accept.

[Dachannien]

I agree with you wholeheartedly

I'd like to point out that the fact that freedom of information, and associated DRM/copyright/fair use issues, doesn't fall along the regular political axes, makes it incredibly difficult to know where our politicians stand on these issues.

For example, is Senator John McCain in favor of consumer rights, or is he in the pocket of the ??AA/? Nobody knows, because this issue doesn't follow political boundaries. What about your congressman? With the exceptions of Hollings and Berman, on one side; Boucher, Doolittle, and Lofgren on the other, and perhaps a few others, nobody has any idea. Keep in mind that the DMCA passed via voice vote in both houses of Congress - though the Senate passed a version different than that of the House - and so there is no real record beyond remarks entered into the Congressional Record of Congress's support for consumer rights.

What we really need is a way to gather information about our Congresspeople's opinions on this issue - to bring it to the forefront - so that we can be better informed in 2004 when we head to the polls, and so that we can better inform the general public (whose rights this will affect when the nation goes digital in 2007) rather than /.'ers and other people with specific interest in this issue.