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ASCAP Refuses To Debate Lessig
An anonymous reader writes "Back in June ASCAP oddly declared war on free culture, specifically calling out Creative Commons, EFF and Public Knowledge, making a number of false statements about all three. The war of words continued as the three groups responded politely, pointing out the errors in the statement from ASCAP's Paul Williams. Larry Lessig wrote a blog post where he asked Williams to debate these topics, saying that it might help if they could get away from making false statements. Williams has now publicly declined to debate saying that it's not worth his time, and once again attacking these groups for trying to 'silence' him. It's difficult to see how a request for a public discussion and debate is an attempt to silence, but that's ASCAP's position and they're sticking to it."
To be fair, no debate in the history of the world has ever actually changed the truth of any matter. Arguments and legislation should be based on published literature and statistics, not on who is the better orator.
That being said, I'm sure they're refusing because they know Lessig would kick ass. His position is well thought-out and basically unimpeachable, while theirs is untenable and distasteful.
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
ASCAP is going to become irrelevant as content producers such as authors move to distributing digitally exclusively so that they get more money from the purchase of their works.
Amazon gives authors of e-books 70% of purchase price? When I'm ready to publish I'll pay for software to produce content in a manner that Kindle users will be able to easily read my content and sit back and watch as either the $$$ roll in or the cob-webs collect (depending on if my content is any good). Either way, I'll already have moved on to my next project.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
It's difficult to see how a request for a public discussion and debate is an attempt to silence
Simple.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Anyone who views an offer of debate as an "attempt to silence"(barring extreme cases like someone with a particularly mockable speech impediment, for which "debate" might well just involve having the crowd laugh at his expense. I'm assuming that you don't become head of ASCAP that way, though. Almost certainly a lawyer or business type who knows how to talk to a boardroom.) must see acting with impunity, and without external input, as their right be default, and thus the idea of someone else having equal footing becomes an attack, not simple justice.
It is rather like the fanatics of various stripes who scream that they are persecuted when they are not allowed to persecute others. Their worldview is warped so far toward themselves as the default, that any attempt to prevent them from harming others is seen as an assault on their rights.
By choosing not to defend his statements in a debate Williams has shown that even he doesn't think they are worth talking about.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...Is it doesn't matter if what they say makes sense. They say it over and over, then they pay people in congress to repeat the same nonsense, then get laws passed based on it. It never has to make sense; it just needs people in power to repeat it like it is true on TV then pass and enforce whatever laws they are paid to.
The letter was perfectly reasonable at its beginning -- the man was basically saying, "My job is to promote the financial interests of these people," which is at least honest. Then he says that a debate would be a waste of time, which is a bit insulting but not terrible as far as the things that copyright lobbyists say. Then he finishes the letter by saying that the copyleft movement seeks to silence criticism, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever given that he was responding to a challenge to a public debate, and is basically just an attempt to play the victim.
ASCAP should bury this guy before he makes them look any more desperate.
Palm trees and 8
"Williams has now publicly declined to debate saying that it's not worth his time, and once again attacking these groups for trying to 'silence' him."
If he decides not to debate the matter he has chosen to silence himself.
Furthermore, Williams says this (quoted in the article, which has a link to the original on the ASCAP site):
"Our members have every right to give their music away for free if they choose, but they should not be forced to do so."
All those organizations he's talking about say "YES". None of those organizations are advocating what he claims they are. Creative Commons, EFF, and others aren't saying artists should be forced to give away their creations for free. They don't *have* to use Creative Commons or other licenses that also depend on copyright. It's a choice. Under copyright law they can use whatever damn license they please, and given that Creative Commons depends on copyright law, nothing about Creative Commons undermines that.
Naturally the people Williams claims are saying this nonsense are going to loudly, repeatedly, and publicly dispute it. That isn't an attempt to "silence" him, it's an attempt to correct his flagrant misrepresentation, because people tend to get rather upset when false words are put into their mouths.
What's next? He'll claim that other people believe the sky is green, and when they correct him and say "No, it's blue", he'll accuse them of trying to "silence" his opposing view?
you kill the beast
ascap's existence is due to a flow of cash that is being threatened by technological change
so there is nothing to debate, there is only the relentless march of progress, and those who resist it because their revenue streams are drying up because of technological change are already living in denial
with denial as their logical baseline, "debate" is an exercise in absurdity. there's simply nothing to debate or talk about: ascap's position is logically untenable from the start, yet they continue to hold their position, therefore, logic will not nor ever sway them. force is the only language they know or understand. so they must be forcibly killed off (by this i mean it becomes acceptable to deny them their revenue streams, i'm not talking about real world physical violence: you have to be careful to note your words are only symbolic because there are real lunatics out there)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is why political debates are a waste of time -- sure, it forces both sides to bring out their best arguments, but everyone's already picked a side; if the enemy makes their position "seem...well...reasonable", that only means they're skillful, but our guy is "clearly arguing from the high ground".
I haven't watched the debate in question, but your statement reeks of unrecognized bias -- you take the correctness of your position so axiomatically that you can't admit the other side may have a point. Don't worry, there's a capitalist-libertarian somewhere going on about how despite Lessig's debating skill, the simple truth of Gillespie's argument won out.
(FWIW, I'm not pitching the "more polarized than ever" line -- it's always been like this, and political debate has always been like this for almost all people, almost all the time.)
When Paul Williams is complaining about being potentially "silenced," he doesn't mean in the sense of being censored, or black-bagged or something. What he means is that Lessig, by offering to debate him and disprove his incoherent ramblings point by point, is preventing him from freely engaging the modern US press.
For anyone who hasn't been paying attention the past fifteen years, there are basically three different, slightly overlapping, journalistic spheres, all of whom I label by their derogatory names:
-The "liberal" media
-The "mainstream" media, and
-The "conservative" media
The "conservative" media consists of everything owned by Rupert Murdoch, a nationwide network of conservative talk radio hosts (Limbaugh, etc), and a few attack websites, like the one that posted that doctored video that got that poor woman fired last week. The "liberal" media consists of MSNBC, a few liberal talk show hosts, and a large network of liberal websites like MoveOn.org.
The liberal media basically exists to demonize and attack everything said by a Republican or by a member of the "conservative" media, and vice versa. Neither one cares about honest debate, or constructive discourse, or anything like that; all they care about is filtering out the facts that their audience doesn't want to hear, and only giving out the information that their audience does want to hear. This is why, for instance, every Republican congressman knew about that one case in Philadelphia where the New Black Panthers were accused of trying to keep a white man from voting through threat of violence, and being let off the hook by the Obama Justice Department, but none of them knew about the Minutemen trying to prevent Latino voters from voting by pointing guns at them, and being let off by the Bush Justice Department. Democrat congressmen, on the other hand, were all familiar with the Minutemen incident, but none at all knew about the New Black Panthers.
Given this climate, it's obvious why Paul Williams would be horrified about an invitation to debate: nobody would know about it! The "liberal" media wouldn't cover it, because it would risk their audience knowing who Paul Williams is, and the "conservative" media wouldn't cover it, because it would risk letting their audience know who Larry Lessig is. That's two-thirds of the press, gone, right off the bat.
Now, you ask, what about the "mainstream" media? Unfortunately, the "mainstream" media has, somehow, decided that journalists can't--or maybe shouldn't--influence the national discussion by injecting pesky things like facts or logic. Their job is to simply report on what the liberal talking heads are saying, then report on what the conservative talking heads are saying, and then try to tie them both into some kind of "narrative". Note how "facts" or "truth" don't come into play here; that's not the point. The mainstream media is "balanced," which to them means it doesn't matter if one side is right and the other side is wrong, or one side is lying and the other side is telling the truth. Their job is to simply report, to tell the story, not to inform anyone.
These are the people who told the story about WMDs in Iraq, and kept the story going until we were embroiled in a two-front war and ignoring the front that had Bin Laden in it. These are the people who told the story about Obama's rise to power, and kept it going until he won in a landslide. These are the people who talked about the health care "debate"--note the lack of any details about what was in the bill--and kept it going until we lost all hope of true reform. And these are the people who are telling the story about how Republicans are resurgent this year, and will keep telling it until they've taken over Congress, passed huge austerity measures, and, just like in 1937 when the Republicans started cutting spending in a big recession, plunge us into a double-dip, which last time we didn't really get out of (WWII was a weird situation all around economically speaking)