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."

Comments

Lessig on Bill Moyers Journal

[mb12036]

I kind of felt like Lessig got beat up a little bit on Bill Moyers Journal when he debated Nick Gillespie on the Citizen's United campaign finance case. Gillespie was skillful enough to make the pro-corporate-money position seem...well...reasonable. And Lessig seemed ill at ease with the whole thing. I don't know if anybody "won" that debate, but Lessig definitely didn't win - which is surprising since he was clearly arguing from the high ground. It was actually a little scary to watch how deftly Gillespie dispatched all Lessig's jousts about corporate money in campaigns. If somebody at ASCAP has skills like Gillespie's, they might not have that much to worry about. More props to Lessig, despite all that, for wanting to keep these debates in a public forum.

Link at: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02052010/profile.html

Re:Debates are almost worthless

[dgatwood]

The truth exists independently of the positions we may take in an argument or the laws we might pass.

That's not entirely true. For example, I could say that it is illegal to smoke pot in the U.S. And that would be true until California takes a vote this November. Then, the truth will have changed; that statement is currently true, but no longer will be. Similarly, as this whole discussion is about copyright law, the law does, indeed, play a role, though it is unlikely that any change in the law would be sufficient to make ASCAP's statements in this matter even remotely true.

Either way, it's pretty clear that ASCAP's Paul Williams is either an idiot or a bald-faced liar, and no changes in copyright law will ever change that. Does anybody know if there's a mechanism for ASCAP members to make a motion of no confidence? I'd love to help start that process, but I'm not really familiar enough with ASCAP's governance to know where to begin.