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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."
SIILEEENCE!!! I keel you.
Boredom is bliss.
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.
Stop trying to confuse him with the facts!
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
I suspect Lessig wanted the video of the debate available for all to see for free, and Williams wouldn't participate unless each viewer had to pay 3 cents to see it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
This is only half-true, because the quote only talks about "they." It's missing what you have to do:
First they ignore you
Then you hold some public meetings
Then they laugh at you
Then you fill a room with 5,000 people
Then they fight you
Then you lobby legislators
Then you raise some money
Then you put 10,000 people in a room
Then you write a bill
Then you lobby legislators
Then you raise some money
Then you reintroduce the bill
Then you put 10,000 people in 500 rooms
Then you raise some money
Then you lobby legislators
Then you win
In other words, Margaret Mead was wrong.
By choosing not to defend his statements in a debate Williams has shown that even he doesn't think they are worth talking about.
Sir, I'm a lawyer representing the estate of Mohandas Karamchand "Mahatma" Gandhi. You owe us $75,000 for the right to use that quote in public or we will sue.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
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
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
...isn't usually a problem; in fact it's usually a benefit. Maybe in other countries it is impossible to hate someone who never showed his face, but in the US it actually makes things easier. Whatever your political affiliation, one of the easiest and cheapest ways to disparage a group is to attach the words "big" or "faceless" to it. "Big" government, "faceless" corporations, "big" labor, etc. People don't trust you unless you can show them your face; that why for example BP was so eager to get a spokesman in front of cameras (too bad for them he made a douche of himself, but the point stands.)
The problem with the ASCAP/RIAA et al. is that they simply don't have anyone they can trot out in front of a camera without it looking like a South Park cartoon. "Look, there's Lars now. [...] This month he was looking to have a gold-plated shark tank bar installed right next to his pool, but thanks to people downloading his music for free, he must now wait a few months before he can afford it." Hollywood has spent decades highlighting the rich and glamorous lives that their stars lead, with huge houses, fast cars, and all of that; now they've got to try to work against all their own marketing to tell us that these same artists are starving and they have to put ordinary blue collar workers into debt for the rest of their lives to support them.
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)
I assume you mean Gandhi, not Mead.
Or were you talking about mating habits in Samoa?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.