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Interviews: Ask Attorney and Author Mike Godwin a Question
Mike Godwin worked as the first staff counsel of the EFF and served as general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. He has been a contributing editor of Reason magazine and was elected to the Open Source Initiative board in 2011. Mike is probably best known however for coining the internet adage Godwin's Law. He is currently general counsel and director of innovation policy at the R Street Institute. Mike has given us some of his time to answer any questions you may have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question (and one comparison involving Nazis or Hitler) per post.
If you had a totally free chance to write or change a law - what would you change?
-- Steve
www.sjbaker.org
Do you think that Microsoft's introduction of Windows 10 is similar to the way the Nazis seized power? Will Microsoft take all our privacy away?
Are there exceptions (or clarifications) to Godwin's Law? What if the topic is about Hitler or Nazis? Is there another law that applies when this mashup happens?
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
Godwin'd from TFS ... now what?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Is Adam Tod Brown of Cracked justified in comparing Donald Trump's rise to power to that of an infamous German chancellor?
How would you judge the progress, Libertarianism is making in the US? Do you consider it rising, flat, or, perhaps, diminishing as a philosophy?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
How does Murphy's law affect Godwin's law? Does it mean that any attempt to invoke Godwin's law is doomed to failure, like Mussolini and HITLER in World War II?
Do you have a generally positive or negative opinion of these people?
Source: "Worst Ideas You Didn't Know Come From America" by Melissa Dylan
Do you believe governments / the US Government will succeed in forcing digital communication giants like Apple or Google to either make illegal zero-knowledge encryption methods or mandate backdoor decryptors to snoop on customer data and communications?
What happens when someone legitimately equates fascist behaviour with Nazism?
Almost *reflexively*, some self-proclaimed intellectual will pop up and invoke "Godwin's law" to appear smart, and everyone else in the thread will agree, because you've become an internet meme.
Hitler was quick to seize on "laws" of human behavior that were merely politically convenient for him, making a mockery of social sciences.
Why are you so much like Hitler in this regard?
Or somebody else?
Is the answer to any headline that asks "Is X the next Hitler?" invariably "no"?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
... I guess the question that a lot of people are thinking: do you think the Nazi comparison is actually apt in the case of Donald Trump's calls for a national registry of muslims, preventing muslims from entering the country, and the like?
Recent comments by Donald Trump have invoked comparisons to Nazis and Hitler. These sorts of comments online tend to lead to people invoking the "extended" version of Godwin's Law - that is, the moment Hitler is mentioned, the thread is over and the people who brought up Hitler immediately lose. What are your thoughts on using "Godwin's Law" in a prescriptive instead of merely descriptive manner? Is it something you envisioned when you formulated it?
Relatedly, as a lawyer, do you feel that there's room for Nazism to be used as a cautionary tale when discussing proposed laws, or is that well so poisoned that even non-inflammatory, literal comparisons are counter-productive?
What do you make of how Godwin's Law, and more so its usage, has evolved since its creation?
Personally, I think too many people are confusing the actual idea behind it (a humorously made law of probability) with one of many corollaries derived from it, many of which (IMO) are rather illogical. For example, the corollary stating that the analogy maker loses the argument. This, in spite of being cited as being Godwin's Law, is not Godwin's Law. In my opinion, the corollary is illogical because it assumes that it is invalid based on being made, without looking at the reason behind making the analogy, and the quality or lack thereof of the analogy. (it also bothers me
Thanks!
So how do you feel about Nazis. Everyone can be considered worse than Hitler these days.
Are you concerned that you've become an internet meme and your "law" a tool to stifle debate?
I've seen legitimate comparisons to Nazism shut down because someone pops into a discussion in an almost automatic fashion and invokes "Godwins Law" when the word "Nazi" is used, whether the invocation was within context, or not.
Does the rate of frequency of references to Hitler and Nazi Germany, grow according to
- the number of people with Internet access
- Metcalfe's Law, i.e. the square of the number of people with access
or
- Moore's Law, i.e doubling every two years?
1) Is this shiny new Interweb thing better than text flooded over UUCP for actually understanding things and for thoughtful conversations? Discuss.
2) If you could by fiat could change one thing technically or legally worldwide to make the online world a more civil place, what might it be? Might Google's 'hate speech' 'spellchecker' delaying or censoring Twitter/FB/etc posts mentioning Hi**er or similar help?
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering known mainstays of Nazi Germany such as genocide, eugenics, or racial superiority, nor, more debatably, to a discussion of other totalitarian regimes or ideologies,[citation needed] if that was the explicit topic of conversation, because a Nazi comparison in those circumstances may be appropriate"
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Of when you personally compared someone to Hitler or Nazis recently?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Would you give us some valid examples of where Godwin's Law applies and why? Some counter examples would also be enlightening.
The principle behind Goodwin's Law (people resorting to demagoguery against their political opponents, especially online) would presumably still be valid. Do you think there would still be a Goodwin's Law, and if so, who would the comparison be to?
The same question without the "killing baby Hitler" piece: Other than Hitler, do you think there are other demagoguery comparisons that are sufficiently overused to merit mention in Goodwin's Law?
Mike, I appreciate your work on CISPA/PIPA and related tragedies - thank you.
At this point, is there any real benefit to resist them aside from social signalling? It seems that with the massive centralization of power and the near-complete abandonment of representative government in the US (and elsewhere abroad similarly afflicted), we're left with a situation where every one of these draconian bills will be coming up again and again, funded by the rent-seekers and their corrupt political allies until the grass-roots runs out of steam and finally it's attached to a bill that funds the program that removes lead from baby formula, and sails through on a voice vote on the Friday before Labor Day. It doesn't even matter at this point if the full text of a plan to kill all the puppies and kittens makes it up to Wikileaks - once they want something, it's a fait accompli and then "we" spend the next 25+ years mopping up the mess.
Why should we continue to street-fight on their turf instead of investing our scarce resources in building mutual-defense alliances against these predatory regulat[ors,ions]?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You aleady know what's going to be in the first paragraph of your obit?
Sorry, rational explanations really don't matter. I've seen Godwin used to stifle legitimate debate on this site more times than I can count. The modern-day corollary to "Nazi" is now "white male", so I think this "law" is probably going out of fashion.
So much right-to-repair, right-to-own, right-to-modify law is based on an 1800s cotton baling wire case. We are happy that USA Supreme Court has routinely sided with refurbishers (Fuji vs. Jazz Camera, Lexmark vs. Arizona Ink Cartridge Remanufacturers), and the WTO defense of Remanufacturers in the Doha Round of NTTBs was great http://www.meti.go.jp/policy/t... However, just as alarming are the cases going the other way in other countries (Fuji won vs. Jazz Camera in Japan). As the USA recedes from its role as the largest consumer market, it seems that Chinese precedent might go either way. Will the future of copyright law in other countries follow the First Use Doctrine?
Gently reply
You used to be general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia and a number of related sites.
What kinds of cases came up there? What kinds of legal threats were being made - are there any interesting ones you can talk about, even in general terms?
You're an author and an attorney, so I assume you know some things about laws specifically designed for authors. Is there a way for a writer, a composer, etc. to be sure that he didn't accidentally infringe someone's copyright when creating his own work? For instance, what should George Harrison have done to avoid infringing a copyright owned by Ronald Mack (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music), Michael Bolton to avoid the Isley Brothers (Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton), or Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke to avoid Marvin Gaye (Gaye v. Thicke)? This is especially difficult for songwriters because of the combinatoric limits of possible melodies.
What Nazi set the requirement that each question for Mike Godwin must have a comparison with Nazis or Hitler to make it a valid post?
Nate
The longer the site continues to be ran by DICE the more liberal and lamestream it becomes.
Is opensource.stackexchange.com a good place to get answers to questions about GPL?
For example, today there's a question:
"Can I change the license of a GPL derived work to be more restrictive regarding version upgrades?"
It's received two answers: yes you can, and no you can't. The "yes" answer has 4 times the votes
of the "no" answer and has been "accepted".
CAPTCHA: playroom
I like to write small software tools, and give them away to open source (BSD license). Most of the tools help you write code faster and more accurately, but one of the tools lets you run an app faster and easier.
Do I need to worry about my code being too close to existing apps that someone else has already written? I'm thinking of accidentally
1) naming my new code the same name as existing code, or
2) writing code that does the same thing that someone else's existing code does.
Could I get sued in either case?
Could it be a problem if my software does the same thing that other software does? (Ex: I don't think Adobe has sued anyone over GIMP, but might they some day?)
What if my software has the same result as existing apps (tools that make it easier to write code), but my UI and underlying code are different from existing apps?
Besides doing Google searches the best I can, is there anything else I should do, to avoid duplicating software names or functions?
Thanks.
How many people do you think will go to jail for their involvement in #fanniegate?
See gselinks.com for an overview and timhoward717.com for extensive reading.
Mike,
Do you realize that your "law" only helped to shelter actual Hitler emulators from being called out?
Regards,
6 trillionth jew
Monopoly laws prohibit bundling (by companies with any monopoly power.) Google bundles like crazy with Android, as does Samsung. Google's business model is bundling, in fact, so that you get their ad-supported services and Google play store with a free operating system. Bundling at its finest, and 85% of mobiles sold are Android, I believe. Yet the Justice department (but not nec the EU) ignores this. Google seems to believe that if it's all free - but wait the app store isn't free - it ain't bundling. I don't see any basis in law for such a view. Who's right?
Google has pulled a fast one by having a secondary Java OS run on top of the Linux kernel/Android. Doesn't this mean that the GPL extends to that Java, in fact? Changing the language of your additions is immaterial in law, surely.