Alexander Terekhov wrote: > > http://techliberation.com/2009/03/18/liberty-anarchism-and-eben-moglen/ > > (From comments)
[...] > Tim Lee's dull response: > > ----- > Tom, brackets are commonly used to either summarize a long paragraph or > to make a quotation grammatical in its new context. It's totally > inappropriate to use brackets as a way of making an ideological point. > Given your history of misrepresenting others' views, I think you should > be particularly careful in this respect. > > I choose to call copyright a monopoly right to emphasize that it is a > statutory right created by Congress. This is very different from > ordinary property rights, which tend to emerge spontaneously and are > only recognized and secured by government after they are recognized by > civil society. > > And you totally missed my point with regard to Stallman and Congress. > The point of the GPL is to ensure that downstream distributors of GPLed > software do not use copyright or patent laws to restrict users' freedom > to use that software. In a world without copyright, the GPL would likely > not be needed because users would have that freedom by default. > Certainly, in a world without copyright Stallman wouldn't need > Congress's help to create his software. > ----- Tom Sydnor fired back: ----- Tim, you say, Given your history of misrepresenting others' views, I think you should be particularly careful in this respect. Tim, I have no history of mischaracterizing other's views. But you doand you generated this despicable history by being too immature, too irresponsible, and too biased to check your sources, (and read them with an unjaundiced eye), before leveling serious accusations at those who disagree with your brilliance. For example, and as my previous post suggested, had you bothered to check sources before just presuming that your college roomate, Julian Sangers, account of Lessigs views was correct, and mine wrong, you would never have authored a post asserting this. But you could not be bothered. Check the source materials, Tim. I characterized them correctly. Julian got them wrong. If this is news to you, that is because you chose to sling very serious allegations without confirming their validity. I thus suggest, for the last time, that you belatedly check the relevant source materials, and then apologizebefore I lose patience with your childish antics. I take intellectual honesty far more seriously than you ever have, young man. And I will now prove that by walking through your excuses, Timothy, and eviscerating them. And lets be clear, Tim. Since you have again (wrongly and ignorantly) accused me of intellectual dishonesty, I presume that you willfor a changehave the guts to respond substantively to the points that follow. Your habit of intellectual cowardice is most unbecoming, Tim. I expect you to end it now and to face the consequences of your incompetent illogic. Next, Tim, you say, It's totally inappropriate to use brackets as a way of making an ideological point . Tom, brackets are commonly used to either summarize a long paragraph or to make a quotation grammatical in its new context. Your views are erroneous, Tim, but that is why I dont pay much attention to pedantic lectures on English usage delivered by schoolboys. To be clear, Tim, I was making an idealogical point only in the sense that I was, indeed, mocking your pretentious, misleading rhetoric. But I poked fun at you within the rules of usage. Consequently, you have responded by picking a really stupid fight that you will inevitably lose. Being arrogant, underinformed, overconfident, and unaware of standard English usage, you have stomped self-righteously into the buzzsaw. Newsflash, Tim: brackets are also frequently used when one synonym can be fairly substituted for another. I would prove this, Tim, but you are so familiar with this principle that you accept it automatically when doing so does notdirectlymake you look stupid. For example, I quoted Milton Friedman, for the following proposition: [Copyrights and Patents] are different, because they can equally be regarded as defining property rights. In a literal sense, if I have a property right to a particular piece of land, I can be said to have a monopoly with respect to that piece of land defined and enforced by the government. Tim, were you the sort that bothered to check source materials, you would have known that the bracketed text was synonymous with the actual text. In the actual text, Friedman used a pronoun, but its antecedent was copyrights and patents. Are you now suggesting that this usage was improper, or that Milton Friedman and I just do not understand the idealogical difference between monopoly rights and property rights? A usage is not idealogical Tim, just because you pretend that it is. If the terms property right and monopoly right are as interchangeable as Milton Friedman suggests, then no wrong was done to youI simply made fun of your trite rhetoric. Next, Tim, you try to excuse your trite rhetoric as follows: I choose to call copyright a monopoly right to emphasize that it is a statutory right created by Congress. This is very different from ordinary property rights, which tend to emerge spontaneously and are only recognized and secured by government after they are recognized by civil society. Tim, this pathetic answer is nonresponsiveits an excuse, not an explanation. Tim, had you claimed that copyrights were statutory rights, we would never have had this debate. Do you really claim that all such statutory rights are monopoly rights? (And before you answer, Tim, think about net neutrality.) Of course you dontthats ridiculous. For example, in U.S. law, those awful statutory copyrights actually predated the Constitution in 12 of the 13 orginial States; they appeared in in the original constitution in 1789; and they appeared in federal statutes in 1790the same year as the Bill of Rights. In effect, Tim, your implausible excuses force you to argue that any right merely recognized, but not implemented, by the federal Constitution in 1789 is a mere statutory rightand thus, for some inexplicable reason, a monopoly right. Thats absurd. Cut the nonsense, Tim: you used a misleading Scary Synonym because you arrogantly presumed that your readers could not pace your oh-so-clever rhetoric. I called you on it, and as a result, you now look disingenuous and silly. In time, greater maturity and more serious study of the subject matter will work their usual magic, and you may someday perform a socially useful function by doing the same to me. This is why the marketplace of ideas eventually produces good results: It punishes those who overreach or mislead. Welcome to the market, Timmy. So spare me your quivering lip and implausible excuses: this is not me being mean to you, Timothy. Its market discipline operating within the marketplace of ideas. If you find its effects unpleasant, well, that is the point: as soon as you stop overreaching by calling copyrights monopoly rightsand by pretending that Eben Moglin is a hero for libertariansthis will stop happening. Game over, Tim. And if you think otherwise, then stop running away, turn and face me, and answer the legitimate, fair questions that you continue to dodge: Are you asserting that the mere possession of a copyright inevitably confers market power within the meaning of the law of antitrust? Are you going farther, and asserting that the mere possession of a copyright inevitably results in the abuse of market power within the meaning of the law of antitrust? And dont try to pretend, Tim, that you can refuse to answer these questions because you are just too pure, too perfect, and too important to be bothered. You have showed your true colors too clearly: everyone will realize why you areagainscampering like a baby bunny for the safety of your burrow. So if you chose to keep denying reality, Tim, then stop running away and turn and face the consequences of your own trite rhetoric. Granted, they stink, but that was your choice, not mine. Finally, Tim, you made the following silly claim: [Y]ou totally missed my point with regard to Stallman and Congress. The point of the GPL is to ensure that downstream distributors of GPLed software do not use copyright or patent laws to restrict users' freedom to use that software. In a world without copyright, the GPL would likely not be needed because users would have that freedom by default. Certainly, in a world without copyright Stallman wouldn't need Congress's help to create his software. Dont lie to your readers, Tim. That was NOT the point of your original postand you know it, young man. I would quote your own words back to you, but your run-and-rethread tactics make that inconvenient, and I would encourage such tactics by compensating for the inconveniences that they impose upon your readers. Run-and-rethread has lost its utility, Tim. Indeed, your whole point is absurd. You are claiming that but for copyrights, Stallman would have gleefully put his code into the public domain and let others recompile it into object code that they could then sell. What baloney. Stallmanfairly, in my opinion, but not in yourswanted to ensure that others could use the results of HIS labors ONLY if they were willing to be bound by the TBD-version of freedom that Stallman articulates in the current version of the GPL. Had copyrights not existed, Stallman would have needed to get Congress to enact legislation to achieve this result. I know this. You know this. Stop assuming that your readers are too dull to know this, Tim. Tom ----- regards, alexander. -- http://gng.z505.com/index.htm (GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards too, whereas GNU cannot.) _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
