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Well, they lost it. If Jefferson were around today, he’d be living in Montreal and pretending not to speak English.
Certainly there he could sit in cafes and deep-kiss Sally Hemings and no one would care. Even his funky knee socks would fit in.
Also he’d like Canadian constitutional review, Quebec isolationist pacifism, publicly owned universities, and tolerance written into the Constitution.
He’d want nothing to do with that thing flying that ugly 50-starred imperialist flag – and he’d dodge the draft if he came back during the 1960s.

Time to break up the state, pick new regional capitals, and try again.

I believe both.

I tend to agree that just because you can trade a file doesn’t mean you should or should be allowed to.

No one advocates photocopying novels and handing them out on street corners.

On the otherhand, any artist would be insane NOT to freely distribute their music online.

The indirect benefits of a potential listenership 100s of thousands of people larger than traditionally possible, far outweighs any direct costs in lost CD sale.

The only thing that worries me about file trading is the shift aways from albums to singles.

For me the album is the work of art and should be experienced as a whole. Each song, obviously i a work in it’s own right and can be enjoyed as such. But, just like a series of painting when experienced together the works take on another level of enriched meaning and insight.

Thanks for responding. It’s kind of unfortunate that you chose to call me silly and use a straw man argument about stealing music instead of responding meaningfully to my question. I wasn’t questioning Gandhi as an example of leadership, but I did wonder about the logic of naming him given your positions on IP.

Gandhi certainly regarded theft as inappropriate, but his feelings on property were fairly radical and probably don’t match well with your own. He would have taken issue with any model for intellectual property favoring the interests of one group over those of the broader community. I have no doubt that he would have advocated boycotts and other actions to help a given industry understand that its policies are counter productive, including the illegal use of materials that would better serve the community’s interests if they were brought into the commons. A couple clear examples of this would be the salt march and the drive to use home spun cloth. This is where I see a significant disconnect between your positions… hence my confusion at your decision to include him in your post.

I doubt you’ll even see this post, but if you do I’d be interested to read a bit about your take on him as a leader within the context of his feelings on property. Feel free to drop me a line directly if you like – pwelsch at indiana dot edu.

Be well,

Pete

There were just under 300 comments, far too many of which were mine, like this one. I’m off on holiday now.

I once knew some people who worked with Gandhi in the Swaraj movement, and they said he was a pretty swell all-around guy, with a bit of a temper where his wife was concerned, but generally OK. I have no reason to doubt them.

One example of the little guy’s leadership was his putting the Swaraj movement on hold during WW II, when several others wanted to take advantage of Britain’s preoccupation with a man holding Buchanan/Kucinich positions on trade and Israel to accelerate the independence struggle. He was a stand-up guy on that issue, and on many others as well.

Baldrick’s clever plans always sound good at first hearing, that one of the chamring things about the Black Adder sketch.

One more reason to vote for Kucinich!

TITLE 17 > CHAPTER 1 > Sec. 101.

Here is the relevant definition (quote):

To perform or display a work ”publicly” means –

(1)

to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or

(2)

to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.

End quote. I think a private party would be covered by (1), unless you invited your whole neighborhood (like a block party). But it seems to me that P2P filesharing constitutes “public performance” under (2). I don’t dispute your opinion that it should not be illegal; you’re entitled to that. Just under the law as it stands, it looks illegal for copyrighted works.

One of the (many) things that is frightening to me is the entertainment industries’ efforts to bully hardware manufacturers into “helping” us stay within the law by putting access-control components into the various media players we buy. DVD region-encoding was only the first effort. I can easily imagine a day when you have to enter keys into your CD player to “unlock” your CD so you can play it, or where your Windows Media Player will not play an mp3 file unless you downloaded it from an approved source that attached the proper key to allow it to play. This can go really really far all in the name of “protecting copyright.”

I found the inclusion of Gandhi in your list of great leaders interesting. I’d agree that he was a great leader, far greater than any of the other men you listed… but it’s worth pointing out that he would have stood in direct opposition to the vast majority of principles that you’ve articulated in this forum. Why did you include him?

Pete