PFF has launched what they promise to be a “series of papers that will critique Free Culture and the Free Culture Movement.” Their first is a piece by Tom Sydnor II called “Tragedy and Farce: An Analysis of the Book FREE CULTURE.” Calling the book akin to “quasi-socialist utopianism,” the 17 page review is certain to be an interesting read. Someone should add this to the Anti-Lessig Reader.
-
Archives
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- May 2011
- March 2011
- November 2010
- October 2010
- August 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- August 2004
- July 2004
- June 2004
- May 2004
- October 2003
- September 2003
- August 2003
- July 2003
- June 2003
- May 2003
- April 2003
- March 2003
- January 2003
- December 2002
- November 2002
- October 2002
- September 2002
- August 2002
-
Meta
The PFF wouldn’t know progress or freedom if they were thrown from a prison transfer coach in a collision with inevitability. Indeed, they are intent on making sure neither progress nor freedom occurs in the context of published works and the cultural liberty of the public.
As for your book ‘free culture’, this also falls grievously short of envisioning a culture free of constraint by copyright, and so does one of the greatest disservices to the term ‘free culture’ and the free culture movement.
Just as with Andrew Keen the PFF is a critic of similarly poor calibre and not one to be proud of.
Free Culture is an excellent reformist (rather than abolitionist) work regarding cultural freedom.
PFF are well named, although they really need an ellipsis.
Linking to their idiocy is generous rather than kind…
Sourcewatch has some background info on this group: “PFF seems to have been funded by communications companies from the outset.”
Unless Larry has the power to change people into agents of the dark lord Satan, I really wish Mr. Sydnor would stop saying “literally demonize.”
-krish
Someone should point Tom Sydnor II to the evil socialists who made the odd billion Dollars by selling GPL (but also commercial) MySQL to Sun and who are the (Labour) party in power in the UK, a close military ally during the various wars of this administration. It may well be the case that less than one user in a thousand of MySQL has paid MySQL any money but the odd billion Dollars of gain is not something to dismiss easily. Nor is the implied criticism of the government of a close ally just because Mr Sydnor can’t distinguish between socialism and communism.
Tom Sydnor II also seems to completely ignore the success of socialist Europe and the economic powerhouse that the European Union is becoming. Ask Boeing about that. And maybe watch Mr Sydnor have apoplexy as he tries to reconcile the free market he champions with a desire to protect Boeing from free competition in which it loses, in spite of being caught trying to fix the result of the competition.
He may also benefit from a little more research when it comes to the obviously bogus claim that “During the latter half of the 20th Century, the United States emerged as a uniquely successful creator and exporter of a vast array of expressive works”. He appears not to recall that George Orwell, author of the work 1984 that he cites so much, was English. Fans of Mr. Harry Potter’s popular magical adventures might notice that the author is Scottish.
Research about “foresee the consequences of spyware-powered Thought Police” also seems lacking, for it was Sony that introduced spyware-powered monitoring of the plays of the music they were distributing, in a free market Orwellian approach to monitoring every play of those works. Not a theoretical threat like many Mr Sydnor is discussing, but actual commercial reality in the United States.
His writing does provide amusing and sad comment on the demons of the past that seem to dominate the thinking of some advocates in the US. All those sad references to the cold war past that we in Europe have already moved on from. Hopefully he’ll move on from his tragic life in the past and farcical lack of understanding of the parts of the world outside the United States.
And should you red this, My Sydnor, do note also that it was in England that highly restricted copyrights were found, by an absolute monarch, to be unhelpful and were limited to control the harm that they were doing. And that failed experience with unlimited copyrights is how we ended up with the limited copyrights that followed, in the United States and elsewhere. Events in the rest of the world sometimes matter. Maybe not often if you ignore the history, but some of us don’t.
Oh boy, another one of those papers saying “Property is God. Anyone else is a COMMIE.”. There really should be some sort of way that flacks can just indicate they want to advocate such a viewpoint, without the huge waste of time of pages and pages of bombast over it.
Seth, I wouldn’t really have much issue with the PFF if they championed property rights, a free and fair market, and rejected communism.
Unfortunately, they are championing the preservation of the status quo, the retention of the mercantile privileges of copyright and patent, which are nothing to do with property or rights, and by their monopolistic nature completely undermine a free and fair market.
The only thing I could agree with the PFF on is how ludicrous the idea of communising the production of digital works is, i.e. all digital works may be freely exchanged if they’re funded via taxation and valued by a central committee with assistance from a computerised proliferation census.
Either:
A) the PFF are stupid because they’re barking up the wrong tree if they’re trying to discredit Professor Lessig – who is doing an excellent job of persuading everyone to retain copyright (by suggesting that if one has a problem with its unkindnesses one simply adopts kinder licenses).
or
B) The PFF are cunning because by pretending to attack the pro-copyright treatise ‘Free Culture’ as anti-property it obtains greater support by those easily beguiled by the ‘enemy of my enemy must be my friend’ fallacy.
The PFF’s statement is possibly the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read.
The statement is so focused on the false dichotomy of “privately owned” versus “government owned,” it is completely blind to the possibility that ideas and other intangibles might simply be unowned.
If the PFF were to bother to look, they could find numerous examples of unowned ideas working wonderfully well, where people come together in an “open source” kind of way to use an idea and add to it to create an unowned commons, without any expectation of payment. One example is the English language, built up over centuries by people using it and freely adding words to it, with nobody seriously suggesting it should be privately owned or that royalties should be paid to the introducers of words.
If the PFF is so opposed to that supposedly “commie” model of creation, perhaps it should practice what it preaches and refrain from using the English language.
There really should be some sort of way that flacks can just indicate they want to advocate such a viewpoint, without the huge waste of time of pages and pages of bombast over it.
If we’re deleting spam, I don’t believe Giyim has passed the Turing test, so by leaving the comment instead of deleting it grants it greater standing than if the other spam comments remained. Tricky isn’t it?
Incidentally, Tom Sydnor (or someone purporting to be him) has replied on Techdirt concerning the PFF’s apparent antipathy toward the book Free Culture.
See The Smear Campaign Against Larry Lessig And Free Culture.