“is it that these young readers are missing the nuance you build in, or are some of your popular press writings and blogs leading these kids to think the bumper sticker really is the right answer?”

I got another one for you… Maybe they’re missing the nuance built in rhetoric like: “you are with us or against us.” Maybe they’re forced to pick a team and Lessig has nothing to do with it.

You say you admire Lessig? And next line you think that “waging a weekend war on Starbucks […] might be causing more harm than necessary.”

It doesn’t take a doctorate in political science to see you’re a fake. Your pseudo-intellectual bs is not only pretentious, but also boring…
Could you please post this stuff to your own blog so I don’t waste my time trying to avoid it? Thx.

http://free-the-midi.com/webmasters.htm
http://net4tv.com/voice/story.cfm?storyid=2941

describe a situation in which copyright (rather than trademark) law is wielded against numerous naive and/or weak parties who appear at least prima facie in technical violation of the law who can be expected to settle out of court.

I have no way to know whether any of the allegations there is true, except that (1) A company called “Trycho Music International” does exist, and it (2) boasts that it “actively prosecute[s] unauthorized distribution of [its] recordings:”

http://www.trycho.com/piracy.htm (last visited today).

My view on the technical point, however, is independent of the truth of the claims made by the Music Relief Association: A MIDI sequence is not a high-fidelity “recording”. With MIDI sequences we have come full circle back to the situation we were in in the days of piano rolls. A MIDI sequence, like a piano roll, is simply an alternative form of musical notation; the MIDI sequence should not be separately copyrightable from the music. A MIDI sequence of entirely public domain music (i.e. no copyrightable “adaptation” or “arrangement” involved) should be sub-copyrightable.

I have taken the site down temporarily; the domain is redirecting to virtualgalfriday.com

You can still see pieces of the original site here:

http://www.virtualgalfriday.com/thevirtualoffice/index.html

Remember that some of the images aren’t working..but the text is there and you can see what the fuss is all about. Our services are similar; but not identical. I do not operate a staffing agency, my business, like the Fitzpatricks’ is virtual. We do not hire employees; we use Independent Contractors to fulfill work assignments for clients.

AND the real kicker for me is that we never had a client through The Virtual Office Team; for the last 2 years this has been a ‘dream’ of mine; a concept finally taking shape. AND now someone wants my domain name..I just have to scream “It’s not FAIR”..and it’s not!

Nancy A. Brown
[email protected]

I am sorry if the “stunts” offend. I think they do some good. One of the greatest IP scholars of all time, Jessica Litman, writes in her wonderful book, Digital Copyright, that copyright law is filled with rules that ordinary people would respond to by saying, “There can’t really be a law that says that. That would be silly.” In my view, the more that IP law gets used against “ordinary people,” the more people have got to see just how extreme the law can be.

Your first thought was to have compassion for the lawyer Weisbein, “who very likely has had a very bad day today”? Why was that your “first thought”? What about the people he is bringing this claim against?

At least it is his job, as an attorney, to take some heat and be in an adversarial posture. These folks seem to have done nothing to merit what Half and Weisbein are doing to them.

I would think your “first thought” would be one of sympathy for them. Not a lawyer for a megafirm that is threatening to take their livelihood away.

Apologies for the email mixup. My only email access is from a work account, and I am reluctant to give that one out in a public forum for fear of SPAM. Besides, a public conversation has some charms. Although I am happy to stop if that is what you think best.

On confirming facts, I take it that you and I now agree. Before posting this, you should have (my point) and did (your ultimate response) check to make sure this was not just some trouble-maker. The general norms of blogging are not important to me; what is important is that bloggers with a huge following exercise care in how they use that power. You have now clarified that you did, which is good to hear, and clearly the right thing to do.

On the question of balance, maybe my experience is atypical, but I work with a large number of young people (high school and some college) and they love you, read your books and your blog, and they have no sense of nuance or balance at all. They think that Napster and Grokster are clearly good, and that RIAA and MPAA are clearly bad, and that there is no room for disagreement. The troubling part is that they think they learned it all from you.

I myself see issues like those to be closer calls. Should Grokster have some responsibility for designing its service in a way that shows at least a modicum of concern for existing copyright rights? I think so. And I am sure that there is a respectable argument to be made on that side. When I tell the young people that, I usually can gradually convince them that the issue is in fact a difficult one, with serious concerns to balance and weigh. But it frustrates me that they walk in thinking they already understand the issue, when they clearly don’t. And, again, they often think they learned it all from you.

So our question then turns to this: is it that these young readers are missing the nuance you build in, or are some of your popular press writings and blogs leading these kids to think the bumper sticker really is the right answer? I see Ryan Mahoney (above) half-joke about roughing up the lawyer, and I wonder.

Again, I have great respect for much of what you do. My own thinking on many issues has been beneficially influenced by your writings and perspective. But waging a weekend war on Starbucks, or making the Ryan Mahoneys of the world think they can know the right answers without doing any critical thinking, might be causing more harm than necessary.

That was what worried me when I saw the post we’ve talked about today. Maybe I am alone, but my first thought was to have some compassion for lawyer Weisbein, who very likely (and possibly underservingly) has had a very bad day today.

Thank you for taking the time to write back-and-forth on this.

We were contacted by a reporter from Forbes Magazine as a result of this posting. HE IS CHECKING the facts as we speak and is going to try to get the story published in the next hardcopy edition of Forbes magazine.

The other person being sued, Nancy Brown, has posted her summons and judgment online. I hope to get ours online this week.
http://www.virtualgalfriday.com/thevirtualoffice/judgement.html
http://www.virtualgalfriday.com/thevirtualoffice/complaint.html

Until that time, I welcome anyone who is interested to contact us for documents, additional information or anything else that you might need to verify the facts.

Thank you,
Dan and Tryna Fitzpatrick
321.733.1700
[email protected]

I wanted to take this offline, but apparently this isn’t your email address.

Let’s separate the particular from the general.

The particular:

You asked how do I know the complaint is legit — that it’s not just someone with a vendetta, etc. I agree, my post did not make that clear. I implied that I had had contact with them by saying I had permission to post, but I should have made that point clearer. Of course it was appropriate to determine that the complaint was in good faith, and that these people were legitimate in making the complaint.

What I did not verify (and these are the “facts” I was referring to) was the allegations that they made. But I don’t think that’s necessary or appropriate. Lists and blogs all the time repeat allegations, and so long as they are tied to a real person and there is an opportunity to respond, I believe that linking is totally fair. If you disagree, I’d be eager to know why, but you’d be disagreeing with a custom, and not just me.

Re the general: you said I have lost by “balance as an academic”

That’s the part I am less willing to accept, at least without an argument. Sure, a blog post is a bumper sticker. But I don’t think it is fair to say of my work that I have not tried to draw attention to the nuance in these issues. I’ve written literally thousands of pages about the nuance in these issues. The problem as I see it is that we are getting not the hard questions wrong, but the easy questions wrong. And that’s not because there’s not sufficient nuance out there.