Re: Tom Sydnor trashing a Freetard

[Alexander Terekhov]

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 do—and 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 Sanger’s, account of Lessig’s 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 apologize—before 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 let’s be clear, Tim. Since you have again
(wrongly and ignorantly) accused me of intellectual dishonesty, I
presume that you will—for a change—have 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 don’t
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 not—directly—make 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
you—I 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 nonresponsive—it’s 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 don’t—that’s 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 1790—the 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” right—and thus, for
some inexplicable reason, a “monopoly right.” That’s 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. It’s “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 rights”—and by pretending that Eben Moglin is a
hero for libertarians—this 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 don’t 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 are—again—scampering 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.”

Don’t lie to your readers, Tim. That was NOT the point of your original
post—and 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. 

Stallman—fairly, in my opinion, but not in yours—wanted 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.)