Defiance of unjust laws is the duty of every citizen. Mute acceptance of laws as they stand is just plain foolish: the law is not some sort of magic immutable given- technologically aware people are as much members of the wider community as anyone else, and thus, through *democratic* organisations like the various Pirate Parties, are in fact working to correct the law (i.e. reducing or eliminating patent and copyright monopolies) by democratic means. Rather more honestly democratic means than the paid shills (hello Preventing Progress and Freedom Foundation) and bribery beloved of the anti-free-market corporatists of america, too.

By this rationale, when DRM or other technological measures prevent uses which are legal under copyright law (such as personal time-shifting), they also subvert democratic choices. What's the difference, Noel?

Fundamental to our democracy are certain 'inalienable rights' that are part of the Bill of rights, and they can not be abrogated by a simple majority vote. This has long been recognized.

It is profondly disturbing that such fundamental concepts, deeply embedded in nearly all concepts of morality, can be so thoughtlessly brushed aside.

Make no mistake, the corporate power advocates want to take away your freedoms. just as surely as any fascist would.

Their aim to make a quick profit may seem more benign (at first) than those aims of traditional fascists, but once our freedoms start to erode, (if we are so careless as to let that happen) they will certainly find other uses for the power infrastructure that they are trying to build.

Their role model is China: capitalism without democracy.

See also Tim Lee's excellent post about this same essay, at TLF.

Reidenberg's paper is terrible scholarship in any case. He claims that DMCA section 512 increased liability for ISPs. That's not so, it's explicitly a limitation of liability. Obviously he didn't bother to read the statute, or else he's so desperate to make his point that he won't let facts stand in the way.

Bizarrely, Reidenberg praises Creative Commons licenses while condemning all open source software licenses, even though the CC licenses were specifically modeled after the GPL and other FOSS licenses. How exactly does FOSS subvert the democratic process while CC does not?

Also, many of Reidenberg's examples of things that are somehow going to destroy our democracy are things that are still being decided in court, such as Google Book Search. How is an activity that neither Congress nor the courts have yet addressed going to destroy our way of life? Reidenberg's only answer is essentially "gee, what Google is doing has got to be illegal somewhere in the world..."

Reidenberg implies throughout this piece that the US has made a "democratic" choice to forbid anyone from profiting from the creative work of others, even in circumstances where no law or rule assigns a right to the author. But that's just not true - radio stations profit from the work of musicians and don't have to pay them anything, and that's a choice our legislature made. Same with people who sell knockoff fashions, they don't break any law either.

That leaves just one example of actual lawbreaking mentioned in the article - peer to peer file sharing. And Reidenberg's conclusion that P2P will lead to increased secondary copyright liability has already happened and is well known.

So Noel, are you going to defend this piece of shoddy scholarship?

Noel, your silence speaks volumes. Your readers want to know if you have anything to offer besides being an echo chamber for half-baked anti-FOSS screeds. I guess we know the answer now.

Tell us, Noel: do you agree with Reidenberg that FOSS and Creative Commons licenses fall on opposite sides of some morality divide? On what basis? And how exactly is FOSS "depriving" us of "our public system of political economy?" That's a bit sensationalist, don't you think?