Having dealt with Mr. Masnick's self-immolating attack on my analysis of Thomas, I must now even more emphatically reject Mr. Masnick's absurd claim that he "proved" that my paper on Free Culture mischaracterized the views that Professor Lawrence Lessig expressed in Code, a deplorable book advocating government control of the Internet and lawsuits against programmers. Frankly, mischaracterizing Lessig is pointless: quoting him suffices. Nevertheless, Mr. Masnick claimed, "The worst was when a variety of others pointed out Sydnor's out of context comments [sic] and put them back into context--and Sydnor still stood by the paper, refusing to admit he took a single comment out of content."

Nonsense: I stand by my paper because Mr. Masnick and "others" failed to quibble successfully even about details wholly tangential to its main argument. As Mr. Masnick's post indicates, his quibbles claimed that I had unfairly portrayed Lessig as a "communist sympathizer." But my paper said:

To be clear, I do not think that Lessig, Fisher, or other Free-Culture-Movement academics and interest groups are literally 'communists' or 'socialists....' But they do still display the flaws that made communists and socialists dangerous to themselves and others: Inherent distrust of and contempt for the utility of bilateral private exchange conjoined with boundless, unshakeable faith in the potential wisdom, foresight, and benevolence of vast and coercive governmental power.

But this failed to sate Mr. Masnick, who still felt that a few sentences of my paper just did not provide the "context" that would show why reasonable people cannot criticize Lessig for describing the reign of Stalin as "bland communism" and claiming that that Americans have less "effective freedom" than the surviving victims of a communist dictatorship that murdered a million Vietnamese and caused millions more to flee for their lives. Mr. Masnick thus argued that reasonable people must admit that Lessig was just making nonjudgemental, morally neutral, sensible points when he said things like, "Vietnam sets as its ideal the state in the service of the withering of the state; the United States sets as its ideal the withered state in the service of liberty."

Mr. Masnick's quibbles thus consisted of claims like this one, in which Mr. Masnick--who runs a website that often criticizes his government--claimed that he would have more "effective freedom," (as Lessig put it), in the failed communist state that controls the heavily government-filtered region of the Internet called "NamNet":

The biggest difference in terms of freedom between Vietnam and America is the ability of the government to effectively execute its laws. Vietnam is, no doubt, far less efficient at executing its tyrannical laws than the United States, thus reducing many of them to being little more than bloviating as far as many average Vietnamese need concern themselves with the law.

But see Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering 155 (Ronald Deibert, et al., ed., 2008) ("Of countries filtering political content, China, Myanmar, and Vietnam blocked with the greatest breadth and depth....").

Not even worshippers of the graven idol of Lessig should pretend that the effects of decades of totalitarian terror inflicted by a dictatorship upon its own citizens can be reasonably characterized as a form of "effective freedom." The Black Book of Communism records the fate of Vietnamese poets who criticized censorship--and the fate of Vietnamese who did nothing at all:

As in Beijing, people were found guilty simply because they had been accused by the Party, which never made mistakes. Therefore the best response was often to do what was expected of you: "It was better to have killed your father and mother and admitted it than to say nothing and to have done nothing wrong."

More contradictions of Messrs. Lessig and Masnick's bizarre claims about the relative "effective freedom" of Vietnamese and Americans can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Sadly, those links may not work for those who must actually endure the "effective freedom" of "NamNet."

In short, Mr. Masnick and others argued that reasonable people must agree that Lessig's claim that people terrorized for decades by their totalitarian government have more "effective freedom" than Americans was just a reasonable, interesting, morally neutral claim about the difference between the "law on the books" and the "law on the street." Mr. Masnick even argued that Lessig was thus "showing the problems with US regulations, something I would think you would endorse."

That is absurd. In Code, Lessig argued, in effect, that if a failed totalitarian state has so terrorized its citizens that they smile even though there is "barely any infrastructure" and kill their parents upon demand, then those citizens who have learned they they must always submit to or avoid their incompetent dictators enjoy "effective freedom" superior to that enjoyed by Americans. I cannot agree that anyone can rationally characterize the aftereffects of totalitarian terror as "effective freedom"--much less agree that the potential deregulatory effects of such terror are somehow relevant to the implementation of technology policy in 21st Century America.

On page 4 of Code, Lessig characterized the reign of Stalin as "bland communism." Mr. Masnick argued that because Lessig mentioned "neon signs" along with many basic state functions like caring for the elderly and preventing violence, reasonable persons must conclude that Lessig referred only to the "aethestic sense" of Stalinism. But if that was what Lessig meant, then why was he lamenting its passing? Mr. Masnick's argument coincides with neither the text of Code nor common sense.

Sartre once argued that Stalin's crimes had to be downplayed least they discourage the workers. Albert Camus then allegedly ended their friendship by replying, "the truth is the truth, and denying it mocks the causes both of humanity and morality." Personally, I still conclude that Code mocked the causes of both humanity and morality. And that I can reasonably and fairly support my claim that Lessig tends to downplay the hazards of concentrated governmental power by quoting his nauseating mischaracterizations of Soviet and Vietnamese communism.

Frankly, I ended the last iteration of this inane "debate" because it seemed to pointless to keep beating Mr. Masnick's dead horse in a debate that was only generating heat, not light on a point not central to my paper's argument. Sadly, I now see that Mr. Masnick may have mistaken that mercy killing for a victory.

So be it. When I have nothing better to do, I will exhume this stupefying "debate" and further defend my claim that reasonable people can fairly critique Lessig for lamenting the end of Stalin's "bland communism" and praising the "effective freedom" allegedly enjoyed by the cowering victims of a terror-wielding state so incompetent and repressive that it had "barely any infrastructure." And when I do, I will ask Mr. Masnick to explain why millions of boat people risked their lives to escape the "effective freedom" that Mr. Masnick and Professor Lessig--but no one else--can find so intoxicating and liberating.

Finally, I note that that Mr. Masnick's post illustrated his own rhetorical style by linking to a post in which he had claimed that a PFF Fellow argued that "fair use harms innovation" because he said that we should not repeat the Grokster fiasco of distributing tools that could be used for fair use, but would actually be used mostly to infringe. And then Mr. Masnick claimed that because I just did not provide enough "context" to show why Lessig was lamenting the passing of Stalin's "bland communism" and praising the "effective freedom" of cowering victims of totalitarian terror, I thus wrote "one of the most ridiculous attack dog papers we've seen."

That seems to suggest that Lessig received from me better treatment than he would have received had Code stopped downplaying Stalin, praising terror, and calling for government control of the Internet and started defending the anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA--an act that could actually have offended the sensibilities of Mr. Masnick.

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 11:10 AM | Academia, Economics, Game Theory & Public Choice, Enforcement & Remedies, Free Culture Movement, Internet: P2P, Search Engines..., Liberty and IP

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