[free-sklyarov] Libertarian anti-DMCA is fantasy

[Seth Finkelstein]

Declan McCullagh wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 04:40:57PM -0400, Seth Finkelstein wrote:
> > > This is true. I'm not intimately familiar with the Libertarian Party,
> >
> >       Ahem.
> >
> > "In Defense of Libertarianism" by Declan McCullagh and Solveig Singleton
> > http://hotwired.com/synapse/feature/97/36/mccullagh4a_1.html
> 
> Right, and you can see other stuff I've written at cluebot.com,
> wired.com, politechbot.com, The New Republic, and many other
> sites. But being sympathetic to libertarian values is not the same as
> being a Libertarian Party member, which I am not and have not been,
> not that it is any of your business anyway.

	I think, while the statement may have been strictly true,
it left out a lot of background that a reader would have liked
to know in order to place it in context. After all, Feinstein
is not a member of the Socialist party either.

> Too many journalists in Washington suck up to the trade associations
> and DOJ and FBI and Congress -- look at the coverage of the DMCA in
> 1998-- I try to be a bit more independent.

	Err, sucking-up (to use *your* words) to other players in
Washington is not the same thing as independent.

> As for copyright, my views are still evolving. I think
> copyright-anarchist arguments (though only the thoughtful ones, like
> Tom Bell's) have something to be said for them. But I haven't thought
> through the economics and law enough to have a solid opinion about
> what I would want copyright law to look like if I were in charge.

	There's a deep problem here, of property. While you are
not obligated to think about it, that doesn't make the problem
go away.

> The rest of Seth's post is, typically, nonsense or otherwise not
> worth the time it takes to reply.

	Repeat, sneering at the problems of "What Is Property",
and that the key question here is how to define property-rights,
will not make it go away.

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  sethf at sethf.com  http://sethf.com
http://www10.nytimes.com/2001/07/19/technology/circuits/19HACK.html