On the one hand, OtherMichael was playing an intellectually dishonest game of shifting from a discussion of principles to a specific historical example, rather than the general principle of abolition or human rights, singling out abolition in the US. More honest would have been to compare ending all DRM globally to ending all slavery globally, but then the game would have been up.
But it was a poorly chosen example. Historically abolition had an immediate impact across Europe, the Americas, and Africa which, granted, was only a bit more that 1/3 of the global population. But it wasnât isolated - over a fairly short time the effects of those events resonated in Asia. Korean abolition in the 1890s was motivated by the huge boost to the abolitionist movement that US abolition contributed to, and Chinese abolition shortly thereafter was similarly influenced. Abolition in US gave a massive boost to the abolitionist movement and its general global dissemination/progress.
Oh, we were discussing principles? I thought we were discussing things that could impact the lives of people (either a minority or a majority).
But it seems we were discussing things that would have no impact whatsoever, outside of Gedankenexperiments.
Well, then. Does somebody have the program? Iâve totally lost track of where the goalposts are. [Fumbles for his opera-glasses.] Oh, my! Theyâve moved that far, eh.
The Gedankenexperiment was global elimination of DRM (and freeing of all software) to consider the principle. The honest comparison would have been global elimination of slavery. I am sure it is hard for you to find the goalposts when you keep shifting them to the point that I donât get the sense you even can tell where they ever were. Given your misplaced/confused values, thatâs not so surprising.
yes, letâs please look at your original commentâ
if we restrict our discussions to only those things which would change the condition of life for the vast majority of humanity then we might as well close down boingboing and the majority of the internet, as well as the majority of all human discussions. do you really not see that it is the sweeping nature of your dismissal of the discussion that has driven @OtherMichael and myself to attempt to upbraid you? i could have understood it if you had dismissed the discussion as âfirst world problemsâ or something of that ilk but you have dismissed it in a way so as to dismiss virtually all conversation. someone, perhaps, is being shameless but i donât think itâs michael.
I was responding to @OtherMichaelâs equivocation regarding software license/IP related issues and actual human slavery. The example was only to illustrate the degree of difference and kind between fundamental human rights and software licensing issues and their relative human impact.
I havenât at any point told anyone they werenât permitted to say anything. I havenât intentionally made any suggestion that any topic of discussion should be dismissed or restricted for not being important enough. I was annoyed when that false claim came up, though I didnât want to get dragged into parsing @OtherMichaelâs stream of dishonest debate tactics since that would be a pointless waste of time since you canât have any meaningful discussion with someone whoâs apparently trying to âwinâ rather than have an honest discussion.
I discuss license/IP topics often enough since I work in the industry, and care about them, but I have no illusions that sorting out licensing/IP issues and working to try to correct some of our current problems in that domain are the moral equivalent of working to end literal human enslavement/human rights abuses, and I find that comparison to be horrifying. DRM, software license issues, and intellectual property issues are something I actually believe are very worthy of discussion, and certainly are important, but if in that discussion you suggest that limits on the way someone is allowed to use some class of intellectual property on a computer is the same class as slavery, then I am going to point out that thatâs a profoundly wrong-headed view grounded in a serious confusion of values which is what I was doing here.
it seems clear that you have misunderstood much of the discussion that has gone on between michael, yourself, and me. iâll try once more to clarify and then iâll let it go as this side-issue is becoming a drag on the discussion. you were sweepingly dismissive of the issues at hand ( . . . the vast majority of humanity . . .), michael made a series of equivalently sweeping statements in the fashion of a reductio ad absurdum to which you responded as if they were something other than what they wereâi.e. outrageous statements intended to demonstrate the sweeping breadth of your dismissiveness. his statements were sheer snark and my statements have been an attempt to clarify that fact for you. i encourage you to go back and reread the discussion with that insight.
For the record that was my first comment and was specifically tied to the difference between human rights and IP and the wrongness with suggesting equivalence, and brought the example up for only thing - to illustrate the core difference between human rights vs IP laws. I see that it was taken to somehow mean something like that, but that has nothing to do with what I meant or with what I actually said, which I tried to make clear at a few points in different ways. On the other hand OtherMichael actually was trivializing human rights abuses, which is really disturbing, and the only reason I was engaged in the discussion. Rereading the thread I think I should have stuck with bailing when I first tried since my actual point has been consistently ignored, while tangents, serious mischaracterizations of what I said, and @OtherMichaelâs shameless intellectual dishonesty (which I donât accuse you of at all) have persisted, so thatâs what Iâll do now. Take care.
But, we are not talking about the important things that you want us to talk about, and are instead talking about the unimportant things that you do not want us to talk about.
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And now youâre taking your toys and going home.
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Enjoy your âintellectually honestâ arguments at home, and do be sure to write!
