Lessig publicly humiliates Andrew Keen
Then, when Keen got home, he blogged (!) about the incident saying that he'd crowd-sourced the question to his blog-readers who'd affirmed that, indeed, Lessig had done what he'd said. Though, of course, no references were forthcoming.
I asked Keen if he had ever read anything I had written. He said he had. I asked him to name one instance where I had ever "laud[ed] the appropriation of intellectual property." He sat silently. I pressed. He had no answer. He could name no instance of my "laud[ing] the appropriation of intellectual property" because that's not my schtick. Indeed, as I repeatedly insisted in Free Culture (see pages 10, 18, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 139, 255), what others call "piracy" I was emphatically not writing to defend. Indeed, I criticized it as "wrong."LinkNow whether mine is a sensible view or not, or a view consistent with the Free Culture Movement or not, is an argument had on this page many times. But the Keen-relevant point is that my claim was a claim about a fact. He alleges I "laud the appropriation of intellectual property." I claim I do not. That's a true/false claim. And so in the tradition of the professional truth-seeker, so threatened, Keen believes, by the wisdom-of-the-crowds Internet, one would think that the disagreement would be resolved by someone actually reading something, or at least providing some citation. No doubt it was unfair to call Keen out on stage. He didn't come with his notes. Why would I expect him to be able to identify anything in my work at all? But after the conference, perhaps. Maybe then Keen could defend the assertion that I flatly denied.
And indeed, he now has -- but the interesting (self-parody point) is how.
In a blog post, Keen again charges me with lauding the appropriation of intellectual property. But what's the source for his renewed charge? Did Keen go back to the books? Or back to his notes? Does he offer a quote, or a passage to exemplify this defining feature of my work?
No. The truth of this matter for Keen is resolved by asking a bunch of people at the conference whether in fact I "laud the appropriation of intellectual property." They said I did. And that resolves it for Keen.
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Doesn't that prove Keen's original point though? He "crowd-sourced" (puke) the question, and the crowd came up with a wrong answer.
It's not even far-fetched (Who? Lessig? Isn't he that commie leftist guy? He must love pirates. I'll vote "yes".)
Perhaps he's "crowd-sourced" his entire book?
Andrew Keen is a charlatan. Every time he repeats his assertions about the nature of publication on the Internet he assumes that it, like paper publishing, is a one way medium, because that is the one that he is safest in, in a situation in which no-one can challenge him or his arguments. As soon as he finds himself in a situation where someone can question him, he clams up, like in this case. Unfortunately, some people, particularily in the old fashioned one-way press, still regards him as relevant because he confirms the things that they believe. The Independent has given him a platform in which he sees every incident like Wikipedia's squabbles as proof that Teh Internets Am Bad. And funnily enough, he doesn't allow discussion of his articles on the online version. Funny that.
He's positioning himself as this decade's Cliff Stohl, I suppose.
Sad thing is that there is an argument to be made from the Keen side of things. Lanier did it better in his Edge post or NYTimes OpEd, looking at some of the limitations of our own wild speculation early on.
I think the important point - and the one so often missed in the Internet's often polar discussions - is that it's not a matter of yes/no good/bad, but rather what helps online collaboration work better, and what inhibits the process? What is this technology particularly good for, and what is it less good for?
I, for one, think it's less good for what Lessig is working on now (politics) that it was for what Lessig was working on before (creative commons). But that's another conversation.
The best point of this whole thing is what you said above - that Keen proved his point accidentally, by getting the crowd to produce the wrong answer. Again, though, this just shows how a poorly set-up interactive forum will lead to a poor answer.
Why didn't Lessig answer by telling him what he IS in fact promoting, instead of playing the "Prove It" card? What is he promoting? CC, the redistribution of wealth? Socialism...?
"Never argue with idiots: They'll drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience."
Or you could just google for "Arguing on the internet".
Thornae, how do you know that the other party is an idiot unless you engage them in a conversational arugument? How do you get to know what their argument is unless you allow it to take place? If someone fails to say anything, I take that as proof that they can't defend their stance.
There are many more things you can bust Keen on - like the factual inaccuracies in his book. He quotes statistics untethered from their historical background, so they look bad...until you investigate.
For example, he quotes a study from the late 90s that says, in a survey, 70% of college students admitted they cheated. He uses this as an example of how horrible the Internet is. He fails to mention a study done 30+ years previously in which 75% of students admitted cheating...which completely blows away his argument.
Then there are the flat-out lies. He says that over 50% of Chinese citizens were addicted to opium at the turn of the last century. I have found nothing that backs that up. The highest estimates are about 10%.
There are many more inaccuracies of this nature in his book. Perhaps I will give them to Mr. Lessig for the next time he is on a panel with Keen.
Then again, unlike Mr. Keen, I actually know how to research.
Keen v. Lessig. It isn't really a fair fight, Keen loses.
Video of the Legal Futures exchange between Lessig and Keen. Hal Varian, Google's chief economist snickers sitting on the right, seems to be enjoying the exchange. Keen = pwned: http://youtube.com/watch?v=1S6h4IXqcRs
OMG, I thought I recognized that name. I had him for Political Thinking at NU. He was this sort of judgmental third-rate Simon Cowell/Gordon Ramsey responsible for exposing us to a variety of ideologies while making little effort to hide his approval or disdain for any of them. He also told us that "teaching basically is a lazy profession".
Weird. I still have the book for that class, too.
So Keen "crowd-sourced" something, and the crowd came up with the wrong answer, well. . . why is he "crowd sourcing" at all, isn't that just more of his "cult of the amateur" sloppiness, asking a bunch of "non-experts" for proof? Of course it also says nothing of his sourcing methods-- he heard the answer he wanted, but out of how many different answers (how many agreed with Lessig, and did Keen only cite the answers he liked?)
While I admire Mr. Lessig's knowledge, intellect, and communications skills, I find his general viewpoint of supporting some form of so-called "intellectual property" to be counterproductive. Mr. Lessig is doomed to fail in his quests, if only because he has allowed his powerful opponents to create, change, and expand the landscape in which he pursues them.
Which is to say, the concept of intellectual property is indefensible from a populist viewpoint. Many years ago, various gangs of wealthy thugs got together and bribed or bullied governments into creating laws that protected their rackets with patents and copyrights. In order to rationalize these wholly superfluous laws, they hypothesized that such monopolies would foster innovation and creativity, and generally create value, all for the public good.
Whether or not this hypothesis was ever true, it is demonstrably false now. The legal mess we call patents has been shown to stifle innovation. The burgeoning monster we call copyright is suffocating public domain culture. Even trademarks, which ought to be a fairly straightforward way of protecting the public from fraud, have morphed into an excuse to extort anyone who dares utter a brand name in vain.
Intellectual property does far more harm than good. Despite Mr. Lessig's understandable sympathy for legal framework, he should be trying to tear out the roots of this monstrous weed, rather than just clipping its twigs into a more attractive pattern.
Wadda maroon.
"Which is to say, the concept of intellectual property is indefensible from a populist viewpoint."
Though it may well be justified from an ethical, rational and legal point of view...
For more on the wonders of Andrew Keen's stupidity, see Andrew Keen vs Emily Bell, where she does the same thing to him, over and over. It's quite joyous.
Listen to this: Playing with Keen is such a challenge...
http://www.melodiefabriek.nl/audio/mp3/media_me/Marco_Raaphorst_en_Bert_Kommerij_-_Keen.mp3
(music by Gurdonark, check http://ccmixter.org/files/gurdonark/5801)
#12, neither copyright nor patenting were founded upon the concept of property, so one has to accept the fallacy of "intellectual property" from today's power brokers in order to believe your argument.
You did hint at something important though: Keen got Lessig to accept the IP concept as the latter defended his reputation. So maybe Keen loses the battle but wins the war?
BShock (12), while your history of the creation of patents and copyrights is certainly picturesque, it has little or nothing to do with what actually happened. I've gotta say, though -- you do talk a good game.
oops, you've put your foot in it this time! Now i get to roll on my back, expose my scabby belly for a good scratch and lounge around drooling and farting while you do all the work of explaining the history of patents and copyrights in words of one half syllable. I love this place! It's like I don't have to study any more!
Listen to this: Playing with Lessig and a couple of quotes from Steal This Film II...
http://www.melodiefabriek.nl/audio/mp3/media_me/Marco_Raaphorst_en_Bert_Kommerij_-_Lessig.mp3
Well, I think it's very literalist to jam on the idea of trying to hunt "where Lessig lauds the appropriation of intellectual property".
The point is, he has created a cloud around himself that incites this very appropriation. His disciples and defenders right in threads like this show you that.
His concept that old white dead guys or governments with old white dead guys in them hang on to copyright too long is at root, an "expropriate the expropriators" Bolshevik concept. Of course, it's dressed up very skillfully.
The idea that Creative Commons helped save IP and helped people protect their livlihoods seems hugely overstated, untested, and very misleading. I've written how disappointing it was in Second Life, where Lessig was consulted and was enthusiastically cited constantly, and where he is absolutely nowhere to be found now that his supposed invention is floundering and everyone's content is copied readily in a streaming world where you can copy everything you can see, and where aggressive opensource and reverse engineer movements threaten all IP, even of Linden Lab itself.
What's more important than trying to play gotcha with a quote from Lessig that would pin down what seems like his subterranean Marxism -- where you can't win because he's always going to be more cunning and erudite than thou -- what has to be done as the social challenge to Lessig is to ask him where he is really defending IP that he claims he doesn't undermine.
That place, among others, is Second Life. Where is he now that his CC-type experiment failed and he can't do a thing about it technically, morally or legally? The argument isn't "oh, progress means you have to get over your attachment to property and make everything stone soup and opensourced consulting business models", the argument is: why didn't your IP scheme work? You said it would. It didn't.