Lessig Questions Pirate Party’s Existence
At a preview of his new ‘Change Congress’ project, the Stanford professor took a swipe at the Pirate Party of the United States. Whilst expressing skepticism about it’s utility, his main criticism seemed to be the name.
Lawrence Lessig appears to be in and out of the tech news recently - the will-he-won’t-he run for Congress, has caused a storm of blog-posts this last month alone. Having declined to run on the democratic party ticket, he has now started criticizing other parties.
At a preview of his new Change Congress project at the ETech conference, the Creative Commons founder responded to a question about the US Pirate Party, saying “I’m skeptical of the utility of something like the Pirate Party in the United States.” He went on to comment about the naming, referring to the ‘honest business fighting illegitimate thieves‘ battle that Hollywood portrays with “Call your party the Pirate Party, and you’ll reinforce that. The branding is not one that I would embrace here in the United States.”
Naturally, the Pirate Party of the US disagrees. “As a professor, he should know better than to advocate judging a book by it’s cover” says Andrew Norton, head of the US Pirate Party. “It’s also unusual that the man that fought Hollywood’s increase of copyright, should find fault with a party that only seeks to represent the general public, and what better title than the name that Hollywood is using for all citizens.” referring to a recent study,(pdf) which suggested that everyone violates copyright, and are thus pirates, every day.
“It may, however, be that he feels since we are called ‘The Pirate Party’, that at some point we may advocate Piracy, or at least copyright infringement. We do not, and will not, promote the breaking of any law, criminal or civil,” added Norton. “We, like Prof. Lessig, stand squarely behind the political process, and hope that people will use their ability to vote, to vote for the candidates they want, rather than the so-called ‘tactical voting’ which has turned current US politics into the sham it is. In this, we are willing and eager to work with the Change Congress campaign in any way we can.”
These sentiments regarding the political process in the US have suddenly come to a head, with Independent Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader condemning the current political setup. On an appearance on the hugely popular Daily Show Tuesday, he commented “The two parties have shut out the people in Washington. It’s corporate occupied territory.”
He later went on to comment about how the two parties have rigged things so it’s hard for any other party to even get on the ballot, which the Pirate Party knows only too well. “Many states bury their party registration requirements in vast amounts of legalese,” says Norton. “Other states don’t publish it clearly, and don’t respond to requests for information on it. Government is supposed to exist for the benefit of the people, but right now, it’s benefiting the lawyers, and those that can pay for them.”
Can Lessig really ‘Change Congress’? It all depends if he will see past names, to the actual issues they hide.
Previously: BitTorrent Throttling Company Sandvine Sees Sales Down 88%
Next: Diferior, an Easy to Use BitTorrent CMS
43 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
Pages: « 1 [2] Show All
If Americans are really such air heads, they should call themselves Free-iPod-Party and they would run for president before they had realized it.
There has never been a Nigga Party, has there? So maybe Lessing has a point or maybe he hasn’t.
The great problem of the US, and thus the rest of the world, is the lack of equal representation in the US political system.
Could someone please explain the difference between an illegitimate pirate and a legit one?
Fuck the pirate party and all parties, fuck all the laws
DO NOT VOTE AT ALL, ACT INSTEAD OF LETTING YOUR LIFE INTO THE HAND OF CROOK POLITICIANS
@ 28
There is none.
It’s even so, that my country is once liberated from the spanish by pirates.
It’s like the word terrorist.
One’s terrorist, is someone else his freedom fighter.
I propose the name change to the Free Culture Party or The Peer Party.
Lesslig’s point was that people *WILL* judge the book by its cover, like it or not. So calling yourself this is shooting yourself in the foot, politically.
I ageee. We shouldn’t call ourselves “pirates”, at least officially. I don’t care about branding but such name supports the wrong idea of filesharing being something illegal, while actually it’s a natural phenomenon, an expression of a very basic freedom - freedom of information.
Downloading isn’t stealing.
Should be the Robbin Hood Party.
As someone asked “Could someone please explain the difference between an illegitimate pirate and a legit one?”
A bad pirate is like a thief. A good pirate is like Robbin Hood.
Quoting the article….
[quote]He went on to comment about the naming, referring to the ‘honest business fighting illegitimate thieves‘ battle that Hollywood portrays with “Call your party the Pirate Party, and you’ll reinforce that. The branding is not one that I would embrace here in the United States.”
Naturally, the Pirate Party of the US disagrees. “As a professor, he should know better than to advocate judging a book by it’s cover” says Andrew Norton, head of the US Pirate Party.[/quote]
Andrew, stop downloading movies and learn to read. Lessig wasn’t judging the book, he was judging the cover.
I think Ralph Nader died about 20 years ago.
Ever since then, he’s just a Elvis-like Super-imposed video. Using green-screen technology, he appears every 4 or 8 years on current-events programming.
The tell-tale sign is that repeats the same stuff over and over. The whole conspiracy is carefully Republican controlled. They march him out just enough to split the democrats’ votes, but not enough to actually win — lest the public learn that he’s not alive.
From the article: “As a professor, he should know better than to advocate judging a book by it’s cover” says Andrew Norton.
Mr. Norton should’ve paid more attention in school. In criticizing the party’s name, Lessig is not judging the “book” (i.e. the party’s platform) by its “cover” (i.e. its name). He’s simply pointing out that the name will hurt them. Stating that says nothing about the worth of the party’s platform.
Also from the article: “It’s also unusual that the man that fought Hollywood’s increase of copyright, should find fault with a party that only seeks to represent the general public”.
Mr. Norton seems to be under the impression that if one agrees with one aspect of a political party one must agree with all aspects of it and never criticize it. I guess in addition to the class that discussed proverbs, he missed the one that talked about logical fallacies too.
I have a question for him though: if you really believe in what your party stands for and wants to achieve then do you really think it makes sense to lob baseless criticisms at one of the most experienced and most respected copyright analysts in the country just because he criticized your party’s *name*? Based on that, I’m tempted to go further than Lessig and wonder whether it’s not only the name that’s problematic. Even if the contents of the book are okay, there definitely seems to be some issues with its author.
The use of ‘pirate’ is a linguistic reclamation that pirates have made and so I am personally completely for its use by political parties all over the world.
lots and lots of very interesting content Ben, thanks
Ben, what you gonna do you brainy bro? :-D
no brother is gonna attempt to repeat your intelligent but convoluted dissertation articulation of nomenclature in media “hey girl listen up! Ben says pirate per se does not mean pirate de jure because it is a faux nome parody par excellence! i am member of the priate party but i am not a software prirate but i AM a pirate a romatic revolutionary figure of fiction! *sob*”
Ben wake up dude you gonna be great one day and i hope in time to lend an assist to the cause here in hand
if argument is won by explanation of facts there us no need to argue
For those interested, I grabbed a video of the whole answer at the conference.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fCyaF-Umod0
Lessig is a person who sells activism as academia. If he would abide to academic professionalism he would need to stop,
Lessig has also not the slightest clue about campaigning and believes in corruption. So better leave advocacy to the professionals.
1 references to this post
Pages: « 1 [2] Show All
Add your response