Newsnight interviewed Dan Glickman (MPAA) and John Perry Barlow (EFF), to hear what they got to say about each other. It’s pretty amusing.
Barlow was the songwriter of “The Grateful Dead”, advising its fans to share. He’s also a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Here’s what Barlow has to say about the MPAA:
“These are aging industries run by aging men, and they’re up against 17-year-olds who have turned themselves into electronic Hezbollah because they resent the content industry for its proprietary practices.”
Barlow continues:
If I were to encounter Dan Glickman on the street and we were to have a civilised conversation about this subject, which would be a long shot, I’d tell him to relax.
I’d tell him to spend less of the resources of his industry on fighting the inevitable and more on learning about the conditions that they find themselves in and recognising the opportunities, which I think are vast and very encouraging. But they can’t get to those opportunities until they quit trying to stop progress.
He goes on:
“But you know the problem is – the bad news is that you’re up against a dedicated foe that is younger and smarter that you are and will be alive when you’re dead. You’re 55 years old and these kids are 17 and they’re just smarter than you. So you’re gonna lose that one.
But the good news is that you guys are mean sons of bitches and you’ve been figuring out ways of ripping off audiences and artists for centuries….. “
Read more, and Dan Glickmans comments over here.