When Even The Strongest Copyright Defenders Recognize That SOPA Goes Too Far...

from the perhaps-it's-gone-too-far? dept

I've been a big fan of much of Adam Thierer's work in the past on issues like the importance of Section 230 safe harbors, free speech rights, regulating video games and a number of other things. But one area that I've disagreed with him on is copyright. While he hasn't been that vocal on copyright personally, the now-defunct Progress & Freedom Foundation, which Adam used to run, became somewhat infamous for its highly questionable attacks on those who argued for bringing copyright law more in line with its Constitutional moorings.

So, it's interesting to see that Adam, even as he complains that many of the critics of SOPA appear to just be "apologists for the ugly free-riding and mass piracy that is all too real on the Internet today," still does not feel at all comfortable with SOPA:

We are now witnessing copyright’s last stand with large content interests proposing something akin to the nuclear option of enforcement: mucking with the underlying architecture of the Internet. In an attempt to tackle offshore pirate sites and other “rogue” services, SOPA would require online operators to block services at the domain name system level and search engines would need to take steps to prevent such services from even being found in organic search results. Payment processors and ad networkers would also be roped into this enforcement scheme in an attempt to block the flow of funds to sites that supposedly facilitate copyright infringement. SOPA critics fear this could chill a great deal of legitimate speech on social media sites where incidental or accidental infringement could take place.

Regardless, no amount of intermediary deputization or meddling with the DNS or extraterritorial enforcement efforts will likely get this problem under control. This cat-and-mouse game is being played on a scale, and at a speed, that is unprecedented and growing.

At the end of his column, he notes that even if the consequences of a failing copyright system are damaging for artists and consumers, "that doesn’t justify a ‘by-any-means-necessary’ approach to enforcement."

There's an important point that gets lost in a lot of this debate. Even those who love copyright and think it's necessary and wonderful should be worried about the extremes of PIPA and SOPA. There are ways to deal with the challenges faced by those who rely on copyright today that don't involve putting massive new regulations on the internet. Unfortunately the backers of SOPA and PIPA don't want to consider any such options, instead using this "nuclear option," with tremendous consequences to how the rest of the internet will work.

Filed Under: adam thierer, internet regulation, sopa

The Day The WSJ Attributed My Quote To Someone Else

from the corrections... dept

Late Sunday night, I got an email from L. Gordon Crovitz, the former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, saying that he had an apology he wished to offer, as he had misattributed a quote of mine in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece about Europe's attempt to create a "right to forget." He took a quote from my Techdirt blog post on the subject from earlier this month, but accidentally attributed it to Adam Thierer of the Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF). The writeup was doubly incorrect, as not only was the quote not Thierer's but PFF shut down at the end of September. You can see a screenshot here (since the actual article is behind the WSJ's infamous paywall): You can see a larger image that shows the quote in context if you'd like. Now, let me be clear: I don't think this is that big of a deal, and I told Crovitz exactly that in an email response (I also told that to Thierer, who had emailed me separately to make me aware of this and to note that he had not "plagiarized" from me). Mistakes happen. We all make them at times -- and I probably make more of them than others.

What interested me, however, is how the WSJ would respond. Crovitz told me that the paper version had already gone out, but that he had asked the Journal to fix the web version. So I watched during the course of the day to see if it happened. As of me writing this, it still attributes the quote to Thierer. Around noon on Monday, I had some fun and tweeted that the WSJ had quoted me, but attributed my quote to someone else. Following that tweet, Priya Ganapati, an editor at the WSJ tweeted back asking which story. I pointed it out, but didn't hear anything back. As I said, as of this posting, the story still has not been updated.

Again, this really is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. The quote was nothing special. I've been quoted in the WSJ before and perhaps I'll be quoted in the future (well, perhaps not after this post!). Three things, however, struck me as interesting about this: (1) how much time it appears to take to get the WSJ to correct such things and (2) how people likely would have reacted if this had gone in the opposite direction and (3) why "links" are a good thing.

Imagine if I had misquoted a story in the WSJ on Techdirt. Within minutes, I can assure you, our comments would be full of people pointing it out (and probably accusing me of purposely misleading people). And, hopefully, soon after that, I would have corrected the mistake and apologized for it. And, that's what I consider to be a good thing: as I said, I make mistakes. Plenty of them. But the community here makes for pretty damn good fact checkers, and they work hard at keeping me honest. It's something I appreciate. One commenter, Ryan Radia, did mention the mistake in his own comment on the WSJ article, but I believe it was after my tweet (Ryan follows me on Twitter). But there has been no response to that comment as of me writing this.

Finally, this highlights the value of links. While not possible in the paper version, it would have been quite easy for the Wall Street Journal to link to my blog post where I made that quote, which would have made it clear for anyone who clicked the link to see who actually wrote the story. Of course, that would require admitting that the quote had simply been pulled from a blog, and the article at least leaves the impression that Crovitz spoke with Thierer to get the quote.

Now, of course, the WSJ is a big newspaper with lots of busy people doing things more important than getting a misattributed quote fixed. But in an era when we keep hearing how important the big legacy press is, and how bloggers have some sort of "lower standards" when it comes to their own efforts, it strikes me that this is an example of where that's simply not true. We both might have made that mistake, but it's likely that I would have first linked to the source material in question and would likely (I hope!) have been faster to correct it. This isn't to say that blogs are "better," but to challenge the idea that the big newspapers automatically have higher standards on these sorts of things.

Filed Under: adam thierer, corrections, fact checking, gordon crovitz, journalism, misquote
Companies: wall street journal