Re: Support RMS

[Aaron Wolf]

On 2021-03-27 2:27 p.m., quiliro wrote:
> Aaron Wolf <wolftune@riseup.net> writes:
> 
> 
>> Don't just look for the flaws. Ask: how is the Snowden analogy *useful*?
> 
> I'll take the bait.  How is it?  How is attacking an old activist from the
> safety of distance comparable to risking our lives?
> 

I'd like to wrap things up and let the list relax and get back to other
things.

I'll try to briefly clarify.

The utility of the analogy has nothing to do with the level of risk. The
utility is about whether critics are *insiders*. Both Snowden and people
like Deb Nicholson are *insiders* with lengthy experience working day to
day with and within the organizations they are criticizing. And the
dynamic I was emphasizing was whether the orgs and the orgs' defenders
*attack* the critic or whether they focus on making sure they are
hearing the concerns with an open perspective in order to learn all they
can from them.

The whole point of analogies like this is to help get a starting point
where we can all agree (Snowden is a hero, the attacks on him are
unfounded, the NSA and its defenders are more interested in making the
conversation about him and criticizing him, they don't want to talk
about the issues he revealed). Then, from that point we can *ask* and
discuss where the analogy fits and where it doesn't. **Obviously** this
is not a simple near-identical situation, a list of the *differences*
would be thousands of points. The purpose of the analogy is to simply
say, "don't fall into criticizing Deb or others in order to refuse to
engage with the concerns they are bringing up, start with the
presumption that there are real concerns and try to figure out the
details." If efforts to understand the concerns come up short, that's
the best evidence that the complaints were unfair. Much better evidence
than attacking the witnesses.

I'm not saying questions about the sources are unfair. Someone saying
what Snowden said but with no credentials, no experience or connection,
that would be more suspicious. And the critics of RMS who had no
experience or understanding of him were all basically unfair and not
compelling.

So, the point of the analogy is that Deb isn't some superficial outside
critic, she's as intimately knowledgeable and experienced with RMS and
his issues as Snowden was with the NSA.

Beyond these points which are the reason for the analogy, the rest of
the analogy falls apart, and that's entirely uninteresting and takes
nothing away from the main point.

When Nina Paley brings up the analogy between slavery and intellectual
property in https://questioncopyright.org/redefining-property she is NOT
saying that her argument rests on concluding that intellectual property
*is* slavery. Attacking her arguments by pointing out the differences
between slavery and intellectual property is to completely miss the point.