Re:Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone
by chris_wot on Saturday April 30, 2016 @11:18AM
(#11602016)
Well, I'm glad to see I was wrong :-) thank you. It's just you seemed to compare my, uh, rhetoric to what the "populists and muckrackers" of the 1900s were saying. Though in certain company I guess that could be considered high praise, I'm not sure I was too fond of the comparison...
My intent was to say that 100 years ago people would have said that the muckrakers and populists pushed for a level of "openness and transparency" which had never before been seen. I don't see how that is coupled to your character.
In the 1970s, after the Watergate hearings and the new FOIA and Sunshine laws, people again could have, and likely did, say that it was also a level of openness and transparency which had never before been seen.
Your essential argument seems to be "things are different now so throw out the old". But things always change, so that argument is always true, and can be therefore be used to justify anything.
I do argue against the meaningfulness of your comments, given the judgement in Eldred, and given the last 250 years of incessant technological change. I also think you, like many, see the near history with a much better focus than the further past. But that is not a character flaw.