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beautifulduckweedPeople have bitched before that the comments at Smart Bitches can get mobby and shouty and awful when you hold an unpopular opinion. I haven't been at the receiving end too often, largely because, well, I'm one of the owners. However, I'm certainly getting it from all fronts this time, in a recent discussion about illegal downloading.
Despite all that, I'm not fazed by the loud disagreement. Some people are irritating me with their black-or-white attitudes, and others are getting on my tits because they're attempting to drag plagiarism into the issue ("If you think downloading books occasionally is OK, you must WANT TO MAKE THINGS EASIER FOR PLAGIARISTS, because some of those books are in .doc format, which makes things easy to copy and paste!" Oh for chrissakes. Here, let me hand you a tub of KY so you can lubricate that slope even more.) By and large, though, the discussion, while noisy and occasionally barbed, has addressed issues and not made personal attacks, and I'm OK with noisy dissent. I just wish more people brought up issues that actually made me pause and think, instead of sweeping statements about dirty thiefses, precioussss. They have a point if you come from a certain ethical standpoint (some people honestly don't see the difference between, say, Ken Lay and a shoplifter--a thief is a thief is a thief), but there's really no fruitful debate when you take that position and hold on for your life. And there really IS nothing to debate for them, of course. It's wrong. That's it, and that's all. But there's so much juicy stuff! The nature of intellectual property, the state of copyright law, and DRM (god, DRM alone would be FASCINATING debate material), the nature of "sharing" electronic files, etc.
I'm enjoying myself a whole lot, reading the comments and attempting to clarify my positions, but a) it's throwing me off course in my homework and The Book, and b) I'm unable to do any of the issues justice, because I don't have enough time to formulate thoughtful, reasoned replies--I'm mostly writing slapdash things that float to the surface of my brainmeats.
Unrelatedly: I have a long, long post about magic and science and teaching both to kids and how they're not even remotely mutually exclusive. Maybe I'll allow myself to write it out if I'm good tomorrow and get the necessary amount of work done.
Despite all that, I'm not fazed by the loud disagreement. Some people are irritating me with their black-or-white attitudes, and others are getting on my tits because they're attempting to drag plagiarism into the issue ("If you think downloading books occasionally is OK, you must WANT TO MAKE THINGS EASIER FOR PLAGIARISTS, because some of those books are in .doc format, which makes things easy to copy and paste!" Oh for chrissakes. Here, let me hand you a tub of KY so you can lubricate that slope even more.) By and large, though, the discussion, while noisy and occasionally barbed, has addressed issues and not made personal attacks, and I'm OK with noisy dissent. I just wish more people brought up issues that actually made me pause and think, instead of sweeping statements about dirty thiefses, precioussss. They have a point if you come from a certain ethical standpoint (some people honestly don't see the difference between, say, Ken Lay and a shoplifter--a thief is a thief is a thief), but there's really no fruitful debate when you take that position and hold on for your life. And there really IS nothing to debate for them, of course. It's wrong. That's it, and that's all. But there's so much juicy stuff! The nature of intellectual property, the state of copyright law, and DRM (god, DRM alone would be FASCINATING debate material), the nature of "sharing" electronic files, etc.
I'm enjoying myself a whole lot, reading the comments and attempting to clarify my positions, but a) it's throwing me off course in my homework and The Book, and b) I'm unable to do any of the issues justice, because I don't have enough time to formulate thoughtful, reasoned replies--I'm mostly writing slapdash things that float to the surface of my brainmeats.
Unrelatedly: I have a long, long post about magic and science and teaching both to kids and how they're not even remotely mutually exclusive. Maybe I'll allow myself to write it out if I'm good tomorrow and get the necessary amount of work done.
