Lessigblog [Tim Wu] on Barlow

http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/002088.shtml

Barlow

Whether you like him or he drives you nuts, John Perry Barlow is
incapable of being boring. From his interview with Reason, on reality TV,
intellectual propetry, and his decision to leave the Republican party:

"If all ideas have to be bought, then you have an intellectually
regressive system that will assure you have a highly knowledgeable elite
and an ignorant mass."

"I think he's [Kerry] been in the U.S. Senate long enough to have his
backbone dissolved. But I think Kerry will be somewhat better than Bush,
if for no other reason than he is not on the same side in the culture war.
Kerry's a Deadhead. He inhaled."

"I personally think intellectual property is an oxymoron. Physical
objects have a completely different natural economy than intellectual
goods. Its a tricky thing to try to own something that remains in your
possession even after you give it to many others."

"Trying to own intellectual products and creating an economy of
scarcity around them as we do with physical objects is very harmful to the
development of culture and the ability to speak freely, and a very
important principle not talked about much, which is the right to know."

"There are libertarian wings in both the Democratic and Republican
parties, and in the past I found it most effective to be inside the
Republican Party acting as a libertarian. But I've switched."

"I'm an optimist. In order to be libertarian, you have to be an
optimist. You have to have a benign view of human nature, to believe that
human beings left to their own devices are basically good. But Im not so
sure about human institutions."

posted by [ Tim Wu ] on [ Aug 14 04 at 9:32 AM ] to [ ] [ post
diffusion: 1 trackback + technorati ]

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