On Tuesday, October 9, 2001, at 07:04 PM, Declan McCullagh wrote:
At 06:31 PM 10/9/01 -0700, David Honig wrote:
It would be better for Tim (etc) to do a writeup, post it, and point to it. Then others could find the original and compare reporters'
No, reporters will want to ask questions on the phone, or, more rarely, in person for audio or video taping. (There are many good reasons for this.) An essay by Tim isn't good enough for those reasons and also, frankly, for more parochial reasons of "exclusivity."
As the Deaf One used to say, "mega dittos." When I used to give some interviews, or answer questions, essentially none of those who interviewed me had ever bothered to read anything I had written prior to the interview. Every time I consent to an interview, I regret it. The most recent time was earlier this year for a French journalist doing a piece on Freenet, Napster, peer-to-peer, Gnutellla, and related technologies. He contacted me by e-mail and said he wanted to get my comments on the significance of these technologies. I agreed and made myself available for his phone call. He promised he would send me a copy of the French magazine the piece was to run in. Our interview lasted an hour. A frustrating hour, as he was not knowledgeable about crypto, anonymity, or political issues. "But wouldn't this interfere with police investigations?" The worst was yet to come. He sent me e-mail saying his tape machine had somehow not been running, or something along these lines, and could I please do the interview _again_. "Sigh." I stupidly made myself available a second time. It was much worse. Apparently the implications of crypto anarchy had sunk in, and he spent most of the 45 minutes or so debating me about what "chaos" would mean. Including the old chestnut about "what would happen to taxes? Who would help the poor?" I tried to tell him about market economies, the ubiquitousness of anarchies all around us, Hayek, Friedman, etc., but it was clear these were all things he had never thought about. (Sort of the way airheads like Cathy Young write for "Reason" without ever having thought about their alleged beliefs.) This second interview went nowhere, due to getting bogged down in his utter disbelief that anyone could advocate such "libertarian" ideas (I assume libertarian ideas have not taken root in France--they like the trappings of radicalism, but they are actually very bourgois.). I never received a copy from him of the magazine article, or any further e-mail communication, so I don't even know if it ever got published. I hear the magazine business is going into a steep dive this year, especially after 911. Apparently not a lot of people are shelling out real money to buy most of the thousand or so junky mags. ("Oracle 8i World, the magazine for Oracle 8i consumer-units," "Interior Southwestern Homes, the design magazine for pueblo reconstruction advertising," "Lesbigay Travel, the monthly for active lesbigays") If we can knock off "Reason" and "Wired," it'll have been a good year. --Tim May, Citizen-unit of of the once free United States " The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. "--Thomas Jefferson, 1787