Talking to the Press Considered Harmful

[Tim May]

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