Tech Throwdown

Julian Sanchez | January 29, 2004

Lawrence Lessig is on the right side of this little spat with Cato's Adam Thierer—and arguably the more libertarian side to boot. So it's a shame he resorts to a particularly vulgar version of the argumentum ad funderam in the course of making his points. This part makes no sense: As Lessig himself notes, Cato folk have been on the other side of copyright questions before, and I'm pretty sure opposing the Iraq war was a bigger net risk to funding than supporting spectrum commons would be. Attacking people's motives is the desperate tactic of those who don't have the arguments on their side; here it serves as a toxic sprig of parsley on an otherwise well-crafted meal.