The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Stuart Houghton:

Maybe a more constructive way for us to look at this is to recognise that we aren't limited to either making fun Bill Gates' remarks or reframing the debate. We can do both and, to be honest, I think we need to do both.

The right have got a lot of mileage out of mocking political correctness, while at the same time depicting it as ideologically unsound and even dangerous. Can't the copyfighters use the same two pronged attack?

Why cede that argument, even as a joke?

Umm.. because if things are at the point where someone can't make a joke without their entire viewpoint being hopelessly devalued then they are so far from winning the argument that they may as well quit now?

I dunno. I am typing this in the offices of a cosy liberal NGO in London - are things really that insane, politically, on your side of the pond?

News Flash... BoingBoing readership not solely composed of the irony-impaired... MPEG at eleven!

I think I see your point, but it does rely on a few premises that may prove to be false:

1) The majority of people who care about these issues are likely to see one of Xeni's parodies and be so outraged at the Red Menace that they will lobby their representatives to smite the godless CreativeCommunists.

2) The kind of people who are opposed to the Creative Commons are regular BoingBoing readers.

3) The word 'Communism' still has the power to chill people to their very core. Even in Bush II's America, is this still the case? Now, if Bill had compared intellectual property reformers to Liberals then maybe we should start worrying...

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