Marc's Voice

Come watch George Nemeth and myself debate these two old school dudes

George Nemeth and myself have been invited to debate the silly notion that copyright laws should be changed to “protect” old media.  Lordy lordy lordy.  Dec. 1st, noon.

Here’s a few of the issues I’ll bring up during the debate:

- the 4th estate doesn’t get any more special treatment, they’re “just” a business like everyone else

- Hollywood resisted the VCR when it first came out - and the DVD as well

- 85% of Italians claimed they would NEVER use a cell phone - in 1989

- instead of trying to game the laws, why doesn’t the Plain Dealer think of itself as a platform?

It was this very debate that drove me to create that post for Connie Schultz - back at the end of June this summer.

And BTW if you wanna know how I do in debates, why don’t you ask Dave Winer what happened when he and I debated at Stewart Alsop’s Agenda conference in 1988.  The theme was “should HyperCard be system software?”