Musician Don Henley (of The Eagles) doesn't like the Internet very much. He personally signed onto an amicus brief in the Viacom v. YouTube case supporting Viacom's attempt to shut down YouTube and similar user-generated content services.
Henley has now published an op-ed piece in USA Today setting forth his views, including his support for a very flawed piece of legislation. While he is entitled to his opinion, some of his rhetoric goes a little overboard. For example, Henley says that "Critics of this pending legislation need to be honest about the company they keep and why they essentially aid and abet these criminal endeavors." He includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Google in that group.
Brad Templeton, one of EFF's directors, published a response to Henley's diatribe. Here's the best part:
Take it Easy, Don. There’s a New Kid in Town, and it’s called the Internet. Get Over It. I Can’t Tell you Why, but in The Long Run, there isn’t going to be a Heartache Tonight. One of these Nights I hope you’ll you understand that for search engines to Take it To the Limit, they can’t be forced to police every search result.
Internet companies only grow when living Life in the Fast Lane, able to operate, innovate and design products without needing to check for permission from the music industry. If every time you wrote a song you had to worry about what every user who plays it and every store that sells it might do with it, you would lose your Peaceful, Easy Feeling quickly. Big companies might run filters, but if the small ones had needed to they would be Already Gone.
The Best of My Love,
Brad Templeton, EFF
Heh. (Click here if you don't follow some of the italicized references.) If USA Today publishes EFF's expected formal response to Henley's op-ed, I'll update this post to link to it. Here's Techdirt's discussion of Henley's article.
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