It seems there may be a little in-fighting amongst those opposed to Hollywoods "we own everything" campaign.
http://torrentfreak.com/lessig-questions-pirate-party-existence-080308/At a preview of his new Change Congress project at the ETech conference, the Creative Commons founder responded to a question about the US Pirate Party, saying “I’m skeptical of the utility of something like the Pirate Party in the United States.” He went on to comment about the naming, referring to the ‘honest business fighting illegitimate thieves‘ battle that Hollywood portrays with “Call your party the Pirate Party, and you’ll reinforce that. The branding is not one that I would embrace here in the United States.”
Naturally, the Pirate Party of the US disagrees. “As a professor, he should know better than to advocate judging a book by it’s cover” says Andrew Norton, head of the US Pirate Party. “It’s also unusual that the man that fought Hollywood’s increase of copyright, should find fault with a party that only seeks to represent the general public, and what better title than the name that Hollywood is using for all citizens.” referring to a recent study,(pdf) which suggested that everyone violates copyright, and are thus pirates, every day.
I get the idea these guys are letting the Cartel get the better of them by making this sort of division public discussion material but I,m actually quite pleased they are at least doing things in public and not hiding even the trivia that comes with being public figures.
Let's hope through an exchange of reported rhetoric they can reach some commonly held ground and focus on whats important.
