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Jeffrey Langstraat

Terminally single queer academic foodie in love with his cat. ... and a proud member for 2 years 48 weeks

My Latest Post:

It's time to retire to the study

I've spent the weekend working on my dissertation proposal...put it to bed a while ago, just in time for the Oscars (Matt Dillon is still yummy). I'm turning it in for a fellowship tomorrow. The weekend started with me thinking I'd just clean up the draft I was working with, but noooooooo. I had to tear it apart and write a whole different proposal...48 pages later and I'm a bit tired. That brings me to the point of this post. Over the past couple months, I've had an increasingly difficult time maintaining a consistent blogging schedule. I've been teaching a full load (nothing unusual with that) but also devoting more time to completing my academic work (I've been recovering academically from a depressive crisis I went through a few years ago. Finally caught up.) The past couple weeks in particular (in addition to the proposal, I cranked out a 27-page paper last weekend, graded 90 papers, and taught several classes. Something's got to give, and that something is blogging. If I'm going to finish this dissertation in the next year, I'm going to minimize my other commitments (I think that also means I'm going to miss my New Year's Resolution of dating more...but I've still got almost 10 months, so it's not dead yet.)

My Recent Comments:

1. We don't call it Northworst for nothing... (on Northwest Airlines must go to seed)
2. I'm so sorry... (on Lydia, our little red-haired angel, is gone)
3. For crying out loud... (on The Embarassment in Chief)
4. Aw, the poor English... (on Four years of Italians gloating? Noooooooooo!)
5. Zidane fucked up... (on Four years of Italians gloating? Noooooooooo!)
6. AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!... (on Are you feeling the Mundial yet?)
7. My family... (on Immigration and Historical Honesty: We become what our ancestors had to overcome)
8. Yeah... (on Feingold Kicks Specter in the Nuts)
9. Apparently... (on Feingold Kicks Specter in the Nuts)
10. I think it is... (on What is white supremacy?)

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Words to live by

So the recent struggles about network neutrality have led me to recognize something I hadn't quite seen before. And that something in turn makes more puzzling the debates that have been raised around network neutrality. The something to recognize is that in a fundamental sense, fair use (FU) and network neutrality (NN) are the same thing. They are both state enforced limits on the property rights of others. In both cases, the limits are slight --the vast range of uses granted a copyright holder are only slightly restricted by FU; the vast range of uses allowed a network owner are only slightly restricted by NN. And in both cases, the line defining the limits is uncertain. But in both cases, those who support each say that the limits imposed on the property right are necessary for some important social end (admittedly, different in each case), and that the costs of enforcing those limits are outweighed by the benefits of protecting that social end. So from this perspective, it is easy to understand those who reject FU and NN (who are they?). And it is easy to understand those who embrace FU and NN. What gets difficult is understanding those who embrace one while rejecting the other --at least when that rejection is articulated in terms of "government regulation".

—

Lawrence Lessig