Sunday, August 24, 2014

'Anarcho-Capitalist' Stefan Molyneux, Who Doesn't Support Copyright, Abuses DMCA To Silence Critic

 Mike Masnick at TechDirt comments:
I'm not one who gets tied up in particular philosophies or philosophical movements, so I have to first say that until someone on Twitter pointed this story out to me, I had no idea who Stefan Molyneux was. I was vaguely aware that there were folks supportive of anarcho-capitalism, but I tend to find people who identify too much with philosophies, rather than realities, a bit tiresome. Either way, Molyneux, who writes and speaks frequently about being against "state" violence and has spoken out about how he doesn't support intellectual property law, apparently chose to make use of the DMCA to take down a bunch of videos from "TruShibes" an account that apparently has mocked Molyneux and apparently hypocritical actions/statements he's made...

 Molyneux's position that the trolling/harassment was a problem is a perfectly reasonable argument to make. But YouTube has a process for dealing with harassment and cyberbullying, and it's not abusing federal copyright law to silence those videos. And, while it's unclear if FreeDomainDamon was actually bullying Molyneux's readers, from everything that people have been presenting online in various forums, it seems pretty clear that TruShibe was not doing that, but was merely critical of Molyneux. However, thanks to multiple copyright claims against TruShibe's YouTube account, the entire account has been taken down.

It does seem odd for someone who claims to be an anarchist and against "state violence" to then use copyright law to take down critical videos...

if you're going to go around claiming that you're against intellectual property and an "anarcho capitalist," it's going to look pretty sketchy when you use a federal law like copyright to censor someone else's speech that is critical of you.

11 comments:

  1. Justin Raimondo slammed him real hard early last week. He called him a "fascist" and a "huckster." Out of curiosity, I've tried to watch his videos a few times and can't make it past two minutes. It amazes me that there are actual libertarians who suffer through hour+ long videos of his. To me, he is a huckster much in the same vein as Glenn Beck or your megachurch preacher types. I used to work in mental health and all the patients who were clinically diagnosed narcissists were always charming individuals skilled in the art of bullshit. Guys like Beck and Molyneux are no different.

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    1. Stephan has introduced many people to libertarianism, even if he is inconsistent here and there. I wouldn't call him a 'huckster.'

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    2. JayS what is ironic here is that your sophistic attempt to slam Molyneux makes you guilty of that which you accuse him of. You throw around a bunch of degrading adjectives with absolutely zero content to support your claims. This = not an argument. Who is the huckster? If you managed to 'suffer' through more than your admitted threshold of two minutes of his videos you would be surprised to see that Molyneux goes above and beyond to provide reference to mountains of research and evidence to support his claims.

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    3. Ryan, please read this Guardian article exposing him in 2008: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/15/family-relationships-fdr-defoo-cult
      And there a multiple stories similiar to this. He has destroyed families with his psychobabble that people need to cut themselves off from their parents.
      I also suggest you check out: www.molyneuxrevealed.com and www.fdrliberated.com

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  2. Joe rogan confronted Stefan about this on his podcast, Stefan claims that the guy, TruShribes (I guess), used to work for him or FDR and was creeping on Stefan's callers. Stefan claims the guy was cyber stalkining people. Idk, I really don't care enough to look into it, but Stefan is somewhat inconsistent in his libertarianism. RW really slapped him around on his show, and now, after seeing more of Stefan, I can see it was justified.

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  3. It looks like to me that Stefan was just using DMCA to take down the bullying videos because it was the fastest and easiest way to do it. Big mistake but I dont think this invalidates everything he stands for which is total freedom from govt. Dont throw him under the bus for a little transgression. We need him.

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  4. Get him on the RW show and call him out on it. He seems a fairly principled libertarian. Hash out your disagreements.

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  5. BTW, this argument that Molyneux shouldn't use the DMCA process to get the troll bully off his site would be similar to the one where Ron Paul called for no govt spending but then lobbies to get cash for his district, e.g. "aggression has been initiated already...we're just playing the game."

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    Replies
    1. An imperfect, though interesting, metaphor. DMCA was just easy.

      SM is still an unbalanced troll.

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    2. Metaphor-comparison. I deleted a bunch of extraneous language but left the main offender intact!

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  6. He's a total bastard. Disinformer, pretentious, not at all that intelligent, and a Fascist no doubt.

    His followers are like right-wing Scientologist for the most part. Very narrow minded, absolutely bigoted, racist, xenophobic, hardly literate sheep who pend by every word he says.

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