As for the technological argument, why should digital, as opposed to analog, communication require "random listening"?
Wittes' colleague Paul Rosenzweig, of the Lawfare Institute, was similarly skeptical, finding the technological argument for dismissing Smith "rather unpersuasive".
We saw the pan-technological argument raised in favor of tutorials by television decades ago (remember "Sunrise Semester"?).
His brief is being filed at the request of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who asked Mr. Lessig to assess the technological "tying" arguments in the case.
The record got away from him, upending his assumptions and making him yet another name in the long and controversial history of sampling: a bewildering grey area shaped by legal confusion, financial necessity, technological advances, arguments over artistic freedom, and old-fashioned seat-of-the-pants chutzpah.
But others are still weighing the technological and financial arguments from both groups.
In doing so, he systematically demolished every technological and economic argument advanced by the automobile industry as to why it cannot significantly improve automobile efficiency.
The argument is that those who build technology or technological systems do not concern themselves with (technological) artefacts alone, but must also consider the way in which the artefacts relate to social, economic, political and scientific factors.
Boot's book is no argument for technological determinism.
I actually had a conversation with an EFF lawyer back during CES, and he pretty much said just that: you could walk into a courtroom with a rock-solid case, but if the judge doesn't understand the technological details of your argument you might as well be speaking Aramaic.
