YOU DON’T VOTE REPUBLICAN. YR ARGUMENT IS INVALID.

ITEM: The Republican Party of Wisconsin makes an open records request for the emails of a University of Wisconsin professor of history, geography and environmental studies in an apparent response to a blog post the professor wrote about a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Which, as it happens, is a private, secretive conservative group founded in 1973 for the purpose of drafting "model bills" that conservative legislators can introduce in all 50 states. Like the one in Wisconsin that takes away collective bargaining rights for public employees. And the immigration bill in Arizona.

Cronon – who did some digging on the origins of the Wisconsin union bill in part because he didn’t seriously believe the whole thing was David Koch’s idea – wrote that ALEC seemed like a good place for historians, students and anyone else to start if they want a better understanding of how certain laws come into existence – and also want to start a discussion over whether it's good for a secretive interest group to be cooking them up.

So naturally, the Republican Party of Wisconsin now wants to see Cronon’s emails.

You can read Cronon’s thoughts on it here, which I recommend if only because it covers all the bases (including the important “The fact that I have nothing to hide is beside the point” defense, because I tire of politicians who trot out the old “If yr innocent, why not tell us everything” line). The GOP’s take is here, though it’s basically a lot of “we have every legal right to do this, so why do Professor Cronon and the Liberal Media want to take away our legal right to hold govt accountable blah bah blah.”

Oh, and supposedly there’s a University rule prohibiting employees from using the university email system “to support the nomination of any person for political office or to influence a vote in any election or referendum.”

So I guess the GOP is hoping to prove that there’s no connection between ALEC and the union bill by proving that Cronon uses his university position to support Democrats. Therefore his argument is invalid. Or something.

The term “McCarthyism” will get thrown around a lot as this story develops. The difference here is that McCarthy and his ilk at least had a specific accusation in mind (yr a Commie), whereas in this case it’s more like “Whatever we can find to embarrass this fucker”.

Either way, that’s why I figure Cronon must be on to something. If someone writes a critical article about you and yr first (and so far only) response is to run a background check on the author, you have no counter-argument. You lose.

Then again, it’s not like the Wisconsin GOP was ever interested in debating the opposition on the merits of its proposals. Why bother when you have enough votes? That’s the whole point of democracy.

These days, I mean.

On the bright side, Salon makes a good point – you can thank the Wisconsin GOP for giving Cronon and his ALEC piece a far bigger audience than it ever would have had otherwise.

Works every time.

BONUS TRACK: See also Cronon’s op-ed on how the Wisconsin GOP union bill takes away what the Wisconsin GOP  historically once approved.

Nothing to hide,

This is dF

HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC, PART 178,562

A couple of interesting developments on the War On Gawdamn Freeloading Music Fans Who Will Burn For Their Crimes Filesharing:

1. Research firm NPD Group says that the number of Internet users that illegally download MP3s from peer-to-peer services has dropped 30% since Limewire – the biggest P2P service in the last few years – shut down. Inference: shutting down P2P sites reduces piracy.

Just one problem, says Copyfight’s Alan Wexelblat: that 30% figure covers figures from Q4 2007 to Q4 2010. Limewire only shut down in October last year. Which means Limewire’s shutdown alone couldn't possibly account for that drop. 

Meanwhile TorrentFreak asks: If it's true that "music piracy" has dropped 30%, has there been a concomitant rise in music sales? And if there wasn't one, does that mean the music industry is wrong that "piracy" is the cause of its financial decline?

2. A new report, funded by Canada and by the Ford Foundation, debunks frequent claims by movie studios, video game publishers, and business software developers that music piracy is mostly run by organized crime and terrorists because it’s easy money and so lucrative that pirated DVDs are worth more than cocaine.

Turns out they’re not:

Piracy made money back when optical disc stampers were scarce and expensive; it became less lucrative when CD and DVD burners became commodity items. Today, under pressure from P2P distribution, optical disc piracy in wealthy countries is "all but eliminated" and profit margins elsewhere are slim.

"Increasingly, commercial pirates face the same dilemma as the legal industry," says the report, "how to compete with free."

A hard dollar,

This is dF