SunnComm is now taking yet another position regarding Alex Halderman’s paper – that the paper is just “political activism masquerading as research”. (The quote comes from SunnComm president Peter Jacobs, responding to a question from Seth Finkelstein.) Jacobs had expressed the same sentiment earlier, on an investor discussion board, in this vitriolic message, which he apparently tried to retract later.
[I can’t resist pointing out how hilariously wrong Jacobs is when he says that nobody affiliated with the EFF has ever produced any digital content worth selling. There are many counterexamples, starting with the three founders of EFF (Mitch Kapor, John Perry Barlow, and John Gilmore) who all became rich and famous by producing copyrighted works.]
As far as I can tell, what Jacobs is arguing, essentially, is that even though Halderman’s paper does not make any political argument, the paper might affect the public policy debate about DRM. What I don’t understand is why that’s a bad thing. It seems to me that an accurate, truthful research report has more merit, rather than less, if its results are relevant to a public policy debate.
To put it another way, Halderman stands accused of relevance, which can be a dangerous tactic for an academic to follow.
