FC: Scientific American assails prof who attacked enviro-article

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Wed Mar 06 2002 - 20:59:39 PST

  • Next message: Declan McCullagh: "FC: Sweden weighs law controlling employees' electronic privacy"

    Bjørn Lomborg is, according to his website, an associate professor of 
    statistics in the Department of Politital Science at the University of Aarhus:
    http://www.ps.au.dk/vip/lomborg/biograph.htm
    
    An (admittedly ill-formatted) mirror:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:kTuhJRr1b-kC:www.ps.au.dk/vip/lomborg/html/files/ScientificAmerican%2BBL.pdf+lomborg.org+%22scientific+american%22+pdf&hl=en
    
    -Declan
    
    ---
    
    Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 12:27:34 -0600
    Subject: "Free Speech Under Attack"
    From: Virginia Postrel <vpostrelat_private>
    To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private>
    
    Free Speech Under Attack
    By Glenn Harlan Reynold
    
    When Bjorn Lomborg wrote his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, I imagine
    that he expected to be criticized; one doesn't accuse an entrenched
    establishment of fraud without encountering some blowback. So when a
    critical issue of Scientific American came out, accusing Lomborg of not
    knowing what he was talking about, Lomborg didn't get mad: he simply posted
    the article, along with a detailed response, on his website.
    
    What happened next, however, may have come as a surprise: Scientific
    American sent him a letter threatening to sue him if he didn't remove the
    critical article that he was responding to. With the air of bemused
    politeness that has marked Lomborg's response to his often-overheated
    critics, Lomborg took the article down.
    
    Lomborg's situation, however, serves to underscore a new and unwholesome
    trend: the use of copyright law to silence critics.
    
    more
    
    http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/envirowrapper.jsp?PID=1051-450&CID=1051-030602B
    
    
    -- 
    Virginia Postrel (vpostrelat_private)
    Author, The Future and Its Enemies
    "Economic Scene" columnist, The New York Times
    Contributing editor and "Spaces" columnist, D Magazine
    http://www.dynamist.com | http://vpostrel.com (The Scene)
    (214) 219-5725 | (214) 219-1188 (fax)
    
    
    
    
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
    You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
    Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
    To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
    This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Mar 06 2002 - 21:35:25 PST