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The Mad Hatter Calls Out Sookman

The Mad Hatter has a detailed post identifying a series of inaccuracies and misleading statements in a new post by CRIA lobbyist Barry Sookman on Canada and P2P.  Sookman has now heavily edited the post, though many of the same claims can be found in other documents.

7 Comments

  1. Barry Sookman says:

    I stand by my post and said so in a comment I asked be posted on The Mad Hatter’s site. It is not misleading. The quotes in the post were, as I have stated, taken from the various sites previously. If there is a divergence between the quotes and the sites, it is because the sites may have changed, perhaps in response to my previous posting about it.

  2. @ Barry Sookman
    Even first year journalism students know how to verify online content. Every time you side of the argument tries to rebut something it comes out the wrong end. I’m highly amused, but disappointed that we have people that are being listened to on the other side of the debate, who are not qualified enough to comment on and verify digital sources. You don’t belong in this debate Sookman, you don’t even understand fully what you are debating. And stop using wiki..lol

  3. Russell McOrmond says:

    Sookman is partly to blame for his own complaint.
    The core of Sookman’s message seemed to be that according to Torrent sites hosted in Canada, Canada has lax copyright laws. His “solution” is to change Canadian law.

    But if you look at the source of the claim that Canadian law is lax, it is his clients. The legitimate solution would be for him and his clients to stop misleading people (ranging from politicians to torrent sites) about the state of Canadian law. If more Canadians believe that Canadian law is lax, then Mr Sookman and his clients are to blame — not Canadian law.

  4. @ Barry Sookman
    Mr. Sookman, do you enjoy sunking your side of the argument even more with misleading information and partial lies?

    As it was with your attempt to protect the CRIA’s reputation by trying to make us believe that an act of digital piracy is not an act of digital piracy if it’s done by the CRIA(btw, list or no list, the artist MUST allow a third party the distribution right before said third party can even think about distributing content).

    Stop trying to put Torrent = Piracy like you always do… it would be like saying Computers = Piracy… oh wait that’s the entire argument of the RIAA/MPAA for the last 2 decades… never mind then… countinue with your defence of something immoral and illegal (aka: the list) but spare us the double speak please we are not idiots, we know that piracy is bad and I for one dont do it. As for the Torrents = Piracy argument that you and your ilk likes to mention… just tell that to Activition Blizzard, they distribute content via BitTorrent… are they a pirate group?

  5. Torrent search sites are not the essence of piracy that you seem to think they are, they are just search sites.
    Torrents are good for lots of completely legitimate things, as I’m sure you well know. Anything large and used by more than a couple people is a good candidate to be served through a torrent. I use them all the time for testing out new linux distributions, and basically anything else that is a large download (and not infringing copyright in any way).

    Also, you can find pirated material using other types of search engines as well.

  6. The problem with referencing the work of others without proper research into how the work of the others was done is really simple. If it turns out to be unverifiable or wrong, you look like an idiot at best, or a shill at worst. This happened with the counterfeiting numbers that keep getting handed around as reliable regarding the amount of counterfeiting and illegal software use in Canada… unfortunately the RCMP published the numbers which, by all accounts, were pulled from a bodily cavity. These were cited in one place, which was in turn cited, and so on, until they became “accepted” even though they are totally without verifiability, and as it turns out, wrong.

    Of course, if one wants to be a conspiracy theorist on this matter, how do we know that the numbers, etc, cited by BS were a circular link back to his own stuff?

    Was the items on the other sites corrected before, or after, he posted. If before, then he shouldn’t be citing the wrong information; that is NOT what the referenced site indicated at the time that he posted. This would be akin to referencing him, attributing any anti-copyright statements he may have made in the past as current. If after, then did he knew it was incorrect and use it anyway (again misinformation)? Or if he believed it was correct (and I am making no judgments here), how long did it take him to correct his own post?

    This is the problem with taking an Internet blog as a source of information. One needs to look at a number of them in order to get anything approaching balanced coverage of an issue; while some blogs are more balanced that others, occasionally they will lapse and unintentionally fail to cover both sides of the issue.

  7. Law Student says:

    Barry Sookman Brings Shame Upon The Legal Profession
    Its people like him that cause lawyers to be hated. Will never cease to stoop to new lows in his pathetic e-rainmaking attempts.