Quote:
Originally Posted by ahi
I think a great deal of a lot of your posts, Elfwreck, but in this instance I've found rougue_ronin cogent and articulate and even relatively restrained, while your responses to him seem somewhat less so.
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Thank you! We'll probably continue to disagree somewhat on the future of PDFs, but I respect your opinions; they're grounded in real understanding.
I found rogue_ronin's posts in this thread to be mostly coherent--because I'm well-versed in copyfight propaganda. He jumped between DRM, copyright law, and cultural appropriation by corporations as if they were interchangeable concepts, without explaining the connections. He's also insulting those who disagree with him, implying they're ignorant or thick-witted, and claiming that those who find his arguments lacking are insulting him.
Ranting. Not explaining, not persuading. I'll admit that some people are persuaded by rants, but there's not many of those at mobileread.
(Also, he insulted fanfic! How dare he imply that Kirk/McCoy slash is anything other than high art!)
Were I in the right mindset for his arguments, they'd be perfectly clear. At the moment, I'm in the middle of an insanely busy weekend after a terribly hectic work-week, and the more subtle nuances of DRM-DMCA-Berne Convention-Disney's attempt to take over the world are a bit beyond me... and his posts come across as rants, not discussion points.
If one's arguments require the reader to already agree with one's conclusion, or if they require the reader to have already made the same mental connection between points, they're not valid.
That doesn't mean they're wrong--they just don't work as supported points intended to persuade.
(I think most publishers' free pdf ebooks are bad, because they're not tagged, have no bookmarks, and have page sizes that look awful on a dedicated ebook reader. Someone else might also think they're bad... because he doesn't like Acrobat Reader and he once got in a screaming fight with customer support at Adobe. His arguments, with the same conclusion as mine, are not valid.)