Talk:TheKeenReader

"'... most of the content being shared .. was composed or written by someone from the sweat of their creative brow ...'" ... Note the pronoun "their." Keen's talking about the collective process that creativity always is. That at least is the charitable way to read the sentence. Otherwise, you'd have to say Keen doesn't know basic grammar.

Singular they is a feature of English and has been for hundreds of years. (There are examples in The King James Version of The Bible!) In any case, this sort of argument -- a grammar flame disguised as deliberate(?) misconstrual -- fails to make the intended point, and will strike many as petty. Better just to point out that no creative brow exists in a vacuum and leave it at that. Tom Duff 10:30, 31 May 2007 (PDT)

Agreed on this point. Picking at someone's grammar just looks desperate. Besides, Keen is British, and in British usage singular they is more common.


 * I created this username simply to note this error. Since this is a wiki, should we just remove the silly passage? SingularThey 16:08, 20 May 2009 (PDT)

"This is a claim too ridiculous to have to rebut. I certainly have argued in favor of changing the way copyright law functions. But I never have 'laud[ed]' 'piracy.' See, e.g., Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture 10, 18, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 139, 255 (2004) (describing 'piracy' as 'wrong'). Only the most careless of readers could make such a claim."

What about Lessig's March 2004 Wired column, where he says "As the history of film, music, radio, and cable TV suggest, even if some piracy is plainly wrong, not all piracy is...Many kinds of piracy are useful and productive, either to create new content or foster new ways of doing business."

Seems like a careful reader could see that as lauding piracy.