Nowhere do I even come close to saying that he deserved to be sued because I don't like his music (which is just a lousy interpretation of someone else's music). That's just silly. He deserved to be sued because he deliberately violated a photographer's copyright. And I don't "demonize" Baio at all; I just think he made some mistakes and was rightfully compelled to pay for them. I might come close to demonizing Gruber, because of the nasty way he attacked Maisel. (These escalating internet attacks on the photographer, who is in his 70s, actually turned into physical attacks on his house, orchestrated by another of Baio's supporters.)
My "middle school" passage that you quote was meant as a parody of Baio's arguments that, at least in my judgement, amount to the claim that a trivial modification of someone else's original artistic work gives you the right to distribute the modified work. Out of context it might sound juvenile, but it was meant to goad people into thinking about his claims of "fair use".
Just a reality check here: for someone asking for people to behave decently online, you're being argumentative, calling people names, assuming the worst possible motivations, and pretty much blowing off a - in my eyes - honest criticism. Never mind that you're basically spamming your site here and derailing the conversation.
"being argumentative": I felt I was misrepresented and thought I had a right to point that out. I replied to someone who put words in my mouth and claimed I took a position that in fact seems ridiculous to me.
"calling people names": Where in this thread did I do that?
"assuming the worst possible motivations": I'm puzzled by this; can you be specific?
"blowing off a - in my eyes - honest criticism": You actually read my piece and think that I said that Baio deserved to be sued because I don't like his music? Really? Because if you think the criticism is "honest" you must agree with this reading, which is off the wall. Since I never came close to saying that, how is the criticism "honest"?
"spamming your site here": I include a link to something I wrote instead of repeating it here to make my point. Is this against some kind of HN guideline? Is everyone who does this "spamming", or just me?
"derailing the conversation": I didn't mean to. I did not introduce these topics, but was replying to a thread started by others with something that I thought, in context, was relevant and interesting. But I can understand if it doesn't seem exactly on topic - neither was the thread, not started by me.
"reality check": Apparently your term for your opinion, in the form of a series of baseless accusations.
In your blog entry that you linked here - the one titled "Who's the Dick?" - you called John Gruber a scumbag, presuming that he dug for dirt instead of maybe following conversations where someone pointed info out, and then insisted that the music and artwork was both trivial and substantially transformative enough to, in your opinion, suck.
If you want to write about being decent online, you need to write more clearly and less muddled. And if you feel like something you've previously written is relevant, link it, but don't contort too hard for a connection, because non sequitur reasons - like the one about Apple fawning over him - read like spam rather than someone trying to be part of the conversation.
I misunderstood: I thought you meant I had called someone a name here in the comments. In my linked article I tried to lend some support to Maisel, whom Gruber had obscenely attacked, repeatedly calling him a "dick", by saying "If Maisel is a 'dick,' then John Gruber is a scumbag". You are welcome to characterize this as "calling people names", but I think that's an odd characterization. In the article I supply plenty of supporting evidence for "scumbag", which I nevertheless entomb in a contingent clause.
"presuming that he dug for dirt instead of maybe following conversations": I presumed nothing; he himself linked to the article that I claim he used disingenuously. He told us where he got the "dirt".
I notice that you don't seem to try to defend your other claims, but I'm having some trouble making grammatical sense out of a few of your comments. You seem to be complaining that my writing is "muddled", but I can't be sure, because the very sentence where you are trying to do that is a syntactical trainwreck.
I thought you might have had a point about me not being on topic, but the upvotes on the comments you are complaining about give me some reassurance.
My "middle school" passage that you quote was meant as a parody of Baio's arguments that, at least in my judgement, amount to the claim that a trivial modification of someone else's original artistic work gives you the right to distribute the modified work. Out of context it might sound juvenile, but it was meant to goad people into thinking about his claims of "fair use".