Lessig trashes Andrew Keen's book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture.

Lessig: "Keen is our generation’s greatest self-parodist...the real argument of Keen’s book is that traditional media and publishing is just as bad as the worst of the Internet. Here’s a book — Keen’s — that has passed through all the rigor of modern American publishing, yet which is perhaps as reliable as your average blog post."

I made a similar point when visiting Rosemary Roberts' journalism class at UNCG this spring. She asked about blog standards and accuracy, I asked about Judy Miller and the NYT.

I saw Keen on a panel at PDF last month. Credit him for entering that lion's den with a pork chop tied around his neck -- he was up against Scoble, Shirky, and Newmark -- but he didn't even seem to be trying very hard to defend his arguments past a certain point. As Lessig says, he raises plenty of worthwhile ideas, just not in a very productive way.