First of all, while it can be argued my work for the EFF gains me status, to say it nets me perks shows a deep misunderstanding of the situation, which could have been remedied had you simply asked, rather than assumed. Like almost all the board members of EFF (and many other nonprofits) I contribute far more in cash donations than I could ever have been judged to receive in “perks” as you describe them. By orders of magnitude, that’s how incorrect this statement is. And while I have, like most other conference speakers, received free admisssion to conferences at which I was an invited speaker, I’m racking my brain to figure out what free speaking trips you could be talking about. (I did once get paid airfare/hotel for a conference to talk about nanotech, which I would think would relate more to my hat at Foresight Nanotech Institute.) I won’t deny I wouldn’t mind at all if conferences paid my travel expenses and I sometimes ask if they can (they usually can’t) but again, it would take a lot of these to touch the money I have donated.

Secondly, the EFF is, as I am surprised you aren’t aware, an organization devoted first to free speech. It does not muzzle its board members from expressing their views. Surely you’ve notice things like board member Dave Farber being a major net neutrality opponent while board member (until a couple of weeks ago) Larry Lessig was a net neutrality booster. Again, you seem to be making nasty allegations of conflict of interest for which you not only have no evidence, but which are demonstrably false.

Thirdly, when I do speak for EFF I am not “conflicted.” Making statements on these matters is what the EFF does. So statements about a conflict of interest make no sense in this context. The EFF’s interests and policies are what we on the board decide, with some reflection on the interests of our members.

It is correct that I have an interest in the financial success of Bittorrent, Inc. And I am quite open about that, mentioning it almost every time I talk related to this issue, and it is noted near the top of my bio on my home page. You would not have known that when I joined the BitTorrent board, I made it a condition that I would not be limited from making statements with my EFF hat which were at odds with what BitTorrent was saying. You can believe that in spite of that, I make statements about P2P which I do not believe in order to further BitTorrent’s interest, but I thought you knew better than that. My advice to you today in person was you would better serve your own goals by sticking to facts and reasoned arguments rather than making false guesses about motives.

However, you are not bound to follow that advice, but it is honestly given (and you’ll find I’ve given it to many other than you over the years, perhaps a hundred times, and still stand by it.) Nobody follows it perfectly, even myself, but it’s the right thing to aim for.