Anthony Gregory asks, “You call this a war? I’ll show you a war.” He contends that we are prone to forget the atrocities of today’s wars because they are so distant to our daily lives. This is the most important link you can read from this weekly news post.

David Theroux, President of the Independent Institute, did an interview this week with To the Source about C.S. Lewis and the State.

One of my heroes, Stephan Kinsella, did an amazing interview with The Daily Bell this week on libertarianism and intellectual property. It is a superb read with a great many further links and resources for the interested reader.

In other IP news, Summit Entertainment is apparently claiming to own the date “November 20, 2009” and issued a DMCA takedown on art created on that day. No kidding.

Have you heard that Tide is now being used like money on the black market? Talk about money laundering…

I’m a science fiction fan, so here’s something for other SF lovers out there: Top 10 Best Retorts in Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Remember Kony 2012, or is that old news at this point? Here is another perspective on Kony and the White Savior Industrial Complex.

Are you involved in the Ron Paul 2012 presidential campaign in some way? Here is a new book you can download for free that might interest you.

There was a lot going on at home this week (in particular, my wife was in town!) so posting time was scarce. But if you didn’t visit LCC this week, here is what you missed:

• Time for a Drink

Have some relevant news and links you want to share? Post in the comments below. I read every comment and respond to almost all of them. Let me know what you’re thinking!

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News of the Week: You Call this a War?

Wikipedia, along with thousands of other sites, are protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) because these two bills pose some of the most egregious violations of property rights one could imagine. In essence, the federal government would gain the power to censor almost anything at a whim. People were offended when the Feds talked about an internet “kill switch” – Egypt-style – but this is like putting an individual kill switch on every web site hosted on a server in the United States. It is bone-chillingly draconian and utterly barbaric.

If you are unaware of this legislation, please take a few moments to learn more. Wikipedia has a special page dedicated to the protest.

Here is a useful video by one of my favorite YouTube channels that deals with online culture, KnowYourMeme.com.

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Today is Internet Blackout Day

Click here for more great resources on the perils of intellectual property.

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Thoughts on Intellectual Property

Quoting Stephan in full:

As a recent column in the Wall Street Journal reminds us, online freedom is jeopardized in the name of “net neutrality” (The FCC’s Threat to Internet Freedom). This is just another case of the state re-labeling things to sound benign but that are really invasions of liberty and property rights–another good example being use of the term “intellectual property” to masque the true nature of state-granted monopoly privilege rights (patent and copyright) (see my post Intellectual Properganda).

It is true that some corporations probably have extra-market power to control aspects of the Internet, as the result of state interventions such as IP, FCC licensing, antitrust law, big business favoritism, and so on. But the solution is not to grant the state even more power to regulate private companies.This is the criminal gang that has fouled things up in the first place. Another recent example of federal Chutzpah is the Obama administration’s proposal to provide a “Web Privacy ‘Bill of Rights’“–how obscene. The mob that is the greatest threat to online privacy freedom, and rights will protect us? I’m reminded of the phrase, “We’re from the government. And we’re here to help.” Thanks, but no thanks, guys.

These are the same parasites who do everything they can to hobble and destroy business and innovation–they impose costly regulations; tax individuals, making employees more costly; inflate the money supply and cause destructive business cycles; impose insane, murderous policies on pharmaceutical and medical innovations via the FDA; and then impose double tax by taxing corporations too, after imposing Sarbannes Oxley on them for the “privilege” to exist as a corporation (a privilege that is not a privilege; corporations do not need state privileges to exist–see Legitimizing the Corporation and Other Posts; Richman and Carson on the BP Oil Spill; Should Libertarians Oppose “Capitalism”?; Rothbard on Corporations and Limited Liability for Tort; Comment on Knapp’s Big Government, Big Business — Conjoined Twins; Pilon on Corporations: A Discussion with Kevin Carson; Defending Corporations: Block and Huebert).

And then, as a solution to the damage done to innovation by the state’s malicious hobbbling, the maniacal intellectual properteers urge giving the state more power to grant intellectual monopoly privilege grants to companies. (But then, if the companies use these monopoly grants “too much”, it’s called “abuse” and the state persecutes them under its evil antitrust laws.) (See State Antitrust (anti-monopoly) law versus state IP (pro-monopoly) law.)

Likewise, net neutrality is an attempt by the state to see more power to control private property rights as an ostensible response to various “market failures” that are really themselves caused by state intervention. In this, it is anohter example of the state’s creating a crisis and using this as a justification to seize more power under the pretense of saving the people from the crisis that it caused. (See Robert Higgs, Crisis & Leviathan.)

Libertarians should oppose net neutrality–and the state interventions that gives rise to the problems net neutrality pretends to address. (See my posts Net Neutrality Developments and Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality (both reposted below); also Harvard’s Yochai Benkler on Net Neutrality and Innovation.) Don’t trust the state to “protect” you. Ever.

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Against Net Neutrality

IMPORTANT: Today is the last day to contribute to Vijay Boyapati’s Marathon for Mises fundraising event. Please consider contributing even a small amount to help the greatest free-market-promoting organization on the planet, the Ludwig von Mises Institute!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you had a wonderful time remembering how blessed we are. We can especially be thankful that God created a world that sustains itself with cooperation and industry, as Mary Theroux at the Independent Institute reminds us.

LRC reminds us that the war of our dear “Christian” president George W. Bush has resulted in the martyring of thousands of Christians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks, U.S. Federal Government! /sarcasm

GraphJam has a great post outlining the insanity of the TSA.

Lies continue to be spread that campus carry cannot work.

I’ve thought for quite a while that Star Trek: Insurrection was a very libertarian-leaning film.

Universities are now suing high schools using similar logos for “trademark violations.” Did we just enter the twilight zone or something?

Time for a few classic Mises Institute articles… First, Ralph Raico writes about Harry Truman and the Atomic Bombs. Murray Rothbard warns us to never give in to the warfare state.

My favorite comic of the week.

Bonus quote of the week courtesy of LRC:

New TSA Motto: “We Handle More Packages Than the U.S. Postal Service.”

(From an emailer to the Ron Smith Radio Show on WBAL in Baltimore).

Add your own favorite news or fun item of the week in the comments, share the love!

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News of the Week: November 21 to 27, 2010

Nevertheless, the US government continues to prop up this inefficient and unethical practice. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, many lives have been ruined by the bad side of corps, full of lawyers hunting for cash. We all know of the old ladies and teenagers who receive verdicts requiring them to pay obscene amounts of money for such non-crimes.

Well, some new rules coming straight from the Library of Congress are sure to help alleviate a few of these problems. Essentially, the Librarian of Congress must evaluate exemptions to the DMCA every 3 years, i.e. you cannot be prosecuted, period, if you do these things. Previously, there had only been one exemption recognized. Now, there are SIX exemptions, and the first three are quite significant.

The basics of each exemption:
1) You can rip your own DVDs. You can remix scenes for noncommercial use. So all those Hitler-plus-caption remixes from the movie Downfall no longer can be taken down. Teachers who want to use a movie in a class can rip it. No one from the DMCA can touch you.
2) You can jailbreak your phone, nobody can prosecute you. Big swipe at Apple/AT&T.
3) You can use software to unlock your phone for use on a different network.
4) You can use software to crack game SecuROMs or other game DRM for the purpose of “investigation” or research. The language is very broad, since even curiosity can prompt “investigation.”
5) You can use cracks to bypass a hardware dongle. This is significant for people like me who use lab equipment or any variety of peripherals with stupid dongles.
6) You can crack DRM encrypted ebooks to use text-to-speech capabilities. Convenient.

Gizmodo has a more thorough analysis here.

These new rules surely do not go far enough, but thankfully things are not becoming more restrictive in this arena. But we need to continue pushing back, so keep spreading the word!

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New Copyright Rules Released

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Intellectual Property and Libertarianism

Congratulations, Daniel, on being the first Libertarian Longhorn to have contributed to Mises Daily! May it be the first of many intellectual contributions that our members make to the libertarian movement. Join me in giving him a hearty round of internet applause… [clap clap clap]

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“The Fallacy of Intellectual Property”

In a stupendous example of how IP clogs up the works, the Authors Guild, an advocacy group for writers, is claiming that Amazon’s Kindle 2 is breaking copyright law with its new text-to-speech feature. Their director is quoted as saying: “They don’t have the right to read a book out loud. That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.” So mother, you reading aloud to us as kids makes you a criminal. Okay, not really, but read more about this bizarro situation here.

You know that there is a big problem in America when Vladimir Putin warns us that we might be getting a little too, what’s the word, socialistic?

“In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute,” Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.”

Thomas DiLorenzo reviews the book of a scholar who has come clean about Emperor Lincoln.

Marvel’s 2006 book, Mr. Lincoln Goes to War, says this on the inside cover: “Marvel leads the reader inexorably to the conclusion that Lincoln not only missed opportunities to avoid war but actually fanned the flames – and often acted quite unconstitutionally in prosecuting the war once it had begun.” This is obviously not how to win another “Lincoln Prize.”

Lastly, let me encourage you to check out the brand-spanking new website of UT-Austin’s Libertarian Longhorns, a group I help run. It’s pretty spartan-looking right now, but I’m excited about the potential opportunities it will provide for growing the group.

Have a great weekend!

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Speedlinking Friday: Meltdown, Kindle, Putin, and Lincoln

Fave article of the week: John Hasnas describes What It Feels Like To Be A Libertarian. Don’t be discouraged when you read the following quote, it’s a great article:

I’ll tell you. It feels bad. Being a libertarian means living with a level of frustration that is nearly beyond human endurance. It means being subject to unending scorn and derision despite being inevitably proven correct by events. How does it feel to be a libertarian? Imagine what the internal life of Cassandra must have been and you will have a pretty good idea.

Imagine spending two decades warning that government policy is leading to a major economic collapse, and then, when the collapse comes, watching the world conclude that markets do not work.

Imagine continually explaining that markets function because they have a built in corrective mechanism; that periodic contractions are necessary to weed out unproductive ventures; that continually loosening credit to avoid such corrections just puts off the day of reckoning and inevitably leads to a larger recession; that this is precisely what the government did during the 1920′s that led to the great depression; and then, when the recession hits, seeing it offered as proof of the failure of laissez-faire capitalism.

That may sound pretty bleak for aspiring libertarian thinkers. But you know what else? Despite the frustration, it feels good. Finally making sense of the world and how things work feels good. I don’t regret one minute of it. Period.

Two articles on LRC regarding liberty and the Christian faith came up this week. First, Stan Warford’s article on The Christian and War has some great words to us about the history of Christianity’s view on war. The following quote is excellent:

On the evening of October 28, 311 at a place called Melvian Bridge, the pagan Constantine was at war to determine who would be the emperor of the western empire. He was to do battle the next day, and there was a real possibility that he would lose. That night he had a dream in which he saw a cross in the sky with the Latin words, “With this sign thou shalt conquer.” He rose from his bed and that night had the sign of the cross painted on the armor of his soldiers. The next day he was victorious and became emperor of the western half of the Roman empire. Later he became emperor of the entire Roman empire.

As a result of that battle, Constantine in the year 313 made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. He confiscated many of the pagan temples and gave them to the Christians, who converted them into houses of worship. After Constantine died, the ruling class criticized the Christian community for receiving benefits from the state while still preaching nonviolence and not supporting its wars. So, the state made the church choose between adjusting its teaching to accommodate the state, or losing its state-sanctioned privileges. In 368 A.D. for the first time in the history of the church, St. Ambrose offered the first justification for the Christian to participate in the violence of war. His student, St. Augustine, codified the teaching in his so-called Just War Theory that is used by most churches today.

In 311 A.D. you could not be a Roman soldier and at the same time be a Christian. By 416 A.D., that is, within the space of about a hundred years, you could not be a Roman soldier unless you were a Christian.

Next, Christopher Bevis has published an article called Caesar and God in Context that explains the “Render to Caesar” passages in the Gospels. He takes a slightly different viewpoint than I do on the topic, but I like his analysis.

Jeff Tucker keeps opining on copyright law, and it’s still fun to read.

Justin Raimondo recounts the history of web political commentary and activism in Ideology and the Internet. I find interesting the shift of websites like DailyKos and Democratic Underground from government critics into Obama-worshipping shills. Just goes to show that most of the modern left is more interesting in their kind of statism rather than getting rid of the uber-power of the Executive and enhancing civil liberties.

Nancy Pelosi did a bang-up job estimating the number of Americans losing their jobs these days:

I really think that if we do not have an economic recovery package, 500 million Americans lose their jobs. I don’t think we can go fast enough to stop that. The President asked for action, swift and bold. That is exactly what we are doing.

Brilliant woman, I’m telling you.

And now for something completely different… James T. Kirk, singing opera with Khan Noonian Singh.

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Speedlinking Friday