RawStory reports that ISPs based in the United States will begin reporting your internet usage to the Feds as early as July 12, 2012. Ostensibly the purpose is “reduction of piracy” but this is the federal government for goodness sake, the most benign and generous institution on the planet!

Joe Carter continues his criticism of libertarians at the Acton Blog. You can see my response to his initial volleys here, and there will indeed be more to come next week. In the meantime, perhaps Hayek’s article Why I am Not a Conservative would be worthwhile to review again.

The Ludwig von Mises Institute Blog is going through a transition period right now, and one result is the founding of a new blog for interesting commentary called The Circle Bastiat. I’m excited to see what TCB bloggers will do with their new site.

My friend and former LVMI visionary Jeff Tucker is now the head of the great company Laissez Faire Books. He now writes regularly for their main blog, Whiskey and Gunpowder (fantastic name), and I highly recommend signing up for their mailing list. Even for the week or so that I have been on the list, I have found the articles they are sending superb. For instance, The Economics of the Timeline is a great read. He also had some excellent commentary on the aforementioned internet-spying debacle.

Did you visit LCC this week? Here’s what you missed if not:

• Some Caliphate
• Debating Christian Libertarianism
• The TSA is Wasteful, Unhealthy, and Unnecessary
• Should Christians Support the War on Drugs?

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: The Government Wants Your Internets!

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

Freedom is the default.

(Great job Students for Liberty friend Michelle Fields as well. If I recall correctly, she is a student at Church of Christ-based Pepperdine University as well! Michelle, if you’re an LCC reader please comment so we can all brag on you a bit…)

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How much money would someone have to pay you to give up the internet?

I am fascinated by cultural movements for a variety of reasons, and some of the most interesting cultural tidbits you find occur in the form of internet memes. The website Know Your Meme does an incredible job of documenting and explaining how these things develop and propagate, and this live presentation at a recent conference illustrates why they consider their work important to the preservation of cultural knowledge. It even has some implications to how we think about intellectual property (or the lack thereof). Best quote: “Culture isn’t just valuable when you can stuff it full of DRM and sell it.”

Also, if you haven’t heard about Amazon’s Cloud Player, check it out. It is AMAZING.

That’s all for now, enjoy your weekend!

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News of the Week: Of Memes and Clouds

Egyptians are rioting in protest of corruption and terrible economic policies in their government. This is some of the first serious international news of this sort I have seen since the economic crisis began, and it indicative of how the entire world economy continues to suffer from the insane economic policies of central banks and governments around the world.

Reports from social networking services and beyond indicate that the government is cracking down on the spread of information via the Internet.

Yet we also see great and small signs of hope in this crisis. Boing-Boing has posted multiple pictures (click here and here) of protesters quite literally approaching the barbaric and tyrannical police and army forces and kissing them. I smell a Pulitzer prize coming for this photo:

Check out this photo recap of yesterday’s protests.

The bullet point version of what’s happening (courtesy of TDW):

1. Egyptian riot police clash with thousands of anti-government demonstrators.
2. Police fire tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds in Cairo, Suez and Alexandria.
3. Suez sees some of the worst violence, with a police station being set on fire.
4. Reports say opposition figurehead Mohamed ElBaradei, who joined Cairo protests, has been placed under house arrest.
5. The authorities have disrupted mobile phone networks and internet services.
6. The unrest follows three days of protests in which at least eight people have been killed.

Whew, that was heavy.

Here’s a fun comic to top it off.

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News of the Week: Walk like a rioting Egyptian

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

There are plenty more reactions to Wikileaks to keep track of.

And somebody even has a reaction to my Students for Liberty article. (My response will be forthcoming next week…)

Apparently, NASA has discovered arsenic-based life (though some doubt). If I said this was kick-As, would you get the pun?

Lifehacker has a cool article about getting answers online (without using Google).

And finally, my favorite comic of the week.

Just FYI, there will not be a “News of the Week” post on Christmas Day next week.

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News of the Week: Dec. 12-18, 2010

I am especially interested in working for Libertarian Party candidates or other LP organizations such as counties, cities, states, or special events. Trust me, I can create a great looking site that is incredibly easy for you to update and maintain – you won’t be disappointed. Contact me for more information if you’re interested. You’ve obviously seen LibertarianChristians.com; check out the other sites I have helped design including the Libertarian Longhorns, Texans for Accountable Government (consulted), and Operation Defuse (consulted), and of course the Travis County LP.

Sometimes, you just have to get out there and advertise yourself. And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

UPDATE: The Travis County LP website is now at www.travislp.org. Links have been changed accordingly, even though they are not to the originally designed site that I made for them. I’ll be helping them on the new site in the near future. Long story…

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Check out the NEW Travis County Libertarian Party website!

Communicating the same principled message in multiple mediums means a larger potential audience. In the past, somewhat dependent on the specific culture, ideas were transferred through spoken language, dance, and later, through books. Though they still play a role, other mediums, such as the Internet, television, and music, must too be broached as people access content via their preferred medium. This does not mean we have to rework our message but only add it to the larger conversation at different points. Otherwise, it’s as though we’re absent from the conversation entirely. For example, government bloat and hypocrisy provides ample fodder for The Daily Show, South Park, Stossel’s 20/20 [now he hosts “Stossel” on the Fox Business Network], and Pen and Teller’s: Bull****!, shows that influence the worldview of millions. And the same anti-bureaucracy, pro-freedom message can just as easily be communicated through Internet radio shows (like Free Talk Live), blogs (like The Austrian Economists), podcasts (such as Bureaucrash’s Podcrash), and webzines. If your interests and skills lie in one of these mediums, you can help reinforce those already countering pro-state rhetoric.

Technology helps us bypass traditional gatekeepers. The age of media being controlled by a handful of barons in bed with government is over (for one example of the harm this sort of relationship brought, read up on William Randolh Hearst, Harry Ansligner, and the criminalization of marijuana). We live in a time where the proliferation of technology has allowed virtually anyone, anywhere to share their ideas with others, whether via a blog post, uploaded video, Twitter message, or shared song. This empowers you, the individual, and threatens the status quo: the power of government and its frequent accomplice, the mainstream media. You no longer have to submit an op-ed to a newspaper editor and hope that they’re open-minded enough to run your piece. Instead, you can ignore them completely and share your thoughts with others via the Internet. Much to the chagrin of mainstream media companies, prominent blogs have readerships that rival the largest circulated newspapers. Using an inexpensive video camera, Joe Sixpack can create and post a video on YouTube that generates more views than movies released by mammoth Hollywood companies. Anyone with a microphone, a computer, and some free software can host a podcast.

Prominent cultural figures hold enormous sway. Like it or not, many folks take cues from the singer of their favorite band, a controversial radio talk show host, a graphic artist, or a documentary filmmaker. These figures could very easily introduce tens of thousands or millions of others to the ideas of liberty. Even if they just plant a seed, it’ll help to nudge their fans just a little bit more toward the ideas of freedom.

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