During the email debate on Immigration and Consumption taxes, one of my friends invoked Godwin’s Law, accusing me of being a fascist. Given that we were all a little intoxicated at the time, and the context in which it was delivered suggested some confusion on exactly what fascism entailed, I felt the need to respond [...]
In an article in Wired, Bruce Schneier makes the following insightful observation:
Trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet.
After reading an article on the misuse of patents, I’ve finally decided to write an overview of how I think intellectual property should work. Many of these ideas are probably borrowed or modified from other sources (notably Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture), so I can’t claim true originality.
Patents
Even with the changes to the patent system [...]
The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has recently been debating several initiatives that I’ve been following, both of which I’ve discussed in previous posts.
The first is the Broadcast Flag - an initiative originally mandated by the FCC to force all electronics manufacturers to obey a “broadcast flag” that would determine how any given [...]
I stumbled across an article today that makes me wonder what kind of world some people really want. In this article, a librarian refused to divulge confidential records to the police without a subpoena. As a result, she is facing disciplinary action for “a blatant diregard for the Police Department”.
Maybe I’m wrong, but [...]