Despite Congress’s decision, in response to a huge backlash on the internet and in Silicon Valley, not to pass SOPA last week, the executive branch shows that it essentially has all the powers in that legislation already—the power to accuse a website of deliberately facilitating “piracy” and shut it down and confiscate its assets...
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I posted earlier about the provisions of the New Years Eve-signed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) a/k/a the “Homeland Battlefield Bill,” allowing the President of the U.S., at his or her sole discretion, to order the indefinite detention of any U.S. citizen, with no burden of proof whatsoever, and no recourse for the detainee—in...
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Hollywood, the big recording companies, and the rest of the old entertainment industry have strongly supported the Stop Online Piracy Act and its companion, the Protect IP Act. These bills, sponsored by big-government Democrats like Chuck Schumer, pose unprecedented threats to online liberty. If there is one free frontier remaining in modern life, it...
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Independent Institute Research Director Alexander Tabarrok is interviewed here by Ray Lehmann on the FIRE (Finance, Insurance & Real Estate News) Podcast for the Heartland Institute. The interview discusses many government barriers that exist that block innovation and what policy reforms could be adopted now to restore entrepreneurship and prosperity. Issues addressed include patents...
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Pundits of late have been lamenting the decline of technological innovation. Has the rate of innovation in fact slowed down? And if so, how can we best revive it and speed up the rate of economic progress? Independent Institute Research Director Alex Tabarrok offers his penetrating insights on this hot topic in his new...
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Did the administration threaten to exclude the San Francisco Chronicle from covering future presidential events? Reporter Carla Marinucci says yes, although the White House denies it. A little over a week ago, protesters paid $5,000 each to get into a DNC fundraiser where they could interrupt Obama’s speech and break into a song, expressing...
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The Obama administration has detained the alleged Wikileaks whistleblower under torturous conditions—for almost a year, he has been subjected to solitary confinement in a windowless 6×12 cell for 23 hours a day, under constant surveillance, prevented from exercising, lacking a pillow or sheets. For the remaining hour every day, he is allowed to walk...
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The Democratic Party agenda tends to be a mixture of socialism and corporatism, whereas Republicans probably emphasize corporatism and socialism. Obama’s health care plan has always been a hybrid, as most interventionist polices are in a mixed economy. Perhaps in the longterm he wants to move toward as fully socialist a system as possible,...
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To follow up on my recent posting, “Obama’s Surveillance State Targets PCs, Laptops and Media Devices,” Computerworld reported on March 15th, in “Obama administration says treaty text is state secret”: The Office of U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), part of President Barack Obama’s office, has denied a company’s request for information about a secretive anticounterfeiting...
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According to Russia Today, in the name of protecting copyright infringements, the Obama administration is now pushing for an international treaty to allow governments to have sweeping access to anyone’s PC, laptop and other electronic devices in order to make copies of any files. Attempts by privacy and civil liberties groups to have copies...
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