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I’m reading a law paper by Eben Moglen whilst sitting on a bed with sunlight pouring in the windows… [oops, I spoke too soon. Here come the rain. This is Ireland.] In short, he explains why Copyright is dead meat. Although written in 1999 it is still relevant. The death throws of Copyright will require a few more decades to play to their final denouement, but there is little doubt of that end.
To say I agree is an understatement. I’ve expressed my thoughts on this many times over the years, for example in this 1995 article. As I said then and in more depth in 1999, Copyright depends on the embodiment of ideas in physical form. It is a creature of Gutenberg’s invention. In the 21st Century we are moving on towards something else. I’m about as likely to project correctly what that “something else” is as would a writer in the first decades of the printed word so I won’t even try.
And here comes the sun again…
Good news, although good news about bad news, from Hong Kong:
Hong Kong’s chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, did something yesterday that Chinese Communist leaders never do on the mainland. He deferred to the clearly expressed majority will in Hong Kong and withdrew legislation for a repressive new security law he was trying to impose.
That’s paragraph one of the New York Times report. This final paragraph reads very European doesn’t it? …
Mr. Tung says he still thinks that new security legislation is needed but is now prepared to wait until there is clearer public support. His plan may be to defuse the issue until after the legislative elections and then try again. Hong Kong’s people will not be deceived so easily.
…except that Europeans are probably a bit easier to deceive.
Stephen Lewis of the Sterling Times message board sent this link.
Follow it, please. Now would be a good time.
Mr Lewis has found a report on the Radio Nederlands website stating that the BBC, the BBC, is to monitor message boards for hate speech on behalf of the authorities.
Once upon a time the only official way your home could be searched was by a policeman backed by a warrant issued by the courts. OK, as a libertarian I could raise certain objections even to that, but it was the evolved and generally agreed custom of my country and that counts for a lot. Then the privilege of search spread first to customs officers and then to tax-gatherers, until now practically any parasite of a an environmental health officer or social worker can walk in.
Count on it. The same process is happening with restrictions of freedom of speech. Fifty years ago the legal right to impose restrictions was the preserve of the courts. Many of the restrictions were ridiculous: the Lord Chamberlain censored naughty bits out of stage plays until as late as 1968. However, in terms of political speech, freedom fifty years ago was greater than freedom now. Speakers in Hyde Park Corner could and did call for the gutters of Mayfair to run red with the blood of the rich and the copper would just say, “steady on mate, steady on.” Part of the reason for this freedom was that the right to restrict was itself restricted to the justice system.
It’s a sign of a half-way healthy state (half-way being about as good as states get) that it is very clear who is doing the state’s dirty work.
Now, it seems, the job of spying on British citizens has been franchised out to that “much loved” institution, the BBC. As Mr Lewis says, that is not their role. Later on in the post some Radio Nederlands commentary is quoted saying that it might be better to have “trained journalists” doing the monitoring than others. Not surprising, I suppose, that the trained journalists at Radio Nederlands rate their fellow trained journalists at the BBC as the best people to employ for this task. I must disagree: if I had to choose I’d rather be spied on by professional spies. At least they live in the real world, and in particular have the peril of Islamofascism very much in the forefront of their minds. I’d trust them way above the BBC to be able to tell the difference between clear statements warning against Islamofascism and genuine hate speech.*
When it comes to judging others – judging us here, for instance – the BBC is very likely to imply that anyone who says out loud that a kind of death-cult has infected to some degree a disturbingly high proportion of the Muslim world is thereby an Islamophobe.
But when it comes to judging themselves, or judging the groups they have a soft spot for, the standard is very different. You can see the double standard in operation by the BBC’s choice of Jew-hating ranter Mahathir as official BBC “expert” on Islam for an upcoming forum. (See Biased BBC here and passim.) Tell you what, Beeb guys, if you want to monitor “hate speech” why don’t you start with him?
*I do not make this distinction between real and apparent hate speech in order to say we should forbid one and allow the other. I am a free speech absolutist. That means I must support the political right to make truly hateful hate speech, however vile, while also asserting my right to condemn it. This includes hate speech about Muslims and hate speech by Muslims. But the distinction between real and apparent hate speech is crucial in terms of moral assessment and national security.
Stephen Lewis of the Sterling Times message board sent this link.
Follow it, please. Now would be a good time.
Mr Lewis has found a report on the Radio Nederlands website stating that the BBC, the BBC, is to monitor message boards for hate speech on behalf of the authorities.
Once upon a time the only official way your home could be searched was by a policeman backed by a warrant issued by the courts. OK, as a libertarian I could raise certain objections even to that, but it was the evolved and generally agreed custom of my country and that counts for a lot. Then the privilege of search spread first to customs officers and then to tax-gatherers, until now practically any parasite of an environmental health officer or social worker can walk in.
Count on it. The same process is happening with restrictions of freedom of speech. Fifty years ago the legal right to impose restrictions was the preserve of the courts. Many of the restrictions were ridiculous: the Lord Chamberlain censored naughty bits out of stage plays until as late as 1968. However, in terms of political speech, freedom fifty years ago was greater than freedom now. Speakers in Hyde Park Corner could and did call for the gutters of Mayfair to run red with the blood of the rich and the copper would just say, “steady on mate, steady on.” Part of the reason for this freedom was that the right to restrict was itself restricted to the justice system.
It’s a sign of a half-way healthy state (half-way being about as good as states get) that it is very clear who is doing the state’s dirty work.
Now, it seems, the job of spying on British citizens has been franchised out to that “much loved” institution, the BBC. As Mr Lewis says, that is not their role. Later on in the post some Radio Nederlands commentary is quoted saying that it might be better to have “trained journalists” doing the monitoring than others. Not surprising, I suppose, that the trained journalists at Radio Nederlands rate their fellow trained journalists at the BBC as the best people to employ for this task. I must disagree: if I had to choose I’d rather be spied on by professional spies. At least they live in the real world, and in particular have the peril of Islamofascism very much in the forefront of their minds. I’d trust them way above the BBC to be able to tell the difference between clear statements warning against Islamofascism and genuine hate speech 1.
When it comes to judging others – judging us here, for instance – the BBC is very likely to imply that anyone who says out loud that a kind of death-cult has infected to some degree a disturbingly high proportion of the Muslim world is thereby an Islamophobe.
But when it comes to judging themselves, or judging the groups they have a soft spot for, the standard is very different. You can see the double standard in operation by the BBC’s choice of Jew-hating ranter Mahathir as official BBC “expert” on Islam for an upcoming forum. (See Biased BBC here and passim.) Tell you what, Beeb guys, if you want to monitor “hate speech” why don’t you start with him?
- I do not make this distinction between real and apparent hate speech in order to say we should forbid one and allow the other. I am a free speech absolutist. That means I must support the political right to make truly hateful hate speech, however vile, while also asserting my right to condemn it. This includes hate speech about Muslims and hate speech by Muslims. But the distinction between real and apparent hate speech is crucial in terms of moral assessment and national security.
US News and World Report has an article that is well worth reading on how mobile phones are being used as tracking devices for all sorts of purposes, as well as how other consumer devices are also slowly evolving into tracking devices.
Maria at Crooked Timber writes:
Today, EPIC & Privacy International launch ‘Privacy and Human Rights 2003, an international survey of privacy laws and developments’. It is a meaty tome that summarises developments in privacy law and policy in 55 countries during the past year.
This year’s review “finds increased data sharing among government agencies, the use of anti-terrorism laws to suppress political dissent, and the growing use of new technologies of surveillance.” Familiar themes to readers of my entries …
And to readers here.
Maria adds:
By way of disclosure – I did the chapter on Ireland and bits and pieces on the UK, EU and electronic surveillance.
Sounds like a person White Rose should stay tuned to.
From James Taranto’s ur-blog Best of the Web comes this tidbit (scroll down to the bottom):
AdAge magazine reports on a big stride in racial progress:
A huge, black man raises his arms to gloat obnoxiously over a foosball goal, and this vile underarm stench overpowers everyone in the room.
It’s a Right Guard commercial, and it’s wonderful.
Actually, the BBDO, New York, ad itself–starring Tampa Bay Buccaneers star Warren Sapp–is pretty ordinary, a sort of generic argument for deodorant with a brand name attached. What’s wonderful is that the big stinker isn’t white.
AdAge’s Bob Garfield lists other recent ads that depict black characters as the butt of jokes and observer: “We’ll know when we’ve achieved some sort of racial equilibrium in this country when black people can appear ridiculous in the pop culture right alongside white people. The very fact that this phenomenon has been growing for two years, and nobody has even flinched, speaks volumes.”
Absolutely correct on all fronts. For years (and years) it has been a convention of US TV commercials that white men, and only white men, are portrayed as foolish boobs, and women, or men “of color”, are wise, clever, etc. I happen to believe that TV commercials can be high pop art and a wonderful oracle to consult if you want to know what the current zeitgeist is all about.
I applaud the new willingness of the ad industry to poke fun at black men as a good sign that race is becoming a non-factor to many Americans, and I plan to keep an eye out for more examples of the same.
As mentioned by R. C. Dean in an earlier article, the fact that EU policy is a major contributor to poverty in the Third World is finally starting to attract the attention it deserves. Many of Samizdata.net’s contributors have written in the past about the true price of protectionism and just who pays it.
Well now the The Centre for the New Europe has released a devastating paper that shows the claims of the Euro-statist elite to care for the world’s ‘have-nots’ for what they are: complete lies
Key Findings
- 6,600 people die every day in the world because of the trading rules of the EU. That is 275 people every hour.
- In other words, one person dies every 13 seconds somewhere in the world – mainly in Africa – because the European Union does not act on trade as it talks.
- If Africa could increase its share of world trade by just one per cent, it would earn an additional £49 billion a year. This would be enough to lift 128 million people out of extreme poverty. The EU’s trade barriers are directly responsible for Africa’s inability to increase its trade and thus for keeping Africa in poverty.
- If the poorest countries as a whole could increase their share of world exports by five per cent, that would generate £248 billion or $350 billion, raising millions more out of extreme poverty.
The complete paper can be downloaded from the main CNE site
The latest news in the Tony Martin/Brendan Fearon saga is in today’s Sun. There are pictures of Tony Martin dining out with the lady who works for his publisher (“Valentina Artsrunik”!), as they prepare Martin’s forthcoming book for publication. Excellent. Martin deserves a bit of the high life.
But more intriguing to me was the sidebar story on the right. Journalists must spend an awful lot of time ringing borderline celebs for juicy quotes only to be given either waffle or nothing. But this time, if that’s how it happened, they struck gold:
COMIC Paul O’Grady last night warned would-be burglars: “Break into my house and I’ll shoot you.”
The 48-year-old – telly’s Lily Savage – threatened to do a Tony Martin after talking to pal Cilla Black about the £1million burglary at her house.
The comic lives in a plush £1million riverside flat overlooking London’s Tower Bridge. He said: “I’ve just bought myself a gun. After what happened to Cilla, I’m not taking any chances.
“If I’m lying in bed and any gob-sh**e burglars are in my house, thinking I’m not going to do anything, then they’ll be in for a shock. I’ll shoot them in the kneecaps and feed them to my pigs.
“I’m with Tony Martin on this one. If you’re in my house and you shouldn’t be, then I’ll shoot you, simple as that.”
I particularly enjoyed this last bit:
A spokesman for O’Grady said last night: “What he was saying was done tongue-in-cheek.”
After all, you wouldn’t want your client becoming too popular with the general public, now would you?
How about a compromise. If Paul O’Grady is burgled, he can shoot the gob-sh**e burglars in the kneecaps. But then afterwards a spokesman for O’Grady can say that he only shot the gob-sh**e burglars tongue-in-cheek.
And when the O’Grady pigs eat the gob-sh**e burglars, they will likewise only be joking.
The Grauniad (of all papers) continues its libertarian crusade for free trade, slamming the EU’s continued protectionism of ag markets:
The European commission yesterday launched a ferocious attack on poor countries and development campaigners when it dismissed calls for big cuts in Europe’s farm protection regime as extreme demands couched in “cheap propaganda”.
In a move that threatens to shatter the fragile peace ahead of next week’s trade talks in Cancun, Mexico, Franz Fischler, the EU agriculture commissioner, said Brussels would strongly defend its farmers.
Note the condescending tone of the EUnik leading the charge on this one. Is it something they actually screen for? Is it in the water in Brussels?
“If I look at the recent extreme proposal co-sponsored by Brazil, China, India and others, I cannot help [getting] the impression that they are circling in a different orbit,” Mr Fischler reporters.
“If they want to do business, they should come back to mother earth. If they choose to continue their space odyssey they will not get the stars, they will not get the moon, they will end up with empty hands.”
Perhaps the big plus for free traders in all this is that this issue is not being posed as multinational corporations v. defenseless working class slobs (as antiglobalism is usually set up in the US), or as noble social democracies v. the evil capitalist US, but rather is put forth as poor and starving people v. coddled and protected industry.
Still, its a shame that it looks like the Doha round of negotiations will wither on the vine.
The movie moguls and their sidekicks in the film industry are being urged to tone down their campaigning to win the forthcoming Oscars.
Presumably the heads of the film industry in the U.S. and elsewhere are concerned that an unseemly rush by actors, actresses and others to plug their films is already annoying the public. I honestly don’t know if people really are all that concerned if, say, Cameron Diaz or Russell Crowe are on the stump advocating the merits of their films. (If Ms Diaz wants me to interview her about her work, she is only too welcome).
The film industry, both in the States as well as elsewhere, has become so large in its financial strength that it is hard to see how much can, or should be done to restrain artists from doing their all to grab one of the golden statues. It may be crass, but what can you do, apart from ask for polite restraint? Personally, I nurse a slight antipathy to the Oscars, which usually provide an opportunity for blowhards like hard-left progagandist Michael Moore to harangue the audience with his paranoid views at the reward ceremonies, or else give the back-scratchers in the business a chance to do what they know best.
But really, in the big scheme of things, it is hard to get too upset. The Oscars have become a circus and they look set to remain that way, barring a catastrophic drop in the movie industry’s fortunes. Michael Jennings of this parish had some good things to say in this vein in his superb piece here a few days ago.
Of course the surreal nature of lobbying for Oscar slots gets even more Daliesque when juxtaposed next to the recall election in California. Here’s a poser for you – which is more out of touch with reality, the Oscars, or California’s politicians? Discuss.
In electoral terms, the British National Party are still miniscule but success in local elections is now regular to the point of being almost monotonous:
The far-right British National Party have picked up another council seat after a by-election in Essex.
His party has tried to moderate its policies and rhetoric in an effort to shake off its racist image and become more electable.
The by-election was triggered by the death of a Labour incumbent.
In common with everybody else, the BBC always refers to the BNP as ‘far-right’. Such nonsense. The BNP is not of the right, near or far. It is an old Labour-style socialist party with a bit of wog-bashing thrown in. They are, in the truest sense of the term, the Nationalist Left.
But quibbles aside, there can be little argument that their appeal is widening if not spectacularly then at least steadily.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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