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glennreynolds.com
by glenn reynolds
• Dec. 16, 2003 | 3:52 PM ET
MORAL IDIOTS
Why am I inclined toward libertarianism? It's because I figured out long
ago that many of the people who run most big institutions are -- and I
want to put this in the nicest possible way -- idiots. Today brings more
proof.
Consider the town of Cleburne, Texas. Just a couple of days ago, a
middle-school student was stabbed. But what's the top law-enforcement
priority there? Apparently, it's keeping married couples from getting
sex toys:
A Texas housewife is in big trouble with the law for selling a vibrator
to a pair of undercover cops. . . . Joanne Webb, a former fifth-grade
teacher and mother of three, was in a county court in Cleburne, Texas,
on Monday to answer obscenity charges for selling the vibrator to
undercover narcotics officers posing as a dysfunctional married couple
in search of a sex aid.
The law is pretty obviously unconstitutional in light of the Supreme
Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas, but that's not the point. The
point is that the town fathers -- perhaps viewing such devices as
competition? -- chose to send people with guns to arrest Ms. Webb. This
looks to me like proof positive that taxes in Cleburne are too high, and
that a round of law-enforcement layoffs would do some good -- or that
the town fathers have a misplaced sense of priorities, to put it mildly.
Perhaps they're just champions of traditional values -- but if so, they
should note that another traditional American value involved tarring and
feathering overreaching officials and running them out of town on a
rail. Nowadays we mostly just make fun of them on the Internet, but if
they'd like to turn the clock back, well...
Meanwhile papal envoy Cardinal Renato Martino is expressing sympathy for
Saddam Hussein, saying that photos of him getting his teeth checked
shouldn't have been shown. As blogger Rob Hinkley notes, "And what is
the treatment that the Cardinal finds so distressing? They looked at
his teeth! Oh, the inhumanity. Looking at his teeth... that's almost as
bad as smashing his teeth out and then electrocuting him, right?"
I wonder if the Vatican will come to the defense of Joanne Webb. Well,
no. Actually I don't wonder at all.
• Dec. 15, 2003 | 11:44 AM ET
THE DICTATORSHIP FALLS
Saddam's captured. That's a big story -- and military blogger LT Smash
has a roundup of blog commentary that's worth reading. But that's not
the dictatorship I mean.
I'm referring to the dictatorship of the Big Media, which is losing its
stranglehold over news. Here's just one example.
Last week, there were huge anti-terrorism and anti-Saddam demonstrations
in Iraq. But they hardly got any coverage in the mainstream media. The
New York Times gave them one short paragraph, buried in a story about
something else. The Washington Post didn't cover them at all. Neither
did most of the big TV networks. (You can see Reuters' raw video feed
here). But American blogger Jeff Jarvis had sent a digital camera to
Iraqi blogger Zeyad, who reported on the demonstrations and posted
photos on his weblog. Lots of other bloggers picked up on this (links
here, here, here, and here) and Roger Simon (last link) observed: "Do
you think for one moment that if thousands had been marching for
Saddam... for the fascists... excuse me "insurgents"... it wouldn't have
been front page news? I don't. What's going on?"
What, indeed?
But the story got out. And in fact, it got picked up. Amazingly -- a
week after Zeyad got his digital camera, and just a few days after the
protests -- The Weekly Standard gave over two pages of its front section
to Zeyad's reporting. (It's in their print magazine, and on their
website here.
Just a few years ago, this would have been a non-story in the United
States. Now, it's a huge embarrassment for the New York Times, the
Washington Post, and the other Big Media operations that were scooped by
an Iraqi dentist with a $200 digital camera. And not just scooped --
shown up for having what are, at best, rather skewed priorities in their
reportage.
They'd better get used to it.
Dec. 11, 2003 | 1:46 PM ET
GOOSE CREEK UPDATE
Last month I wrote about the national embarrassment created by the
thuggish drug search at Stratford High School in Goose Creek, South
Carolina, in which students were forced to lie on the floor while dogs
prowled and police aimed guns at their heads. (Start here and scroll
up.) To make it even more pathetic, no drugs were found.
Now there’s a lawsuit underway, and reportedly the raid, which targeted
mostly black students, has aggravated racial tensions. And video
indicates that the Goose Creek police weren’t following their own rules.
In the Drug War, we hear a lot about “personal responsibility.” Kids
caught with drugs would likely have been expelled, or jailed, for not
following the rules. Will Stratford High School Principal George
McCrackin, or Goose Creek Police Chief Harvey Becker lose their jobs? Or
is “personal responsibility” just for the little people?
• Dec. 10, 2003 | 4:51 PM ET
THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS
The good news is that plans to propose a U.N. takeover of the Internet
at this week’s World Summit on the Information Society seem to have been
shelved for the moment,. Faced with a storm of protest, and difficulty
in agreeing on what to do, the governments who favored such a move have
backed down for the moment.
The bad news is that they won’t stay backed down. The Internet is too
much of a threat to the world’s governing classes to go unanswered.
The other good news is that the longer they wait to try to set up a
regime that will give government officials control over what people read
and say, the harder it will be for them to pull it off. And in this
game, the delay works very much in the interests of freedom.
Bureaucracies — especially international bureaucracies — tend to move
slowly. Things on the Internet, on the other hand, tend to move quite
rapidly. This means that the Internet is “inside the decision curve” of
the bureaucracies.
The other bad news is that that’s a huge advantage, but not an
insuperable one: The bureaucracies may not have time or technology on
their sides, but they do have guns, and access to a lot of (other
people’s) money. Despite the brave talk of the world’s
cyber-libertarians, if push ever really came to shove, governments could
probably shut down the Internet, or at least the parts of it they don’t
like.
The other other good news is that the longer they wait, the more
entangled the Internet becomes with commerce and daily life, and the
higher the political costs of shutdown, or even censorship, become.
Being an isolated dictatorship like, say, Burma will be possible — but
it’ll also mean being impoverished and inconsequential, like Burma.
That’s one reason why fighting for Internet freedom is so important —
and why it’s especially important right now. The longer that the world’s
governments can be kept away from the Internet, the harder it will be to
censor, and the more advantage for the forces of freedom.
I’ve got a column addressing this topic at more length here.
• Dec. 9, 2003 | 9:56 AM ET
WHO WILL CONTROL THE INTERNET?
The Internet is letting people read and say what they want all over the
world, to the immense discomfiture of the kinds of people who don’t like
that. Now the tyrants are striking back — and, despite all the talk,
it’s not in the name of democracy or accountability, as this New York
Times report makes clear. The pre-discussions leading up to this week’s
Geneva Summit are underway, and it doesn’t sound good. The corporation
that currently controls the vital Internet-addressing functions, ICANN,
has been criticized often — sometimes even by me — but it looks awfully
open compared to the international bureaucrats:
An important point of debate will be whether the Internet should be
overseen by the United Nations instead of American groups like Icann.
“I am not amused,” Mr. Twomey said via a cellphone outside the
conference room Friday evening after he was barred from the planning
meeting. “At Icann, anybody can attend meetings, appeal decisions or go
to ombudsmen. And here I am outside a U.N. meeting room where diplomats
- most of whom know little about the technical aspects - are deciding in
a closed forum how 750 million people should reach the Internet.” Mr.
Twomey said that others were also kept out, including members of the
news media and anyone who was not a government official.
They’ve also excluded Reporters Without Borders from the event. Make no
mistake about it — this isn’t about opening the Internet up to the
underrepresented. It’s about closing it down to people who threaten the
power of entrenched bureaucracies, especially in non-democratic
countries. It’s no coincidence that some of the most enthusiastic
Webloggers, for example, are Iranians anxious to end the rule of the
corrupt, tyrannical mullahs who currently control their nation’s
government. Not surprisingly, the mullahs aren’t very happy about that.
They join the rulers of China, various Arab nations, and other
despotisms and near-despotisms — along, I suspect, with the heads of
some major media organs — in nostalgia for the old days when it was
easier to control what people said and what they read.
The good news is that it looks as if they’re not going to get their way
this time around. But you can rest assured that they’ll keep trying.
• Dec. 8, 2003 | 9:27 AM ET
NANOTECHNOLOGY BECOMES AN ISSUE
Last week I noted that the nanotechnology bill had passed Congress and
was scheduled to be signed by the President. That happened (here’s the
White House press release), and many people are optimistic. For example,
UPI columnist Charles Choi writes that “contrary to many of the grand
gestures made by presidents and congresses past, the 21st Century
Nanotechnology Research and Development Act that Bush signed might just
live up to its potential.”
Not everyone is happy, of course. While some environmental groups want a
moratorium on nanotechnology research until they’re satisfied that it
won’t threaten the environment or existing economic relationships (in
other words, basically forever), others, like Greenpeace, are taking a
more responsible line.
Writing in this month’s Reason, Ron Bailey notes that a moratorium might
be dangerous in itself, and I’m inclined to agree. I’ve written more on
this subject in an article that will soon appear in the Harvard Journal
of Law and Technology, but for now I’ll just say that I agree with
Greenpeace that a moratorium is a bad idea.
If you’re interested in following this subject, there are several good
places to look. Small Times magazine covers the nanotechnology industry
quite closely. Howard Lovy, a Small Times correspondent, also has his
own nanotechnology-related weblog. And Nanodot is a news and discussion
site that focuses on nanotechnology, too. And here’s a short piece that
I wrote for Legal Affairs on the legal and economic ramifications of
nanotechnology, a topic that is also addressed by Berkeley economist
Brad DeLong in this blog post, which prompted some further thoughts by
Zack Lynch at Corante. The technology may be just taking off, but the
discussion is already underway.
© 2003 MSNBC Interactive
Stoney
"Designated Rascal and Rapscallion
and
SCAMPERMEISTER!"
When in doubt, SCAMPER about!
When things are fair, SCAMPER everywhere!
When things are rough, can't SCAMPER enough!
/end humour alert
alt.atheism military veteran #11
{so much for the 'no atheists in foxholes' rubbish}
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