I’ve already got a number of posts up, some old and republished from other sites, some new. I’m hoping this won’t be a one-man show, so I’m looking for some regular writers as well as submissions from irregular or part-time contributors. There are already a few others on board, so you should start to see posts from them before long. If you’re interested in contributing a review, news commentary, or the like, contact me.

You can learn more about Prometheus Unbound, my reasons for creating it, and what I’m looking for in submissions by starting with my introductory post. I’m particularly interested in science fiction and fantasy prose fiction, but Prometheus Unbound will be open to submissions dealing with just about any genre or medium, including film, tv, comics and graphic novels, and poetry.

~*~

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

We libertarians have more than merely consequentialist, slippery slope arguments against government policies, of course, but I still think it is useful to point out dangerous precedents, particularly when our worries are not just theoretical as we are already well on our way down the slide. The acceptance of professional licensing of “crucial” professions has over time been expanded into ever more areas, even to the licensing of florists in my home state of Louisiana and now to calls for the licensing of parents.

Others have pointed out that despite seeming like natural allies, the divide between anarchists and minarchists is actually greater than the divide between minarchists and (other) statists. Minarchists give away the game at the outset when they accept that a government monopoly in X or Y service (say law and security provision) is necessary. This is especially true of small government types who can’t imagine how the free market can provide, for example, roads or postal service. It is fairly trivial for left-liberals to extend the reasoning behind the need for government to provide such services to the need for government to support their own pet projects.

With that in mind, consider a recently published paper I just came across written by a left-liberal philosopher, Eric Thomas Weber, who is an acquaintance of mine. He cleverly co-opts an institution beloved by conservatives, arguing that the Founding Fathers’ arguments in favor of government postal roads and services can be extended to expanding broadband services through a government initiative. What principled argument can Republicans, and even minarchists, offer against this? Indeed, on his Facebook page, he relates that after giving a presentation of this paper a fellow from AEI told him he had been convinced. Another case in point, the first person to comment on his Facebook Wall post claims to be libertarian-minded (!) and yet convinced by Weber’s historical-constitutional argument that broadband would meet his personal criteria for acceptable government involvement.

~*~

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

Here’s a practical example taking place before us. Some technologically and strategically-incompetent pundits are clamoring for the United States federal government to use its cyber capabilities to take out WikiLeaks before the organization puts online the remaining 15,000 documents of the leaked Afghan war logs.

Kevin Poulsen of Wired.com explains how a previous attempt to take down wikileaks.org has already failed in the past and how future attempts to take out WikiLeaks will fail as well.

In 2008, federal judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco ordered the WikiLeaks.org domain name seized as part of a lawsuit filed by Julius Baer Bank and Trust, a Swiss bank that suffered a leak of some of its internal documents. Two weeks later the judge admitted he’d acted hastily, and he had the site restored. “There are serious questions of prior restraint, possible violations of the First Amendment,” he said.

Even while the order was in effect, WikiLeaks lived on: supporters and free speech advocates distributed the internet IP address of the site, so it could be reached directly. Mirrors of the site were unaffected by the court order, and a copy of the entire WikiLeaks archive of leaked documents circulated freely on the Pirate Bay.

The U.S. government has other, less legal, options, of course — the “cyber” capabilities Thiessen alludes to. The Pentagon probably has the ability to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks against WikiLeaks’ public-facing servers. If it doesn’t, the Army could rent a formidable botnet from Russian hackers for less than the cost of a Humvee.

But that wouldn’t do much good either. WikiLeaks wrote its own insurance policy two weeks ago, when it posted a 1.4 GB file called insurance.aes256.

The file’s contents are encrypted, so there’s no way to know what’s in it. But, as we’ve previously reported, it’s more than 19 times the size of the Afghan war log — large enough to contain the entire Afghan database, as well as the other, larger classified databases said to be in WikiLeaks’ possession. Accused Army leaker Bradley Manning claimed to have provided WikiLeaks with a log of events in the Iraq war containing 500,000 entries from 2004 through 2009, as well as a database of 260,000 State Department cables to and from diplomatic posts around the globe.

Whatever the insurance file contains, Assange — appearing via Skype on a panel at the Frontline Club — reminded everyone Thursday that he could make it public at any time. “All we have to do is release the password to that material and it’s instantly available,” he said.

WikiLeaks is encouraging supporters to download the insurance file through the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay. “Keep it safe,” reads a message greeting visitors to the WikiLeaks chat room. After two weeks, the insurance file is doubtless in the hands of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of netizens already.

We dipped into the torrent Friday to get a sense of WikiLeaks’ support in that effort. In a few minutes of downloading, we pulled bits and piece of insurance.aes256 from 61 seeders around the world. We ran the IP addresses through a geolocation service and turned it into a KML file to produce the Google Map at the top of this page [go to the Wired.com article or view it on Google Maps — GAP]. The seeders are everywhere, from the U.S., to Iceland, Australia, Canada and Europe. They had all already grabbed the entire file, and are now just donating bandwidth to help WikiLeaks survive.

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

I’m a libertarian, not a Tea Partier, but I’ll take a stab at explaining this.

Both free markets and the right to free speech are based on the right to private property. Net neutrality, insofar as it involves regulation, violates private property rights. That said, not every violation of the right to property is a violation of the right to free speech.

“But really, to expect the ISPs to do “right” by you is laughable. If it could, Comcast and the nation’s ISPs would offer 1 mbps (down, mind you) and call that SUPER FAST INTERNET, then charge you $100 per month for the privilege of using it.”

If they could? Maybe. Maybe not. But in a free market, they could not. Restrict competition through regulations, monopoly franchises, and whatnot, and then maybe they could.

“But to oppose Net Neutrality in order to defend the free speech of ISPs is pretty laughable.”

Umm… I don’t see in the letter where they defend the free speech of ISPs. I don’t see it in the quoted soundbite either.¹ More likely the speaker was concerned about the free speech of users who could be prevented by net neutrality regulations from purchasing services that otherwise might have been available, services they could have used to express themselves more effectively.

In any case, the fundamental reason to oppose net neutrality laws or regulations is that they constitute a violation of property rights.

Then I realized I had made a small mistake, so I left a second comment:

Okay, I see that in the linked article on Radtke’s quote, the reporter writes:

“The free-speech objection to net neutrality has also gained some ground recently. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and AT&T began citing First Amendment objections to net neutrality in public discussions and in filings with the FCC this year.

“The free-speech argument holds that, by interfering with how phone and cable companies deliver Internet traffic, the government would be thwarting the free-speech rights of providers such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.”

This is the reporter’s interpretation, but let’s say it’s accurate. Is it not possible to imagine how net neutrality regulations could interfere with even the free speech of ISPs? And as “browse” at 1:58 pm UTC pointed out:

“The EFF has some great pieces on Net Neutrality. One of the issues is the Trojan Horse issue: whereby a more activist commissioner could abuse powers won in the aims of Net Neutrality to stifle free expression online. Even if they current FCC has no inclinations to regulate the Internet beyond Net Neutrality, regimes do change pretty frequently, and agendas change with them. If you look at it from that perspective, the argument you quoted above sounds a bit less crazy.”

In any case, as I mentioned in my previous comment, the fundamental reason to oppose net neutrality laws and regulations isn’t free speech but private property.

To wrap things up: That Nicholas finds the Tea Party’s free speech argument so laughable on its face betrays a leftist anti-corporate bias. Corporations are often not the good guys, such as when they seek government protection from competition. But at least corporations are not intrinsically evil. To turn to government as our savior, when it is government that is the primary enemy and source of man-made problems in the world, now that’s more than slightly misguided. In any event, Nicholas hardly gives the Tea Party a fair shake, focusing on their free speech argument as he does and not even bothering to give that a charitable interpretation or serious counterargument.

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

1. Jaime Radtke, chairwoman of the Virginia Tea Party Patriot Federation, said, “I think the clearest thing is it’s an affront to free speech and free markets.” ↩

There has been a lot wailing and gnashing of teeth recently over a joint announcement by Google and Verizon of a legislative-framework proposal they’ve been working on.

Now, I’ve seen this variously referred to as a backroom deal or pact, a secret treaty, or a set of regulations Google and Verizon are imposing on the internet. The FCC is shamefully abdicating its responsibility to regulate the internet! Nevermind that the D.C. Circuit court determined recently in the Comcast case that the FCC has no such regulatory authority over broadband internet; hence, the calls to disastrously reclassify broadband internet access in order to place it under the same regulatory rules as regular telephone service. Some are even intimating that Google and Verizon are trying to ‘own’ the internet. Net neutrality activists are up in arms about this proposal, viciously attacking Google for selling out and reversing its longstanding defense of net neutrality, and calling for people to stage a silly boycott of Google products and services. If you don’t join the herd, you get labeled a Google-Verizon apologist or it is insinuated that you are on their payroll (see comments on the CNET articles linked below, for example).

So what should libertarians make of all this?

As libertarians, we must of course oppose the Google-Verizon proposal and favor the abolition of the FCC and all internet regulation.

First, it is necessary to get a few facts straight. Larry Downes provides the best analysis I’ve yet seen in “Deconstructing the Google-Verizon Framework” at TechLiberation.com and “What the Google-Verizon proposal really says” at CNET. (There’s some overlap, but it’s worth reading both.) Also good and level-headed are Peter Suderman’s “No More Net Neutrality?” at Reason.com‘s Hit & Run and Berin Szoka and Adam Thierer’s “Just say no to Ma Bell-era Net neutrality regulation” at CNET (though libertarians cannot agree with their claim that governments should step in “when … self-regulation fails”).

As Downes points out,

the Google-Verizon framework has absolutely no legal significance.  It’s not a treaty, accord, agreement, deal, pact, contract or business arrangement — all terms still being used to describe it.  It doesn’t bind anyone to do anything, including Google and Verizon.

Moreover, if Downes’s analysis is correct, there are very few significant differences between the Google-Verizon proposal and the FCC’s own Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) made way back in October of last year. So much for the “FCC is abdicating regulatory responsibility” nonsense (the authority for which it lacks, remember). Keep in mind this is just a proposal. We don’t know if the FCC or Congress will adopt any of its points. Google and Verizon cannot write or impose regulations without Congress and the FCC.

According to Downes, it is primarily for the very points on which the Google-Verizon and FCC proposals are identical or very very similar that Google and Verizon are being attacked. And, bizarrely, it is these points that net neutrality advocates usually support — and, notably, do support…when they come from the FCC. Odd how vague terms and turns of phrase get interpreted much more charitably when coming from a government bureaucracy than from a corporation.

Where the Google-Verizon proposal does differ significantly from the FCC proposal is where things get interesting. It does suggest the FCC not be granted any authority to regulate broadband internet access and only be granted the authority to enforce rules passed into law by Congress. Libertarians can get behind the first part of this at least. And one would think people of a democratic bent would approve of keeping regulatory control in the hands of a democratically-elected body rather than a technocratic, politically-appointed bureaucracy.  Unsurprisingly, the FCC is none too fond of this part of the proposal, insisting the only way net neutrality will be achieved is if Congress gives them more power and authority. Imagine that.

The proposal significantly departs from net neutrality by suggesting wireless broadband, i.e., mobile network, infrastructure is not mature enough yet to function reasonably well under its rules. This appears to be a compromise Google made with Verizon, long a staunch opponent of net neutrality, in order to come to an agreement on a middle-ground policy proposal before Congress or the FCC got it into their heads to do something drastic, like reclassifying broadband internet or otherwise granting the FCC broad regulatory authority to screw up the internet.

Another noted exception to net neutrality is the exclusion of ‘unlawful’ content from the non-discrimination rule. Libertarians can object to this that there is much that is unlawful, under positive law, in the US that should not be. But is this exception really that unusual? Don’t landlords often include such provisions in leases? Do we really imagine that governments won’t mind ISPs allowing ‘unlawful’ activity and content or that ISPs won’t mind bearing the risk of liability for what customers do on their networks? Instead of attacking Google and Verizon on this, net neutrality advocates ought to attack governments for unjust laws and get them repealed. Still, it would be heroic of Google and Verizon to defy governments on this.

The Google-Verizon and FCC proposals don’t seem all that radical, status-quo altering, or different to me. It seems much is being made ado about nothing and the claims of the death of Google’s commitment to net neutrality as well as the FCC’s exercising of its regulatory responsibility have been greatly exaggerated.  Surprise Surprise. The boring truth wouldn’t generate as many page views and as much anti-corporate political outrage.

But all this is really neither here nor there. Whether Google has sold out on net neutrality or not, whether Downes’s analysis is correct or not, whatever the correct interpretation of certain phrases in the Google-Verizon proposal that net neutrality advocates are criticizing — it shouldn’t have a significant impact on how libertarians ought to view what Google and Verizon are trying to do.  Google and Verizon are attempting regulatory capture. They are trying to get Congress and/or the FCC to regulate the internet in certain ways. This is understandable. It can be seen as defensive in a sense — to prevent regulation that will be harmful to their business. The proposal seeks to preserve the lack of net neutrality in wireless broadband, at least for now, effectively maintaining the status quo for Verizon. And it seeks to preserve, codify, and extend net neutrality in wired broadband, which benefits Google on personal computers.

Meanwhile, in a separate move, Google is apparently starting to co-locate portable data centers with Verizon’s network hubs to speed up its services for mobile users as well as save space for other traffic and probably save the two companies money. There’s nothing wrong with this at all, legally or morally, as it is a shrewd business decision that involves no aggression; and it will only benefit users.

While the Google-Verizon legislative-framework proposal may be defensive in a sense, self-defense against impending aggression (i.e., the threat or use of initiatory force) cannot justify aggression against innocent third parties. The proposal as a whole will involve just such ‘collateral damage’. Government regulation involves initiating force against people to prevent them from engaging in voluntary, mutually-agreeable transactions with their own property.  As libertarians, we must of course oppose this and favor the abolition of the FCC and all internet regulation. Depending on your point of view, the Google-Verizon proposal may be the best politically-realistic option on the table or there may be better alternatives (though it’s not the abominable betrayal many are making it out to be), but because it is a proposal for regulating the internet it is not something libertarians can actively support.

Against this position I have personally seen a number of different objections (in blockquotes below):

This is naive and reflexive. What you propose is dangerous, because voters and internet users do not have a voice in corporate decision-making (unless they own stock and exercise voting privileges). This is not hands-off government, this is hands in the pockets government.

This makes it sound as if voters have much of a voice in government decision-making. This, along with turning to government to solve perceived problems, particularly when it has to do with corporations, could be labeled naive and reflexive. As if government agents are disinterested and altruistic. Public Choice Economics 101. I don’t see the difference between hands-off government and hands-in-the-pockets government. In any case, either type is an oxymoron. Government is always putting its hands in other people’s pockets, often on behalf of big corporations. Why are people still surprised at regulatory capture? I’d be surprised not to see it.

Libertarian idealism is great in theory, but in practice it is co-opted by the interests of those who have risen to the top in business and now want to solidify those gains by making it difficult for others to take the same level playing field they enjoyed when they were smaller.

This is not libertarian ideals in practice. The only way the guys at the top in business can do this successfully is through the government. This is the very opposite of the libertarian ideal; it is not libertarianism in action. It is precisely why much corporate regulation is actually proposed by the big players in an industry once they’ve risen to the top, not by forward-thinking, altruistic politicians. What the objection actually describes is Republicanism, which pays lip service to liberty and free markets but in reality is corporatist. But the Democrats are corporatist too, in a different way. The existence of internet regulation and the FCC just serves to support the state-corporate plutocratic partnership.

Libertarians do not suggest regulatory capture as a solution. We suggest abolishing the FCC so that there is nothing for Google or any other corporation to capture and no political reason for them to feel they need to do so.

Google is great and I would love to see government stay out of a fair fight. This isn’t one, and you’re rooting against your own best interests, unless of course you own stock in Google or Verizon.

What is fair about a fight in which those with the best political connections — usually the wealthy and big corporations, mind you! — can employ the massive force of the government to impose their will on those who disagree? This generally is not good for the little guy. In fact, if this issue weren’t thrust into the political arena, it wouldn’t even be fair to call it a fight. Politicizing the issue and vying for control over the minds, bodies, and property of others against their will is what turns this into a fight. It is not in my best interest (properly conceived) to force others to let me use their property the way I want.  Government regulation of telecoms has also gone hand-in-hand with invasion of privacy, such as government snooping after “‘terrorists’ and whatnot. And do we really want to open the door to Hollywood, the RIAA,  indecency police, and Homeland Security influence on internet regulation?

Allowing Google and Verizon to write regulations for themselves is like letting the financial industry regulate itself. (How well has that worked for us?)

As I’ve pointed out, Google and Verizon cannot write regulations without Congress and the FCC. Moreover, the financial industry most certainly was not left to “‘regulate’ itself. It is shot through and through with government regulation, regulation that failed, that will continue to fail, that is in fact counter productive. Regulation is what screwed up the rating agencies, making them worse than useless. Government interference in the housing market and the money/credit supply is what created the housing bubble upon which the infamous credit default swaps were built. Regulatory capture happened and will continue to happen in the financial industry. It has and will continue to happen with the internet so long as the government seeks to regulate it.

Moreover, the politicians and bureaucrats are ignorant of the very things they are regulating. Regulators didn’t catch Enron. They didn’t catch Madoff’s scam and they ignored the guy who did. They didn’t understand credit default swaps. Does anyone really expect them to understand how the internet works, what business models work best, and what consumers really want? The late, and unlamented, former Senator Ted Stevens, famously referred to an email message as “an internet” and described the internet as a “series of tubes” (referenced in the post title). This man chaired the Senate commerce committee for years, overseeing a large overhaul of the telecommunications bill and “‘authoring’ S. 2686, the Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006.

Do telecoms understand the technology better than politicians and political appointees? Yes, they do. That’s precisely why they should not be allowed to police themselves.

What you say!!!

The illogic of this is mindboggling. I do not understand how “telecoms understand the technology better than politicians and political appointees” leads to “That’s precisely why they should not be allowed to police themselves.” Is this based on fear? I’m more afraid of politicians and political appointees. They have much more power and much less accountability. That makes their ignorance all the more worrisome. At least companies have to compete with one another for (voluntary) customers and revenue.

I think most people do not understand the extent to which the telecom and internet industries are regulated by governments already, leading to myriad problems, including distorted and decreased competition. Separate economy and state, and corporations would have far less power.

What I am advocating is defending the status quo. If the status quo must be defended by regulation, then I am for government regulation.

Why defend the status quo? What’s so special about it? Change can be good. Ask Obama. Seriously though, by what right can anyone use regulation to maintain the status quo?

Left alone, I’m afraid internet would go the way of television — mostly garbage for free and very dumbed down, the more you pay, the better. My other biggest concern is lack of access to information by people who are low income, or schools on limited budgets, etc.

The internet is for porn! Seriously though, I’m fond of Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap. Still, there is a lot of great, free content on the internet. That would be the case even without net neutrality. And I see no reason why non-commercial sites like Wikipedia would slow to a crawl and become hard to use, as some have irresponsibly claimed.

Peter Suderman said it well:

And, of course, that’s the big picture here: allowing and encouraging a diversity of feature sets and service options for content providers and consumers. Neutrality advocates stress the concept of equality for a reason — the goal is to ensure a level of sameness amongst consumers. But when it comes to information-service markets, especially the growing world of mobile data access, not all plans, phones, and networks are created equal. But that’s as it should be, because not all consumer needs are the same. Those who want more should be able to pay for it. Those who don’t shouldn’t have to.

Broadband may be becoming so voluminous and cheap that we’ll effectively see net neutrality for most users by default. But if this turns out not to be the case, and traffic needs keep up with expanding supply, then we might not see net neutrality fully realized in all respects. If net neutrality is not what would arise in an unhampered market, then so be it. It won’t be the end of the world and the poor will not be more unable to access the internet (at reasonable speeds) than they already are. I expect they will be better off.

Free wifi with reasonable speeds is offered by a growing number of businesses, including coffee shops and restaurants. Even Sam’s Club will soon be offering free wifi to shoppers. Businesses have an incentive to do this as a loss leader, to get customers inside to sample and purchase their products and other services. Companies like Google want everyone to be online and having a good experience; it’s better for their bottom line.  Even Verizon benefits from providing customers a satisfying internet experience.

Tell Googlizon to do no evil, but do it for the right reasons.²

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

1. Confused by this sentence and the title? The title is a mash-up of a few geeky internet memes. Know your meme, and also check out this Wikipedia article and this YouTube video. ↩

2. Googlizon, for those who haven’t figured it out, is my Japanese Godzilla-style mashup of Google and Verizon. ↩

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

I love Noah Shachtman’s analysis of the propagandistic publicity poster by Northrop Grumman, the maker of the Army’s latest war toy:

God smiles when the Army spends a half-billion dollars on spy blimps the size of a football field. I believe that’s the message Northrop Grumman is trying to convey in this illustration. . .

The first airship is supposed to be inflated around 10 months from now. Eight months later, the Army hopes to have the first LEMV flying over Afghanistan. On that day, the clouds will part, the sun will shine, and the cherubs will sing as the unblinking eye begins looking for Taliban.

God bless America indeed.

The Unblinking Eyes of Sauron are intended for use over foreign soil. But with the increasing militarization of US borders and police, I wonder how long until they or their successors are deployed over our own heads? looking for brown-skinned interlopers, pot growers, and terrorists under every rock.

I’m reminded of a couple of pieces by heavy metal bands, though these work just as well for spy satellites. The first is a creepy intro, “An Eye Is Upon You,” by Powerman 5000 for their album Tonight the Stars Revolt! And the second is “Electric Eye” by one of my favorite bands, Judas Priest (their compilation album Metal Works is a good place to start).

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

This is just one aspect of the Mises Institute’s effort to be completely open source. All of the intellectual eggs of the Austro-Libertarian movement are no longer being kept in one basket. The more people who seed those torrents, the easier the burden on the Mises Institute.

But more importantly, should statist or natural disaster strike, the world won’t lose the vast wealth of information hosted by the Mises Institute. Indeed, not only will the information not be lost, but there will be no downtime in its worldwide online distribution. Should states decide to actively move against us, they’ll be in for one hell of a game of ‘whack-a-mole’. They’ll face the same problems the RIAA, Hollywood, and others are facing in their War on Piracy Copying.

Austro-Libertarianism has gone viral, folks.

All this is to set the context for another example of open source anti-state resistance that I recently discovered. WordPress is an open source website and blogging platform. It’s an easy to use, yet powerful, tool for getting our ideas online where people around the world can access them. It’s free, as in speech and beer. This site is powered by it. The Libertarian Standard is powered by it. The Mises Institute’s site is powered by it.

But some countries like China and Australia censor the internet, blocking access to unapproved sites like YouTube and Twitter, filtering or blocking or shutting down or otherwise regulating websites and blogs.

There are ways to get around this censorship, however. Here’s one: The good folks at Global Voices Advocacy, an organization defending free speech online, have heroically created a guide to mirroring a censored WordPress blog. It’s covered by a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, just like this site and The Libertarian Standard. Get it. Share it. Even if you don’t need it yet, someday you might. Others already do.

In the spirit of the Mises Institute’s torrented online library, I’m hosting the guide here as well.

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

It’s my first LOLcat. Like it?

(I added just the Apple logo and the text, someone else had already put the cat in.)