StephanKinsella.com

The “Wayback Machine” at the Internet Archive is extremely cool, and a bit scary. It lets you find old or dead web sites. They take a complete snapshot of the entire web every so often, and archive it. You can type in a given website or URL and see the content on various dates (thanks to Pat Galea).

Interesting discussion of notion of “copyleft”: The Great Giveaway: Good ideas are worth money. So why are hard headed operators giving them away for free?, by Graham Lawton, NewScientist.com. It’s interesting to note that though the (often leftist) advocates of the copyleft idea seem to brand themselves as radical opponents of copyright (and private property, capitalism, commercialism, profit motive, etc.), the very notion of copyleft requires there to be copyright. This is because copyleft is really just a special type of copyright license, one that gives users of a copyrighted work virtually unfettered permission to use/copy/distribute/modify the work–but only “on the condition that” similar “copyleft” is given in the subsequent work. Without copyright, there could be no copyleft. While copyleft is an admittedly clever use of copyright, advocates of copyleft are also necessarily advocates of copyright.

Examiner Obscenity: in a purportedly genuine Official Action sent by an Examiner at the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to a patent applicant (see Paragraph 8) (JPG file, 116Kb; courtesy PATNEWS)

Voicemail message, with increasingly frustrated obscenities, purportedly left by trademark applicant/appellant with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) (WAV file, 1.3Mb)

I’ve updated my list of Annoying and Pretentious Terms & Figures of Speech. Suggestions/comments welcome.

Pat Buchanan’s latest book, The Death of the West, looks to be an important wake-up call about the dangers that immigration, multiculturalism, and the like pose to western culture and civilization. However, Buchanan has written a recent column linking libertarians with a pro-immigration stance–despite explicitly libertarian anti-immigration arguments by arch-libertarian Hans-Hermann Hoppe (longer PDF article) and other reservations about open borders by other libertarians. In response to Buchanan’s lumping of all libertarians together under the pro-immigration banner, WorldNetDaily published today a response to Buchanan from paleolibertarian Karen De Coster, plus other responses and articles on immigration. De Coster makes it clear that not all libertarians are pro-open borders, despite Pat’s incorrect assumption to the contrary.

Another Pat Response

In addition to the commentary linked in the last blog, see also Buchanan’s column accusing libertarians of being pro-immigration.

I’ve come across DynamicDrive.com, a neat website with cool tricks, tips, and tools for web sites, e.g., mouse trail effects.

I’ve been using Netflix–a great service that I recommend–and the other day rented The Man in the Moon. It’s a fantastic movie; I agree with Roger Ebert’s review.

There are a growing number of sites containing free, electronic copies of classic and other books, such as Bibliomania. Others are listed here.

Two good articles: The Seven Wonders of the Web; and Democracy vs. Freedom (And The Nation-State)?, by Jared Taylor (discussing the provocative new book by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy – The God That Failed).

Another fantastic article is Gary North’s Advice to a Would-Be Scholar. One I wish I’d read when I was younger.

January 6, 2002

Interesting article on FoxNews.com, Setting Sail on a Giant, Floating City. Unlike some libertarian fantasies, this one may work.

My former partner, Erid Sinrod, reports on an interesting recent case, Intel v. Hamidi, in which a California appellate court ruled that waves of unsolicited e-mails sent to Intel by a former employee constituted trespass on Intel’s server. The court applied the common-law doctrine of trespass to chattels. See Intel’s argument, which pointed out that, under California law, unconsented access to a computer system constitutes a trespass to chattels. This was established in Thrifty-Tel, Inc. v. Bezenek, 46 Cal. App. 4th 1559 (1996), and extended to e-mail systems in CompuServe, Inc. v. Cyber Promotions, Inc., 962 F. Supp. 1015 (S.D. Ohio 1997). In that case, the court enjoined the defendant from sending unauthorized e-mail onto the plaintiff’s proprietary computer systems. The CompuServe court found that the defendant’s electronic signals, comprising the e-mail, physically invaded the plaintiff’s computers after a demand to cease. America Online, Inc. v. IMS, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17437 at *4-*8 (E.D. Va. October 29, 1998) also based its trespass to chattels holding primarily on the reasoning in CompuServe. In my view, this is a legitimate application of libertarian principles of property rights and trespass.

Are we headed toward a technological singularity? The end of life as we know it, in 40-50 years, due to the unpredictable and ever-accelerating pace of technological “progess”? See: Vernor Vinge’s The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era; A Critical Discussion of Vinge’s Singularity Concept ; and Kurzweil’s Law. Food for thought…

Nice Fox News/ifeminist article by Wendy McElroy, Good Will Toward Men.

I came across a hilarious web site of a small, mostly-female-owned Colorado law firm, who call themselves The Bitches From Hell. See especially the new firm announcement and their fan mail. I’d hire ’em.

Excellent article, exploring the evils of patent and copyright: Suddenly, ‘Idea Wars’ Take on a New Global Urgency, by Amy Harmon, New York Times, Nov. 11, 2001 (free registration may be required).