Down with Gatekeepers: Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration vs. Internet Freedom

Anti-Statism, Corporatism, Education, IP Law, Police Statism, Technology, Totalitarianism
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Last year, in Hillary Clinton’s Historic Speech on Global Internet Freedom, Adam Thierer praised Hillary Clinton for a speech drawing

a bold line in the cyber-sand regarding exactly where the United States stands on global online freedom. Clinton’s answer was unequivocal: “Both the American people and nations that censor the Internet should understand that our government is committed to helping promote Internet freedom.” “The Internet can serve as a great equalizer,” she argued. “By providing people with access to knowledge and potential markets, networks can create opportunities where none exist.”

But of course this is a complete sham. The fedgov and the Obama administration may not like it when other oppressive regimes restrict their own subjects’ access to technology, when this is contrary the American state’s geopolitical “interests,” but the cekatS1 is not at all in favor of Internet freedom. Witness the relentless push to keep increasing copyright law and its insidious effect on Internet freedom. Thus, Obama signed the horrible ACTA (probably unconstitutionally),2 and his administration is also: using other trade agreements to export the draconian DMCA-type copyright provisions to other countries;3 and has proposed to expand “tough” enforcement of copyright, including wiretaps4 and other legislation to curb “piracy” on the Internet.5 And it’s why

U.S. Copyright Czar and Obama administration officials secretly cooperate with Hollywood, recording industry and ISPs to disrupt internet access for users suspected of violating copyright law … Obama administration’s cozy relationship with Hollywood and the music industry’s lobbying arms and its early support for the copyright-violation crackdown system publicly announced in July.6

And it’s why we have the looming threat of SOPA,7 which endangers Internet freedom, which, as I’ve noted before, is one of the most important tools available in the fight against the state.8  And it’s why the cekatS wants to control and restrict it. And it’s doing so, cleverly if perversely, in the name of (intellectual) “property rights” and fighting “piracy”. And who can doubt Obama will sign SOPA if Congress puts it on his desk? (Even though Vice-Thug and IP Poobah Biden hypocritcally spoke out against SOPA type provisions recently.)

And it’s why the Obama administration has seized websites to censor Wikileaks. And ICE has seized hundreds of domains in the name of stopping piracy and at the behest of the MPAA, in addition to other ICE domain seizures in the name of stopping child pornography (“Operation Protect Our Children“–What do you mean “our,” kemosabe?).

No one can seriously think that the central state, or the Obama administration, is in favor of Internet freedom.

As for Hillary Clinton’s lies and claims to be for global Internet freedom despite being part of an administration hell bent on destroying it, her true views were revealed long ago, in 1998 in the wake of the Drudge Report breaking the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal, in response to a question by reporters  Hillary Clinton was asked by reporters whether she favored curbs on the Internet. Her response:
“We’re all going to have to rethink how we deal with the Internet. As exciting as these new developments are, there are a number of serious issues without any kind of editing function or gatekeeping function…”9 And, as Thierer notes in his piece, Hillary Clinton also said “We are all going to have to rethink how we deal with [the Internet], because there are all these competing values. Without any kind of editing function or gatekeeping function, what does it mean to have the right to defend your reputation?” Note here how IP (reputation rights are a type of IP) is once more at the root of the threat to the Internet (one reason I have concluded that copyright is even worse than patent). Of course the political elites–the real 1%–and the Big Media they are in cahoots with, hate the lack of the official “gatekeeper” function. They hate the Internet, social media, talk radio, podcasting, cell phones, twitter, and video cameras.

Update: see Democrats and “Internet Freedom”.

  1. Bill Stepp’s acronymous term for the state: cekatS = “criminal entity known as the State.” Other funny ones are “conjob” for Constitution, and “crookopolies” for monopolies. ↩

  2. ACTA, Executive Agreements, and the Bricker Amendment. ↩

  3. Free-trade pacts export U.S. copyright controls. ↩

  4. Copyright Enforcement, Now Featuring Wiretaps! ↩

  5. White House will propose new digital copyright laws. ↩

  6. Wired article, U.S. Copyright Czar Cozied Up to Content Industry, E-Mails Show. ↩

  7. Die, SOPA, Die. ↩

  8. The Ominous PROTECT IP Act and the End of Internet Freedom; Patent vs. Copyright: Which is Worse?; Internet Access as a Human Right. ↩

  9. Quoted in Government Gatekeepers Come After the Internet; see also No Gatekeepers; Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Understand The Constitution. ↩

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Thoughts on Tabarrok’s Launching the Innovation Revolution

IP Law, Non-Fiction Reviews
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After reviews by Bryan Caplan and our own Stephan Kinsella got my attention, I read Alexander Tabarrok’s new “TED” e-book, Launching the Innovation Revolution.

I went in with an open mind, ready to applaud practical suggestions for incrementally increasing freedom in the area of intellectual property, even if Tabarrok didn’t endorse abolishing the entire patent system as I do. But I was still disappointed.

To Tabarrok’s credit, he does start by showing why patents aren’t necessary to have innovation (at least, he says, in most fields), and he does argue for shorter patent terms (for some things) and less patent protection (for some things). That’s all fine, as far as it goes.

Unfortunately, too much of the book is devoted to promoting new central-planning schemes that Tabarrok thinks would work better than current government programs. Kinsella discusses some of them in an update to his original review; I’ll discuss a couple more.
…

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Tabarrok’s Launching the Innovation Renaissance: Statism, not renaissance

IP Law
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As noted on Marginal Revolution, in Launching the Innovation Renaissance, erstwhile quasi-Austro-libertarian fellow traveler Alex Tabarrok has a new book out in the intriguing TED Books imprint, entitled Launching the Innovation Renaissance (Amzn link, B&N for Nook, also iTunes). The description of the book says:

How can we increase innovation? I look at patents, prizes, education, immigration, regulation, trade and other levers of innovation policy.

Tabarrok is presented as some radical or maverick, bravely challenging the modern horror of statism and patent. But he is not really against patents. In the book he says:

Patents, innovation prizes, patent buyouts and advance market all have their place. The key is to match problems to institutions.

So patents “have their place.” The patent system should be reformed, but it has its place! Of course patent reform is both unrealistic, and not a solution, any more than tax reform is needed.1 The only real tax reform is to lower the rates, not to shuffle things around and move from one type of tax to another. Likewise, the most meaningful IP reform, short of abolition, is to reduce the length of the term: patents, from 17, down to a shorter amount like 5 years; copyright, from over 100 years, to, say, 10 or 20. (See my post How to Improve Patent, Copyright, and Trademark Law.)

As for the “prizes,” in his new ebook he highlights private prizes like the X-Prize but downplays the fact that he thinks taxpayers should fund these prizes. But this is the idea. As I have noted previously,2 Tabarrok is in favor of a taxpayer-funded “medical innovation prize fund”–starting at “$80 billion per year, and increas[ing] with the growth in GDP“. Similar proposals include those by faux free marketeers Joseph Stiglitz and Forbes.com. (Update: I’ve read more of the book now; he doesn’t downplay the taxpayer-funded aspect of the prize system he (and socialist Bernie Sanders) advocates. He is explicit about it in the book.)

Of course, medical innovations are only a small slice of the space of technologies allegedly promoted by patent law (there are electronics, lasers, chemicals, data processing, pharmaceuticals, and so on; there are over 400 classes in the PTO’s classification system, and each class is divided into numerous subclasses). So if you extend this tax funded innovation prize idea, and replace all patents for all technology areas with tax funded prizes, you’d have to advocate $2 trillion to $20 trillion a year in taxes to stimulate the “right” amount of innovation. Or maybe more. Hurrah for “free market” “solutions” to our “problems.” What the hell, let’s be “bold” and make it $100 trillion of tax funded innovation prizes per year to create a utopia on earth by 2013! Or maybe a quadrillion dollars!

Sorry, did I say “replace”? As patents have their “place,” these prizes would not even replace the patent system, but supplement it. Injury upon injury! In this, I am reminded if calls for “replacing” the current income tax with a VAT or national sales tax. Of course, in practice this amounts to a call for adding a new sales tax on top of the current income tax, since the state will never give up the latter.3 Likewise, Tabarrok’s call for a taxpayer funded prize system would not result in this replacing the patent system, but being added on top of it, making things even worse. …

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  1. See Tyler Cowen on the VAT; Say No To Tax Reform. ↩

  2. See $30 Billion Taxfunded Innovation Contracts: The “Progressive-Libertarian” Solution and Libertarian Favors $80 Billion Annual Tax-Funded “Medical Innovation Prize Fund”. ↩

  3. See Tyler Cowen on the VAT; Say No To Tax Reform. ↩

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Thomas Jefferson’s Proposal to Limit the Length of Patent and Copyright in the Bill of Rights

IP Law
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Patent and copyright apologists often get indignant when you describe the patent and copyright monopolies that they advocate as monopolies.  For example here, patent lawyer and patent shill Dale Halling posts about “The Myth that Patents are a Monopoly” and writes, ” People who suggest a patent is a monopoly are not being intellectually honest and perpetuating a myth to advance a political agenda.”

But obviously patent and copyright are monopoly privileges, as I amply demonstrate in Are Patents “Monopolies”?

I just came across something interesting in this regard. In Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to James Madison, August 28, 1789 (On the liberty to write, speak, and publish and its limits), he proposes to James Madison, then in the process of drafting the Bill of Rights, that the following be incorporated into the Bill of Rights:

Art. 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature and their own inventions in the arts for a term not exceeding — years but for no longer term and no other purpose.

This was written just shortly before the Constitution itself was to be ratified. It appears to be aimed at adding a limit on how many years Congress could grant patent and copyright monopolies for. The copyright and patent clause in the then-pending Constitution had no outside limit on how long the patent and copyright monopoly grants could be, providing: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Jefferson apparently wanted the “limited time” to be capped at some maximum number of years (probably 14 or 21 years or so). If he had got his way, (a) it would be clearer to everyone that patent and copyright are monopolies, and (b) Big Media and Mickey Mouse would not have been able to extend the copyright term to its current 100+ years.

I’m reminded of a similar situation I’ve noted elsewhere that, during debate on the sixteenth amendment (income tax), a 10% cap was considered, but rejected for fear Congress might actually tax at such a high rate, and “because people thought the idea that the tax might ever rise that high too absurd to address”! If only we had had a 10% income tax cap and a 21 year patent and copyright cap!

[C4SIF]

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