Behind the Scenes of Atlas Shrugged

Libertarian Theory, Pop Culture, Statism
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About a month and a half ago, in Atlas Shrugged movie finally filming?!, my co-blogger Jacob Huebert updated us on the Atlas Shrugged movie. Now, thanks to Reason Magazine and Reason.tv, we are privileged to see behind-the-scenes footage and interviews.

I’ll admit I was leery of the current iteration of the project, but I am somewhat reassured to hear that Atlas Shrugged will be made into three movies, not one, which is more doable. I’m also reassured that the director and the actor playing Henry Rearden seem to have a decent handle on Ayn Rand’s vision and characters, though I was a bit disquieted by the director mispronouncing Rand’s first name.

From Reason.com’s Hit & Run blog (video below):

Many actors and producers have talked about adapting Ayn Rand’s classic Atlas Shrugged for the big screen, but 53 years after its publication no one has dared tackle the ambitious project—until now.

Reason.tv heads to the set of Atlas Shrugged Part One to offer viewers a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of this most anticipated film.

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Look out for that bus!

Democracy, Humor, Vulgar Politics
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Pop quiz: What do Rod Blagojevich, Forrest Claypool, Samantha Power, Jim Johnson, Louis Farrakhan, Bernadine Dohrn, William Ayers, Tony Rezko, Trinity United Church of Christ, Father Michael Pfleger, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Alice Palmer, and the Armenians all have in common?

Give up?

Answer: Barack Obama has thrown them all under the bus at some point.

Faustian Bargains: you're safer making them with the devil than with Obama.

Hey, Charles Rangel: welcome to the party, pal!

Barry and Charlie, best friends forev... DOH!

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Erecting Entry-preneurial Barriers

Business, Protectionism, Victimless Crimes
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The caption accompanying this NY Times article picture of a street vendor selling bottled-water reads “Many sidewalk peddlers are doing record business, though the city considers it against the law to sell water without a license.”

I think Brad Spangler’s timely Facebook status update expresses how one should react to this:

Note carefully that states will be glad to bust down doors, “sweep streets” and so on in order to combat the problem of child prostitution. What states will not do is stop making the only choice for many prostitution or starvation, by impoverishing the populace with taxes, regulation and the sclerotic choking off of economic opportunities other than prostitution.

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The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism

IP Law, Libertarian Theory
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death throes of an archaeopteryxMy article, “The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism,” was published on Mises Daily today. Also published today on Mises Daily is a reprint of Wendy McElroy’s great, classic “Copyright and Patent in Benjamin Tucker’s Periodical Liberty.”

Updates:

Amusing: on the “Christian Pipe Smokers” site (hunh?), one guy links to my article and says “This is so beautifully written I had to share it.” Another replies: “Okay to be nice I started reading it. I got half way and wanted to blow my brains out. That was stupidly and poorly written. After getting half way I was lost having no idea what he was talking about. … If yer reading crap like this all the time it is no wonder your politics are screwed up.”

Also, mentioned in Where should anarchists stand on IP? (FreeDissent); my comment was:

Thanks for the plug, but correct, I don’t regard myself as a right-libertarian. I despise the right, and also the left. We libertarians are neither right nor left.

I’m nonreligious, pro-gay-marriage, pro-open-borders, pro-tolerance/cosmopolitan values, pro-drug legalization, anti-state, anti-war, and anti-IP. And I even like chardonnay. I am not sure how that makes me “right.” I doubt they would have me.

Also discussed on Freesteader.

And in an excellent post, The Decline of the Randian Influence on American Libertarianism?

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New Copyright Rules Released

IP Law
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Intellectual property, especially copyright and patents, is purely fictitious, a construction of the State. Stephan Kinsella has definitively proved such in his paper Against Intellectual Property.

Nevertheless, the US government continues to prop up this inefficient and unethical practice. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, many lives have been ruined by the bad side of corps, full of lawyers hunting for cash. We all know of the old ladies and teenagers who receive verdicts requiring them to pay obscene amounts of money for such non-crimes.

Well, some new rules coming straight from the Library of Congress are sure to help alleviate a few of these problems. Essentially, the Librarian of Congress must evaluate exemptions to the DMCA every 3 years, i.e. you cannot be prosecuted, period, if you do these things. Previously, there had only been one exemption recognized. Now, there are SIX exemptions, and the first three are quite significant.

The basics of each exemption:
1) You can rip your own DVDs. You can remix scenes for noncommercial use. So all those Hitler-plus-caption remixes from the movie Downfall no longer can be taken down. Teachers who want to use a movie in a class can rip it. No one from the DMCA can touch you.
2) You can jailbreak your phone, nobody can prosecute you. Big swipe at Apple/AT&T.
3) You can use software to unlock your phone for use on a different network.
4) You can use software to crack game SecuROMs or other game DRM for the purpose of “investigation” or research. The language is very broad, since even curiosity can prompt “investigation.”
5) You can use cracks to bypass a hardware dongle. This is significant for people like me who use lab equipment or any variety of peripherals with stupid dongles.
6) You can crack DRM encrypted ebooks to use text-to-speech capabilities. Convenient.

Gizmodo has a more thorough analysis here.

These new rules surely do not go far enough, but thankfully things are not becoming more restrictive in this arena. But we need to continue pushing back, so keep spreading the word!

Cross-posted at LibertarianChristians.com.

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