Core Dump

Apparently, some things are still “too secret” to ever be allowed to be challenged in court. Of course, the effect of this is that the executive branch of our government can do pretty much as it pleases and claim “national security” or “sovereign immunity” to prevent any sort of oversight or review. Sound familiar?

This is sickening. Just sickening. A government with “secrets” can never be a “free” government. The more secrets a government has, the more oppressive it is towards its citizens, and the less “freedom” they will actually have.

This quote from the article I linked above sums it up pretty well:

What’s being asserted here by the Obama DOJ is the virtually absolute power of presidential secrecy, the right to break the law with no consequences, and immunity from surveillance lawsuits so sweeping that one can hardly believe that it’s being claimed with a straight face.  It is simply inexcusable for those who spent the last several years screaming when the Bush administration did exactly this to remain silent now or, worse, to search for excuses to justify this behavior.

Equality before the law means equality before the law for everyone – that must include government as much as it does the people they govern.

A government that is above the law is not a government – it is a tyranny.

I found this over at Miscellanea:

Sad, but true. Think about THAT the next time someone start spouting nonsense about “needing more protection for copyright holders.”

When you read things like this, it really makes you worry:

But you see, Anna is from Estonia, a former republic of the old Soviet Union. As in, the Evil Empire, world’s leading exporter of communism. So when Anna says she feels less free in the United States, where she now lives, than in the once-totalitarian regime where she was born, well … it gets your attention. And when she says Americans sometimes remind her of the gray, fatalistic men and women who shuffled along under communism, unwilling to think too deeply, say too much or laugh too loudly for fear of offending the State, it is striking, to say the least.

In case you can’t tell, I’ve been reading Overlawyered again. I stopped reading for a while because it just depressed me. But really, this needs to stop. It’s getting to the point where people are afraid to do things, just because they might get sued – and their fears are justified. If you do anything – literally, just about anything – you’re likely to get sued. And that’s just not normal!

Read the full article here:

Leonard Pitts: Freedom’s less-considered costs | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Opinion: Viewpoints.

Troubling stuff, indeed.

I just stumbled across a book called Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. It’s about copyright – but also about a lot more than just copyright. It’s a freely available e-book (gotta love Creative Commons licensing), so please do  download the book and give it a read – I highly recommend it.

You may just change your mind about copyright after reading this book – and that’s a good thing.

Techdirt: On The Constitutional Reasons Behind Copyright And Patents:

This short series of posts starts out really well – by quoting (of all people) Thomas Jefferson:

“Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.”

The implication of course being that the founders did see the problems with giving exclusive control (ownership) of ideas to people (or companies) willy-nilly, and the need for balance.

A really good examination of the subject, and well worth the read, IMHO.