Cyber Wars Becoming a Reality?

China is a little worried  about average citizens having full access to the interwebs:  With cyber security through the roof, the Chinese have extremely limited access to the internet.  Apparently the US government has decided that this is a problem which is ours to fix.

Our government, according to the New York Times, has already attempted to hack into Chinese servers several times before. And with Hillary Clinton's constant publicizing of her discontent with China's policy on the internet, it looks like our government is once again trying to interfere with another country's internal affairs.

There are two main problems with this scenario.  First, the United States needs to recognize the sovereignty of China and the way it wants to operate within its own boundaries. If the United States really wants to "compete" with China or attempt to start China's gradual decline, all it needs to do is lower taxes on growing businesses and allow the private sector to out-buy China globally. Second, China needs to learn that liberty is always the answer to any problem. If its society was free to begin with, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now.

Turn off the TV. You'll be impressed with how much time you'll have.

Time for internet and in-person activism, that is.

Why We Stopped Caring: An Open Letter to the National Media

To all of those in the traditional media establishment -

Thanks for all of your dedication over the years, but we're going to have to let you go. The simple reality that we get more objective facts from our Facebook feeds than we do from you. Moreover, we just don't get you anymore. It's like listening in on someone else's conversation. You focus on stories and story lines that have no relevance to us.

Worse, you report from subjective, ideologically-driven premises that we know are simply wrong. See that's the thing, we used to take you at your word and base our understanding on the premises that you developed for us, but now we have the internet and we are starting to discover that your premises are simply false.

Judge Proposes Outlawing Linking...

...yes, linking.  Linking like this.  Richard Posner, who is apparently a well-known "conservative" judge, has suggested on his blog that linking to copyrighted materials online should be made illegal when the copyright holder has not given explicit consent.  The point of this, it seems, would be to protect the dying newspaper industry by keeping people from reading newspaper articles online for free.  That this would actually be effective in practice is highly unlikely, as Lew Rockwell points out:

So what would happen if Posner got his way (impossible, I guess, given all the great hackers, etc.)? We’d all link to foreign sites only, which would then cover US goings-on even more fully, because they would want the traffic. The Washington Post, the New York Times, and all the rest of the CIA’s house organs would continue to decline until they are bailed out by some Obama stimulus, thus making clear what has long been the case, that they serve the state.

That his proposal might eventually be successful is perhaps a little more likely:

Congress has been known to act with great alacrity on copyright matters when they affect corporate interests. And newspaper owners have been remarkably successful in calling attention to their plight.

But though tax breaks, special non-profit status and other federal goodies will likely go nowhere, a law aimed squarely at the linking practices of sites such as Google News and the Huffington Post would probably prove popular, the facts be damned.

It's ominous that those would push for such a law now have an ally as brilliant and influential as Posner.

Read more here.