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.
