For many years, governments took a hands-off approach to the Internet and the world witnessed technological innovations that were beyond our wildest dreams. From the creation of e-mail and the World Wide Web, to the browser wars of the '90s, to the creation of online payment systems, streaming video, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, and the open source movement, a spirit of competition and innovation created the modern-day Internet. Likewise, personal web pages, blogs, and other technologies have given people around the world the ability to express themselves to a mass audience. The low barriers to entry that the technology provides created a marketplace of ideas that is unparallelled in any other communications medium and at any other point in history.
Yet, all this seems to have changed. Nowadays people portray Internet service providers as the big bad wolf, arguing that government must step in to save us from the multinational corporations. They say that government must spy on us to protect us from terrorism. That our ideas should be censored because they might offend someone else. They ignore that government is the one entity that can hold a gun to our heads and call it justice; the one entity that can take our money and call it charity; while companies operating in a competitive market have every incentive to provide people with what they want. At the same time, governments are introducing strict laws that prevent people from using the technology to its full potential. Laws that prevent us from sharing our lives and participating in our own culture.
It is now clear that the Wild West is gone and in its place we have something far more tame and much less free. The Internet, however, has become an indispensable tool in many of our lives. People rely on it for business, education, entertainment, and communication. The future of the Internet is, therefore, more important than ever. My new website Fencing the Digital Horizon: How Government Regulations Threaten Internet Freedom, produced as part of my masters thesis, explores the issues of copyright law and net neutrality in Canada from a free market perspective.
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 07 April 2010 20:30 |
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 The number of people filing new unemployment claims dropped sharply last week, according to statistics released today by the Department of Labor. The number of newly unemployed dropped by 21,000 over the previous week to 454,000, the lowest level since early May.
While the economy is certainly not out of the woods yet, these numbers will add fodder to the debate over whether the Senate should approve a bill that would extend unemployment benefits until November 30. Many Democrats have been lining up in support, arguing that unemployment benefits stimulate the economy. And while Republicans have so far been able to postpone the bill's passage, there is probably a good chance that it will be enacted in some form (I suggest never underestimating the government's propensity to engage in costly spending programs).
Yet, a story in yesterday's Wall Street Journal provides further evidence for what many people have been saying for a long time, that extending unemployment benefits is counterintuitive:
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Last Updated on Thursday, 19 August 2010 14:04 |
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After going home for Christmas to visit with friends and family, I found myself confronting my second semester of journalism school. This semester, we were expected to participate in a blogging assignment. Two posts a week on a specific topic. I was excited that I finally had a chance to stop pretending to be objective and start writing what was really on my mind.
The big problem was deciding on a topic, as I preferred to write about whatever made me angry on any given day. One of my friends came to me with a great solution to this dilemma: write about the trials and tribulations of being a student with right-of-centre political views in a predominantly left-wing university.
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Last Updated on Monday, 05 July 2010 17:36 |
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 While the U.S. deals with the Gulf oil spill, an overhaul of financial regulations, and overbearing immigration laws, the big summer controversy in Canada is whether the government should stop coercing people into handing over detailed personal information to big brother.
Much like in this country, Canadians are required to fill out a census form every five years. A randomly selected group of people, however, are given a long-form census with invasive questions about personal relationships, work and migration histories, and family background, among other things. While I wouldn't have thought that making such questions voluntary would be all that controversial, a surprising number of people are up in arms over the proposal.
Many groups are worried that a voluntary census would hamper the government's ability to collect reliable data, which is then acquired by these groups at prices far below market value. Yet, considering that in 2001, 21,000 Canadians listed their religion as Jedi Knight, it would appear as though collecting information under the threat of coercion doesn't work very well either. Census data from other countries also shows that the world's Jedi population is growing. But as many European countries move to eliminate the census altogether, Canadian Jedis are up in arms.
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Last Updated on Thursday, 19 August 2010 13:59 |
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 In my latest series of articles written for the Western Standard, I take a look two pieces of legislation that were introduced in the House of Commons before the summer recess. The proposed legislation would force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to install costly monitoring equipment on their networks and give the government expanded powers to monitor its citizens Internet use.
In the first article, entitled Government of Canada moves to monitor Internet users, I look at what the legislation says and what it means to Canadians:
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 15 July 2009 20:40 |
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