Wouldn't it be great to flip the government the bird and declare yourself exempt from income taxes? That's exactly what a Canadian man tried to do. David Kevin Lindsay—who in 1996 declared himself not a person, as defined by the law—recently lost a lengthy court battle over his failure to pay income tax:

There must be something in the water down in the South Pacific. Following the recent news that an Australian state is considering tough new legislation banning swearing in public, comes word that Thailand has blocked 43,000 websites accused of defaming the king.

Thai authorities are using strict Internet crime laws, along with laws that make it illegal to criticize the monarchy, plus emergency powers the government granted itself following the recent outbreak of anti-government protests. The latest crackdown comes after 17,000 other websites were blocked, supposedly for national security reasons. Clothilde Le Coz from Reporters Without Borders has more context:

Lawmakers in the Australian state of Queensland are proving just how upside down that country really is. Recently introduced legislation would allow police officers to issue on-the-spot fines of $100 AUD ($86.50) for swearing in public:

With the ongoing oil spill continuing to wreak havoc on the environment and economies along the Gulf Coast, many in the environmental movement are starting to show their true colors. There's no doubt this spill represents a huge environmental disaster and that BP has a pretty shoddy safety record. Although the company should be held financially responsible for fixing the leak and cleaning up the mess, calls for additional punishments are going too far.

Ideas such as forcing BP to compensate oil workers affected by a government-imposed moratorium on deep-water drilling, or not allowing it to operate wells that are already in production, amount to little more than screwing the company for its past success. When all is said and done, BP will have paid out billions of dollars to cap the well, clean up the mess, and compensate the locals. It is now crystal clear that oil companies have every incentive to ensure that a similar disaster does not happen in the future. Moreover, we need the oil.

We rely on oil for things like jobs, transportation, and heating—you know, the kinds of things that make living in today's world better than Medieval Europe. In response to the argument that our economy relies heavily on oil jobs, however, comedian Bill Maher's reaction was: "Fuck your jobs!" That's easy for him to say, but the unemployment rate currently stands at 9.7 percent and, if it gets any higher, there won't be anyone left watching HBO.

Seeing a parental advisory on a rap CD or an adult website would not seem out of the ordinary, but how about the U.S. Constitution? Wilder Publications — a small company based in Virginia — is taking a lot of heat for putting labels on copies of U.S. historical documents, warning readers that the work is "a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today." Diane Macedo at FoxNews.com has more:

At the end of June, President Barack Obama and leaders of the world's seven most powerful economies, as well as finance ministers and central bank governors from 20 countries, will meet in Ontario, Canada, for the Group of Eight (G-8) and Group of Twenty (G-20) summits. In an effort to ensure that world leaders remain safe, Canada's so-called Conservative government will spend close to US$950 million on security for the summits, which will last a total of three days.

In the wake of the riots during the 1999 World Trade Organization Conference in Seattle and the September 11th terrorist attacks on New York City, it is not unreasonable to ensure that government officials remain safe. Yet this Canadian stimulus program for police officers dwarfs the $25 million allocated by Congress for security at the 2004 G-8 summit in Sea Island, Georgia, and the $12.4 million that was reportedly spent on security during last year's G-20 summit in Pittsburgh.

Of course, the frivolous government spending doesn't stop there. In total, the Canadian government is expected to spend over US$1.15 billion, including millions spent on a temporary indoor lake to make international journalists feel as if they are in cottage country, even though they'll be in a convention center in downtown Toronto:

The default desktop in Ubuntu 10.04Ubuntu 10.04 (codenamed "Lucid Lynx") has been released. The latest adaptation of this Linux-based operating system has some exciting new features and a sleek new look. This is also a Long Term Support (LTS) release—meaning that desktop installations will be supported for three years and server installs will be supported for five—which should be welcome news to anyone thinking of deploying Linux in a business environment.

For those who don't know, Ubuntu is a version of the open source Linux operating system. Open source is a method of developing computer software, whereby an application’s source code is made freely available and software is developed collaboratively by programmers from around the world. Ubuntu incorporates a variety of open source applications in order to create a system that combines enterprise-class stability with an easy to use interface that makes it simple for new and experienced computer users to start working with Linux. Read on for the full review.

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.

The Danish cartoons, as published in the Western Standard

In February 2006, riots spread throughout the Muslim world over a series of editorial cartoons, depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammad, which were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten almost a year earlier. While the violence garnered international headlines, many editors made the decision not to publish the cartoons, even though they were central to the story. In what turned out to be an ironic twist of fate, the Western Standard magazine republished some of the cartoons alongside an article about press freedoms.

“So, in the interest of resisting those who would put limits on what subjects news organizations are free to cover, the Western Standard is publishing the cartoons that so many others are afraid to. They may offend some readers, but this is no excuse not to report the news,” read the article.

There are a number of ways in which the freedom of individual journalists and media organizations can be constrained. These include, laws, the market, cultural norms, and the architectural makeup of the physical world. The editors of the Western Standard were concerned that press freedom was being restricted by fundamentalist Muslims who were trying to impose their cultural norms on Western media outlets.

Below is my response to the following interview between Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and Toronto Now columnist Susan G. Cole regarding Ann Coulter's scheduled appearance at the University of Ottawa, which was canceled due to the disgraceful behavior of a group of Marxist protesters. Please notice the difference between those who support free speech and those who do not. I call for Ms. Kelly to represent the other side of the debate, while Ms. Cole believes that Ann Coulter should not be speaking on Canadian campuses (that's right, those institutions that are supposed to foster the free exchange of ideas and encourage debate).

Dear Ms. Kelly,