A welcome sign of sanity from France: A French court has dismissed a criminal-libel charge brought against a journal editor over a negative book review and ordered the plaintiff to pay punitive damages. The editor, Joseph H.H. Weiler, a professor at New York University’s School of Law, said he had been awarded €8,000 (about $11,000) […]
Author Archive | Stewart Baker
Karin Calvo-Goller
Speaking as the author of a book (have I mentioned that here?), I understand how personally authors take bad reviews. And I find the idea of suing the reviewers for their many obvious errors mildly entertaining. But I am gobsmacked by the imagination — not to mention the chutzpah — it takes for an author […]
Words you can’t say at the Pentagon
The Ft. Hood shooting has finally been the subject of a careful after-action analysis — a study that DOD should have done but didn’t. The analysis was done instead in a bipartisan report by Senators Lieberman and Collins, who lead the Homeland Security committee. Their report reveals few new facts but offers disturbing insights into […]
How Data Mining Can Help You Score on the First Date
Talk about news you can use: OKCupid, an enormous free dating service, has a blog devoted to mining its user data and using the results to answer the really important questions. Like, “Will I get lucky tonight?” It turns out the question is pretty easy to answer. Just ask whether your date likes the taste […]
More on Letters to the Editor of the NYT
I’d like to second Eugene Volokh’s report on the frustrations Andy Pincus experienced in sending letters to the editor of the New York Times. I’m not much for sending such letters, since I think the effort futile. But a friend once persuaded me to join her in a letter to the Times disagreeing with an […]
Jesse “The Wussy” Ventura?
Jesse Ventura, who has been sliding into weirdness for a while, is reportedly preparing to sue TSA for: “Warrantless, non-suspicion-based offensive touching, gripping and rubbing of the genital and other sensitive areas of his body,” that meets “the definition for an unlawful sexual assault.” Maybe his real beef is that he used to get paid big […]
Cyberscam hits OECD
You may have seen a headline like this recently: “Risks of cyber war ‘over-hyped’ says OECD study”. Maybe you breathed a sigh of relief, or renewed your determination not to let the military-industrial complex scare people into ill-advised schemes to “protect” the Internet. I scratched my head. I’m on record as thinking that Stuxnet clearly […]
European Parliament To Regulate US Criminal Investigations?
The most libertarian of the European Parliament’s parties, ALDE, has taken its past attacks on US antiterrorism practices to their logical extreme. Now it is questioning the US subpoenas of Twitter in the Wikileaks investigation, and hinting that they somehow violate EU law: ALDE members want to know why US investigators demanded the information when they […]
The Stealth Success of REAL ID
The Center for Immigration Studies and Janice Kephart have released a remarkable new study about REAL ID, the controversial drivers license security requirements adopted to implement one of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations. The law sets security standards for state licenses. It was attacked from the start by civil libertarians as a privacy violation and by […]
Will Julian Assange Protect His Book with DMCA Takedown Notices?
Julian Assange is writing a book — and expecting to make somewhere between $1 and $2 million from it. But his royalties will depend on something he claims to abhor – using government authority to control the distribution of information. Because if a believer in the free distribution of information were to copy Assange’s book […]
The difference between an American border fence and a European border fence
They only look the same. But the difference is clear. An American border fence isn’t reasonable; it treats ordinary people like criminals. A European border fence, in contrast, is an unfortunate “short-term measure” that supplements more structural solutions. Here’s what Brussels is saying today about Greece’s fence: The Greek government says it plans to build […]
Drudge Doubles Down on PrisonPlanet
Apropos of my earlier post on this topic, Matt Drudge is once again featuring a headline (“CNN Reporter Put On ‘Watch List’ After Criticizing T&A…“) with a link to dubious reporting from the truther-friendly site PrisonPlanet. That’s the second Drudge link to PrisonPlanet just this week, so it’s officially a trend. And not a good one […]
“Say it ain’t so, Matt”
Like millions of others, I’m a regular reader of the Drudge Report. It’s like having an alternative editor for the news; the “paper” Drudge edits is an entertaining complilation of tabloidish stories with a conservative/libertarian bent. Lately, though, I’ve begun to wonder about Drudge’s judgment. Because every once in a while, when I click on a Drudge […]
Girl Talk and Intellectual Property
David Post’s item on Girl Talk inspired me, in two ways. First, I downloaded the album, which is indeed very good, if perhaps not quite as astonishing as Gillis’s last effort. Of course, I’m a longtime fan. And second, in reading some of the comments, I was reminded that I wrote a review of Larry […]
Beyond PowerPoint
To my surprise, I’m kind of a PowerPoint fan. I know slides can be deadly, and I’ve heard all the jokes about how power corrupts and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely. Even so, I cling to the view that, when done right, slides and pictures add a lot to a speech. At least that’s my theory. Others […]