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Internet Piracy Sites are Stealing Copyrighted Content and Ad Revenue

February 28, 2014 By

Intellectual Propery Piracy

by George Landrith 

Internet piracy has become a big business. It has also become more sophisticated in the way it steals. Rather than selling the music and movies of others, often they provide it for free and use the increased internet traffic to obtain surprising advertising revenues. This allows the pirate to claim he isn’t selling anything. But he makes a handsome profit stealing the property of others — movies, music, books, etc. According to a recent study by the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA), in 2013, these piracy sites reaped an estimated quarter billion — with a B — dollars in advertising revenue. Even small piracy sites can pull in over $100,000 a year in advertising revenue and it is almost all profit.

Some might think that this is great news — free music and movies for everyone! But the truth is this theft harms everyone. Everyone you ask? Yes! Everyone, except maybe the pirate. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Economic Freedom, Entrepreneurial & Regulatory Freedom, Internet Freedom Tagged With: , ,

“Not even smidgen of corruption…” Really?

February 5, 2014 By
Obama Smirk

by George Landrith

On Super Bowl Sunday, President Obama was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly. In that interview, he claimed that there was zero evidence of any scandal or corruption in the IRS scandal. “Not a smidgen,” were his exact words. But the facts do not support the President’s assertion. In fact, while there is much more to be learned because the DOJ’s investigation hasn’t even interviewed the known targeting victims yet, what we do know is damning indeed. A top IRS official has pleaded the Fifth in response to very simple questions. If the IRS targeting was the result of some honest confusion at the IRS, why plead the Fifth? Plus, most everything the White House has asserted about this scandal has already proven to be false. Remember how the White House said it was just a couple low-level rogue employees in Cincinnati?  We now know that there isn’t a smidgen of truth in that assertion. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Constitutional and Political Freedom Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Obama Using the IRS to Quash Dissent

February 4, 2014 By

obama-irs

by George Landrith

When the House Ways & Means Subcommittee on Oversight grills the Internal Revenue Service’s John Koskinen next week about his scandal-plagued agency, it would do well to ask him to defend its proposed guidelines for the operation of “social welfare groups.” If finalized as written, these guidelines would effectively “gag” many organizations that engage in the nation’s policy discussions.

The IRS now claims that the targeting of conservatives was the result of ambiguous rules rather than a deliberate strategy to silence conservative groups that might oppose the Obama Administration’s policy objectives. While the IRS has been stonewalling Congress on the targeting scandal, it has been secretly preparing these new rules to expand its power and legalize its past abuses. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Constitutional and Political Freedom, Economic Freedom Tagged With: , , , ,

Obama: If you like your privacy, you can keep it

February 4, 2014 By

Obama Privacy NSA

by George Landrith

President Barack Obama had too little to say about the needed reforms at the National Security Agency in Tuesday’s State of the Union address. His previous comments on the subject have captured the natural and necessary tension between one’s right to be left alone by the government and the government’s responsibility to catch criminals and prevent terrorist attacks.

At other times, however, Obama has telegraphed that he has no real interest in reform. In his recent speech devoted to the subject, the president suggested no one should be overly concerned because “the folks at NSA and other intelligence agencies are our neighbors. They’re our friends and family.”

This sounds good but is in fact a Pollyannaish view: Those who act on behalf of the government are our neighbors, friends, and family, but America is a nation of laws. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Constitutional and Political Freedom, Protecting Freedom Tagged With: , ,