Reuters reports that this year the United States Supreme Court will hear its highest proportion of intellectual property (IP) cases in history. The justices are set to decide eight cases on IP — six on patent laws and two on copyright. A sign of the times, really. In a world of open source content and the…

Uma cobertura jornalística mais razoável do colapso do Mt.Gox, um dos maiores mercados de Bitcoin, seria mais ou menos assim: “Uau! Um dos maiores mercados de Bitcoin da internet acaba de desaparecer e, em vez de entrar em colapso, o Bitcoin ainda é comercializado por cerca de US$ 500! Que moeda robusta e resistente! Que…

Sane news coverage of Bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox‘s collapse would look something like this: “Wow! The Internet’s largest Bitcoin exchange just vanished into thin air … and instead of collapsing, Bitcoin is still trading at about $500! What a robust, resilient currency! What a success story! Wow! Wow!” Sanity in news coverage? Well, not so much….

In the 19th and early 20th century, anarchism was in many ways making strides into mainstream culture and thought. It was not through theory that this occurred, but rather through immediate expressions of one’s autonomy. This revolutionary method was known as direct action. Direct action emphasizes the right or duty of each individual to insist on the…

“Building Creative Commons: The Five Pillars of Open Source Finance” was written by Brett Scott and published on his blog The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money. We are honored to have Brett Scott‘s permission to feature his article on C4SS. Feel free to connect with Scott through twitter: @Suitpossum. AHOY, THERE BE A CLOSED…

Glenn Broadnax, di Brooklyn, New York, soffriva di ansia e depressione. Secondo i documenti recentemente resi pubblici dal tribunale, il pomeriggio del 14 settembre stava “parlando con i suoi parenti morti che erano nella sua testa”, una cosa che lo spingeva a “buttarsi davanti alle auto per uccidersi”. Poiché intralciava il traffico, arrivò la polizia….

Sad news today of the death of Mikhail Kalashnikov, designer of the iconic AK-47. Designed by then-sergeant Kalashnikov, a wounded Red Army conscript, in response to what he saw as the inadequate weapons he was issued, the AK-47 has become the most popular rifle in the world, seeing use in virtually every armed conflict since….

Quando si parla di droni, l’atteggiamento della maggior parte dei futuristi libertari è il pessimismo. I droni sono generalmente visti in un più ampio scenario tecno-fascista, come l’egemonia USA (fatta di laser orbitanti e robot soldato telecomandati dall’ONU) immaginata dallo scrittore Ken Macleod nella sua serie Rivoluzione d’Autunno. La tentazione è comprensibile. Dopotutto i droni (combinati con operazioni…

Glenn Broadnax of Brooklyn, New York, suffers from anxiety and depression. According to recently released court documents, on the evening of September 14th he was “talking to dead relatives in his head,” which led him to try “throwing himself in front of cars to kill himself.” As he disrupted traffic, police arrived. Broadnax reached his hand into…

“[Bitcoin]’s a bubble,” asserts Alan Greenspan — who, as chair of the US Federal Reserve, oversaw a 77.5% inflation of the US dollar. Greenspan asserts that “you have to really stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is. I haven’t been able to do it.” Somehow, however, he can stretch his…

The Lawrence, Kansas Journal-World‘s Peter Hancock writes that US Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) finds Bitcoin “a difficult subject” (“Senator says ‘Bitcoins’ are challenge for regulators,” November 25th). And in certain respects Moran is correct. Encrypted digital currencies do imply a technical learning curve for users (and presumably for creators). It seems pretty obvious, though, that what…

Today we can celebrate the recent relaunch of the Silk Road drug market, named for a predecessor taken down over a month ago by federal agents for its connection with an alleged assassination conspiracy involving alleged founder Ross Ulbricht. The FBI is attempting to tie Ulbricht to the online identity of the Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR), an entrepreneur…

Imagine you make your living as a university professor  –  you have a low salary, no health benefits and no retirement benefits. Now imagine that at the end of this semester your career will be suddenly terminated with no due process or severance pay. Now imagine this circumstance is not unique – because it’s not. This circumstance is experienced…

Robert Reich (“Syria and the Reality at Home in America,” Nation of Change, September 7), noting that the share of the population either working or seeking work was at a thirty-year low, writes “A decent society would put people to work — even if this required more government spending on roads, bridges, ports, pipelines, parks…

At a 2011 press conference President Obama, in response to a question about Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, said “We are a nation of laws. We don’t let individuals make decisions about how the law operates.“ Is this really a nation of laws, though? There’s an old legal principle, “nemo iudex in causa sua,” which translated…

Em 2006 Ori Brafman e Rod Beckstrom, em A Estrela-do-Mar e a Aranha, contrastaram o modo pelo qual redes e hierarquias reagem a ataques vindos de fora. As redes, quando atacadas, tornam-se ainda mais descentralizadas e capazes de pronta recuperação. Bom exemplo são Napster e sucessores, cada um dos quais aproximou-se mais estreitamente de modelo ideal de ponto-a-ponto,…

Even as the U.S. security state becomes more closed, centralized and brittle in the face of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks, civil society and the public are responding to the post-Snowden repression by becoming more dispersed and resilient. That’s how networks always respond to censorship and surveillance. Each new attempt at a file-sharing service, after…

Back in 2006 Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, in The Starfish and the Spider, contrasted the way networks and hierarchies respond to outside attacks. Networks, when attacked, become even more decentralized and resilient. A good example is Napster and its successors, each of which has more closely approached an ideal peer-to-peer model, and further freed…

Financial commerce, the exchange of money and currency, is indistinguishable from speech. Therefore, it deserves the exact same respect and “freedom of speech” protections afforded to the utterances of the street-corner preacher, the independent journalist, the newspaper publisher, the internet blogger and so on. Financial commerce is speech, and should be free. Despite all of the “freedom…

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Kevin Carson. Não há nada tão engraçado como a visão dos funcionários autoritários de uma ordem fenecente tentando reprimir uma revolução que não entendem — e fracassando miseravelmente. A tentativa do Departamento de Estado de censurar arquivos imprimíveis de armas de fogo em 3-D…