[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
News and video from the repression in the Twin Cities continues to flood in; check the past few days on LeftLibertarian.org for details. You can also see some great footage of William Gillis and other members of the RNC Welcoming Committee here and here.
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
My second AOTP post is up: Chomsky’s Augustinian Anarchism.
David Gordon’s review of Anarchism/Minarchism has been posted, with bouquets and brickbats for both sides. (But David charitably refrained from pointing out some of the eccentricities of the index.)
ARI has once again taken some baby steps into the 21st century by making available online a few more of the works they’re supposedly trying to promote, including Rand’s essays “The Objectivist Ethics” (probably her most important article), “Introducing Objectivism,” “An Answer for Businessmen,” “Man’s Rights,” “Collectivized ‘Rights’,” and “The Nature of Government” (this last is Rand’s only serious discussion of anarchism) as well as some Rand audio files (lectures and interviews).
Addendum:
I just noticed that, despite the absence of any warning to this effect, the online text of “The Objectivist Ethics” is not complete; it’s just the first few pages of the article. I haven’t checked the others yet, but beware. And if it still needed saying: DON’T TRUST ARI.
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
I’ve been to Indianapolis twice recently: last month for a Liberty Fund conference on Zora Neale Hurston, and last weekend for another Liberty Fund conference, this one on Landes and Posner’s Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law, and held at Liberty Fund’s own offices (and incidentally the first Liberty Fund conference I’ve been to where as many as a third of the participants were nonwhite – a nice change from the usual complexion, pun intended).
As I’ve mentioned before, nearly a third of Liberty & Power’s bloggers were at the first conference. I’ve now gotten the photos developed; these aren’t the highest-quality scans, but they’ll have to do:
L to R: Keith Halderman, Mark Brady, me, David Beito, Jonathan Bean, Wendy McElroy
ditto
Just the anarchists (other than me): Mark Brady, Wendy McElroy, David Beito
As for the second conference, a few random notes:
When I mentioned that although the early Tarzan books are out of copyright, they’re still restricted because ERB’s estate holds the trademark to the characters, Tom Bell (check out his online book Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good) mentioned that he thought a recent case involving Daystar Technologies rules out using trademark to protect copyright – in which case the ERB business model may be in serious trouble. Anyone else with IP expertise (Stephan?) have any comments?
Milton Thompson (who happens to be the lawyer-agent for Star Trek’s Avery Brooks) mentioned that the performers he works with are less and less interested in controlling copyright and are relying less and less on IP in their business models.
I was delighted to learn that Liberty Fund will be publishing a new translation (by Dennis O’Keefe, translator of Constant’s Principles of Politics) of Molinari’s Soirées. (Though this isn’t necessarily a reason to abandon my own translation-in-progress – if the term “progress” really applies to a project that hasn’t been updated since 2003 – since it would also be nice to have a version available without copyright restrictions.)
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
The Molinari Society will be holding its fifth annual Symposium in conjunction with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in Philadelphia, December 27-30, 2008. Here’s the latest schedule info:
GIX-3. Monday, 29 December 2008, 1:30-4:30 p.m.
Molinari Society symposium: Authors Meet Critics:
Crispin Sartwell’s Against the State: An Introduction to Anarchist Political Theory and
Roderick T. Long and Tibor R. Machan, eds., Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a Free Country?
Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 1201 Market Street, Room TBA
Chair: Carrie-Ann Biondi (Marymount Manhattan College)
Critics:
Nicole Hassoun (Carnegie Mellon University)
Jennifer McKitrick (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Christopher Morris (University of Maryland)Authors:
John Hasnas (Georgetown University)
Lester H. Hunt (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Charles Johnson (Molinari Institute)
Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)
Jan Narveson (University of Waterloo-Canada)
Crispin Sartwell (Dickinson College)
William Thomas (Atlas Society)
As part of the APA’s new policy to prevent free riders, they’re not telling us the name of the room until we get to the registration desk. As part of our policy of combating evil we will of course broadcast the name of the room far and wide as soon as we learn it.
Happily, we have once again avoided any schedule conflicts with either the American Association for the Philosophic Study of Society (Dec. 28th, 11:15 -1:15) or the Ayn Rand Society (Dec. 28th, 2:00-5:00).
In other news, the schedule for next month’s Alabama Philosophical Society meeting in Orange Beach is now online.
