On Strike

I appreciate the principled stand that Wikipedia is making against the potential threat against free speech constituted by the SOPA (H.R.3261) and PIPA (S. 968) legislation.

Today, January 18^th, Wikipedia is officially on strike.

 Naturally, I am completely opposed to the practice of pirating copyrighted material, which this legislation is ostensibly targeting. But the bills follow the chilling pattern of much recent legislation (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley): presuming universal guilt and holding arbitrary power over every honest citizen.

Wikipedia has a good description of the purpose of their strike here, and Google has a petition you can sign here.

John David Lewis

I am very sorry to hear that one of my intellectual heroes, John David Lewis, has died following a long bout with cancer. He was a brilliant, passionate, and courageous advocate of reason and liberty. His loss strikes me on a personal level--our few encounters at Objectivist conferences demonstrated his warmth and intellectual honesty--but above all it is a blow to the defense of freedom and civilization.

UPDATE

Alex Epstein has a nice tribute, "Remembering John Lewis," on the CIP website. My wife wrote a post dedicated to him back in 2009.