Skip to main content

"Digg"ing a Hole for Democracy

What happens when Democracy goes wild? Here's a story that ought to make you think.


Recently a web site posted the instructions for how to decrypt content on HD DVDs. Quickly it received thousands of approval "Digg"s on digg.com. The "intellectual property rights owners" asked digg to remove the story, as it was an infringement on their property--which, by the way, it is. The result? A plethora of other unique source stories began to pop up around the internet, which got Digg'ed, and which included the same decryption secrets.

Representative democracy (or a 'democratic republic') works rather well. Democracies often do, too. But sometimes the herd mentality of a democracy causes society to go haywire.

I think digg.com is cool. Digg is not to be blamed in the least. But this story clearly illustrates that if we were to allow everything to be decided in a pure democracy, life would turn into rule by the whims of the mob.

As much as I despise the ineptitude of my current Senators and Congressman, I prefer representative democracy to mobocracy democracy any day.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Anonymous5/02/2007 11:59:00 AM

    What you are actually talking about is "open information flow." And you seem to be suggesting it get restricted. Ironically, your blog would not exist without such free-flow of information (i.e. The Internet). And if you start restricting it, what criteria do you use. Who polices it?

    You are confusing Representative Democracy with censoring knowledge. And that's dumb.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Frank Staheli5/02/2007 12:18:00 PM

    If you think that's what I am suggesting, please read the article again (maybe the lead-in paragraph, if read in isolation, would give you the impression that you arrived at). Free flowing information is important, and I am not suggesting that it be limited.

    What I am suggesting is that using a decryption cypher to infringe on someone else's property is criminal.

    I am also suggesting that if decisions were made based on free information flow by everyone a "pure" democratic society (rather than in representative democracy), we would run into all sorts of trouble.

    So, in a nutshell, I am not "confusing Representative Democracy with censoring knowledge".

    ReplyDelete
  3. David5/02/2007 02:05:00 PM

    Anonymous -

    "Open Information Flow" does not mean anarchy or promoting criminal behavior.

    I love the internet and the democratization of information, but it has to be done responsibly and with some accountability.

    It's better if that accountability is self-imposed rather than brought on by lawsuits or other government intervention. So it's a good thing Digg is policing its own site.

    Copyright laws are prehistoric to where they should be right now, but I bet we'll get it right eventually. As good as democracy can be, it can be slow and a painful process.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous5/03/2007 07:26:00 PM

    Intellectual property is theft.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Frank Staheli5/04/2007 08:12:00 AM

    Anon,

    You are either a member of the Chinese government, or you are a devotee' of Karl Marx.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for commenting. If you have a Google/Blogger account, to be apprised of ongoing comment activity on this article, please click the "Subscribe" link below.

Popular posts from this blog

School Vouchers: "The Bramble Memo"

$429 million? What? Where? The legislative fiscal analyst for the State of Utah calculated the costs to the public schools over the next 13 years if school vouchers are implemented. It said the costs would be $5.5M in the first year, and $71M in the 13th year. Suddenly, the number I have started seeing thrown around was $429 million, the total costs for vouchers over 13 years. Where did that number come from? Enter the mysterious "Bramble Memo". In the past few days several of us (Jeremy, Utah Taxpayer, Craig, Sara, Urban Koda, Jesse, and me) have (sometimes?) enjoyed a lively discussion about school vouchers in Utah . Jeremy clarified to me the costs of the venture by linking to a copy of the Utah Legislative Fiscal Analyst's Impartial Analysis (LFA) of the costs of Vouchers , found on "The Senate Site". In my previous voucher article, I quoted some of Lavar Webb's article from last Sunday's Deseret News, wherein he stated that those total costs ...
66 comments
Read more

Why Do Liberals Coddle the Radical Islamic Monster?

Many liberals and progressives in the United States and elsewhere support a radical Islamic fundamentalist movement which, if it came to power, would quickly wipe out their liberal progressive ideology. Why then, do so many liberals coddle the monster that would destroy them? The Answer lies in their long-stemmed hatred of Western liberty and free markets. Dick Morris' new revelation of Hillary Clinton's ties to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism provides an excellent backdrop for me to ask the question that Greg Allen of The Right Balance has been asking for quite some time, to wit: If many liberals stand for free sexuality, homosexuality, the use of drugs, binge drinking, and other mindless expressions of individuality, why do so many of them also look the other way when it comes to Islamic fundamentalism? Don't they know that Iran has put to death as many as 4,000 homosexuals? Don't they know that if Islamists come to power they will not only make sexual perversi...
52 comments
Read more

The Inhumanity of Bob Lonsberry: Waterboarding, Concentration Camps, and the the Bataan Death March

KNRS 570 radio talk show host Bob Lonsberry advocated waterboarding and other forms of torture during his show on April 21, 2009. More grotesquely, he was beaming with pride about his advocacy campaign. It's difficult to imagine then, that, by the same rationale, had Lonsberry been a German at the time of Hitler, or a Japanese during the Bataan Death March, that he would not have advocated torture of Jews in the concentration camps or the bayoneting and shooting of American soldiers on the Bataan trail. Torture, Torture, Everywhere! Nearly 80,000 American soldiers were captured by the Japanese in the To contemplate a discussion about whether or not torture is legal or whether it even works, it is first required to come to the conclusion that 'I am a child of God, but my adversary is a monkey'. Phillipines in 1942 and forced to march with no food and very little water for six days. If a man stumbled, if he didn't respond quickly to a command, or if he tried to get wat...
50 comments
Read more