Declan sides with Big Business

Declan sides with Big Business

...but not Big Government.

The intellectual hypocrisy of the whole Cato crowd (he loves his contacts there) is that they only acknowledge the danger of one type of unrestrained power. They think that for some reason it's OK if such power is held in private and unaccountable hands (corporations), while it's not OK when it's held in hands that are at least marginally accountable (government).

So while Declan masquerades, on occasion, as someone who actually values the principles of independance on which the US, and much "hacker" culture, is founded ... he is often intentionally blind to the fact that the assaults on liberty today come more often from corporate sources than from governmental ones. The DMCA and its ilk were created for corporate lobbyists, after all.

In short, be extremely skeptical of advice from Declan. His purposeful blindness might make sense in a world where corporations had the same type and degree of constraints that "mere individuals" have ... but sadly, that's not the world in which his advice is issued.

I like the "do both" conclusion better. There's no way governments can do their job when only corporatations (or otherwise wealthy people/organizations) are able to influence them. Or when the world evolves only along the lines those corporations wanted in the first place.