Politics

Check Out Matt Welch's And Nick Gillespie's Ask Me Anything at Reddit

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On friday, Matt Welch and I participated in a two-hour-long AMA ("Ask Me Anything") at Reddit, the immensely popular user-controlled aggregator site. Folks asked us hundreds of questions about everything from arcane libertarian policy positions to clothing to presidential race in 2016 to you name it. We did our best to answer as many as we could.

Here's a link to the full exchange.

And here are the top two questions (as voted on by participants). If you go to site, you'll see tons more of back-and-forth, both on these questions and all the others.

[–]passstab 89 points 1 day ago 

Reason has run a lot of anti-copyright articles.
Would your organization consider releasing Reason under a Copyfree license? Doing so would be consistent with libertarian ideals and would be a very easy way to promote your publication and its ideas.

Thanks for the great website. 

[–]Nick_GillespieNICK GILLESPIE[S] 68 points 1 day ago 

We try not to speak in the royal we at Reason (we don't believe in monarchy or group-based editorial stances), so I won't speak for my colleagues. But I am very much in the copyright anarchist camp. Whatever the origins of copyright in an American (and constitutional) context, it's clear that most intellectual property laws are the tools of politically connected firms (cough, cough, Disney, cough cough). As long as you are not falsely claiming work as your own, I think things should be wide open.

Our goal at Reason--published by a nonprofit--is to spread our ideas and journalism far and wide. This turns out not only to be a pretty good business model (we have stable if limited funding) but it means we don't get super worried when people start using our stuff. But we haven't looked at the copyfree license and probably should.

As with immigration and drug laws, copyright laws are not particularly operative in the decisions people make. But to the extent they make it harder to produce and consume culture, they should be amended.

Viva Grokster!

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[–]awoogatron4000 29 points 1 day ago 

What is your view on the civil rights act?

[–]MattWelchReasonMATT WELCH 81 points 1 day ago 

I would have voted yes. There are some libertarians who are horrified by that answer (including my co-host [on Fox Business' The Independents] Kmele Foster, probably!), because of the private-property intrusions, and there are plenty of others (including legal theorist Richard Epstein) who counter that public accommodation was something the government just needed to get into.

I think people oughtta be able to talk about this stuff without being branded a racist (that is, assuming they aren't being all racisty about it), but yeah, I would have voted for it.

Read the whole thing.

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