Sorry this is late. I had a terrible headache Friday night.
Even as anarchists are talking about a “Hackathon” (a name that unfortunately for them will just remind everyone of Aaron Swartz’s crimes) to promote their extremist worldview, the FBI is busy on its own. Silk Road 2 is down, and its owner Blake Benthall has been arrested.
All in all, FBI took down 414 Tor addresses (The Onion Router, an anonymizing network favored by anarchists, terrorists, drug dealers, and child pornographers) pointing to 27 entire sites.
Sympathizers of these criminals and extremists are grasping for any possible bright side here, first trying to undermine FBI’s claim of the number of sites taken down, even though the number of sites taken down is still a lot, and now even saying that “Well, at least Bitcoin didn’t crash”. That’s ridiculous by the way.
Bitcoin really coudln’t crash after Silk Road 2 went down because the price has already crashed. From a high of $1,138 in November 2013 on Mt. Gox, the then-leading Bitcoin bank in Japan, Bitcoin has already lost 70% of its value, or suffered 75% inflation, whichever you prefer. Today on ANXBTC, the now-leading Bitcoin bank in Hong Kong, Bitcoin sells for $342.
One last bit of the Harry Reid legacy: failure to pass bills everyone wants to pass, like the satellite TV bill.
How high are the fees getting, that government mandates force you to pay in your cable bill for free, over the air broadcast TV stations? they’re actually becoming more important than advertising. But the left will keep demonizing Comcast in order to help out their New York and Hollywood cronies, of course.
FTC takes down a patent troll, which is good news. ACU is right that patents are a good thing, but we must preserve the patent system as one that protects innovators, not one that enriches trial lawyers seeking deep pockets. The latter is what’s gotten worse under Barack Obama and Reid, naturally.