By • Frontiers of Freedom
In Virginia, since 2010, driving more than 10 miles per hour (mph) over the top speed limit can get you charged with a criminal reckless driving and land you in jail for up to a year and fined up to $2,500. This is a textbook case of over-criminalization and is an abuse of governmental power. You read that right. Virginia’s top speed limit is 70 mph on interstates. But by law, driving over 80 mph can get you charged with criminal reckless driving — just 10 mph over the posted speed limit. Simply stated, driving with the flow of traffic on an interstate makes you a criminal in Virginia. That’s nuts!
I wrote about this issue several months ago and pointed out that someone driving more than 10 mph over the speed limit may well expect a speeding ticket and appropriate fine. But no one expects to receive a one year jail term and thousands in criminal fines. Continue reading
by Kathryn Watson • Daily Caller
President-elect Donald Trump’s administration should closely scrutinize any business-crushing “midnight litigation” President Barack Obama’s administration launches before Inauguration Day, taxpayer and free-market groups urge.
Obama’s agencies are poised to file economy-stunting environmental and other lawsuits for political gain in the waning days of the Democrat’s presidency. Trump’s incoming administration needs to be ready to halt any unnecessary and harmful lawsuits on Jan. 20, a group of 29 nonprofit and activist organizations wrote to Vice President-elect Mike Pence Wednesday.
“Everything should be suspect,” George Landrith, president of Frontiers for Freedom and the letter’s circulator, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Continue reading
The winners: consumers, content providers, and advertisers
The losers: pirates, malware, viruses, and thieves
The internet has been a huge engine for commerce. You can go online to by just about anything and have it delivered to your home. You can also legitimately buy and download music, movies, and television shows from a incredible array of legal services. But where there are legitimate businesses, there are also pirates trying to make a quick buck selling that which they do not own. The truth is they make more than a quick buck — they steal billions every year pirating content belonging to others.
GroupM, a leading global media investment management company, recently announced that they will require all their partners to become certified by the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), a voluntary initiative by the advertising industry to fight internet piracy of copyrighted material — typically movies, music, and television programing. Many piracy sites make their money from advertisements on their websites. Indeed, the Digital Citizens Alliance conducted a report concluding that piracy sites made over $209 million selling ads in 2014. So the initiative is aimed at stopping advertisements from legitimate companies running on illegitimate pirate sites. By stopping the flow of advertising dollars to the pirate sites, piracy itself will be reduced, thereby incentivizing creativity, innovation, investment, and jobs. Continue reading