The Digg Incident Was Nothing LIke the Boston Tea Party

The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Cord Blomquist also doesn’t approve of the Digg protesters:

Websters are calling the ‘revolt’ at Digg an online Boston Tea Party. This is offensive to anyone who knows the history of the Boston Tea Party. The Sons of Liberty destroyed someone else’s property, a very non-libertarian thing to do, but they did so to protest the unjust taxation of their own hard earned dollars and the tyrannical British rule. Besides, the British East India Company was nothing like what we would call a private enterprise. Before it was dissolved in the middle of the 19th century the East India Company had many governmental and military functions and virtually ruled India. The revolutionaries were against this kind of government granted monopoly and unjust use of power.

Digg users posting HD-DVD encryption keys is no Boston Tea party. These rogue digg users are referencing a proprietary code, which is not their property, and they’re using a private website, which is also not their property. This attack on private property is more like an online October Revolution. The people at Digg can exercise control over their own property, while the users claim that controlling a private site is equivalent to theft. (They should read What’s Yours is Mine). It all smacks of Marxism to me.

So in other words, it’s OK to destroy private property if you’re protesting a law Blomquist disagrees with, but it’s not cool to even “reference” private property if you’re protesting a law Blomquist likes.

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