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Scams and Spams and Piracy, Oh My!
by Michael Bradshaw
speaker (at) us repeals.org

Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

Re "Angela Zhangs" letter to the manager in last week's issue, what we have here is a simple case of spam, phishing and fraud (and other nasty things beginning with "F"). Everyone and his maiden aunt has been getting these alarming letters from "yg-network" trying to sell him top-level domain registration in China, and Asia in general, at inflated prices. Try a startpage.com search on "yg-network" and see for yourself.

However, it does start me thinking along the lines presented by the spammer. Perhaps an Asian presence for TLE would be a good idea, after all.

Years ago Neil suggested that it would be nice to drop millions of simple one-channel crystal-controlled radios (like hearing aids) all over China and beam libertarian and capitalist fiction and educational programming down from orbit. Can you spell "e-x-p-e-n-s-i-v-e"? But that was the available technology at the time on the receiving end. Having a ".Asia" domain might just be the modern and affordable way to do that. TLE's present registrar, Godaddy.com is and accredited source for ".Asia" domain registration.

"ncc-1776.org" and "The Libertarian Enterprise" are valuable properties of The Libertarian Enterprise and our publisher, L. Neil Smith. A legitimate Asian presence would prevent claim-jumping such as I experienced a few years ago, when usrepeals.com was stolen; and it might expand our market of ideas to another couple of billion folks who could use it.

A simple Chinese-and-English, etc. home page with a link to the present English version of the magazine should suffice for the short term. Later, it would be nice to see some of Neil's books, Big Head Press and other local features translated into the dominant languages of Asia, or at least Cantonese. How about JPFO's "Innocents Betrayed" with an optional Chinese audio track? I wish that I could do some of the translation, but I cannot; as I do not speak any of those languages. Is there anyone here who can?

Asia in general and China in particular are large, growing and important markets for our ideas and philosophy (and, perhaps, a product or two). I think that we should consider expanding our influence in those areas. At the very least we should preserve our options to the extent that we may.

Michael Bradshaw is the Speaker (also the Lord-High Janitor) of the United States House of Repeals, www.usrepeals.org. Copyright © 2011, Michael T. Bradshaw

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