From all the differing opinions there does seem to be a general consensus though...the U.S. government pretty much screws up everything they attempt, unforeseen or not. But how to "police" the internet and still maintain an "acceptable" (which is debatable according to the individual) degree of freedom too? Damned if you do, damned if you don't... 

Oh well, it would appear that the divide that exists between the two sides on this discussion will never come together on this subject.   What a shame because there was so much hope for the human species on this planet.  I guess it's course is set and the future only brings more on the same until.....................

Guess it's a moot point now anyway, John, after all, the rapture's tomorrow....

Guess I should hold off on mowing the yard until Sunday, just in case.

Oh, gosh yes.

The law prohibiting murder infringes on your inalienable right to kill...and damn it, what right do we have to prohibit our self-expressive youth from taking an AK47 to their classmates and enacting their own Columbine?

Gotta nurture these kiddies after all ....;)

Solid thinking there, Cars.

It is true that some laws are necessary to maintain the public good at all. Murder and rape are not only bad for the victims but tend to be bad for society at large. However, killing in general is neither good nor bad, and in some cases should be completely outside the per view of the government. A good example of this would be dueling. Two consenting adults should be capable of setting up and participating in a duel to the death. With appropriate regulation to ensure that the participants are in fact consenting as were present for many many years, such an act would not have undue side effect for society and should be considered as part of the normal inalienable right of personal liberty.

Personally speaking, I am someone who makes their living on what is termed intellectual property. The code I write is completely owned by the company which hires me to write code for them. In this, they own and can manage that code how they see fit. Yet, that intellectual property exists in two forms. The first is the physical code which resides in whatever manner under their control, while the other form is within my own mind. Does it make any sense to say that a company or individual can own pieces of my own intellect? In fact, many companies force people such as myself into non-competition and state that yes this part of my intellect is in fact their property. Thus, I can not readily benefit from my own labor, nor can I really expand the public good as any information I might attempt to impart to other would also be tainted from that labor.

You ask if I would labor and then freely give away the fruits of that labor. In fact, I fully support the open source and free software movements. Just because one does not completely lock down their labors so that only they can benefit does not mean they can't benefit at all. For instance, an artist who paints a mural on a public building can benefit monetarily from this labor without draconian control over the work.

If the right to free dissemination of information is the highest social order of humanity that MUST be protected at ALL COSTS then what say you all post right here your bank account details...passwords et al, as THAT is all actual information whose distribution WILL benefit others.

Oh, wait.....it might hurt YOU.

My bad.

I think you completely miss the point here. Let's look at a good example and hopefully you will understand my point of view. Let say that we make it legal to steal cars. Now, people who don't want their car stolen will take precautions to ensure that their car is not stolen, ie storing their cars in a manner which makes it harder to steal. Those people who are ok with their cars being taken, will do nothing and be ok with it. Yet, in both cases, the choice of how to handle this is up to the car owner. Now, in the case of IP, no one has told you to post your work on Deviant Art for public view, nor have they told you to not take any precautions to ensure that someone could not just rip your work. This choice has been yours this whole time. In the case of most software development, warez is a serious threat, but most companies take significant precautions concerning the distribution of their software to ensure that they get the maximum amount of sales. In the case of SD, this has been the use of a license validation system for patch dissemination which checks license at patch time. Thus, I am not saying "just give out all your personal information," but if you are person who takes all your bank information and leaves it in your trash for anyone to find, well you deserve to lose your identity.

Ok....

Let's say we DON'T make it 'legal to steal cars'.

Let's leave it EXACTLY as it is.... ILLEGAL.

Let's put the onus instead on the thief to COMPLY with the law....and NOT on the victim to jump through hoops to regain custody of his car.

Do YOU get it yet?...;)

In the case of SD this has been by people such as Koop, Island Dog, myself and several others actively chasing down abusers of SD's property rights.

Again, don't assume all issues re SD's IP revolve around Games and gaming.  They don't.

Ok, so if you are so happy with the effectiveness of the law against car theft, then I am going to assume your car does not have any locks, an alarm, and you keep all of your valuable in there for safety due to the amazing car theft laws? Oh wait, you don't so instead you are pushing to cut off the hands of anyone even attempting to steal a car right?

Merely 'attempting to steal' simply makes them incompetent as well as criminally minded.

Probably should pity them and bequeath them the car instead.

No need to 'cut off their hands'...just imprison them for being criminals....we're oh-so civilized after all.

The whole silly point you are hell-bent on ignoring or just plain not understanding is...

No, 'we' are NOT 'happy with the effectiveness of the law against...' which is why 'we' WANT to see something like this 'bill' adopted to IMPROVE the Law's effectiveness.

I think I may actually need to type more slowly so people can keep up...;)

Let's be blunt.

My car has an alarm and locks for the simple reason there are fucks out there who DO NOT CARE about [my] property rights and take any and all opportunities to convert an 'asset' acquired into something to shoot into their veins.

The world is full of shits who have no consideration or respect for others.

Sadly those who DO tend to abide by the social mores and NOT kick the living crap out of the arseholes who so seriously deserve it.

Instead they hope to rely on the policing of law to MINIMIZE the hurt perpetrated by others.

Now come on....twist all that around to some-how legitimize warez use and piracy.... but remember while you champion free speech, free thought...free love and whatever such bullshit remember that paedophilia must also be PROTECTED under this idealism of "freedom".

Good luck with that.

Wow, and you say that I am the one who is twisting the argument. What does freedom of thought have to do with freedom to have sexual relations with children?

When freedom to do 'what you want' precludes warez distribution, file 'sharing' [of other person's property], redistribution of copyrighted work, grand theft, OR child abuse.

Try NOT to be deliberately obtuse.

Such 'extremes' as paedophilia demonstrate exactly how dangerous blanket freedom can be.

The absurdity that is 'freedom of speech at ALL cost' legitimizes the existence of the KKK, and they're such a noble, upright pillar of society.

By the way....going back to the cars with alarms and locks, etc....

In an IDEAL world all people would respect all others' rights and there would be NO NEED to lock anything at all.

The world is NOT ideal.  It has people in it who believe the rules do NOT apply to them simply because they don't particularly care for those rules.

Paedophiles believe they do no wrong.

Warez pirates believe they do no wrong.

What makes the latter particularly annoying is they believe they are actually doing GOOD....;p

Neither creature has a place here, however.

You probably should rephrase here, as it is not that neither creature has a place, but that you do not agree that they should have a place. While I do agree that pedos should be locked away, I am less convinced about warez pirates. To go back to the OP, this legislation does absolutely nothing directly to warez pirates. It can only target potential havens for these people, while also giving an immense amount of power to the federal government. This does not stop warez directly, and like other actions to end illegal distribution will more than likely spurn new technologies to further escape any form of justice. You had previously called this piece of legislation a move towards updating law to handle new technologies, yet it does nothing to actually criminalize Warez pirates. So to return to our car analogy, this would be like letting thieves steal car stereos but bring down the hammer on pawn shops which buy and then sell the stereos.  The stereo thieves may be liable to the car owners in some kind of civil matter, but they could go on being stereo thieves.

Go after them, where the congregate, those that host them (for profit, btw... so RICO hopefully applies, also), those that use their "services" as well. After all, as in the case with prostitution, the gov't. goes after the crime boss, the madam, the prostitute and the 'John'.

You won't get them all with the same law... but hey, use as many laws as you need. "When considering doing a good deed, one should not be deterred by the thought he might not be able to complete it or succeed."

No, I mean I can actually decide the fate of EITHER 'creature' HERE.  That is the responsibility of Stardock's site administrators.

Both face instant removal.

The ONLY difference is the latter gets a ban....whereas the former would get the attention of the Federal Police as well as a ban.

So, no, there's no need to rephrase at all.

Guess it's a moot point now anyway, John, after all, the rapture's tomorrow....

End of quote

I'm speaking from the alien space ship the "ASP Rapture".  Since I was recently raptured, I can only surmise that, my argument was  flawless and completely correct.

So long earthlings!

muhauhuahuahua!

You should have quoted the whole idea, and you are wrong.  We do not have the right to kill.  We have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit (not attainment mind you) of happiness.  For some sick people, murder is happiness, so their rights have to be curtailed (they cannot pursue that happiness).

I thought I was clear that I was not an anarchist.  Recognizing what laws do is not damning them, but understanding their effects.  And that is why I do not like bad laws - regardless of the intent.

U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake'

 OOps, we called all these mom and pop shops child didlers, Are we sorry? Hell no LOL

I wonder how many people here would like to be call "Child Pornographers" by mistake?

The funny part here is actually the source of this idea. Thomas Jefferson was a heavy student of John Locke, the British political philosopher, yet made a fairly significant change to Locke's fundamental theory. In his work "Two Treatises on Government", Locke states that there are four inalienable human rights "Life, Health, Liberty, and Property". In general, the founding fathers of the United States did not agree that property was such a right.

The reason property wasn't mentioned by Jefferson (a slave owner) was the same reason that led to the Civil War:

"The law of the Creator, which invests every human being with an inalienable title to freedom, cannot be repealed by any interior law which asserts that man is property."

Their thoughts centered around holding the 13 colonies together and forging a country, rather than solving that problem which indeed came up and was not dealt with.

I'm sure they had a bunch of beads in order to con the Indians out of THEIR property...;p

Might is right....they had guns, too.