Hello everybody.   
      
   - Maybe this is a good example why we should go back to dialup days and still   
   use bbs's.   
      
   Understanding SOPA and copyright laws in the context of liberty.   
      
       Remember that battle over SOPA, in which the worlds largest websites beat   
   back a congressional threat that would have changed the Internet forever? It   
   was pretty obvious within a day after this Pyrrhic victory that the existing   
   laws in place were enough to give the government the power to wreck the   
   digital world. But how would it happen? How would government end digital   
   freedom? Well, the excuse is obvious. It is intellectual property. This phrase   
   serves the same purpose for would-be censors that terrorism does for   
   warmongers. It is a way to ramp up government control while kicking sand in   
   the faces of those who would oppose such control. Are you for terrorism? Are   
   you for theft? Its rather easy to detect normal theft. One day, I have a   
   planter on my porch. The next day, the planter is on your porch, and it got   
   there without my permission....Now imagine a different scenario. One day, the   
   paragraph above appears on the website for Laissez Faire Books. The next day,   
   it appears on your Facebook page or blog. But it is not thereby removed from   
   lfb.org. Instead, it is copied. A second instance of the paragraph has been   
   created, taking nothing from me. My paragraph still exists. And lets say this   
   happens 10 billion times in the course of a few minutes, as can happen in the   
   digital world. Is this a case of mass looting, or is it a mass compliment to   
   me? Copyright law sees this as theft. But how can that be? The whole merit of   
   the digital world rests on the remarkable scalability of everything digitized.   
   Thats the basis of the economy of the Internet. Its capacity for inspiring and   
   achieving infinite emulation and sharing is unparalleled in history. Its what   
   makes the Internet different from parchment, vinyl or television. Remove that,   
   and you gut the unique energy of the medium. Intellectual property law became   
   universal only about 120 years ago. It was gradually expanded over the course   
   of the century, invading the digital realm in the 1980s and expanding its   
   coverage ever since. How do you make copies illegal in a medium that   
   specializes in its capacity for sharing, multiplying, linking and community   
   formation? You need totalitarian control.   
      
   - from http://www.humblelibertarian.com/2012/03/isps-are-hirelin   
   s-for-police-state.ht ml   
      
      
      
   Matt   
      
   ... CAIR = Hamas = Muslim Brotherhood = Islamic Terrorist Organization   
   --- SBBSecho 2.13-Win32   
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