Hello everybody.   
      
   At the request of Lee, I seperated the paragraphs if anyone wants to give this   
   topic a second chance.   
      
    To   : All   
    Subj : ISP's are hirelings for the police state   
   ===============================================================================   
   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-hirelings-for-police-state.ht   
   ml   
      
      
      
   Matt   
      
   ... Could you continue your petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.   
   --- SBBSecho 2.13-Win32   
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