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In the West jailing people for criticising the government would be unpopular, so they find more subtle but equally effective ways to do it. These silence not just bloggers, but journalists too: The easiest of these is libel laws. US Citizens are lucky that their Right to Free Speech is enshrined in the Constitution, but citizens in other supposedly liberal democracies have no such protection.

Libel Law: "In theory, the objective of defamation laws is to balance protection of individual reputation with freedom of expression. In practice, defamation laws are frequently used as a means of chilling speech. A threat of (costly) defamation proceedings and damages, whether or not a plaintiff's claim is likely to be upheld by a court, is often used to silence criticism not only by a particular person or group but also as a threat to others."
https://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Censor/defamation.html

The UK defamation bill will do little to stop corporations suing individuals and should include a public interest defence
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jun/27/libel-reform-get-right-defamation-bill

UK Libel reform campaigners demand better public interest defence
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jun/27/libel-reform-campaigners-public-interest-defence

It doesn't affect only bloggers: Even journalists are restricted by what they can say:
http://www.thenewsmanual.net/Resources/medialaw_in_australia_02.html

Explanation of UK Libel Law
http://www.urban75.org/info/libel.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law

The Australian Journalist's Defamation Checklist: Can you run this story?
http://www.hss.bond.edu.au/defamkit/

And if they report something embarassing to the Government, then it is jail time:
http://www.thenewsmanual.net/Resources/medialaw_in_australia_06.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Secrets_Act
http://www.caslon.com.au/secrecyguide4.htm

The government redacted 90% of the recent proposal to snoop on Internet Usage. You would think the public have a right to know, but it's National Security if they say it is:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/no-minister-90-of-web-snoop-document-censored-to-stop--premature-unnecessary-debate-20100722-10mxo.html

• An apology
• A change to the respondent's practices or procedures
• Staff counselling
• Taking steps to address the matter, for example providing access to personal information, or amending records
• Compensation for financial or non-financial loss
• Other non-financial options, for example a complimentary subscription to a service.
• http://www.privacy.gov.au/complaints/outcomes

Don't get excited about the financial compensation. That is only if you have suffered economic loss and the employee who did it doesn't have to pay a cent.

http://www.caslon.com.au/privacyguide3.htm
http://www.privacy.gov.au/complaints/outcomes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_in_Australian_law

At the point that you kill Queen, the PM or the Governer General:
"Section 80.1 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) makes it an an offence to cause the death of, or harm to, the Sovereign, the heir apparent, the Governor-General or the Prime Minister."
http://www.caslon.com.au/seditionnote2.htm

It's possible to filter out the bottom-feeders, as we do at SiteTruth. We're looking at this mostly from the user side. But there are also serious complaints about "domaining" from the advertiser side.

Clicks on "typosquatting" sites don't lead to many sales. Basically, they're targeting users who click on random stuff. That doesn't mean those users actually buy based on their mis-aimed clicks. More likely, some real company that advertised via Google AdWords is getting money sucked out of their ad budget without much return. The analytics people are skeptical of the claims of domainers.

The Direct Marketing Association has a white paper for advertisers which recommends that advertisers filter those sites out of their campaigns. "The traffic produced by sites utilizing the practices described above is almost always absolutely worthless. To ensure contextual advertising effectiveness, advertisers should eliminate these sites from their campaigns." Google, however, makes this difficult, because Google doesn't tell the advertiser where their ads are running, and requires excluding each individual domainer site by name, from Google's user interface. There's no "disable all bottom feeders" option. This is a problem.

The DMA's white paper suggests ways an advertiser can defend their ad costs against domainers, automatically accumulating a list of domainers feeding them clicks, discovering which sites generate poor returns, and excluding them. But with clicks coming in randomly from hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of constantly changing bottom-feeder sites, blacklisting the bogus sites is like spam filtering by source address - it's a losing battle.

The advertiser community is getting wise to this. We may see some pushback from that side.

Sony had a lot more restrictions on the sort of films they allowed on their Beta format. And for the first time, the majority of householders were allowed to watch a movie that they wanted to watch, when they wanted. Of course Porn was a factor. Not so much these days, because we had over methods of delivery, but in the 1980 there was some magazines, a few dodgey Theatres that most people wouldn't be seen dead in, and then VHS.

Adult video figures: " A 1999 White Paper from the FSC and Video Software Dealers Association had claimed that adult video sales/rentals from adult product stores in the US were around US$4.1 billion, with around 70% of the films being produced in California and mail order video sales amounting to an estimated US$400 million." from here: http://www.caslon.com.au/xcontentprofile.htm

$4.5 Billion from the US alone, in 1999, to compare with your figures.

Suspended sentence.

"In 2006 former prisoner 'Manfred van H' received a suspended sentence of a year in prison and 300 hours of community service after printing 'Koran, der Heilige Qur'än' on toilet paper and distributing it to the media and mosques."

http://www.caslon.com.au/blasphemyprofile5.htm

There are examples for Greece and Austria of actual jail sentences in recent years, so I think the point stands.

I'm actually referring here to a particular case. I could have been more clear. An artist painted murals onto all sides of a refrigerator (several refrigerators, in fact, I think), then sold it at an auction (I think perhaps a fundraiser; I don't remember exactly). One of the buyers then dismantled the refrigerator and sold the panels individually. The artist sued the seller for dismantling his art. France's concept of moral rights contained within its law ruled for the artist. US law's first sale doctrine would have prevented this artist from having any such control over his art after the artist sold it.

Here's a quick summary of the case that I found using google:
in the 1962 Buffet v Fersing case in France artist Bernard Buffet (1928-1999) gained damages from a buyer who had disassembled one of his works. Buffet executed a painting on six panels of a single refrigerator, signing only one panel. The court held that the single signature was evidence of his intention that the work be understood as a whole; he was thus able to recover damages for violation of his integrity right when the owner of the refrigerator sold each panel separately.

It was at this web address: http://www.caslon.com.au/mrcasesnote.htm

Actually they said that scenes of torture and the blood and gore content where also higher than the submitter claimed.
I don't understand the flack over this. The game isn't banned it's rating was just changed. Those ratings are voluntary and are not enforced by law.
It isn't even like alcohol and cigarettes. A store can choose to sell pretty much any game to anyone. No will get fined or go to jail for it.
It's not like they are banning it.
Unlike here http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/347/eu.shtml or here http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1596751 it isn't government enforced like here http://www.caslon.com.au/censorshipguide17.htm
or like this move to censor internet video http://www.indexonline.org/en/indexindex/articles/ 2005/3/european-union-official-papers-offer-plans- t.shtml
Over all I don't see any reason to get all worked up over this.

I remember, and am quite familiar with the insides of a torrent file. Heck, I've even posted a uuencoded .torrent file to /. just to see if it could be done.

So, since I haven't found the specific code for Australia, let's consider US law . The definition of fair use is covered by 17 USC 1 section 107, and while "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole" is one of the criteria, it is not the only one. Consideration must also be given to "the purpose and character of the use" and "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" (as well as "the nature of the copyrighted work", which is not overly relevant here).

Since the "purpose and character of the use" in creating a torrent is (aside from hypothetically very strange home network usage) facilitiating the widescale distribution of the original, and given that "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" is without remunerating the copyright holder to provide duplicates of the original to anyone with a network connection, some patience, and a tranquil conscience... yeah, I think you'll need a really good lawyer to get a judge to swallow that elephant.

Now, these guys are Aussies. And, while I haven't found the on-line equivalent of the USC (Cornell rocks!), I did find this little blurb noting that AU law recognition of fair use is limited to "research or study", "criticism or review", "reporting of news", and "professional advice given by a legal practitioner or patent attorney". Which would likely rule out any fair use claims in this case.

Other countries laws vary-- and may in fact allow torrents under fair use. Feel free to point out a country and its copyright law if you have a particular one in mind. But it won't fly in the US or the Land of OZ.

B. CRLs don't scale. Period. There's a reason why PKIs hardly ever get past 100K users.

They scale enough though- the number of email domains is presumably much less than 100K.

Back in 2000-2001 there were already 15 million domains (estimated)

Another post from 2002 says that there are at least 36 million.

Some hasty Googling yields:

Historical Development of Copyright in Europe before 1886
IP Guide Background

Right now, we have to lay the foundations of this discussion to rest so we can get right to the point and avoid arguing things we agree on. If there are more pertinent references available to support your opinion, please post the links.

Hm. It would appear you are right. This page claims that until 2003, ICANN is under some sort of U.S. congressional oversight (but what?), so i suppose that i heard something like that and got confused.

Incidentally, this article, while not offering any sources, claims that Jon Postel was originally "contracted" by the U.S. government to be the manager of ARPANet's hosts.txt file, which was how hostnames were managed until DNS was invented.. but they seem to be implying he had no oversight. Anyone know what this refers to? Anyway, you still appear to be right in that once IANA came to be, it was government unafilliated.

To the best of my knowledge, legally, it didn't exist

How perfect then that its name was "IANA" ("I Am Not A"..?) :)

Sealand is not on the list (which can be viewed at http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma /02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html).

ISO 3166 is the "authority" because that's what IANA decided (thus shifting the burden of recognizing nations to another standards-organization). See http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld.htm (where you'll find a link to IANA's decision enabling the .ps ccTLD for the Palestinian Territory). See also http://www.caslon.com.au/domainsprofile.htm