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Australia To Legalize VCR Recording and CD Ripping
paritosh writes "While the rest of the world is trying to figure out how to stop the assault of anti-consumer intellectual property laws, Australia is breaking free from them." From the article: "See, it is currently illegal in Australia to record shows off the telly, or to transferbangle (Australian for copy) music from CDs to portable music players. The end result is that a large portion of of the Australian citizenry are technically breaking the law, and while that may not sit poorly with a nation born of criminality, it makes the legal system look a tad bit ridiculous. Could you imagine shipping all of those offenders to Madagascar?"
While that may be true in a sense, most of the current Australians are actually descended from the guards; the prisoners didn't tend to reproduce very much.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Technically a crime is whenever you break a law. But I have to wonder, at what point does a law become impotent? Take for instance the 18th amendment and the prohibition of alcohol. Something like 36 states ratified it, and yet almost everyone was ignoring it (especially the Kennedy's, which is where they made their fortune, in bootlegging). So the 21st amendment was eventually drafted repealing the 18th. If laws are something akin to a collectively agreed to moral pact that benefits and protects the majority of the citizens, isn't the law moot if the majority of the citizens choose to ignore said law?
$sys$droids
Yes, Zonk fell for it. As he has before, and unless someone with a brain removes his editor stauts, he will again.
One has to wonder how he was picked as editor, as he certainly does not represent the community in any way. It was laughable when he was new, but now when the whole slashdot frontpage is full of his 'stories' its just sad. Its not that I disagree with him, that wouldnt be an issue. The problem is that there is ZERO fact checking, and MASSIVE rewording of stories, so much as to make it sound like a completely different thing is going on. And that leads me to the conclusion that this guy is just a paid shill for someone.
Try blocking his stories in your slashdot preferences. You can select which editors do and do not show up on your user page. I cant tell you how much of a difference it makes in the quality of slashdot by just removing that ONE editor
That way, they don't tie the wording of the law to any particular technology.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It might be a problem for "you" - but the bully is obviously at fault. Why does the bully get a free pass, and the blame transferred to the victim? I guess victims of genocide are at fault for not standing up to people with weapons while they remain defenseless.
... and then they built the supercollider.
My god as an Australian I found that article offensive. First they make up words that no one has ever heard, then they decided that all Australian is descended from criminals while blatently ignoring the fact that America was used as penal colony before Australia was. The whole thing is riddled with jabs at Australia. Is the American education system that bad or is the writer just willfully ignorant.