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BitTorrent Site Admin Sent To Prison
Marc wrote in with a Torrentfreak story which opens: "The 23 year old Grant Stanley has been sentenced to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention, and a $3000 fine for his role in the private BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents.
This ruling is the first BitTorrent related conviction in the US. Stanley pleaded guilty earlier this year to 'conspiracy to commit copyright infringement' and 'criminal copyright infringement.' He is one of the three defendants in the Elitetorrents operation better known as 'Operation D-Elite.'"
You forgot to log in again, Richard.
Maybe the solutions isn't more jails, but rather decriminalizing things that aren't crimes, like addiction.
The harmful behaviour of drug addicts isn't the using of the drugs themselves. If junkies bought drugs with their own money, then quietly shot up in the corner and never bothered anyone, it wouldn't be an issue. The problem is that these junkies, being incapable of holding a job, yet still needing money to feed their addiction, turn to other harmful behaviours, and those do affect other people. Mugging, robbery, burglary, prostitution all go hand-in-hand with drug use. Also, their behaviours while high are harmful. Many drugs make the user more aggressive and violent. They impede your judgement and ability to drive, making them dangerous weapons on the roads.
People who blindly advocate decriminalizing all drugs are naive, and would be well-served to spend a day with an addict to educate themselves on the reality of what it's like to live that life. The drug use itself isn't the problem, but it's a symptom. The people who are in prison for "using drugs" are not innocent drug users. That's simply all they got caught for. But make no mistake: they are liars, cheaters, thieves, burglars and in many cases, much worse. They merely got away with those other crimes. If you swept through a neighborhood and locked up all the drug users, you'd see virtually all other property crime disappear.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
If you didn't have such a high number you'd probably realize that moderation is impossible to one's own posts. Believe it or not Slashdot makes sure that people don't mod their own threads. And no, there's no conspiracy with other Slashdotters...I'm pretty much alone on this site and you can see by my post counts and moderation scores, I own you.
I guess you really don't have much to do today, and for that, I'm sorry, but at least you learned something.