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Harvard Law Professor Urges University to Fight RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Distinguished Harvard University Law School Professor Charles Nesson has called upon Harvard University to fight back against the RIAA and stand up for its students, writing 'Seeking to outsource its enforcement costs, the RIAA asks universities to point fingers at their students, to filter their Internet access, and to pass along notices of claimed copyright infringement. But these responses distort the University's educational mission. ...[W]e should be assisting our students both by explaining the law and by resisting the subpoenas that the RIAA serves upon us. We should be deploying our clinical legal student training programs to defend our targeted students.'"
Finally some one with some integrity speaks on the matter.
Money is the root of all evil?
Finally,the RIAA will be cut down as more and more people & institutions resist the Music Nazis and fight back.
Geek Hillbilly
If this gets out all over the media, people would start fighting back more since a Harvard law professor is advocating resistance, and we all know that Harvard has brand power that is rivaled by only a few other high-grade universities. If Harvard does resist, we can have a new slogan: "Fight the RIAA because Harvard's doing it."
We should be deploying our clinical legal student training programs to defend our targeted students.
Ooh, this raises some intriguing possibilities. If a university's legal faculty 'n' lawyers-to-be rally around the students, a whole body of experience will quickly build up. By the time they become fully-fledged lawyers, a whole bunch of students will be familiar with the xxAA and their tactics.
Could lead to some interesting exam projects, too; "Find a granny being sued by the RIAA and prepare a suitable defense. For bonus credit, find a granny who doesn't have a computer but is being sued by the RIAA."
Nesson's daughter Rebecca (http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~nesson/) works on a PhD in CS after going to Law School. Hence, you can be sure that he is very well aware of the discussion inside the CS community. Rebecca won Google's Anita Borg Fellowship 2007 (http://www.google.com/anitaborg/) and I remember here as a very nice person all around.
At the beginning was at.
Thank you NewYorkCountryLawyer. Keep doing your thang!
Speaking of the RIAA, I think they've been cribbing business plans from the ad for wall-size maps on the back of my granola. It says "Buy USA at retail price, get the World Free!"
Tough guy, huh?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
1. Pick legal fight with one of the most prestigious law universities in the country
2. ???
3. Profit*
* For Harvard, not the MAFIAA.
Yeah! I can point out typos, look at me!
Hell yes, Stand up for what is right!
With all the talk about this recently, I'm surprised someone hasn't mentioned this sooner... Granted I'm not a lawyer, but last I read, copyright law explicitly states that it is perfectly legal for students attending an educational institution to make a copy of any copyrighted work for educational purposes. Who's to say the students in question weren't doing so for this exact purpose?
I met Charlie Neesan once when the icann stuff was getting started in Cambridge. He's (very) good people. He also taught Lessig, Edeleman Molly "babe" van Howling and Zittrain.
Need Mercedes parts ?
i believe there's 2 things they tell you in law school 1. never sue a church - they are exempt from just about everything 2. never sue a university with a well stocked law faculty - you'll become the target of the best legal minds in the world who will have 100's of students working for free.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
What difference does it make? So far downloading music isn't illegal in the prison world called USA.
[CaptainObvious]Hah, you did not read the article![/CaptainObvious]
You probably missed the part where he's plugging Noank Media against the old establishment.
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
I am also not a lawyer, but I don't believe what you are positing would fall under fair use. In 1989, Kinkos was found guilty of copyright violation for copying substantial portions of textbooks (up to 100 pages at a stretch), and fined $1.9M plus court costs.
;)
Basically (as I understand it) there are several factors that fall into the test for fair use. First, is whether the use is for commercial or non-profit use. In this case, copying the music would probably pass the test. The second test is whether the work is "creative" or "informational" in its origin. In this case, the deck would be stacked against a student copying the average RIAA CD for "educational" purposes, as the work itself is probably of a creative nature. The third factor is the scope of the portion used. Simply put, the less you use, the more chance it is fair use. So copying a whole CD wouldn't pass this test. Copying a whole "hit" song probably wouldn't either. There was an actual case where a church choir director was found guilty of copyright infringement for copying essentially all of the lyrics (or something like that) from a song, arranging it to his music, and distributing copies to his choir. It was found that despite his good faith desire (not to infringe), he was still infringing. I recall the famous instance of Gerald Ford's memoirs as well, where only a few hundred words of his 100,000 word work were reprinted, and the supreme court found in his publisher's favor.
So.. in summary, I think you are mistaken. It (copyright law) doesn't state what you think it does, and the test for fair use definitely isn't "explicit" (as you said).. it is rather subjective. Nice shell game, though. Anyone who is a real lawyer, feel free to respond and repudiate my whole post
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
It is fantastic and the right thing that was needed. A reputed university such as Harvard propagates the fight against the RIAA. Why does it make such a difference when Harvard does it? Well, we all know that University of Wisconsin (Madison), albeit respected, does not match to the global reputation and brand recall that comes with an Ivy league university such as Harvard. Harvard's name is familiar to everyone around the world. Students in India, China, Pakistan the UK, everyones knows of Harvard. Even the crowd that isn't aware of the education system in other countries (the US), knows of Harvard.
So, Harvard fighting the RIAA, if publicized correctly by the media, will get the attention of everyone around the world. Take the MIT dean issue that came up recently, for example. That was splashed all across the news channels everywhere in the world!
I am currently in India and it was quite a talk here when the MIT news came out. I'm talking about local news channel covering the story! If the same happens with Harvard's move, is could almost be certain that people can will be educated more about the problem and its impact on internet downloads.
The RIAA would not be threatening the students if the students weren't violating copyright. Stop violating copyright, and the RIAA has nothing to go after.
Being "relatively defenseless families without lawyers or ready means to pay" is not justification for violating copyright. I don't have the an attorney on retainer or the means to pay, but that doesn't mean I can speed or violate traffic laws with impunity. "But judge, I can't afford the ticket so I shouldn't be prosecuted" won't fly very far in court. People in this country need to start taking responsibility for themselves.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Seeking to outsource its enforcement costs, the RIAA asks universities to point fingers at their students, to filter their Internet access, and to pass along notices of claimed copyright infringement. But these responses distort the University's educational mission. ...where this blabla would be reduced to a single word that people learned from history: NAZIS
The definition of Nazism might differ from nitpicker to nitpicker. But my guts tell me that your music is produced and sold by a straight Nazi organisation that desperately promotes its opinions in the news by going after little people.
I'm not sure if you're trying to be funny, or cynical here... My father in law passed away a week and a half ago, and I was tasked with setting up a website in his memory... My wife wanted to use a few songs for the site, which needed, or was intended to be up before the funeral (this coming tuesday)... I said that I could only use Creative Commons, or Public Domain music without permission.... the hard part was finding music suited to the event and the person... A few letters were sent out to the commercial artists she had wanted to use.
The licensing cost wasn't so much the issue (something like $30/year (USD) on a given example. The hard pill to swallow, is it required a bunch of paperwork, with two weeks to review, and decide if to grant or decline license for the song. But worse still is that it would take up to and beyond 8 weeks to actually grant said license.
Upon reviewing several thousand songs over several hours from garageband.com, we found one creative commons song that was suitable. And got permission from the author of another, very appropriate song, for use of it... The songs are encoded, and embedded into flash files, and streamed at a lower quality in mono (mainly for bandwidth issues). As much as the system in play for online/internet radio sucks... it would be nice to have a better interface for licensing a song for playback on a website, without direct access to a higher quality digital recording... One shouldn't have to jump through so many hoops...
On a side note, at least now my wife, and a few relatives have a much better understanding of how F'd up copyright law is, between this issue, and trying to get copies of photos for use at the funeral.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
"Seeking to outsource its enforcement costs, the RIAA asks universities to point fingers at their students, to filter their Internet access, and to pass along notices of claimed copyright infringement."
0 .html?from=public_rss
This reminds me of something the ARIA wanted to/wants to implement in Australia. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21555941-2,0
"Under this system, people who illegally download songs would be given three written warnings by their Internet service provider.
If they continued to illegally download songs, their internet account would be suspended or terminated.
Those with dial-up internet could face having their phone disconnected."
can anyone else see how bad this could be? IANAL, but i think the best way to fix this situation might be a higher court ruling against the motions of the lower court in favor of them being unfounded or inaccurate... something to explain that the ruling came from evidence that couldn't hold water
Finally, a college with some gumption and integrity who will do the right thing. Other colleges should follow this example.
"Stop violating copyright, and the RIAA has nothing to go after."
Isn't the point that the RIAA is suing people who often times don't even have a computer or a computer account? While the law of statistics and large numbers say that probably a few people might have broken copyright law, the implication is that the record companies are just on an intimidation campaign against the rest of the world.
Isn't the real story that the RIAA has no technical means to determine if (a) copyright is in fact being violated (b) who is doing it.
It seems to me, their lawsuits rest on the same illogical conclusion that you are guilty of. That is, you assume that any violation of copyright is so serious that it's OK if a lot of completely innocent people are caught up, because "we" need to teach society a lesson, regard of actual guilt or innocence because it sends a strong message that copyright violators will be caught and prosecuted.
That doesn't even begin to make sense, and I don't think you've really thought through the horrible precedent that this sets for society.
Zittrain and his Digital 9-11 crap is just as bad as that Y2K guy crying the end of the world...
If I never hear him utter "Digital 9-11" again, I'll die a happy man.
Digital Nine One One
Digital Nine One One
Digital Nine One One
Okay, I'm done.
Well, I'm glad to see more and more people taking a stand against the flagrant abuses of the RIAA - with luck, it will soon get to the point that the RIAA can no longer get away with any of it. However, one statement in the article really bothers me:
"We need not condone infringement to conclude that 19th- and 20th-century copyright law is poorly suited to promote 21st-century knowledge."
Now, I may not be a lawyer, but I am a professional writer, and an author, and part of my profession requires me to have a working understanding of copyright law. So, this statement bothers me for a couple of reasons:
1. It does not differentiate between copyright law and patent law. Copyright law is actually quite good at allowing for the promotion of knowledge, as you cannot copyright an idea - only the exact implementation of one. Patent law, on the other hand, has become very restrictive in regards to the promotion of knowledge, and you CAN patent an idea. (You can patent a tax strategy, for crying out loud.)
2. I don't know enough about 19th century copyright law, but frankly, 20th century copyright law based on the Berne Convention is quite good at what it does, and doesn't really need to be fixed. At best, it needs minor modifications.
Expanding on the second point, there seems to be a "shiny thing" reaction in the copyright industry in regards to the Internet, and it really does miss the point. The RIAA, legislators, and even some lawyers are spending a lot of time panicking in awe at the shiny new Internet and what it can do, and failing to notice that at the end of the day, a work is either infringed or it isn't, just like it was before the 'net. As far as the actual letter of the law is concerned, how it got that way is really unimportant.
(Think of it this way - somebody figures out how to commit a murder over the Internet by making his/her victim's keyboard deliver a deadly electric shock. Do the murder laws now need to be rewritten? Of course not - at the end of the day, it's still murder, plain and simple.)
If you look at the Berne Convention, you see:
1. Respect for the creator's wishes for their work.
2. Ability for the creator to transfer rights and copyright.
3. Allowance for fair use and the use of ideas, but not exact implementations, in derivative works.
4. Allowance for public domain.
5. A recognition that these rights and provisions apply to new media.
If you think about it, it's simple, covers all the bases, allows for everything from Creative Commons to the Open Source movement to a novelist receiving royalties in any media - and has been around in its current form since the 1970s. I wouldn't call it a broken tool at all. I just wish people would stop panicking because there's a new shiny thing and coming up with daft measures (Vista-style DRM anybody?) to protect against it.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Hasen't anyone gotten them on a rule 11 or rule 37 yet (sanctions for bad faith representations to the court or for not cooperating with discovery)
It seems if they are making frivolous legal arguments you can call them on that with rule 11?
Just wondering
that keep Harvard on the map.
No matter how bad a reputation the USA may have nowadays, it's top universities haven't had any problem attracting international talent, even from highly developed countries like Germany.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Existing works had already been created under the copyright laws of the time. (28 years plus one extension of 28 more years). The laws fully served their purpose of encouraging the creative arts. No change in the law afterwards would change what had been done. These works should have moved into the public domain, where new artists could freely use them to create even newer works to enrich society. Instead, the content creation industry got Congress to enrich them by extending unreasonably the time of protection. Congress did not represent the people at large that day.
The President failed in his job by signing this bill, and The Supreme Court failed miserably in their job of understanding the intent in the US Constitution by upholding the unwarranted extensions. And the court system now fails even more miserably by permitting the RIAA suits to exist in the first place, and then be dropped in ways that cost never-convicted defendants tens of thousands of reimbursed dollars, the moment the RIAA might lose. All this while the RIAA tries to trick the courts into granting them rights never included in the original legislation. If the RIAA can fool uninformed judges into creating precedents to be used in future cases, they will have de facto created new law for themselves.
Filesharing should be viewed as an act of civil disobedience against an industry that has received out-of-proportion, and unconstitutional, protection from all three branches of the government.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Which President? Not either Bush. Not Kerry, who wanted to be President. Not either Clinton.
Oh, do you mean the President of Microsoft? Yes, but he dropped out.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The second time he has been a major asset to the legal profession!
anyone that is even somewhat competent realizes what a scam cd's are...18$ for about 5 or 6 songs that are good on a cd that has 10 or 12 tracks??? That is insane. Especially since you can't listen to more than a 30 second sample of the tracks so you don't really know what you're buying...even if it is a 'legit' paid for download. I mean, how many cd's do you have that you like EVERY SINGLE SONG on the album??? I have about 3 out of 14 or so...absolutely rediculous. It's no wonder why unrestricted free music has such an appeal...especially to those poor college students (like myself).
If you don't believe in evolution, then how the fuck do you explain pokemon?!
And you should be sending the RIAA a bill when they request documentation about who was connected to what IP when.
If the records office charges fees for copying records, why wouldn't they charge for their time and effort when other information rquests come in?
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Well, frankly, your tone is very inflammatory. Your post suggests that you're the type of person who would have no difficulties with a tyranny of the masses (I don't know if this is the case or not, but you're talking about taking people's rights away, and however you spin it, you're still talking about taking people's rights away).
However, I find this quite funny, because I can't really disagree with the content of your post - because it's pretty much exactly what I said. My words were: "If you think about it, it's simple, covers all the bases, allows for everything from Creative Commons to the Open Source movement to a novelist receiving royalties in any media - and has been around in its current form since the 1970s. I wouldn't call it a broken tool at all. I just wish people would stop panicking because there's a new shiny thing and coming up with daft measures (Vista-style DRM anybody?) to protect against it."
And your words were: "Copyright is an artificial bounty that society has granted to some of its members, but the cost to society of enforcing that bounty has dramatically increased in recent years."
One of these things is very much like the other.
Out of curiosity, did you read all of my post? And have you ever actually read the Berne Convention?
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
He has an MBA from there - he left military service six months early to start it. It has been reported widely.
Expression monopolies aren't rights. They never have been. Copyright isn't a right at all. As mentioned by another poster "Copyright is an artificial bounty that society has granted to some of its members" for the explicit purpose in Article 1.1.8 to promote progress in science and arts, i.e., to grow the public domain.
My problems with Berne and the attendant 1976 Act:
1) Copyright by default. To return to a sane state for copyright we need to return to a registry. Without registration of copyrights we don't know whom to get permission from, and we don't know if and when a work has or will enter the public domain (because we don't know if or when the creator died). Which leads directly to...
2) Copyright terms based on the life of the creator. Lifelong terms are totally absurd given the premise that Congress was given the power to create copyright in the first place. Lifetime monopolies are only "for limited times" with only the most skewed meaning of limited, i.e., from a human frame of reference 'not eternity'. The extension acts aren't helping. Also, I've yet to hear a compelling argument that lifetime monopolies provide more incentive than fourteen year monopolies (the first American copyright term). Was a work ever not created because anyone, anywhere decided, "If I can't milk this for my entire life and seventy years after my death, I'm just not doing it!"? Further, in the approaching transhuman or post-human epoch what will "lifetime monopoly" even mean? And can it be "for limited times" if we stop dying? When machines are creative, will they get copyrights? When will they die and release their works into the public domain?
Bringing up DRM is a whole other can of worms, given that DRM can never work.
I wish the recording industry would just accept that the DONT have a viable business model.
Might as well stand on a street corner offering to polish peoples shoes.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Funny. Why is it then that I hardly ever (read never) find any scientific papers about the latest Robby CD or Spidernam III???
Privacy is terrorism.
The main flaw with the Berne convention as I see it is that in almost all cases it does not respect for the creator's wishes for their work. By default it makes every work uncopiable unless explicitly licensed by the author, and it doesn't provide any means of locating the author. Almost all content on the web was posted by authors who don't expect to make money by selling their content, who don't care about their content being copied (at least when proper attribution is made) and usually prefer that their ideas be diseminated this way. Most of who posts on the web is not reachable to give explicit permision, and if reachable now will not be reachable by the same means next year (say when they abandon their old email address in favor of a new spam-free one).
The first thing that needs to change is that there should be a requirement that legal protection for copyright holders should be restricted for those who claimed they want such protection in advance, before they can claim infringement, in a standard way that could be used by the accused infringer to check and know that there are restrictions on use. Such a standard way should also require that any proted work be made available in a way that allows fair use, or at least allows the passage of the work to the public domain when time comes (i.e., there should not be legal protection for works diseminated only in a way that prevents access after the work has legally entered the public domain).
In a world where most published work was not meant by the content creators to be restricted, the law should not restrict it by default. If anyone wishes to control their work, they should state so. It is not difficult.
-----
License:
I am the copyright holder of this post.
I wish to retain my rights to this post.
As the copyright holder of this post I hereby explicitly grant the permision to anyone who so wishes to copy all of part of this post and to include it in their work.
This notice would hold until 70 years after I cease to be alive, and after that time this post will pass into the public domain regardless of any changes in copyright laws.
If in doubt consult my death certificate if you are able to find it. If you cannot find it assume I am alive and well.
Fight fiercely, Harvard! -- T Lehrer
Well, that's an interesting way of looking at it, but I'm afraid I can't agree, simply because reality doesn't really reflect what you've said.
"The main flaw with the Berne convention as I see it is that in almost all cases it does not respect for the creator's wishes for their work. By default it makes every work uncopiable unless explicitly licensed by the author, and it doesn't provide any means of locating the author."
Well, that's really not the issue you make it out to be for a couple of reasons:
1. The work starts out in the hands of the creator, so the creator has to make a decision about how to distribute it - and copyright law allows him/her to distribute it however s/he wishes. It can't be copied without permission for a very good reason - preventing a publisher from shafting the creator upon submission by taking the work and publishing it behind the creator's back. But, the first thing a creator has to do is decide what kind of publication s/he wants, so your issue is a, well, non-issue. The creator's wishes are respected from the get-go.
2. It is not the place of copyright law to provide a means of locating the author - that's the author's responsibility. Any law creates a legal framework for people to move around in, but it does not do everything for them. Laws against theft don't hold burglars by the hand and prevent them from robbing your house - they allow you to do something about the theft after the fact. It's still your responsibility to lock your doors at night. That being said, any author who is professional about what they do makes a point of keeping their publishers up to date about their whereabouts, so it really isn't an issue. If you want to reprint an author's work and need permission, they aren't that hard to find.
"Almost all content on the web was posted by authors who don't expect to make money by selling their content, who don't care about their content being copied (at least when proper attribution is made) and usually prefer that their ideas be diseminated this way."
Um...that may be true for some, but certainly not for all, and there are lots of major sites where the content is written by people who are paid to do it. And that's not counting the sites that bring in a revenue from advertising, or are subscription-based.
"Most of who posts on the web is not reachable to give explicit permision, and if reachable now will not be reachable by the same means next year (say when they abandon their old email address in favor of a new spam-free one)."
Actually, my experience with browsing the web has been exactly the opposite - the major sites have current contact information, and I would say that current contact information is much more the norm than the exception.
"The first thing that needs to change is that there should be a requirement that legal protection for copyright holders should be restricted for those who claimed they want such protection in advance, before they can claim infringement, in a standard way that could be used by the accused infringer to check and know that there are restrictions on use."
Okay - so let me get this straight - you're suggesting that in order to protect the creator's wishes, the first thing you need to do is take away their legal rights towards their work unless they opt in to it. Somehow, if you were talking about free speech, I don't think anybody would take too kindly to that philosophy. The beauty of copyright under the Berne Convention is that any author can distribute their work however they want - mainstream publication, Creative Commons, etc. - it is up to them from the get-go. You're talking about adding a completely unnecessary step - particularly since the work starts in the creator's hands in the first place. Simple is better, when it comes down to it.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Oh dear, you're looking at a libertarian and seeing a communist. No my friend, I am not advocating taking away your right to societal protection of your intellectual property, simply because you have no such right to begin with.
Over the centuries, philosopher's saints and poets have contemplated the nature of our existence. Many have come to the view that the human person has a natural dignity that retains numerous rights that are deserving of protection. If you are an American, you would no doubt be familiar with one of the best formulations, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
During all that time not one of these philosophers, saints or poets has ever argued that there is a natural right to human intellectual property. Sorry. And don't think that it is because they ignored the notion of property all together either, because they didn't. Simply no-one until recent times has ever considered ideas to be commercially tradable property deserving of police protection.
The "shiny new thing" that you mock in the OP is, ironically, better attributed to the Berne convention itself! The world has been awash with copyrightable works through all of recorded human history, and only recently has anyone decided that ideas can be owned.
If you have decided that you will only perform creative acts in exchange for societal protection, then good riddance to you when we end that protection. I'm hoping that the fellows in charge of the hollywood popcorn factories go with you too.
-M
# grep slashdot access.log | grep html | sort | uniq | wc -l 2604
"Oh dear, you're looking at a libertarian and seeing a communist."
"...simply because you have no such right to begin with."
Ugh...please, stop misusing words. Seriously. I've known people who grew up in communist countries. Believe me, when I read your posts I see an uninformed, spoiled anarchist. Not a communist. You can take my word for that. And I know what the words actually mean.
As for not having the rights in the first place, you are absolutely wrong. Sticking your head in the sand and pretending that copyright isn't there or declaring that it shouldn't be there isn't going to make it go away. I DO have those rights - the law grants them to me. Just as the law grants you the right of free speech and freedom of travel. ALL rights are artificial. Unfortunately, you're living in a society that has had these rights and freedoms for long enough that you've forgotten that somebody had to fight and die for them. When was the last time you had to defend one of your rights?
Frankly, you're spoiled. We all are to some degree. It's a lot easier to talk about taking somebody's rights or legal protections away when you've never had that done to yourself, or to a family member. But, to take an American example, take a close look at Gitmo. A really close look. Look at all of those people being held without trial, and being mistreated. And then tell me about their natural rights. Seems to me it was really fucking easy to take their rights away. And once you've taken a look at that situation, and seen just how artificial rights truly are, perhaps then you'll realize just precious they are when we do have them. And perhaps then you'll understand just why it is that I fight tooth and nail for mine.
Oh, and by the way, as I've said a number of different times, you CAN'T copyright an idea. You never could. Ownership of an idea is PATENT LAW - try to get it right next time.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Ahh, now I begin to see where our points of view diverge. We appear to have a disagreement at a much more fundamental level.
You see, I do not believe that all of my rights are artificial. I believe that many are fundamental to my status as a human person. These rights I will fight and die for. Unlike yourself, I will not kill other humans to protect rights that are merely granted to me as a boon by my society.
You say that there is some level of comparison between my 'right' to have the police chase down and arrest people who make unlicensed copies of my fiddle playing, and my Right to Freedom and Self Determination as a person.
I see no link, and I will not fight and die over the fiddle playing. I also won't do it over my right to use oil in my SUV or any of the other 'rights' you believe that you have. Please don't shoot at my children if my country decides to tell your country where to shove it's copyright treaty, OK? Feel free to shoot at us if we hold your citizens without trial like the USA does to ours.
Indeed, I find it unfortunate that you would invoke the honor of my memories for those who have fallen in battle in defense of our _natural_ rights. If you think that they also believed that all rights are artificial, why do you think they died for them? I put it to you that these men and women overwhelmingly believed that the rights they were fighting for were given to them by God, and not by man. If your next post breaks Goodwin's law and calls me a Nazi, then I will not reply any further.
-M
# grep slashdot access.log | grep html | sort | uniq | wc -l 2604
"We appear to have a disagreement at a much more fundamental level."
The difference is that my point of view is backed up by reality and history.
"Unlike yourself, I will not kill other humans to protect rights that are merely granted to me as a boon by my society."
Well, I've been called a greedy monopolist, but this is the first time I've ever been called a murderer. I have nothing more to say to you. Don't bother to reply - I'm not going to bother reading it.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive