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Gabon Suspends Me.ga Domain, Dotcom Says "We Have Alternative Domain"
hypnosec writes "Kim Dotcom's plan to launch a 'bigger, better, faster, stronger, safer' Megaupload successor, Mega, is already in peril as Gabon's government has suspended the domain me.ga . Announcing his decision, Gabon's Communication Minister Blaise Louembe said 'I have instructed my departments... to immediately suspend the site www.me.ga' in a bid to 'protect intellectual property rights' and 'fight cyber crime effectively.' Dotcom revealed through a tweet that he is in possession of an alternative domain name and that the recent suspension 'demonstrates the bad faith witch hunt the U.S. government is on.'"
pee.ka!
http://gi.ga/
I know that he is trying to sound extreme and provocative, but for Gabon to shut-down a domain name of a yet-to-be-launched service that has only said that it plans to store things online is very-much a Witchhunt. Nothing is really known about me.ga and so the only reason they have to shut it down is because it's a 'successor' to megaupload and they have a vendetta against Kim Dotcom.
Wow, it's nice to see Gabon is in a great economic position, has eliminated all poverty, improved education, public healthcare, great mass transit systems, and can afford the luxury to turn down an offer to host what's sure to become one of the most popular websites on Earth, which will generate millions in ad revenue.
Welcome to obamaworld
Indeed.
I am certain that Romney would make it his first act in the office to loosen the copyright/IP witchhunt. It was totally the election between pro-buisness Obama vs the liberal candidate Romney
Should have worked harder to elect someone like Ron Paul.
Wow. PreCrime is here. Apparently, you don't even have to be open for business or host any files to be a 'cyber criminal' who violates 'intellectual property rights.' Once you're accused by the US governments masters, you're done for, worldwide.
Undiclosed sources close to minister stated that the "fee" paid by representatives from US Media conglomerates was a new Toyota Camry, a Czech slavegirl and ten boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts.
Wow, preemptively shutting something down on the basis that it might be used to infringe copyright before it's even launched?
Philip K. Dick and (to some extent) Scott Frank and Jon Cohen must be proud.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I hope me.ga gets launched, under whatever URL. It uses full, proper, user-controlled end-to-end encryption, it will be very hard to hold the host responsible for content on this one.
But then the studios had direct takedown power on Megaupload and that wasn't enough for them...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I don't know much about Gabon, but I would not be surprised if their small economy needs American support. Either for receiving donations, IMF loans (and the interest level connected to that), or just imports/exports.
Compared to the threat of reduced economic stability, suspending one domain name is peanuts. I bet they were bullied into this suspension of the domain name.
It's some Third World hellhole whose economy runs on bribery and other crimes. What did he expect?
Never think about anything that could lead your to infringe on copyright!
It was pretty stupid to depend on DNS, given how centralized it is.
A better idea would be to bypass DNS entirely, by implementing an independent IP-naming system as part of his program and making himself and/or the users the sole authority for naming IPs on it.
If I lived there I wouldn't be very pleased to know that another country pwned my government.
Korma: Good
False dichotomy much?
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
That his bribe would be bigger than the other guy's?
HAHAHAHA man, if you had chosen any words but "going to tell you how to live" this would have been nowhere NEAR as hilarious as it was, and could have been modded up +1, sad but true. But seriously? Republicans are the masters of telling people how they're going to live. Republicans are entirely about being free to live the way they want you to live. That's what they DO, that's what "social conservative" MEANS.
Wouldn't a native cross-platform app alleviate all these problems with domain names? Use a UDT based file transfer protocol with NAT traversal to connect to servers based on IP numbers that can be updated via bootstrap server or software update. Sure, at some point the user must download the app, but that would not be a big problem in this case, and afterwards the app can update itself. As a bonus you get huge perfomance benefits, at least if you do it the right way.
Just an idea. All this fuzz about domain names, really makes you wonder why people are so obsessed with web-pages.
It's some Third World hellhole whose economy runs on bribery and other crimes. What did he expect?
...to be able to bribe them for the domain registration?
The US Gov. must have some real dirt on their leaders if they didn't take Kim's money.
No sig today...
Cute parody, but by voting for the status quo we have shown we support it. Probably Romney wouldn't be against it. (And maybe in my state Bob Casey's opposition would have co-sponsored PIPA as well.) But in four years our new douche bag and turd sandwich are going to look at what they need to be to win and see this and these past years and march on with it. Because even if it doesn't win elections, it doesn't lose them and that's usually reason enough (with lobbying) to do anything.
corporations and government can't be trusted to control the means of communication
tor and freenet are good starts, alas freenet is too technical for normal people to use
what we need is a distributed infrastructure that isn't under anyone's control
a good start: http://project-byzantium.org/
I am certain that Romney would make it his first act in the office to loosen the copyright/IP witchhunt. It was totally the election between pro-buisness Obama vs the liberal candidate Romney
These elections are never a choice between a pro-business and an "anti-business" (?) candidate. Choosing between one and the is at best prioritizing which set of corporations will be in the front row and which one will get the afterthought treatment: the oil and military ones with Republicans, or the MAFIAA with Democrats. As things are, the MAFIAA got 4 more years of preeminence.
That isn't to mean Romney would have stopped the witchhunt. He just wouldn't "care" as much about it as Obama.
Should have worked harder to elect someone like Ron Paul.
Well, you *do* know that most libertarians are anti-IP, right? We understand all IP to be government interfering with our private property.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Ask to our Romanian friends for a domain name for a site that's the reciprocal of me.ga http://mic.ro/
That's what she said.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Cute parody, but by voting for the status quo we have shown we support it. Probably Romney wouldn't be against it.
While I agree with your sentiment in general, I fear we could not afford to "try" Romney on this principle. While similar in many ways, Romney would dig us even deeper in the hole -- and Ryan is even scarier
This election was already lost when our best and the brightest came down to Obama and Romney. Or perhaps it was lost when Obama was chosen on the "change and hope" platform that never materialized.
http://gizmodo.com/5958415/now-kim-dotcoms-new-site-mega-has-been-hacked-too
Well there is the P2P DNS system and alternative DNS that are out there.
The problem is they are awkward to setup at best for a casual user and they simply aren't known enough to those outside of geek circles.
These 2 systems have the potential to solve EVERYTHING, but they are stagnating in the corner.
Gabon in West Africa?
Nah,
Big guns and navy ships to spare will do fine.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
> I fear we could not afford to "try" Romney on this principle
And that's why nothing will ever change.
> Or perhaps it was lost when Obama was chosen on the "change and hope" platform that never materialized.
You mean "hope and change" didn't materialize? Wow, America really should have held him accountable for that, because it really seems right now like they got the change they wanted.
Seriously that is hilarious. That scammer is never going to give up.
Mr Fox objected to the ban, saying "I don't intend to eat any hens this time! I just want to visit the hen house. My business there is totally legitimate. Judging foxes for what they did in the past is just fascism, man."
hahahahha. Why is this not moderated +5 funny?
Nobody in the US government anywhere on the political spectrum has shown they have any intentions to end the copyright/IP witchhunt except for SCOTUS and maybe 5 senators. The entirety of congress is at fault for this travesty and the damage this copyright/IP farce is causing to our economy.
I know, it's too bad that Romney didn't make it so we can have the government legislating fucking, the right to be with someone you care about, robbing everyone to give to the rich so they can get the highest score and privatizing profits while nationalizing their debt. Instead we have a president that wants to tax the robber barons, legislate people owning property they created, and making sure people are treated when they get sick instead of dying in the street due to a toothache.
Fuck Romney, he was a failure of a man, and would have ruined this nation. Anyone who doesn't see that is a horrible person that needs to learn what it's like to be human before hurt themselves
The rotten and corrupt Domain Name System.
We are on his side ...omega is a hollywood hacker
target released
go nuts on him.
mega isnt the problem its hollywood
AND while i can see what omega says i and millions if not billions would far more prefer a mega then a hollywood
MEGA is going to require encryption to protect IP and prevent things from being shared to the masses in that way, so yes, this is a clear example of a witch hunt.
I seem to recall the hacker group Anonymous went after godaddy, for their support of SOPA, and it cost godaddy a lot. Now, I have to wonder if Anonymous will go after Gabon, and/or their partners and share holders. I would not be surprised to see a large DOXing happen soon. and a number of other things after that.
your a govt hacker fook off.
only those types use the cia er google ergo YouTube to make a point
that also is a shot at the wannabe anonymous tha uses twitter ergo the fbi message board.
its time to clean up and realize your all being played with
The entirety of congress is at fault for this travesty and the damage this copyright/IP farce is causing to our economy.
Is Congress at fault, or are constituents at fault for not paying attention to political news sources other than those operated by movie studios? In a way, news coverage of a candidate for federal elected office can be seen as a stealth in-kind donation to the candidate's election campaign. To bury a candidate that doesn't toe the party line on expansion of copyright, the major TV news outlets (Disney's ABC, Universal's NBC, Paramount's CBS, Last Century Fox's Fox News, and Warner Bros.' CNN) can just fail to remind viewers that the candidate exists.
That's what we need to be sending in ships for. 'We condemn the Gabon government's stance on the allocation of the me.ga domain. Sanctions are in place and US Navy ships will be patrolling your shoreline until this travesty is rectified.'
I'm not sure why he wants a domain name anyway. It just adds an attack vector.
I have no trouble remembering 8.8.8.8 for dns, really.
Also, it's less likely a .arpa domain could be messed with. Ugly, but boy are they stable. They don't even expire.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Did the communication minister of Gabon seriously put quotation marks around the official stated intent of his actions? Have we truly reached the era of unapologetically naked horseshit?
Well, you *do* know that most libertarians are anti-IP, right? We understand all IP to be government interfering with our private property.
Indeed, indeed.
Hey, Republicans, do you remember when you told me that my vote for Gary Johnson was a vote for Obama? Well, you may as well have voted for Obama too. At least I feel good about the principles I stood on when I cast my vote.
No no no. You need to listen to more conservative talk radio.
The proper term is Obamanation.
See, its like abomination.
That way we can get more riled up about it because it uses the dogma switch to turn off the tiny little rational parts of our brain we have not yet mananged to destroy yet.
Well, you *do* know that most libertarians are anti-IP, right? We understand all IP to be government interfering with our private property.
That's not what I hear from the libertarians I talk to. They argue that the only rightful role of government is to defend property rights, of which intellectual property rights are one kind. A country without intellectual property is as barbaric as a country without physical property to the common libertarian. Ayn Rand was certainly a defender of IP, to her the work of the mind was the highest value, and investing that work is what made property property, intellectual or physical.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Given the choice between jumping off a cliff (and into a steaming pit of shit) in order to avoid someone throwing mushitd at me? I choose to remain where I am and tolerate the the small amount of shit for a little while longer rather than drowning in a pit of shit after having broken myself from the jump.
That was the choice between Obama and Romney. Obama sucks badly. But Romney is much worse.
Nah,
Big guns and navy ships to spare will do fine.
Plus the several hundred thousand dollars in US foreign aid. It's the Golden Rule at work.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
That's not what I hear from the libertarians I talk to. They argue that the only rightful role of government is to defend property rights, of which intellectual property rights are one kind. A country without intellectual property is as barbaric as a country without physical property to the common libertarian. Ayn Rand was certainly a defender of IP, to her the work of the mind was the highest value, and investing that work is what made property property, intellectual or physical.
I'm not acquainted with all strands of Libertarianism, my focus being on that of the Austrian School variation, which also happens to be the mainstream (as long as anything "libertarian" can be thought of as "mainstream"), and while there are some in there who argue in favor of IP, particularly the older folk, most tend to agree that you cannot go around opening exceptions to the general libertarian take on government-granted monopolies (i.e., fewer as better than many, and none as definitely better than few) or on what a government is for (preventing an individual from imposing his will over another and another's property, and protecting explicitly-signed contracts). IP violates both things, so a libertarian defending it is quite clearly confused, or more likely just someone who didn't think things through.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
You mean instead of a president who would have taken us into war with Iran where we would no doubt quickly remove a very evil government only to be mired in an unwinnable war against an even more evil insurgency for the next decade we have one who takes the decision that people live or die into his own hands maintaining a kill list that nobody besides a few of his friends are privileged to see or know how people arrive on the list.
the general libertarian take on government-granted monopolies (i.e., fewer as better than many, and none as definitely better than few) or on what a government is for (preventing an individual from imposing his will over another and another's property, and protecting explicitly-signed contracts). IP violates both things, so a libertarian defending it is quite clearly confused, or more likely just someone who didn't think things through.
No libertarian thinks that the government should grant no monopolies. All libertarians think that the government should enforce monopolies on property. That's the essential difference between libertarians and anarcho-socialists.
Since all libertarians want a monopoly on property, the only question is whether IP is property or not. If IP is property, and I outlined one way in which a very prominent libertarian philosopher argued that it is, then it is entirely proper under libertarian thought for the government to stop me from imposing my will over your intellectual property.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"...be a shame if something happened to it."
Dotcom has no drones; the US does - along with an itchy 'we ARE the law' trigger finger. As just about the entirety of the continent north of Johannesburg is now a US free fire zone, any African government would have quickly given in to US demands as Gabon just did.
We understand all IP to be government interfering with our private property.
Yes but many libertarians seem to have no issue whatsoever with Ron Paul wanting to ban abortion (he would want to overturn Roe v. Wade and has co sponsored 4 separate bills to "To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.")
I've never understood all the hype about Ron Paul. The guy has some good ideas but also very many that are close to sheer lunacy (many of them being because he's very much a religious conservative. Among other things he sponsored the original Marriage Protection Act).
Anti-IP or not, I could never vote for someone who wants to mess with people's right to their own bodies. No-one can honestly hold a "pro-life" (quotes because I think the very term itself is loaded) stance and at the same time claim that they're for small government. It doesn't get bigger than government telling you what to do and what not to do with your own body.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
No, it is a sign that the game he's been playing for many years now is finally over. You know, that of moving your operations to a different country each time the one you are currently in finally catches up with your crimes.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Oh, Yah, 59,583,302 to 56,960,530, a 2.25% difference. It really looks like Americans are totally convinced they got what they wanted.
With all the mischief that governments are inflicting on the DNS name space, why not just forgo a DNS name altogether? People don't really need names though they are handy. If megaupload never had a name, you would still be able to find a link via google. You can still bookmark the site. Route around government DNS mischief.
jcw
What kind of "libertarians" have you been talking to? Ayn Rand's Objectivist variety, though quite vocal, has always been on the fringe of libertarian thought, and pro-IP libertarians in general are becoming rarer every day. Neither Objectivists nor the pro-IP faction are representative of modern libertarians.
No libertarian thinks that the government should grant no monopolies. All libertarians think that the government should enforce monopolies on property. That's the essential difference between libertarians and anarcho-socialists.
And anarcho-capitalists, agorists, etc., who make up a significant fraction of libertarians, contrary to your generalizations. We do at least agree that governments should respect property rights. You will find the idea that the government should grant property rights hotly contested, however, and very few libertarians would equate property rights with monopolies.
stop me from imposing my will over your intellectual property
Short of hitting you over the head, or otherwise interfering in your exercise of your actual property rights, there is nothing anyone can do to interfere with your use of your so-called intellectual property. The actions you are claiming the government should stop are impossible to begin with. What you are asking for is not a property right but a monopoly, the difference being that a property right is the right to use something, while a monopoly is a guarantee that others will be prevented from using it, by force, even when their use does not in any way infringe on your own.
Most uses of property are exclusive due to scarcity; two people cannot consume the same scarce good. Exclusivity does not apply, however, when there is no natural scarcity; it is not a fundamental aspect of property.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Yes, he did. We escaped together. We are the only survivors of that universe. That's how it was worse.
What you are asking for is not a property right but a monopoly, the difference being that a property right is the right to use something, while a monopoly is a guarantee that others will be prevented from using it, by force, even when their use does not in any way infringe on your own.
There is no difference here. Property rights encompass both. Nobody can legally use my property without my permission, even if that use does not infringe on my own. Property entails both a right to use, and a right to exclude others from use. I can even buy property with the sole intent to exclude others from using it, and never use it myself.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Countries make their own laws, so legally they can shut down whoever they want; so we're just talking about ethics here. I don't find anything ethically wrong with pre-emptively shutting down an enterprise they (very reasonably, given the history and public comments of the proprietor) consider to encourage intellectual property piracy.
I could never vote for someone who wants to mess with people's right to their own bodies. No-one can honestly hold a "pro-life" (quotes because I think the very term itself is loaded) stance and at the same time claim that they're for small government. It doesn't get bigger than government telling you what to do and what not to do with your own body.
This is one of those gray areas in the theory. Pro-life libertarians argue both positions aren't incompatible on the basis, for example (and this is but one argumentative path in this direction), that if no one can interfere with the body of the mother, neither can she interfere with the body of the fetus, as the fetus has the same rights to his body she has over hers, up to and including co-domain over the organs both share for the duration of their 9-month "contract", willingly entered into by most of her body. Hence, government interference to protect the fetus' negative and contractual rights would be justified.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
I can even buy property with the sole intent to exclude others from using it, and never use it myself.
Yes, that's actually a serious logical difficulty in libertarian theory. The classic way to express it is this:
"Suppose two shipwrecked individuals arrive at a small, deserted island. One of them goes to sleep. The other stays awake, and immediately starts working on the terrain of the island. He works building a fence that just happens to surround the other shipwrecked. The he wakes up, he asks indignant why the other trapped him, to what the first answers that he did no such thing, he just respected the other's property by building where the other hasn't reclaimed, leaving his property (the piece of terrain over which he was sleeping) alone. And now both of them could enjoy their own private properties as much as they liked."
There's no good libertarian reply to this. Which is why I, although still calling myself a libertarian, try to not go overboard with it. There are clear limits to what Libertarianism can meaningfully propose. Beyond a certain point is just stops working, logically or otherwise.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
What about http://mega.co.ck/ The Cook Islands could do with some publicity. They must have chosen .co.ck as their public suffix for some reason.
I really like how the Republicans always want to let "the market" take care of things, then it fails and we have to bail banks out with public money. A system based purely on greed and search for profit is as unsustainable as a pure communist doctrine.
You keep chasing that carrot though.
Domain names might be considered optional if one has exclusive use of their IP address. But if you share your IP with other customers at a hosting service, you'll need something for your browser and email client to use as a target label. Folks, we're not required by law to use the established ICANN Domain Name System! At least not in most "free", first-world countries. Imagine being able to privately or publicly register any freakin' string you like as a domain name, thus sidestepping the pointless, expensive and tyrannical limitations of the current one. This could be implemented as entries in your HOSTS file, the use of a private DNS server on your LAN, or the establishment of an alternate DNS system on the Internet. Users could use it only to set up their own address-bar "shortcuts" like "slash.dot" or "pepsikids.reallycool.internet.blog", or additionally opt-in to accept other's "shortcuts" like "apple", "ebay", and "ibm" too. As an example of the opposite goal, one of OpenDNS's strengths is to intercept legitimate requests for domains that host objectionable material, and redirect them so the kiddies can't browse porn. This function can be extended, or a parallel service established, which permits the DNS resolution of additional strings which are not recognized by ICANN. Call it UCANNOW or DNSAnything. This alternate system would typically filter the use of patterns that would conflict with ICANN TLD's. It's not impossible to make exceptions for those nice, short domains that have been uselessly parked for years by speculators. Screw 'em. ICANN can be expected to do anything in it's power to sabotage this end-run around their feed trough, but will ultimately fail, since this proposed system is opt-in. It doesn't even need it's own domain name to be set up as Primary DNS on folk's PCs or routers. Some controls would need to be established to limit misuse and libel, but this work can be largely handled by it's own community. Registration would be dirt cheap, but vary according to how short or similar to ICANN TLDs a request is. One doesn't want to let IO or IBM pay just $5/yr to secure control of their DNSA counterpart. Registering something like chucks.blog.of.weird.people.at.walmart might cost just $1/life.
Strange - that pirate group doesn't exist. They've never made a release, and they just made a Twitter account when this new operation started - and registered from an IP address from the FBI liaison for the Department for Homeland Security's IP Enforcement division, and not from Gabon at all.
Good grief, they're terrible at false-flag ops.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're trying to tell me that an effective counter to MPAA-controlled news outlets is news through the Internet. For one thing, news through the Internet is far more expensive. In the United States, OTA TV is free with purchase of a monitor with a tuner and an antenna, while Internet access costs per month. In countries that have a TV licence and spell it "licence", OTA TV is probably still cheaper than Internet access. And in a lot of places, cable TV is free or nearly free with the purchase of Internet access because of how the cable company prices its double play bundle plans. For another thing, the MPAA-affiliated networks already have a major presence in Internet news aggregators such as Google News.
So you don't think Obama and his DEA / Justice Dept. is going to interfere with Colorado and Washington for legalizing pot. When the DEA raids the first coffeshop, i'll be sure to remind you how Obama in how way intends to tell people "how to live" or what substances are kosher to consume.
Rothbard makes a decent argument against this "implied contract" argument, but yeah, you've outlined well why some libertarians can claim to be pro-life. There's also the enforcement to consider. How do you possibly enforce prohibition against abortion without stepping on all kinds of rights.
I think Colbert said it best about Bob Barr (L from 4 years ago). "He believes the government should be so small that it can fit in your bedroom." (paraphrasing, regarding DOMA)
Obama is a moderate right winger (by world and historical standards) and so he's not exactly a pacifist. Fair enough, that's up to you in America, but how anyone can think that a more extreme right winger like, well, anyone in the Republican party would be less bellicose is beyond comprehension.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Most uses of property are exclusive due to scarcity; two people cannot consume the same scarce good. Exclusivity does not apply, however, when there is no natural scarcity; it is not a fundamental aspect of property.
Bullshit, you could divide up all the inhabitable land equally amongst all the people in the world and there would me more than enough for everyone. And anyway how does anyone "own" land in the first place? It is only because society agrees that it can be bought and held by one person. That is part of civilisation. In hunter gatherer societies the idea of owning a piece of land would be as meaningless as owning a piece of the sky.
All property rights are imaginary, including IP, as they are human fictions.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Property rights depend on having a legal system with enforceable penalties, as other wise I can just come and steal anything of yours if I have more friends with guns than you do.
Whatever you want to call it, the system that society creates to have this legal system is a government. Government would only be unnecessary in an deal anarchist world where everyone co-operated and shared everything equally without coercion
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
That argument begs the question of whether a foetus is alive and a human being or not.
People who believe in a woman's right to choose would not agree that a collection of cells just after conception magically becomes a human being.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yeah, they are. They are also big supporters of, "confiscate everything which is allegedly being used to violate intellectual property rights, and all funds which are allegedly profits from infringing activity, in advance of serving the other party notice that they are actually accused of doing these things (let alone being proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt)." That's SOP not only in the Megaupload case, but with regard to the ICE using its privileged position as a US Govt agency to pull strings at Verisign et al in the .com/.net/.org domains.
People who believe in a woman's right to choose would not agree that a collection of cells just after conception magically becomes a human being.
Talking about "human being", without qualifying, isn't very precise. For example, if we take the expression at face value, a possible answer could be thus made:
"Well, give those aren't cells of some non-human being, they are at a minimum cells of an human, and if anything, of another human, since their DNA isn't that of the mother (or of the father, for that matter). If it's neither of the woman, nor of the father, and also not of any other 'extra-mother' human being, whose human being is that DNA of? If the answer is 'of a human being that still doesn't exist', that strikes me as at least causative violating. Besides, if that same collection of human cells that aren't human at some point do become human, magically or not, then why not at the conception itself?"
IMHO, this kind of discussion becomes more productive if we add some adjectives to the generic "human being" expression. In the above argument it'd be "biological". In yours, I guess it'd be "sentient". The "sentient human being" is interesting, but I think it causes ambiguities, some logical problems and, at some points, violations of common sense. For example, taking sentience as a basis, many people argue that a fetus should be considered human once s/he/it develops a nervous system. What this actually means, from what I understand, is that once the mechanics for an entity to fully develop a human being level of sentience is in place, its carrier should be considered a human being. But, a pre-nervous system fetus has the mechanics for developing a nervous system that in turn has the mechanics for developing a human being. Why, logically speaking, is that mechanism okay, but not this one? On the other hand, I've also seen some ultra-radical libertarians (of the Ayn Randian-persuasion) argue in the opposite direction, i.e., that what constitutes a human being is actually possessing a human being level of sentiece, and hence that it's in principle perfectly valid to kill an infant (or otherwise use it as one would any animal, with all that implies) up to 5 years of age, since only after that point his level of sentience becomes higher than that of a chimp.
And then there are the positions that the fetus become a human being simply by matter of law arbitration ("legal human being"), so whatever the law says is what matters; by "religion name" qualification (let's say, "christian-concept human being", i.e., at conception; "jewish-concept christian being", at birth; etc.); by purely individual arbitration, which I'd call, depending on the case, "hedonistically-considered human being" or "workaholic-considered human being"; the "contractual human being" of my previous post; and so on and so forth. Each one with its own set of problems and difficulties.
All in all, a quite fascinating subject. :)
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
So wait, let me get this straight: Obama was born in Kenya, but he is also President of Gabon? Man, who can keep track of this stuff?
That is incorrect. Pushing will protect you.
Wow, you think I was stating that Romney would be less likely to start wars than Obama? I guess you only read the 1/2 of my post that you disagreed with. You should move here you would fit right in! I'm simply stating that both options sucked. One may suck less but they are both really bad.
-- Look ma! I can make my point without unnecessary big words to make me look smarter!