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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.'"
http://gi.ga/
How about allyourdataarebelongto.us? I don't see how that wouldn't work.
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.
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.
They have enough oil not to care about a website. They don't want to piss off one of the biggest oil importer.
Not host, it's just a domain name.
most popular websites on Earth, which will generate millions in ad revenue.
What makes you think Gabon would have seen any of that revenue? They might only see the domain registration fees, even hosting does not have to be physically based in Gabon... The ads certainly won't be.
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.
That would be all well and good if Gabon was likely to earn millions in revenue from it. It's more likely to earn only a small fee (less than $25?) for the domain name registration.
Not withstanding that, it seems fairly obvious that this is due to US pressure.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
It's some Third World hellhole whose economy runs on bribery and other crimes. What did he expect?
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.
Holding the TLD of the domain name and hosting the site have nothing to do with each other. First of all, the site was to be cloud-based, so as not to have a single hosting location that can easily be taken down. Second of all, absolutely no cloud services vendors have hosting facilities in Gabon. Gabon would gain nothing from hosting me.ga except diplomatic and economic pressure from North American and European countries, and I'm quite sure that such pressure is what led them to take this action. If they had anything to gain at all, that'd be one thing, but they had a lot to lose, and nothing to gain whatsoever.
This goes to Kim Dotcom's problem...that no matter how he scatters and fuzzes his infrastructure, he will still have to contend with single points of failure that can be attacked through procedural means. I don't know how to deal with it, frankly...all completely decentralized systems for content distribution and sharing that I know of (like Freenet) are somewhat awkward and a real pain in the ass. If you need to use a domain name, you've got a point of vulnerability where the powers that be have an undue procedural advantage. This doesn't even take into account the other challenges of payment processing, financial basis (gotta pay your bills from an account somewhere), hiring of personnel (what if the operation is deemed a criminal activity, and they go after the employees under RICO or an equivalent law?), and other things I probably haven't even thought of.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
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
That would be all well and good if Gabon was likely to earn millions in revenue from it. It's more likely to earn only a small fee (less than $25?) for the domain name registration.
I'm sure they could have cut a deal for a higher registration fee...
No sig today...
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?
I bet they were bullied into this suspension of the domain name.
D'ya think?
No sig today...
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.
Not yet, they still have Iran's and Hugo Chavez's oppressed oil left to free in operation freedom.
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.
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
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
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 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?
frankly...all completely decentralized systems for content distribution and sharing that I know of (like Freenet) are somewhat awkward and a real pain in the ass.
Gnutella worked really well from a technical perspective IIRC. Torrents got big because they were hostable on websites, which allowed for better organization and communities to form, and they downloaded from multiple streams so they were faster. But in terms of ease of use, I'd give Gnutella the edge.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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!
You might want to put your tin foil hat on there.
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.
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
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.
Right, because Kim Criminal will surely move to Gabon and set up his business there. Instead of, you know, crazy wild idea, just route the domain name to somewhere in some 1st world country where they have mansions and fast cars.
And that's assuming the whole thing isn't just total vaporware intended for one thing only: Publicity.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.
It's hard to remember an IPv6 address.
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.
You can label your browser's shortcuts with any name you want, and it's easy to migrate your shortcuts to other browsers.
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
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.
Similarly, maybe they could set themselves up as the world's leading supplier of cocaine and make lots of money off that. Or how about child porn, there must be money to be made there? Snuff movies? Or maybe illegal arms sales or torture equipment to repressive dictatorships?
Money is not the be all and end all of things.
You, and apparently most of slashdot, don't seem to find it wrong that Kim Dotcom can make hundreds of millions for himself by piggybacking off the back of copyrighted material, but some of us do.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
millions if not billions would far more prefer a mega then a hollywood
And exactly how much original material has Kim Dotcom and megaupload provided compared with Hollywood?
Oh, that's right. None. Instead he's earned tens or hundreds of millions by facilitating freeloaders.
If anyone wants to make a movie outside of the Hollywood system, do you know what? They're perfectly free to do so, and give it away for nothing if they like. I personally hardly ever watch Hollywood movies, as they're generally either sentimental unfunny crap, or blockbustery braindead crap, but what I don't do is download them for free and then condemn them for being crap.
Just don't consume crap, it's not difficult.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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!