3. Voters really ought to be able to elect whomever they please, as many times as they please...
7. As another mini-irony, not only does the Constitution not include any such punishment scheme for violating the Constitution...
So no. It doesn't seem like a very good idea to me at all.
Technically, there is no punishment scheme for violating the constitution but there is one for violating the oath.
Here is the relevant part where they have to take the oath (article VI, clause 3):
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
And here is the relevant part where they cannot be elected into a public office if they have violated the oath (article XIV, section 3):
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Now, there may not be a purely objective test of how many laws, subsequently declared as unconstitutional, one senator or representative would have to vote for to have considered as violating the oath. i.e. that number would have to be a lot higher than 3. Or, maybe there would need to be other criteria introduced besides that one number.
But whatever the criteria, to address your argument #3, voters can still elect whoever they want. But if that person has already violated the oath once, it would take 2/3 of each house to let him or her serve again. That makes sense to me, as it takes a simple majority to pass [unconstitutional] laws but 2/3 majority to change the constitution.
I don't care how good they claim their "safeguards" are, they're not going to be as good as they claim, and in any case the companies that host these services are not to be trusted.
You would be reasonably safe if you encrypt all your files stored using this type of service.
[A man condemned to be hanged] was sentenced on Saturday. "The hanging will take place at noon," said the judge to the prisoner, "on one of the seven days of next week. But you will not know which day it is until you are so informed on the morning of the day of the hanging."
The judge was known to be a man who always kept his word. The prisoner, accompanied by his lawyer, went back to his cell. As soon as the two men were alone, the lawyer broke into a grin. "Don't you see?" he exclaimed. "The judge's sentence cannot possibly be carried out."
"I don't see," said the prisoner.
"Let me explain They obviously can't hang you next Saturday. Saturday is the last day of the week. On Friday afternoon you would still be alive and you would know with absolute certainty that the hanging would be on Saturday. You would know this before you were told so on Saturday morning. That would violate the judge's decree."
"True," said the prisoner.
"Saturday, then is positively ruled out," continued the lawyer. "This leaves Friday as the last day they can hang you. But they can't hang you on Friday because by Thursday only two days would remain: Friday and Saturday. Since Saturday is not a possible day, the hanging would have to be on Friday. Your knowledge of that fact would violate the judge's decree again. So Friday is out. This leaves Thursday as the last possible day. But Thursday is out because if you're alive Wednesday afternoon, you'll know that Thursday is to be the day."
"I get it," said the prisoner, who was beginning to feel much better. "In exactly the same way I can rule out Wednesday, Tuesday and Monday. That leaves only tomorrow. But they can't hang me tomorrow because I know it today!"... He is convinced, by what appears to be unimpeachable logic, that he cannot be hanged without contradicting the conditions specified in his sentence. Then on Thursday morning, to his great surprise, the hangman arrives. Clearly he did not expect him. What is more surprising, the judge's decree is now seen to be perfectly correctly. The sentence can be carried out exactly as stated.
I believe that the way to explain the shield law, is that it will protect corporate journalists.
Because laws have to be specific in their definitions, I propose the following for the purposes of this bill:
Journalist - defined as a person working for a multi-national corporate conglomerate that is a part of the international media cartel which in turn makes huge corporate election contributions (read: bribes) to the two-party system puppets; and the reporting content from which can be centrally controlled by simply placing a single phone call to a handful of government buddy company CEOs.
Are you sure that use of that algorithm for color space conversion isn't patented?
That's just looking for an excuse rather than implementing a reasonable solution. Are you sure none of the other features in GIMP are patented? Are you sure posting in an online forum is not patented? Are you sure [...] is not patented?
I don't know much about these techniques and which are patented and which are not. I do know that when I had to create and manipulate a CMYK image, I couldn't do it in GIMP. I did it in OO.org Draw application. If OOo and some other open source apps can do it, so can GIMP!
How's that? They're claiming that the browser which the vast majority of people use is *more* secure. So if you use IE, you need their products *less* than if you used Firefox.
Ahh... you started the thought but didn't finish. Imagine all those people who have switched to Firefox because of the perception of being more secure - they may have even thought that they no longer need to pay for anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc. tools after the switch. So, Symantec hits back saying to these people - you are wrong, you still need our anti-virus, in fact, you may even need it more now (after the switch) than before.
So why would Johnny Hacker spend time and money acquiring an RFID Card Reader so he can tour buses and trains to swipe card details for a few individuals, with the increased risk of getting caught, when he can stay in front of his computer to get hundreds, thousands or millions of cardholder details with far more ease? Again I say: The issue of Card ID theft isn't really that much more than it already is.
Well, you could say anything you want to, but I disagree. With the traditional credit card you, the customer, have a choice of giving your details to only those merchants who you trust - and you know at all times who you gave your info to. If the security of those merchants is not adequate, then that's the risk you are taking. With the RFID credit cards, not only is that same risk related to merchant data security still there, but also there is an added risk of getting scanned by a malicious RFID data thief in a public place.
As for why would someone do that: 1. The list you find online may no longer be valid - numbers on watch or cancelled by credit card companies 2. Online list may be out of date or have incomplete information - e.g. no phone number, zipcode, security code, etc., etc. 3. You can't use the list you find online in brick & mortar shops unless you manage to write that CC data onto a physical card 4. You know that you only have to get the RFID "card" close to a scanner - it doesn't have to be a card, can be any similar transmitter 5. RFID CC data stolen from the street has a much larger chance of being valid and useful - most people don't carry their expired credit cards around 6. Go to a ballgame, movie theaters, subway stations, shopping malls - provided these cards become very popular you could literally collect hundreds of numbers per day. Sell for profit to people with even more malicious intent.
So, yes, there are added risks for RFID cards on top of already existing risks of traditional credit cards.
The issue of Card ID theft isn't really that much more than it already is.
How so? Instead of picking your pocket and removing your wallet from it, all I would have to do is stand next to you with a small scanner in my hand/pocket in an unsuspecting environment - i.e. any crowded place. The FAQ page you liked to doesn't address this issue.
Yes, I agree that the use of 'theft' is inappropriate. However, it really is drawn out to say 'copyright violation' all the time.
Then just call it 'rape' - it's certainly a shorter word than 'theft' (so you don't have to type an extra character) and just as appropriate.
You live in a republic, not a democracy.
When will these statements go away from/.? The 2 notions, as they are most often referred to, are not mutually exclusive - you can have a democratic republic.
My point (and I really don't see why it was labelled 'off topic'... even 'flamebait' might have been more accurate) was that P2P communities are rife with people that just want their free stuff, and they don't give a damn who they hurt. So, it should be NO surprise that one of them turned against the PeerGuardian developers. William wanted his free stuff - where 'stuff' here meant the methlabs.org site - and he didn't give a damn who he hurt.
That could be, but most likely is not the case. This has nothing to do with your "P2P user" prejudice. Disagreements and power grabs happen all the time, even among people - what a surprise - who have never even heard the term P2P, or if they did - they'd never consider using anything similar.
As for the ethical legitimacy of the program itself: I use P2P to share and download files - I could care less about MPAA and RIAA content, however. I download some public domain music, just few days ago I got some books that are in public domain also. And no, I don't want MPAA and RIAA to send my ISP an automatically generated DMCA notice just because I am sharing a file called cinderella.txt. I don't want them to send me their automatically generated lawsuit threats or lawsuit notifications either. So, I might actually consider something like that P2P firewall for myself.
I really like the Kensington 72128. It had been marketed as a "gaming" mouse when it first came out (I even got a free Splinter Cell game with it) but it's great for everyday use - I'm not much of a gamer.
I guess it's people like you that are the reason no new plants (in the U.S.) have been built in decades.
I don't think it's/. trolls that control those decisions. I'm not an energy expert by any means, but there is too much politics and money surrounding the issue. Energy companies say the cost of building and operating nuclear power plants is so high, they need even more government subsidies to operate them. "Gov't" disagrees. So, it's basically a matter of bribing enough politicians to permit and subsidize the power plants so that energy companies get large profits from taxpayers' money. Happens all the time in the energy business. So, IMO one major issue is whether this whole thing is ripe politically.
Who cares that they are creating an XPCOM piece of shit?
Anyone in Korea that cares about cross platform compatibility of their banking and other related applications.
Why dont they just make a web-based thing that would work for all browsers.
Because as other posters and the article itself pointed out, the banking industry is already standardized on using SEED instead of SSL. Presumably changing that would be a tougher undertaking. Besides, XPCOM could work in any browser and any platform if a maker of that browser decided to support it - no Firefox or Mozilla suite are required.
And seriously, you people are such hypocrites.
OK, people out there definitely are.
XPCOM doesnt work on IE, and activex doesnt work on Firefox.
Sure, but the advantage of "Cross Platform Component Object Model" is that it works "cross platform." As I mentioned earlier, this enables any maker of any browser on almost any platform to use XPCOM. You can't say the same for ActiveX, which is an MS proprietary extension.
Mail merge is terrible. It has basic limitations when it comes to the output produced (though in fairness some of these are expected to be fixed in the forthcoming OOo 2.0). The whole data sources architecture is broken horribly, particularly if you're using a Calc spreadsheet as a source. In MS Office, it just works. I have watched more than one person give OpenOffice.org a fair try, experience its mail merge, label it something we wouldn't repeat in polite company, and go back to Word, probably never to return.
I've used mail merge in both office suites. I have found the mail merge process to be more logical in OOo than in MS Office. I have printed out labels, letters, business cards without any problems. It worked reliably every time and has not messed up anything in my experience.
MS Office mail merge is less intuitive for me. I've also seen it mess up - the worst was when I was helping someone do labels from an Excel spreadsheet. Every time they'd do a mail merge operation the result would be missing several random records.
Having said that, in the case of this article, the usability is not an issue. The issue is the use of a standardized open document format by the state government. Microsoft doesn't want to support the open standard that does not guarantee that their customers will be locked in bed with them. By doing (or not doing) that they have disqualified themselves for consideration, and that's fine. Their response of we are not going to support an inferior format does not make sense, however. By that logic MS Office should not be supporting plain text and RTF either.
I'm sorry, but how do you prohibit the sale or providing information about a book that you PURCHASED, regardless of the date it's supposed to be released?
IANAL, but nobody can - at least in the U.S. - if the buyer completed the transaction in good faith (e.g. didn't steal it or purchased a book that he/she knew in advance was stolen). It's all in the UCC. However, I don't know if Canada has a similar law.
There's a simple reason for this. Most people will think, "Gee, I'd like to buy that for $1 online but I won't pay $2 for shipping and handling on something that only costs $1"
To sell online they need to bump the price up to $3 online to subsidize the shipping and nominally charge 50 cents to ship.
Even with shipping at $3, I would think most people who would buy these DVDs at $1 would not buy only one item and pay $3 shipping on it. I would guess they'd pick 10-15 at a time and pay about the same in shipping. In fact, a higher shipping price would be an incentive to buy more in bulk.
Perhaps adding a "patent meta-moderation" system like that of Slashdot, where professionals of the industry can deem a granted patent fair or unfair, and post additional comments, and allow a special USPTO committee to retroactively reject patents, would do the trick. An applicant would then apply for a patent, and know that for maybe 6 months or a year, the patent can be revoked.
You wouldn't call it a patent then. Maybe a probation period that is a step behind a valid patent until it is validated (i.e. satisfied the probation terms) and no prior art presented during that time. If prior art, obviousness, or other challenges are presented during the probation period, however, the patent officer in charge should be obligated to verify their validity and either decline the patent application on that basis, or comment on why the prior art doesn't apply to the patent application in question.
Currently, AFAIK, too many patents are granted where the only check for prior art is done only within the patent database itself. This is a huge problem in the tech sector where advances happen so quickly; and creates a high barrier for small companies with small financial backing for the benefit of the big, rich, slow and powerful.
I know what you are saying, but your example does not make sense under current law - UCC - which most, if not all, states have adopted. Under UCC, if the leasing company purchased the car in good faith without prior knowledge of it being stolen, then they cannot be required to return the car to the previous legal owner. The previous legal owner can go after the thief.
It is , I beleive, the fist object oriented shell.
No, it's not. Windows itself has had WSH for awhile now (since Windows 98?). You can use VBScript or JScript with that environment with the ability to install other scripting engines. It's definitely an interesting concept, but it's just that it became so much of a security nightmare, a lot of people advise to simply have it turned off.
And to think that all the author had to do was look up a wikipedia article about SUSE to get his facts. I didn't think it would be that hard to do. Anyway, SUSE hasn't been "based" on any other distro for over 9 years now, so it hardly makes any difference, especially for beginners (which the article claims it is for), to explore any historical links that have not been relevant in about a decade.
Countries (or governments thereof) many times sign treaties one day and breach them the next day, or next term when the new government is elected. And this doesn't apply to developing countries only - it happens with the U.S. and other "developed" countries too. Yes, you can go to WTO or WIPO or some other entity to try to enforce those deals but they are by no means governing bodies of other people's governments.
Well, then how does that explain the numbers that BSA puts out every once in a while that software industry losses are in trillions, quadrillions or whatever they are counting in this week?
1. Bypassing the publisher's license to enjoy the author's conceptual work, effectively "stealing" the use of the license.
There's no license required to use/enjoy/read/view/etc. anyone's work that's publically available. Have you borrowed a CD from a friend? Bought a book from a used book store? Did you have to obtain a separate "license" from the associated publishers to use or enjoy the content? No, because there is no license required to use copyrighted works as long as you don't violate the copyright law.
2. Depriving the author the privilege of gaining compensation for your enjoyment of his conceptual work, effectively "stealing" his compensation payment.
There's no such privilege associated with copyright law. Copyright law applies to copying and redistribution, not to "enjoyment" as you are using the term. In other words, you don't need an "enjoyment license" from the publisher to read their books.
Sure, you could define the word "stealing" as "copyright infringement" and then turn around and offer your definition as a proof that copyright infringement is indeed stealing. But that's not what the law says because the underlying concepts for those 2 terms are significantly different, and you haven't even considered differences between the associated laws, cases of violations both criminal and civil, consequences and punishments, etc..
Slashdot Mirror
Technically, there is no punishment scheme for violating the constitution but there is one for violating the oath.
Here is the relevant part where they have to take the oath (article VI, clause 3):
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
And here is the relevant part where they cannot be elected into a public office if they have violated the oath (article XIV, section 3):
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Now, there may not be a purely objective test of how many laws, subsequently declared as unconstitutional, one senator or representative would have to vote for to have considered as violating the oath. i.e. that number would have to be a lot higher than 3. Or, maybe there would need to be other criteria introduced besides that one number.
But whatever the criteria, to address your argument #3, voters can still elect whoever they want. But if that person has already violated the oath once, it would take 2/3 of each house to let him or her serve again. That makes sense to me, as it takes a simple majority to pass [unconstitutional] laws but 2/3 majority to change the constitution.
You would be reasonably safe if you encrypt all your files stored using this type of service.
Why don't we revise it one more time then:
Winners: terrorists and murderers
Losers: patriotic all-American honest corporate cartels
Biggest losers: Mr. and Mrs. [patriotic] Smith
Does this labelling do any better for you? Just goes to show that you can label things any way you want to make your "point."
[A man condemned to be hanged] was sentenced on Saturday. "The hanging will take place at noon," said the judge to the prisoner, "on one of the seven days of next week. But you will not know which day it is until you are so informed on the morning of the day of the hanging."
... He is convinced, by what appears to be unimpeachable logic, that he cannot be hanged without contradicting the conditions specified in his sentence. Then on Thursday morning, to his great surprise, the hangman arrives. Clearly he did not expect him. What is more surprising, the judge's decree is now seen to be perfectly correctly. The sentence can be carried out exactly as stated.
The judge was known to be a man who always kept his word. The prisoner, accompanied by his lawyer, went back to his cell. As soon as the two men were alone, the lawyer broke into a grin. "Don't you see?" he exclaimed. "The judge's sentence cannot possibly be carried out."
"I don't see," said the prisoner.
"Let me explain They obviously can't hang you next Saturday. Saturday is the last day of the week. On Friday afternoon you would still be alive and you would know with absolute certainty that the hanging would be on Saturday. You would know this before you were told so on Saturday morning. That would violate the judge's decree."
"True," said the prisoner.
"Saturday, then is positively ruled out," continued the lawyer. "This leaves Friday as the last day they can hang you. But they can't hang you on Friday because by Thursday only two days would remain: Friday and Saturday. Since Saturday is not a possible day, the hanging would have to be on Friday. Your knowledge of that fact would violate the judge's decree again. So Friday is out. This leaves Thursday as the last possible day. But Thursday is out because if you're alive Wednesday afternoon, you'll know that Thursday is to be the day."
"I get it," said the prisoner, who was beginning to feel much better. "In exactly the same way I can rule out Wednesday, Tuesday and Monday. That leaves only tomorrow. But they can't hang me tomorrow because I know it today!"
Because laws have to be specific in their definitions, I propose the following for the purposes of this bill:
Journalist - defined as a person working for a multi-national corporate conglomerate that is a part of the international media cartel which in turn makes huge corporate election contributions (read: bribes) to the two-party system puppets; and the reporting content from which can be centrally controlled by simply placing a single phone call to a handful of government buddy company CEOs.
Did I miss anything?
That's just looking for an excuse rather than implementing a reasonable solution. Are you sure none of the other features in GIMP are patented? Are you sure posting in an online forum is not patented? Are you sure [...] is not patented?
I don't know much about these techniques and which are patented and which are not. I do know that when I had to create and manipulate a CMYK image, I couldn't do it in GIMP. I did it in OO.org Draw application. If OOo and some other open source apps can do it, so can GIMP!
Ahh... you started the thought but didn't finish. Imagine all those people who have switched to Firefox because of the perception of being more secure - they may have even thought that they no longer need to pay for anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc. tools after the switch. So, Symantec hits back saying to these people - you are wrong, you still need our anti-virus, in fact, you may even need it more now (after the switch) than before.
Well, you could say anything you want to, but I disagree. With the traditional credit card you, the customer, have a choice of giving your details to only those merchants who you trust - and you know at all times who you gave your info to. If the security of those merchants is not adequate, then that's the risk you are taking. With the RFID credit cards, not only is that same risk related to merchant data security still there, but also there is an added risk of getting scanned by a malicious RFID data thief in a public place.
As for why would someone do that:
1. The list you find online may no longer be valid - numbers on watch or cancelled by credit card companies
2. Online list may be out of date or have incomplete information - e.g. no phone number, zipcode, security code, etc., etc.
3. You can't use the list you find online in brick & mortar shops unless you manage to write that CC data onto a physical card
4. You know that you only have to get the RFID "card" close to a scanner - it doesn't have to be a card, can be any similar transmitter
5. RFID CC data stolen from the street has a much larger chance of being valid and useful - most people don't carry their expired credit cards around
6. Go to a ballgame, movie theaters, subway stations, shopping malls - provided these cards become very popular you could literally collect hundreds of numbers per day. Sell for profit to people with even more malicious intent.
So, yes, there are added risks for RFID cards on top of already existing risks of traditional credit cards.
How so? Instead of picking your pocket and removing your wallet from it, all I would have to do is stand next to you with a small scanner in my hand/pocket in an unsuspecting environment - i.e. any crowded place. The FAQ page you liked to doesn't address this issue.
Then just call it 'rape' - it's certainly a shorter word than 'theft' (so you don't have to type an extra character) and just as appropriate.
When will these statements go away from
That could be, but most likely is not the case. This has nothing to do with your "P2P user" prejudice. Disagreements and power grabs happen all the time, even among people - what a surprise - who have never even heard the term P2P, or if they did - they'd never consider using anything similar.
As for the ethical legitimacy of the program itself: I use P2P to share and download files - I could care less about MPAA and RIAA content, however. I download some public domain music, just few days ago I got some books that are in public domain also. And no, I don't want MPAA and RIAA to send my ISP an automatically generated DMCA notice just because I am sharing a file called cinderella.txt. I don't want them to send me their automatically generated lawsuit threats or lawsuit notifications either. So, I might actually consider something like that P2P firewall for myself.
I really like the Kensington 72128. It had been marketed as a "gaming" mouse when it first came out (I even got a free Splinter Cell game with it) but it's great for everyday use - I'm not much of a gamer.
I don't think it's
Anyone in Korea that cares about cross platform compatibility of their banking and other related applications.
Because as other posters and the article itself pointed out, the banking industry is already standardized on using SEED instead of SSL. Presumably changing that would be a tougher undertaking. Besides, XPCOM could work in any browser and any platform if a maker of that browser decided to support it - no Firefox or Mozilla suite are required.
OK, people out there definitely are.
Sure, but the advantage of "Cross Platform Component Object Model" is that it works "cross platform." As I mentioned earlier, this enables any maker of any browser on almost any platform to use XPCOM. You can't say the same for ActiveX, which is an MS proprietary extension.
No, it makes XPCOM "better."
I've used mail merge in both office suites. I have found the mail merge process to be more logical in OOo than in MS Office. I have printed out labels, letters, business cards without any problems. It worked reliably every time and has not messed up anything in my experience.
MS Office mail merge is less intuitive for me. I've also seen it mess up - the worst was when I was helping someone do labels from an Excel spreadsheet. Every time they'd do a mail merge operation the result would be missing several random records.
Having said that, in the case of this article, the usability is not an issue. The issue is the use of a standardized open document format by the state government. Microsoft doesn't want to support the open standard that does not guarantee that their customers will be locked in bed with them. By doing (or not doing) that they have disqualified themselves for consideration, and that's fine. Their response of we are not going to support an inferior format does not make sense, however. By that logic MS Office should not be supporting plain text and RTF either.
Or a browser that doesn't crash when one of its plug-ins crashes.
IANAL, but nobody can - at least in the U.S. - if the buyer completed the transaction in good faith (e.g. didn't steal it or purchased a book that he/she knew in advance was stolen). It's all in the UCC. However, I don't know if Canada has a similar law.
Even with shipping at $3, I would think most people who would buy these DVDs at $1 would not buy only one item and pay $3 shipping on it. I would guess they'd pick 10-15 at a time and pay about the same in shipping. In fact, a higher shipping price would be an incentive to buy more in bulk.
You wouldn't call it a patent then. Maybe a probation period that is a step behind a valid patent until it is validated (i.e. satisfied the probation terms) and no prior art presented during that time. If prior art, obviousness, or other challenges are presented during the probation period, however, the patent officer in charge should be obligated to verify their validity and either decline the patent application on that basis, or comment on why the prior art doesn't apply to the patent application in question.
Currently, AFAIK, too many patents are granted where the only check for prior art is done only within the patent database itself. This is a huge problem in the tech sector where advances happen so quickly; and creates a high barrier for small companies with small financial backing for the benefit of the big, rich, slow and powerful.
I know what you are saying, but your example does not make sense under current law - UCC - which most, if not all, states have adopted. Under UCC, if the leasing company purchased the car in good faith without prior knowledge of it being stolen, then they cannot be required to return the car to the previous legal owner. The previous legal owner can go after the thief.
No, it's not. Windows itself has had WSH for awhile now (since Windows 98?). You can use VBScript or JScript with that environment with the ability to install other scripting engines. It's definitely an interesting concept, but it's just that it became so much of a security nightmare, a lot of people advise to simply have it turned off.
And to think that all the author had to do was look up a wikipedia article about SUSE to get his facts. I didn't think it would be that hard to do. Anyway, SUSE hasn't been "based" on any other distro for over 9 years now, so it hardly makes any difference, especially for beginners (which the article claims it is for), to explore any historical links that have not been relevant in about a decade.
Countries (or governments thereof) many times sign treaties one day and breach them the next day, or next term when the new government is elected. And this doesn't apply to developing countries only - it happens with the U.S. and other "developed" countries too. Yes, you can go to WTO or WIPO or some other entity to try to enforce those deals but they are by no means governing bodies of other people's governments.
Well, then how does that explain the numbers that BSA puts out every once in a while that software industry losses are in trillions, quadrillions or whatever they are counting in this week?
The FBI asked /. to hand out certain ip addresses.
Including the IP address of a certain Anonymous Coward who disclosed the news.
There's no license required to use/enjoy/read/view/etc. anyone's work that's publically available. Have you borrowed a CD from a friend? Bought a book from a used book store? Did you have to obtain a separate "license" from the associated publishers to use or enjoy the content? No, because there is no license required to use copyrighted works as long as you don't violate the copyright law.
There's no such privilege associated with copyright law. Copyright law applies to copying and redistribution, not to "enjoyment" as you are using the term. In other words, you don't need an "enjoyment license" from the publisher to read their books.
Sure, you could define the word "stealing" as "copyright infringement" and then turn around and offer your definition as a proof that copyright infringement is indeed stealing. But that's not what the law says because the underlying concepts for those 2 terms are significantly different, and you haven't even considered differences between the associated laws, cases of violations both criminal and civil, consequences and punishments, etc..