No, no, no, the skanky copies come with all the updates and a little tool that make wga work on it. I have tried and tested one bought here in Thailand but as I have said elsewhere I personally do not think it wise to use XP on a machine that is connected to the internet anyway.
I think that fair competition is the only way to go. Here in Thailand genuine DVDs and CDs are cheaper to compete with the skanky copies. I can go into Mangpong and buy a genuine DVD for $10 or get a skanky copy down the road for $3.5. The genuine copy will work and look good even though being a genuine Thai version may mean that I have to change the language before I can watch the film but the quality will be predictable. If I go down the road I will get a low contrast skanky copy with silhouette walking across the screen on their way to the toilet etc. O.K. the quality is often better than that but with a reasonable price difference I am not prepared to take that risk. If I had to pay the prices that I was used to paying back home I think that I would take the risk more often. CDs are similarly cheaper as well and the same is true, I would rather buy a good quality CD than a skanky copy that I have to argue to get replaced if it does not work.
Treat people fairly and they will respond to that fair treatment. Give good service and people will come back. Try to force people to be loyal and they will not feel any guilt about going to the guy down the road.
I like the way you say that I have missed the point and then give me a lecture about being born in the US. I am not an American and it shows how much you missed the point when you assumed that I am. I am British and our relationship with India goes back a lot further.
One of the main problems in dealing with Indian companies is that the level of English is quite good in the educated Indian people but that they are a minority. So the detailed description of the job will be discussed with someone that has passable English but is too polite to say what they do not understand. It is then handed to someone else to do the job who has less grasp of English and as the first person did not really clarify the parts they did not understand that person has no one to turn to when there is a problem. The end result is that the finished product bears no relationship to the spec sheet and is not what is required.
Lots of British companies that outsourced to India 5-10 years ago found that it cost more overall because the quality suffered and so much time was spent with managers flying backwards and forwards. Many of those companies returned to the UK because it is cheaper to pay for something to be done properly in the first place that to get a cheap job done that needs twice as much spent on fixing it.
You do not have to worry about that as Google will quite happily give your data to anyone that asks saving them the trouble of hacking. O.K., I am going a little overboard about the Chinese incident but I would think that Google is now one of the last companies that I would trust with my personal data. I live in Thailand were it is a crime to criticise the King and it can still gets you into trouble if you say the wrong thing about the government. I am stopped from using proxies etc. I have to be careful if I am saying something that they do not want me to say and Google have a Thai site - www.google.co.th. Would I trust them not to let the Thai gov read all my data? You must be having a laugh.
The skanky copies of XP have a prog that fires randomly generated license codes at the server until it finds one that works. That means that when a skanky copy works a genuine copy ceases to work. It is simply a matter of who gets there first. With all these skanky copies using up so many genuine license codes it is not surprising that so many people are getting pissed off. Despite what the post further down says I have tried this out and found the prog worked well and did not cause any noticable delay. That is not to say that I advocate the use of such progs and in fact I personally would not use XP on a machine that is actually connected to the internet and only use Linux for the net except to try certain things out.
But banking/financial trading/infrastructure/military etc etc
You mean in situations where only a moron would be using anything other than a Sun system.... The article is rubbish for all the afformentioned reasons (lack of true comparison and no real data etc.) but the reality still comes down to a matter of choice and horses for courses. Windows is fine in the back office if you do not have good IT staff (you should still put Macs out front:). Linux is better if you have competant IT staff and Sun are still the best. Linux does not have the great cost saving because you still need the support lines which cost money and which this report seems to have overlooked. Windows cannot do a better job because what it does is decide for you what you need and that means that someone in Redmond decided what you need several years ago without ever meeting you. This is only any good if the person in charge has little knowledge of what they are doing.
Is says something that a country riddled with gangsters that operate at level akin to Al Capone in the 20's, where most of the white slave trade is transported through and with a murder rate higher than LA gets stopped at the door of WTO because of MP3s. I think that it is a real indicator of how corrupt the USA has become that a business can rule the country rather than the people.
And we have just found genetic material on a rape victim in Taiwan proving that not only are you a rapist but that you were in Taiwan illegally without a visa. How are you going to prove your innocence?
There has already been a case of mistaken identity with DNA evidence when a British guy was accused of a rape commited in Italy even though he had never left the Britain. When these databases get too large the idea that no two are the same goes out the window because they only look at so many points and it only identifies you as one a few million. When the whole of the US is linked with the whole of the EU that will be about half a billion. There will be mistakes and the general public (i.e. a jury) is not yet ready to see this new snake oil as phalable.
I do not find it a surprise that someone can be so wrong but I am surprised that someone that writes something that is so far from correct can be modded up to 5. The concepts of patents and copyright are older that the US and seeing as the US has historically been the haven for business built on other countries ideas your assertion is ridiculous. While you drink your Bud (a Czech copyright) and sit in front of your internet browser (a British invention) ranting on about how the US invents and owns all things great, you might ponder why the rest of the world gets fed up with the USA.
The US may promise to pay a high proportion of the UN's expenses but the US only actually starts to pay what it owes when it wants something in return, i.e. when lobbying for another war. Most of the world would rather do without the US's promises as well as the US's wars. The US owes the UN rather than bankroles the UN. In return the US stiffles the democratic role of the UN by refusing visas to people with opinions different to the US's thereby stopping them from speaking at the UN. Many people feel that for the UN to continue it needs to break its ties with the US so that it can become more democratic as it should be.
Although I think that what you have written is correct, you seem to have missed the point. It is not the illegal immigrants that will be tagged. It will be the highly skilled and hard working 'legal' immigrants that are going to be tagged. OK, there are some people that would still want to go to the USA and make that sacrifice but I for one would not. That said I had already decided against working in the USA when I was asked to work in NY and decided that I prefered SE Asia. I get a lot less money here but I have a smile on my face more of the time and that is what matters to me. I used to teach computer foresics and now I just teach English to local kids. I have helped on high profile court cases and do not want to take that pain again so I settle for a happy life. I am the opposite of the immigrant that you talk about.
The PS3 will do well because there are so many PS2 owners that will have to have it. It will not do as well as it would have done if they had left out the Blueray and dropped the price accordingly. I for one do not want or need Blueray and am not prepared to be hijacked into open wallet surgery. Then again I am one of those rare people that does not have a PS2 (although I have 2 sons that have PS2s but not at my house). Maybe now the price of PS2s is plummeting I might buy a PS2 soon.
Sony have made a serious mistake that will hurt thier market share. X-Box and Nintendo are probably the happiest people around right now. I do not think that either will take the lead from this mistake alone but it does put Sony in a fragile position and if anything goes tits up on the PS3 they could lose their top dog place.
Well put:) I am happy for my g/f to have her easy to use phone but I would be lost without my gadgets. She laughs when I try to look at a cut down web page on a 2" x 1.5" screen and I laugh with her but we are both happy and that is what life is about.
There's this guy named bin Laden... You may have heard of him? We know exactly who he is and we are even pretty certain where he is a lot of the time...
He lives in a different world to you and I and no, the US government does not know where he is. Your news reports always talk about the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan as if that is all there is because that is all the average American (G. W.) can understand. To the Islamic extremists the is a northern border, one which your news programmes and your President do not know about. It crosses into a world that US troops dare not go. The Islamic extremists do not see that border as a border, it is just part of their world but the US troops cannot go over that line. Bin Laden would not be stupid enough to go into Pakistan knowing that he would be horse traded for a nuke. He can go into Uzbekistan where he is welcomed or Kazakstan etc.
Yes, I know that Russia let the US put a couple of air bases in that wilderness but the troops are not free to travel, they cannot chase people on the ground and if they used weapons they could start WWIII and they are not ready for that.
I live in the wild and woolly Golden Triangle, northern Thailand. I often travel around here into Burma, Laos, Cambodia etc. These are the areas where the use of copied (I hate the word pirated because it is wrong) software is highest. The average person earns about 3000 - 3500 Baht a month ($75 - $88) and the computers are older than yours. Not only can't they even dream of affording to buy genuine software, it would not work on their computer which is not powerful enough. The 10 year old copy of photoshop that they want is no longer on sale.
If the software houses want to change the situation they should put thier old stuff into the public domain so that these people had an option. If there is no way to follow a law it is ignored. People just forget it and no one is going to enforce it. M$ should make Win 98 public domain. No one with money would dream of using it but then they would have more support when they crack down on illegal copies. They would even look like good guys.
By Jonathan Fildes BBC News science and technology reporter in Edinburgh
The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said.
Recent attempts in the US to try to charge for different levels of online access web were not "part of the internet model," he said in Edinburgh.
He warned that if the US decided to go ahead with a two-tier internet, the network would enter "a dark period".
Sir Tim was speaking at the start of a conference on the future of the web.
"What's very important from my point of view is that there is one web," he said.
"Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring."
An equal net
The British scientist developed the web in 1989 as an academic tool to allow scientists to share data. Since then it has exploded into every area of life.
However, as it has grown, there have been increasingly diverse opinions on how it should evolve.
The World Wide Web Consortium, of which Sir Tim is the director, believes in an open model.
This is based on the concept of network neutrality, where everyone has the same level of access to the web and that all data moving around the web is treated equally.
This view is backed by companies like Microsoft and Google, who have called for legislation to be introduced to guarantee net neutrality.
The first steps towards this were taken last week when members of the US House of Representatives introduced a net neutrality bill.
Pay model
But telecoms companies in the US do not agree. They would like to implement a two-tier system, where data from companies or institutions that can pay are given priority over those that cannot.
This has particularly become an issue with the transmission of TV shows over the internet, with some broadband providers wanting to charge content providers to carry the data.
The internet community believes this threatens the open model of the internet as broadband providers will become gatekeepers to the web's content.
Providers that can pay will be able to get a commercial advantage over those that cannot.
There is a fear that institutions like universities and charities would also suffer.
The web community is also worried that any charges would be passed on to the consumer.
Optimism
Sir Tim said this was "not the internet model". The "right" model, as exists at the moment, was that any content provider could pay for a connection to the internet and could then put any content on to the web with no discrimination.
Speaking to reporters in Edinburgh at the WWW2006 conference, he argued this was where the great benefit of the internet lay.
"You get this tremendous serendipity where I can search the internet and come across a site that I did not set out to look for," he said.
A two-tier system would mean that people would only have full access to those portions of the internet that they paid for and that some companies would be given priority over others.
But Sir Tim was optimistic that the internet would resist attempts to fragment.
"I think it is one and will remain as one," he said.
The WWW2006 conference will run until Friday at the International Conference Centre in Edinburgh.
If an American travels to a country with a less draconian attitude to copyright and buys a legally produced version of a record or film (i.e. The Beatles or Dumbo) and gets stopped at US customs, is he breaking the law? Can they take it away from him? The copying was done legally... Most of the world sees Mickey Mouse as being in the public domain but do not let Disney hear you say that. The Beatles are a UK band and under UK law most of their material is public now but you can bet the RIAA would sue you for downloading a copy from a European host.
"Most people here say that things should be more readily available and free to use as you like once you have bought but I have seldom seen a post that advocates piracy."
So you're saying that since I saw the movie at a movie theater this past Saturday I can go ahead and download a pirated copy, right? Did I buy a copy of the movie or the opportunity to view it at the theater? While the parent does come off a bit trollish, don't you think that a story like this, put on the front page of Slashdot, is wrong?
What have you been smoking? How can anyone arrive at that deduction from what I said? If you go to a movie, all you have bought is a ticket to watch... There is no point arguing with a sick mind. You should get back to your medication before you get lost.
and no, I do not see anything wrong with a story like this being put forward for discussion. That does not mean that I support Japanese whaling, Iranian nuclear power or anything else other than discussing the subject.
Maybe you have not been reading/. for long or something but it certainly is not a pro-piracy haven. Disgust at the MPAA/RIAA activities does not in any way imply a pro-piracy stance, mearly a dislike of bully boy tactics. Most people here say that things should be more readily available and free to use as you like once you have bought but I have seldom seen a post that advocates piracy.
Freedom of Speech you can't be punished legally for what you say.
You have never heard of libel, defamation and slander? If you lie about someone else there should be redress for that person. If you incite violence then you commit a crime, if you plan a murder you commit a crime. Free speech does have restrictions and law does have a place in deciding what you are free to say and what you are not free to say. A person should be accountable for what they say if another can show that what is said is maliciously untrue. I do not think that I am qualified to decide such things but I do think that an individual has a right to defence from other peoples slander whether it be personal or of those they love.
OK, I have to concede google's rights even though I do not see who they are to set themselves up as judge and jury. I am not angry enough to give up my gmail account yet though:)
Slashdot Mirror
No, no, no, the skanky copies come with all the updates and a little tool that make wga work on it. I have tried and tested one bought here in Thailand but as I have said elsewhere I personally do not think it wise to use XP on a machine that is connected to the internet anyway.
I think that fair competition is the only way to go. Here in Thailand genuine DVDs and CDs are cheaper to compete with the skanky copies. I can go into Mangpong and buy a genuine DVD for $10 or get a skanky copy down the road for $3.5. The genuine copy will work and look good even though being a genuine Thai version may mean that I have to change the language before I can watch the film but the quality will be predictable. If I go down the road I will get a low contrast skanky copy with silhouette walking across the screen on their way to the toilet etc. O.K. the quality is often better than that but with a reasonable price difference I am not prepared to take that risk. If I had to pay the prices that I was used to paying back home I think that I would take the risk more often. CDs are similarly cheaper as well and the same is true, I would rather buy a good quality CD than a skanky copy that I have to argue to get replaced if it does not work.
Treat people fairly and they will respond to that fair treatment. Give good service and people will come back. Try to force people to be loyal and they will not feel any guilt about going to the guy down the road.
I like the way you say that I have missed the point and then give me a lecture about being born in the US. I am not an American and it shows how much you missed the point when you assumed that I am. I am British and our relationship with India goes back a lot further.
One of the main problems in dealing with Indian companies is that the level of English is quite good in the educated Indian people but that they are a minority. So the detailed description of the job will be discussed with someone that has passable English but is too polite to say what they do not understand. It is then handed to someone else to do the job who has less grasp of English and as the first person did not really clarify the parts they did not understand that person has no one to turn to when there is a problem. The end result is that the finished product bears no relationship to the spec sheet and is not what is required.
Lots of British companies that outsourced to India 5-10 years ago found that it cost more overall because the quality suffered and so much time was spent with managers flying backwards and forwards. Many of those companies returned to the UK because it is cheaper to pay for something to be done properly in the first place that to get a cheap job done that needs twice as much spent on fixing it.
anyone who might hack in
You do not have to worry about that as Google will quite happily give your data to anyone that asks saving them the trouble of hacking. O.K., I am going a little overboard about the Chinese incident but I would think that Google is now one of the last companies that I would trust with my personal data. I live in Thailand were it is a crime to criticise the King and it can still gets you into trouble if you say the wrong thing about the government. I am stopped from using proxies etc. I have to be careful if I am saying something that they do not want me to say and Google have a Thai site - www.google.co.th. Would I trust them not to let the Thai gov read all my data? You must be having a laugh.
The skanky copies of XP have a prog that fires randomly generated license codes at the server until it finds one that works. That means that when a skanky copy works a genuine copy ceases to work. It is simply a matter of who gets there first. With all these skanky copies using up so many genuine license codes it is not surprising that so many people are getting pissed off. Despite what the post further down says I have tried this out and found the prog worked well and did not cause any noticable delay. That is not to say that I advocate the use of such progs and in fact I personally would not use XP on a machine that is actually connected to the internet and only use Linux for the net except to try certain things out.
But banking/financial trading/infrastructure/military etc etc
:). Linux is better if you have competant IT staff and Sun are still the best. Linux does not have the great cost saving because you still need the support lines which cost money and which this report seems to have overlooked. Windows cannot do a better job because what it does is decide for you what you need and that means that someone in Redmond decided what you need several years ago without ever meeting you. This is only any good if the person in charge has little knowledge of what they are doing.
You mean in situations where only a moron would be using anything other than a Sun system.... The article is rubbish for all the afformentioned reasons (lack of true comparison and no real data etc.) but the reality still comes down to a matter of choice and horses for courses. Windows is fine in the back office if you do not have good IT staff (you should still put Macs out front
As long as this does not mean that I will have to walk away from this screen to meet my next wife I don't care.
There nothing new here but the quality is shite.
Is says something that a country riddled with gangsters that operate at level akin to Al Capone in the 20's, where most of the white slave trade is transported through and with a murder rate higher than LA gets stopped at the door of WTO because of MP3s. I think that it is a real indicator of how corrupt the USA has become that a business can rule the country rather than the people.
And we have just found genetic material on a rape victim in Taiwan proving that not only are you a rapist but that you were in Taiwan illegally without a visa. How are you going to prove your innocence?
There has already been a case of mistaken identity with DNA evidence when a British guy was accused of a rape commited in Italy even though he had never left the Britain. When these databases get too large the idea that no two are the same goes out the window because they only look at so many points and it only identifies you as one a few million. When the whole of the US is linked with the whole of the EU that will be about half a billion. There will be mistakes and the general public (i.e. a jury) is not yet ready to see this new snake oil as phalable.
I do not find it a surprise that someone can be so wrong but I am surprised that someone that writes something that is so far from correct can be modded up to 5. The concepts of patents and copyright are older that the US and seeing as the US has historically been the haven for business built on other countries ideas your assertion is ridiculous. While you drink your Bud (a Czech copyright) and sit in front of your internet browser (a British invention) ranting on about how the US invents and owns all things great, you might ponder why the rest of the world gets fed up with the USA.
The US may promise to pay a high proportion of the UN's expenses but the US only actually starts to pay what it owes when it wants something in return, i.e. when lobbying for another war. Most of the world would rather do without the US's promises as well as the US's wars. The US owes the UN rather than bankroles the UN. In return the US stiffles the democratic role of the UN by refusing visas to people with opinions different to the US's thereby stopping them from speaking at the UN. Many people feel that for the UN to continue it needs to break its ties with the US so that it can become more democratic as it should be.
Although I think that what you have written is correct, you seem to have missed the point. It is not the illegal immigrants that will be tagged. It will be the highly skilled and hard working 'legal' immigrants that are going to be tagged. OK, there are some people that would still want to go to the USA and make that sacrifice but I for one would not. That said I had already decided against working in the USA when I was asked to work in NY and decided that I prefered SE Asia. I get a lot less money here but I have a smile on my face more of the time and that is what matters to me. I used to teach computer foresics and now I just teach English to local kids. I have helped on high profile court cases and do not want to take that pain again so I settle for a happy life. I am the opposite of the immigrant that you talk about.
Just like every other country, they only worry about it when they think their IP has been violated....
The PS3 will do well because there are so many PS2 owners that will have to have it. It will not do as well as it would have done if they had left out the Blueray and dropped the price accordingly. I for one do not want or need Blueray and am not prepared to be hijacked into open wallet surgery. Then again I am one of those rare people that does not have a PS2 (although I have 2 sons that have PS2s but not at my house). Maybe now the price of PS2s is plummeting I might buy a PS2 soon.
Sony have made a serious mistake that will hurt thier market share. X-Box and Nintendo are probably the happiest people around right now. I do not think that either will take the lead from this mistake alone but it does put Sony in a fragile position and if anything goes tits up on the PS3 they could lose their top dog place.
Well put :) I am happy for my g/f to have her easy to use phone but I would be lost without my gadgets. She laughs when I try to look at a cut down web page on a 2" x 1.5" screen and I laugh with her but we are both happy and that is what life is about.
Sorry, what is 'different'?
There's this guy named bin Laden... You may have heard of him? We know exactly who he is and we are even pretty certain where he is a lot of the time...
He lives in a different world to you and I and no, the US government does not know where he is. Your news reports always talk about the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan as if that is all there is because that is all the average American (G. W.) can understand. To the Islamic extremists the is a northern border, one which your news programmes and your President do not know about. It crosses into a world that US troops dare not go. The Islamic extremists do not see that border as a border, it is just part of their world but the US troops cannot go over that line. Bin Laden would not be stupid enough to go into Pakistan knowing that he would be horse traded for a nuke. He can go into Uzbekistan where he is welcomed or Kazakstan etc.
Yes, I know that Russia let the US put a couple of air bases in that wilderness but the troops are not free to travel, they cannot chase people on the ground and if they used weapons they could start WWIII and they are not ready for that.
I live in the wild and woolly Golden Triangle, northern Thailand. I often travel around here into Burma, Laos, Cambodia etc. These are the areas where the use of copied (I hate the word pirated because it is wrong) software is highest. The average person earns about 3000 - 3500 Baht a month ($75 - $88) and the computers are older than yours. Not only can't they even dream of affording to buy genuine software, it would not work on their computer which is not powerful enough. The 10 year old copy of photoshop that they want is no longer on sale.
If the software houses want to change the situation they should put thier old stuff into the public domain so that these people had an option. If there is no way to follow a law it is ignored. People just forget it and no one is going to enforce it. M$ should make Win 98 public domain. No one with money would dream of using it but then they would have more support when they crack down on illegal copies. They would even look like good guys.
By Jonathan Fildes
BBC News science and technology reporter in Edinburgh
The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said.
Recent attempts in the US to try to charge for different levels of online access web were not "part of the internet model," he said in Edinburgh.
He warned that if the US decided to go ahead with a two-tier internet, the network would enter "a dark period".
Sir Tim was speaking at the start of a conference on the future of the web.
"What's very important from my point of view is that there is one web," he said.
"Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring."
An equal net
The British scientist developed the web in 1989 as an academic tool to allow scientists to share data. Since then it has exploded into every area of life.
However, as it has grown, there have been increasingly diverse opinions on how it should evolve.
The World Wide Web Consortium, of which Sir Tim is the director, believes in an open model.
This is based on the concept of network neutrality, where everyone has the same level of access to the web and that all data moving around the web is treated equally.
This view is backed by companies like Microsoft and Google, who have called for legislation to be introduced to guarantee net neutrality.
The first steps towards this were taken last week when members of the US House of Representatives introduced a net neutrality bill.
Pay model
But telecoms companies in the US do not agree. They would like to implement a two-tier system, where data from companies or institutions that can pay are given priority over those that cannot.
This has particularly become an issue with the transmission of TV shows over the internet, with some broadband providers wanting to charge content providers to carry the data.
The internet community believes this threatens the open model of the internet as broadband providers will become gatekeepers to the web's content.
Providers that can pay will be able to get a commercial advantage over those that cannot.
There is a fear that institutions like universities and charities would also suffer.
The web community is also worried that any charges would be passed on to the consumer.
Optimism
Sir Tim said this was "not the internet model". The "right" model, as exists at the moment, was that any content provider could pay for a connection to the internet and could then put any content on to the web with no discrimination.
Speaking to reporters in Edinburgh at the WWW2006 conference, he argued this was where the great benefit of the internet lay.
"You get this tremendous serendipity where I can search the internet and come across a site that I did not set out to look for," he said.
A two-tier system would mean that people would only have full access to those portions of the internet that they paid for and that some companies would be given priority over others.
But Sir Tim was optimistic that the internet would resist attempts to fragment.
"I think it is one and will remain as one," he said.
The WWW2006 conference will run until Friday at the International Conference Centre in Edinburgh.
If an American travels to a country with a less draconian attitude to copyright and buys a legally produced version of a record or film (i.e. The Beatles or Dumbo) and gets stopped at US customs, is he breaking the law? Can they take it away from him? The copying was done legally... Most of the world sees Mickey Mouse as being in the public domain but do not let Disney hear you say that. The Beatles are a UK band and under UK law most of their material is public now but you can bet the RIAA would sue you for downloading a copy from a European host.
"Most people here say that things should be more readily available and free to use as you like once you have bought but I have seldom seen a post that advocates piracy."
So you're saying that since I saw the movie at a movie theater this past Saturday I can go ahead and download a pirated copy, right? Did I buy a copy of the movie or the opportunity to view it at the theater? While the parent does come off a bit trollish, don't you think that a story like this, put on the front page of Slashdot, is wrong?
What have you been smoking? How can anyone arrive at that deduction from what I said? If you go to a movie, all you have bought is a ticket to watch... There is no point arguing with a sick mind. You should get back to your medication before you get lost.
and no, I do not see anything wrong with a story like this being put forward for discussion. That does not mean that I support Japanese whaling, Iranian nuclear power or anything else other than discussing the subject.
Maybe you have not been reading /. for long or something but it certainly is not a pro-piracy haven. Disgust at the MPAA/RIAA activities does not in any way imply a pro-piracy stance, mearly a dislike of bully boy tactics. Most people here say that things should be more readily available and free to use as you like once you have bought but I have seldom seen a post that advocates piracy.
No, but the book was OK. I think they should forget the movie and copy the book...
Freedom of Speech you can't be punished legally for what you say.
:)
You have never heard of libel, defamation and slander? If you lie about someone else there should be redress for that person. If you incite violence then you commit a crime, if you plan a murder you commit a crime. Free speech does have restrictions and law does have a place in deciding what you are free to say and what you are not free to say. A person should be accountable for what they say if another can show that what is said is maliciously untrue. I do not think that I am qualified to decide such things but I do think that an individual has a right to defence from other peoples slander whether it be personal or of those they love.
OK, I have to concede google's rights even though I do not see who they are to set themselves up as judge and jury. I am not angry enough to give up my gmail account yet though