"The ISP will have a database of users with the "pervert" bit and who knows what might happen with that. Will that data be confidential? Or can the ISP sell the list to its "marketing partners" and send users direct mail offers for porn?"
I think the best solution would be to have a couple of things that only "adults" normally look up on the internet.
E.g., having to opt out of the filter in order to receive either (a) stock quotes or (b) porn.
A couple of objections may of course be raised, e.g., that some minors may have legitimate reasons for viewing stock quotes. I would reply, in turn, that such precociousness is downright creepy and would surely mess a kid up.
Second, one might claim that people shouldn't have to opt-in to porn in order to opt-in to stock quotes (such that their children might be able to view the former), I reply that if you are so eager to pretend to engage in the economy, but so uninterested in influencing the economy of your own child's mind by (say) using one of the myriad extant opt-in systems, you shouldn't have access to either porn or stock quotes. Q.E.D.
Alternatively, it might be better to have a two (or more)-tiered counting system: count the ballots for the governorship (or whatever) immediately as per any other normal election (like that in Canada), but then take your sweet time counting up all the votes on subsidiary ballot initiatives.
"No one buys a computer just for the hardware. Hardware is pretty useless without software. If someone is only choosing the Dell over a Mac because the hardware is slightly better, then they deserve Vista.
Choose the best tool for the job. If you'll be more productive with OS X, and you're only choosing between these two systems, then obviously choose the iMac."
Gee, I wonder if any linux distribution could possibly run on the Dell. I know it's a long shot, but if such a tremendous feat were possible, then that would seem to entirely undermine any point you claim to have, would it not? [/sarcasm]
"A law that would require you to identify yourself would not violate the 1st. You can still say whatever you want."
Fair enough. But by the same logic, you can still say whatever you want with a gun to your head, too.
I think the real rub lies in what counts as an "abridgement", e.g., whether forcing you to identify yourself (or someone else to identify you) is antithetical to a freedom.
"Canonical Ubuntu - Gutsy Gibbon is an operating system with the option of two Desktop environments and over 10,000 applications. I think there are around 45,000 deb files but all of those aren't programs. These applications include a web browser, graphics 3D and sound manipulation programs, games, photo and music management, office suite (out of the box), the list could go on."
Umm, the vast majority of those 10,000 applications have nothing in particular to do with Ubuntu. They are developed separately, by separate developers, who would continue to develop were there no Ubuntu. They were developed for, and indeed run, on distributions other than Ubuntu. In other words, Ubuntu != Linux.
By your standards, Vista would probably have over 1,000,000 applications, since there is quite a lot of tripe floating around that runs natively on Windows, just as your "10,000" programs run on Ubuntu.
Sorry, I was just being a bit snarky with that comment. I hadn't expected you to read all of that. Your situtation is truly rough.
QoS just refers to something easily implementable on a network, which can ensure that no one person can screw others over by hogging too much bandwidth -- without cutting the former persons off. And it's highly configurable, so (say) the person that downloads constantly all day might still get somewhat slower than average speeds, but the person who checks his email for 20 minutes a day could get blazing fast speed for those 20 minutes. That way, the ISP can saturate the bandwidth they pay for themselves without cutting anyone off, per se. Of course, if far too many people download at a constant rate, everyone still suffers proportionally. But with QoS, they can just severely limit the high-users (e.g., giving them 10kb/s at peak times, which is bearable, even if only for web + email), while at peak periods letting them go all out. In other words, no matter how bad the situation is, any competent sysadmin can make the situation fair for all, without giving anyone a kick in the nuts.
"One or two customers transferring this quantity of data can bring a system to it's knees and significantly affect the throughput other subscribers have available to them, causing all subscribers on the segment to be unhappy about their service."
Not if they know at least the following three letters of the alphabet:
"1. When running an entrapment scheme, a 1:12 ratio is hardly damning of the whole organization"
It sure as hell is. 8% odds that your computer will be searched for whatever some pervert tech wants to find is pretty indicative of a serious problem. Would 8% of police chiefs being paid off by the mob not indicate something seriously wrong with the system?
"2. Who cares? Was the entrapment author deprived of his pr0n? No, someone just got a copy."
Most people aren't that casual when it comes to pictures of their girlfriend or wife. You might be, but you're not indicative of most people.
"3. If you have super secret pr0n or whatever on your computer, DON'T TAKE IT TO BEST BUY. Hire someone to come to your house so you can discuss your concerns and sit next to them while they do their thing."
This point is right on. People are either extremely naive to think that some minimum-wage flunkie won't go looking for porn on their computer, or are so incompetent with computers that they think it'll take anyone else just as much time to find their porn as it takes for them to figure out where, precisely, in their computer's 'memory' those downloaded internet files go to (and ergo not worth the effort).
Of course, we should keep in mind that crimes involving intent and strict liability crimes are not jointly exhaustive of criminal culpability. E.g., negligence is occasionally a culpable feature of behaviour that can be used to prove that someone is guilty of a crime, even if the crime is not one of strict liability. (See mens rea).
For example, even if I honestly don't intend to commit a crime, I might still do so through a lack of forethought that a reasonable person should have had (e.g., walking out of a grocery store with a can of tuna in my pocket that I'd honestly planned to pay for -- guilty, say, because reasonable people don't put groceries in their pockets while shopping). But this need not make the law one of strict liability.
Strict liability crimes take this even further, applying to things that even reasonable people, taking all reasonable precautions, could not have avoided (per se). The only example off the top of my head is statutory rape: even if one believes a minor to be at or over the age of consent, and even if said minor produces multiple forms of perfect-quality government documentation attesting to that fact (such that no person would ever reasonably suspect that the person wasn't of age), it still remains a crime to bone said person.
The point: you needn't defer to strict liability to prove your point. (Apologies for pedancy).
With the latter, I would quibble that the warrant should specify a search of the premises and computers that could be connecting, rather than a search of one particular resident's possessions.
The danger here is the potential for abuse.
Right! Particularly when connecting anonymously through another person's WAP is extremely simple (to say the least), we shouldn't want to allow the possibility that neighbors could simply target a neighbor they don't like (who happens to have an open WAP) by engaging in certain online criminal activity through their IP address, who would then laugh their crooked heads off when watching the neighbor's house get ransacked for electronics (and whatever they happen to find in the meantime, as you say).
The 'searching every computer within range' proviso you suggest is rather good, given that, with an open WAP, it is probable not only that a neighbor was the one doing the illegal activities in the first place, but perhaps even more probably, presuming that the culprit isn't an idiot. I mean, if you were in the commission of an online crime, it'd be the prudent thing to do to mooch off a neighbor's wireless (not that I'd advocate such a thing).
"In other words, if the sheriff hadn't lied about his identity, there wouldn't have been a crime here, even if the man had done the same thing?"
Umm, I'm not all too familiar with legal mens rea requirements and/or strict liability (I'm guessing the crime has to be defined as the latter, since there is no actual act, but:
If I have a cardboard cutout of myself on my front lawn and, at night when it looks exactly like me from afar, and you decide to shoot at it with a rifle thinking it was me, is that not normally enough intent for you to be convicted of attempted murder?
Or, if you sneak into a bank late at night in an attempt to rob their safe, but find the safe to be already empty (due to the bank changing its address or something), were you not still attempting a robbery?
I appreciate your point, but surely the law needs to be able to account for attempted crimes, not just successful ones. (I think the bigger problem is that of entrapment, which is an issue on its own).
"Finally, his entire theory hinges on an upper and lower class being maintained and still existing 1000 years from now."
...not only that, but also on the complete ignorance of a very factual matter, viz., that people of different social classes enjoy boning each other. I.e., when you have an upper-class man/woman ignoring his/her upper-class spouse, in order to make babies with the (albeit dwarfy, under this theory) maid/butler, we end up with a glorious breed -- one I like to call a regular fucking human.
And when this ungodly hybrid breaks loose and tries to breed with other upper-class/lower-class/somewhere-in-the-middle-cl ass humans, everything completely falls apart -- for this brain farmer's theory, anyway (I doubt much else will be any different from circa 2006 tedium).
"The D-Link box contained a printed copy of the GPL. So they clearly do consider the GPL binding, otherwise why would they have bothered?"
I suspect that they, like many, might see a distinction between actually considering a document legally binding and the prudential practice of covering one's ass.
"If there are good games out there that people want to support, they'll go to great lengths to do it.
Though judging by your behaviour, "great lengths" will include bitching to ebgames numerous times, but won't include the arguably simpler task of, e.g., purchasing the product online from an American company and having them ship it to Canada. Kudos for your patriotic practice of keeping money out of the hands of foreign retailers, but I still think the aforementioned fact weakens your point a bit.
"If you download music in some lawful fashion -- from iTunes, for example -- then you're likely doing so pursuant to a license agreement that would've been quite prominent. This is necessary since downloading is reproduction, and would otherwise infringe."
Would a license agreement binding on the end-user actually be legally necessary, rather than simply for the distributor(s)?
I.e., I can buy a book, signing no licensing agreement, yet it remains illegal for me to copy and distribute copies of that book. No additional licensing agreement is necessary for copyright law to apply to the intellectual work.
Similarly, no licensing agreement would be necessary, e.g., on iTunes, for redistribution by the end-user (of copies) to remain illegal.
I believe the above poster, to whom you responded, was discussing something completely distinct from what you thought: s/he was pointing out the ambiguity in the phrase "copies of their music collection".
I.e., "copies" can refer to either duplicates (the selling of which, while retaining the original, would violate copyright laws) and original copies, which are covered by the doctrine of first sale.
Your point stands, but so does the above poster's.
I surely appreciate your sentiments, but I think the merits of implementing Pascal's theism-wager vs. a pascalian-global-warming-wager can be summed up (by a devil's advocate against your position) as such:
Length of mortal life: ~75 years - Personally devastating effects of global warming: slim to nil Length of eternal life: indefinite - Personally devastating effects of hellfire, if so existing: infinite
So the ratio between the two is, e.g., n : infinity, and people who take the lazy way out act accordingly.
People who actually give a shit, on the other hand, tend to think that there's more to being a {Christian | minimally decent human being | etc.} than being a selfish prick who only cares about his or her own soul -- a sentiment which is largely anathema to the actual words of Christ, as I recall.
"Why not, its already illegal [gnu-designs.com] to withold your encryption keys in the UK, the US is soon to follow."
Well, the UK does have the drawback of having no formal constitution to which detainees could appeal (as they can try to with the 5th amendment to the US constitution).
Nevertheless, I appreciate your point, especially when "national security" so easily trumps constitutional rights in the US already.
In other news, written constitutions worldwide are devaluing faster than Germany's currency in the 1920s.
"Although... If you find yourself strapped on a table with a room full of NSA or CIA agenents with one of them weilding a cattle prod and other asking for those keys in a stern german accent... Well... Best of luck then."
"Well... That's what truecrypt is for."
Um... someone ought to be reminded to never, ever mention Truecrypt in this context again (i.e., imprisonment and other sundry legal sanctions), unless one wants to cue another endless onslaught of:
"But, if you can't prove that you have no hidden encrypted containers, they'll imprison/torture you forever."
"Wrong! If they can't prove that you do have hidden encrypted containers, they'll not be able to imrison/torture you forever."
"Wrong! If you can't prove that you have no hidden encrypted containers, they'll imprison/torture you forever."
"Wrong! If they can't prove that you do have hidden encrypted containers, they'll not be able to imrison/torture you forever."
"Wrong! If you can't prove that you have no hidden encrypted containers, they'll imprison/torture you forever."
"Wrong! If they can't prove that you do have hidden encrypted containers, they'll not be able to imrison/torture you forever."
And on and on--ad infinitum, and in rapidly decreasing respectability--once again recreating the essence of every damned truecrypt discussion on this bloody forum.
I never meant to imply that the U.S. should implement something of the sort.
I merely meant that such a thing would be the most direct correlate of the U.S. Custom's-enforced duty-system, which, among other things, can redress the issue of citizens purchasing American-made products abroad at a fraction of the cost, then bringing them to the U.S.. If no duties are paid at the border (contra the de jure policy), artists gain far fewer (if any) royalties from their works than they would had the person bought their product in the U.S.
The internet, being the strange beast that it is, does not allow U.S. Customs to implement this policy (though I imagine legally and domestically they do have the power, but no way to enforce it). THUS the current trend of the U.S. strongarming soverign nations into accepting policies amenable to what would normally be a domestic issue (i.e., going through U.S. Customs when one [or what one has shipped] enters the country).
"Freedom and Democracy my ass."
Which outlines the major problem: that strongarming foreign governments is a gross limitation of their freedom and democracy, which is especially troublesome when done over both an essentially domestic and, I would argue, insignificant issue.
So, to America, then: solve your own damn problem within your own borders. If there is no way to do so, tough shit. Leave the rest of the world out of it.
You, sir, are a genius. (And, no, I am not being sarcastic, though I may be easily impressed)
While some might want to fight reactionary and all-too-corporate-backed legal policies with pithy appeals to such things as the "rule of law" and "human rights", this method pits such reactionary, corporate-backed legal policy against (drum roll...) corporate-backed legal policy!
Turning the overlord's law against itself, however, is something that will only get you figuratively crushed, if you don't know what you're doing. Are you sure you know what you're doing?
Slashdot Mirror
"The ISP will have a database of users with the "pervert" bit and who knows what might happen with that. Will that data be confidential? Or can the ISP sell the list to its "marketing partners" and send users direct mail offers for porn?"
I think the best solution would be to have a couple of things that only "adults" normally look up on the internet.
E.g., having to opt out of the filter in order to receive either (a) stock quotes or (b) porn.
A couple of objections may of course be raised, e.g., that some minors may have legitimate reasons for viewing stock quotes. I would reply, in turn, that such precociousness is downright creepy and would surely mess a kid up.
Second, one might claim that people shouldn't have to opt-in to porn in order to opt-in to stock quotes (such that their children might be able to view the former), I reply that if you are so eager to pretend to engage in the economy, but so uninterested in influencing the economy of your own child's mind by (say) using one of the myriad extant opt-in systems, you shouldn't have access to either porn or stock quotes. Q.E.D.
Damn right.
Alternatively, it might be better to have a two (or more)-tiered counting system: count the ballots for the governorship (or whatever) immediately as per any other normal election (like that in Canada), but then take your sweet time counting up all the votes on subsidiary ballot initiatives.
"No one buys a computer just for the hardware. Hardware is pretty useless without software. If someone is only choosing the Dell over a Mac because the hardware is slightly better, then they deserve Vista.
Choose the best tool for the job. If you'll be more productive with OS X, and you're only choosing between these two systems, then obviously choose the iMac."
Gee, I wonder if any linux distribution could possibly run on the Dell. I know it's a long shot, but if such a tremendous feat were possible, then that would seem to entirely undermine any point you claim to have, would it not? [/sarcasm]
"A law that would require you to identify yourself would not violate the 1st. You can still say whatever you want."
Fair enough. But by the same logic, you can still say whatever you want with a gun to your head, too.
I think the real rub lies in what counts as an "abridgement", e.g., whether forcing you to identify yourself (or someone else to identify you) is antithetical to a freedom.
"Canonical Ubuntu - Gutsy Gibbon is an operating system with the option of two Desktop environments and over 10,000 applications. I think there are around 45,000 deb files but all of those aren't programs. These applications include a web browser, graphics 3D and sound manipulation programs, games, photo and music management, office suite (out of the box), the list could go on."
Umm, the vast majority of those 10,000 applications have nothing in particular to do with Ubuntu. They are developed separately, by separate developers, who would continue to develop were there no Ubuntu. They were developed for, and indeed run, on distributions other than Ubuntu. In other words, Ubuntu != Linux.
By your standards, Vista would probably have over 1,000,000 applications, since there is quite a lot of tripe floating around that runs natively on Windows, just as your "10,000" programs run on Ubuntu.
Sorry, I was just being a bit snarky with that comment. I hadn't expected you to read all of that. Your situtation is truly rough.
QoS just refers to something easily implementable on a network, which can ensure that no one person can screw others over by hogging too much bandwidth -- without cutting the former persons off. And it's highly configurable, so (say) the person that downloads constantly all day might still get somewhat slower than average speeds, but the person who checks his email for 20 minutes a day could get blazing fast speed for those 20 minutes. That way, the ISP can saturate the bandwidth they pay for themselves without cutting anyone off, per se. Of course, if far too many people download at a constant rate, everyone still suffers proportionally. But with QoS, they can just severely limit the high-users (e.g., giving them 10kb/s at peak times, which is bearable, even if only for web + email), while at peak periods letting them go all out. In other words, no matter how bad the situation is, any competent sysadmin can make the situation fair for all, without giving anyone a kick in the nuts.
"One or two customers transferring this quantity of data can bring a system to it's knees and significantly affect the throughput other subscribers have available to them, causing all subscribers on the segment to be unhappy about their service."
Not if they know at least the following three letters of the alphabet:
Q. o. S.
"Whenever I want to play an mp3, I just turn my gigabit NIC up to eleven."
I think the mod who thought this to actually be informative (rather than plain funny) just turned his/her NIC up to 11.
"1. When running an entrapment scheme, a 1:12 ratio is hardly damning of the whole organization"
It sure as hell is. 8% odds that your computer will be searched for whatever some pervert tech wants to find is pretty indicative of a serious problem. Would 8% of police chiefs being paid off by the mob not indicate something seriously wrong with the system?
"2. Who cares? Was the entrapment author deprived of his pr0n? No, someone just got a copy."
Most people aren't that casual when it comes to pictures of their girlfriend or wife. You might be, but you're not indicative of most people.
"3. If you have super secret pr0n or whatever on your computer, DON'T TAKE IT TO BEST BUY. Hire someone to come to your house so you can discuss your concerns and sit next to them while they do their thing."
This point is right on. People are either extremely naive to think that some minimum-wage flunkie won't go looking for porn on their computer, or are so incompetent with computers that they think it'll take anyone else just as much time to find their porn as it takes for them to figure out where, precisely, in their computer's 'memory' those downloaded internet files go to (and ergo not worth the effort).
Of course, we should keep in mind that crimes involving intent and strict liability crimes are not jointly exhaustive of criminal culpability. E.g., negligence is occasionally a culpable feature of behaviour that can be used to prove that someone is guilty of a crime, even if the crime is not one of strict liability. (See mens rea).
For example, even if I honestly don't intend to commit a crime, I might still do so through a lack of forethought that a reasonable person should have had (e.g., walking out of a grocery store with a can of tuna in my pocket that I'd honestly planned to pay for -- guilty, say, because reasonable people don't put groceries in their pockets while shopping). But this need not make the law one of strict liability.
Strict liability crimes take this even further, applying to things that even reasonable people, taking all reasonable precautions, could not have avoided (per se). The only example off the top of my head is statutory rape: even if one believes a minor to be at or over the age of consent, and even if said minor produces multiple forms of perfect-quality government documentation attesting to that fact (such that no person would ever reasonably suspect that the person wasn't of age), it still remains a crime to bone said person.
The point: you needn't defer to strict liability to prove your point. (Apologies for pedancy).
With the latter, I would quibble that the warrant should specify a search of the premises and computers that could be connecting, rather than a search of one particular resident's possessions.
The danger here is the potential for abuse.
Right! Particularly when connecting anonymously through another person's WAP is extremely simple (to say the least), we shouldn't want to allow the possibility that neighbors could simply target a neighbor they don't like (who happens to have an open WAP) by engaging in certain online criminal activity through their IP address, who would then laugh their crooked heads off when watching the neighbor's house get ransacked for electronics (and whatever they happen to find in the meantime, as you say).
The 'searching every computer within range' proviso you suggest is rather good, given that, with an open WAP, it is probable not only that a neighbor was the one doing the illegal activities in the first place, but perhaps even more probably, presuming that the culprit isn't an idiot. I mean, if you were in the commission of an online crime, it'd be the prudent thing to do to mooch off a neighbor's wireless (not that I'd advocate such a thing).
"In other words, if the sheriff hadn't lied about his identity, there wouldn't have been a crime here, even if the man had done the same thing?"
Umm, I'm not all too familiar with legal mens rea requirements and/or strict liability (I'm guessing the crime has to be defined as the latter, since there is no actual act, but:
If I have a cardboard cutout of myself on my front lawn and, at night when it looks exactly like me from afar, and you decide to shoot at it with a rifle thinking it was me, is that not normally enough intent for you to be convicted of attempted murder?
Or, if you sneak into a bank late at night in an attempt to rob their safe, but find the safe to be already empty (due to the bank changing its address or something), were you not still attempting a robbery?
I appreciate your point, but surely the law needs to be able to account for attempted crimes, not just successful ones. (I think the bigger problem is that of entrapment, which is an issue on its own).
"Is there a fundamental difference between video content and audio content?"
I believe there is:
Video contains visual content,
while audio contains only audible content.
(I'll let myself out).
"Finally, his entire theory hinges on an upper and lower class being maintained and still existing 1000 years from now."
...not only that, but also on the complete ignorance of a very factual matter, viz., that people of different social classes enjoy boning each other. I.e., when you have an upper-class man/woman ignoring his/her upper-class spouse, in order to make babies with the (albeit dwarfy, under this theory) maid/butler, we end up with a glorious breed -- one I like to call a regular fucking human.
l ass humans, everything completely falls apart -- for this brain farmer's theory, anyway (I doubt much else will be any different from circa 2006 tedium).
And when this ungodly hybrid breaks loose and tries to breed with other upper-class/lower-class/somewhere-in-the-middle-c
"The D-Link box contained a printed copy of the GPL. So they clearly do consider the GPL binding, otherwise why would they have bothered?"
I suspect that they, like many, might see a distinction between actually considering a document legally binding and the prudential practice of covering one's ass.
"If there are good games out there that people want to support, they'll go to great lengths to do it.
Though judging by your behaviour, "great lengths" will include bitching to ebgames numerous times, but won't include the arguably simpler task of, e.g., purchasing the product online from an American company and having them ship it to Canada. Kudos for your patriotic practice of keeping money out of the hands of foreign retailers, but I still think the aforementioned fact weakens your point a bit.
"If you download music in some lawful fashion -- from iTunes, for example -- then you're likely doing so pursuant to a license agreement that
would've been quite prominent. This is necessary since downloading is reproduction, and would otherwise infringe."
Would a license agreement binding on the end-user actually be legally necessary, rather than simply for the distributor(s)?
I.e., I can buy a book, signing no licensing agreement, yet it remains illegal for me to copy and distribute copies of that book. No additional licensing agreement is necessary for copyright law to apply to the intellectual work.
Similarly, no licensing agreement would be necessary, e.g., on iTunes, for redistribution by the end-user (of copies) to remain illegal.
I believe the above poster, to whom you responded, was discussing something completely distinct from what you thought: s/he was pointing out the ambiguity in the phrase "copies of their music collection".
I.e., "copies" can refer to either duplicates (the selling of which, while retaining the original, would violate copyright laws) and original copies, which are covered by the doctrine of first sale.
Your point stands, but so does the above poster's.
I surely appreciate your sentiments, but I think the merits of implementing Pascal's theism-wager vs. a pascalian-global-warming-wager can be summed up (by a devil's advocate against your position) as such:
Length of mortal life: ~75 years - Personally devastating effects of global warming: slim to nil
Length of eternal life: indefinite - Personally devastating effects of hellfire, if so existing: infinite
So the ratio between the two is, e.g., n : infinity, and people who take the lazy way out act accordingly.
People who actually give a shit, on the other hand, tend to think that there's more to being a {Christian | minimally decent human being | etc.} than being a selfish prick who only cares about his or her own soul -- a sentiment which is largely anathema to the actual words of Christ, as I recall.
"As it was in the beginning, is now, and always shall be: for ever and ever."
'Please explain how "it was always like this and it will never change" does not equate to "it's been this way forever and this is how it will stay".'
I suppose it all depends on what the word "it" refers to.
If "it" doesn't strictly refer to the physical composition of the earth and cosmos, then the poster you responded to has a valid question.
"Why not, its already illegal [gnu-designs.com] to withold your encryption keys in the UK, the US is soon to follow."
Well, the UK does have the drawback of having no formal constitution to which detainees could appeal (as they can try to with the 5th amendment to the US constitution).
Nevertheless, I appreciate your point, especially when "national security" so easily trumps constitutional rights in the US already.
In other news, written constitutions worldwide are devaluing faster than Germany's currency in the 1920s.
"Although... If you find yourself strapped on a table with a room full of NSA or CIA agenents with one of them weilding a cattle prod and other asking for those keys in a stern german accent... Well... Best of luck then."
"Well... That's what truecrypt is for."
Um... someone ought to be reminded to never, ever mention Truecrypt in this context again (i.e., imprisonment and other sundry legal sanctions), unless one wants to cue another endless onslaught of:
"But, if you can't prove that you have no hidden encrypted containers, they'll imprison/torture you forever."
"Wrong! If they can't prove that you do have hidden encrypted containers, they'll not be able to imrison/torture you forever."
"Wrong! If you can't prove that you have no hidden encrypted containers, they'll imprison/torture you forever."
"Wrong! If they can't prove that you do have hidden encrypted containers, they'll not be able to imrison/torture you forever."
"Wrong! If you can't prove that you have no hidden encrypted containers, they'll imprison/torture you forever."
"Wrong! If they can't prove that you do have hidden encrypted containers, they'll not be able to imrison/torture you forever."
And on and on--ad infinitum, and in rapidly decreasing respectability--once again recreating the essence of every damned truecrypt discussion on this bloody forum.
"Hahahaha you're clearly insane."
I never meant to imply that the U.S. should implement something of the sort.
I merely meant that such a thing would be the most direct correlate of the U.S. Custom's-enforced duty-system, which, among other things, can redress the issue of citizens purchasing American-made products abroad at a fraction of the cost, then bringing them to the U.S.. If no duties are paid at the border (contra the de jure policy), artists gain far fewer (if any) royalties from their works than they would had the person bought their product in the U.S.
The internet, being the strange beast that it is, does not allow U.S. Customs to implement this policy (though I imagine legally and domestically they do have the power, but no way to enforce it). THUS the current trend of the U.S. strongarming soverign nations into accepting policies amenable to what would normally be a domestic issue (i.e., going through U.S. Customs when one [or what one has shipped] enters the country).
"Freedom and Democracy my ass."
Which outlines the major problem: that strongarming foreign governments is a gross limitation of their freedom and democracy, which is especially troublesome when done over both an essentially domestic and, I would argue, insignificant issue.
So, to America, then: solve your own damn problem within your own borders. If there is no way to do so, tough shit. Leave the rest of the world out of it.
You, sir, are a genius. (And, no, I am not being sarcastic, though I may be easily impressed)
While some might want to fight reactionary and all-too-corporate-backed legal policies with pithy appeals to such things as the "rule of law" and "human rights", this method pits such reactionary, corporate-backed legal policy against (drum roll...) corporate-backed legal policy!
Turning the overlord's law against itself, however, is something that will only get you figuratively crushed, if you don't know what you're doing. Are you sure you know what you're doing?
...in the voice of that talking space-ship from "Flight of the Navigator":
"I don't leak. You leak!"
(Best talking space-ship urination joke ever!).