I believe the legal term they fall under is "safe harbor". You'll have to check me on that. There's also legal concepts for proportion of legal vs illegal use. If it were set up where it's only use is to do facilitate illegal activity, well, it's clearly an accessory to that activity.

It may be worth noting that deterrents only work on rational people. The people who do these things can be somewhat less rational.

Just a question to naysayers: how is this different from the state wanting to know where you live, or wanting your name on record?

Those examples are just further up the slippery slope.

Don't sell the guy short - love him or hate him, you can't deny that he was the vision (good or evil) behind the company. This happens with all companies that outlive the careers of their founders - once the original visionaries that started the company start to retire, they are replaced with people who "just work there". Once that happens, the company either finds a new vision or it falters. There aren't many of the originals left there - thus, probably not much of the original vision.

Don't be so quick - extradition isn't the only way Mark could end up in Pak - If he were on his way to a meeting in Mumbai or Bangalore flying from somewhere in Europe and his plane had to make an emergency landing (pilot would probably prefer not to stop in Iraq or Afghanistan, even if it's just for gas), it's possible he could end up on the ground in a country where he has a death warrant. (Hopefully, such a situation would be covered by an international treaty, but I wouldn't know.)

Remember - this guy probably doesn't just work from the home office.

Now how will all of the no-value-added middle men make their livings if this type of philosophy takes hold?

I guess you got me there - I guess we do value those who produce "performances", but we're pretty fickle about which ones we like. That brings us to the "value added" argument: culture, art and sport aren't un-important, but how important should they be?

...by who in that society lives the best. Our society values middle men, lawyers and managers. Let's face it, we value the professions that manipulate others rather than directly producing anything.

Indeed - if this became commonplace, a public school that wanted to keep the riffraff out could find all manner of "critical" materials that all students would be required to purchase. This could be similar to the poll taxes that used to be used to keep the poor from voting. The fact that there are school assets available "during the day" for students to use is somewhat relevant, but you and I both know that there will not be enough to go around, there will be severe restrictions on use (and I'm not talking about web restrictions - I'm talking about file storage, functionality lockouts, etc) that will inhibit the value of the asset to the student.

No matter how you slice it, this will create a very uneven playing field using an arbitrary financial discriminator.

If it were required for a particular elective class or a class for which there was a non-computer-required equivalent, that would be completely different. It would be less ridiculous to require high school students to purchase their own textbooks - and we know how that would go over.

Something that needs to be said -

Your cell phone is not truly "off" unless the battery is removed.

We now return you to your regular nonsense....

There seems to be a disconnect with "businesses" that make their living primarily off of a government license or special status. As we saw when they dissected the banking crisis, many "financial" businesses are quasi-governmental in nature and as such should have much less latitude to declare themselves "purely private" entities with freedom of choice.

Having said that, I do not believe that banks should have any latitude to deny service to anyone who is not causing a direct problem for the bank. (i.e. breaking laws that involve the bank, refusing info required to meet regulation, abusive to the staff, etc.) Most businesses operate this way - it's only when you get self-righteous employees involved that start to treat the business like they own the whole thing that you get nonsense like this. It is not the bank's place to discipline a business for conduct that is neither illegal nor causes problems for the bank.