Which means what? They should be able to do whatever they please because they do other things, too?

Censorship. Loss of freedom and privacy. A complete disregard for the spirit of the constitution.

A lesser evil is still an evil. The government should not be able to ban a single word simply because they don't like it. Let's say it was a lesser used word. A word many people don't use. The harm itself would be relatively small, but it would still be wrong to ban it.

Then I sincerely hope you or people like you don't try to pass any laws.

Many laws are put forth without any evidence. You should not be able to pass laws unless you have a damn good reason to support the fact that they should exist, but you haven't even given me that, let alone actual evidence. Otherwise we end up with a bunch of nonsensical laws. Which is exactly what we have now.

Because of the lack of DRM? If so, how do you know this? Why should I care?

Their job is to violate our freedom and privacy in exchange for security theater? We're a representative democracy, not a direct democracy; if a law would violate the constitution, it must not be passed.

They took an oath to uphold the constitution, and they're simply not doing that when they support SOPA, the TSA, the Patriot Act, or anything similar.

How about world hunger? Nah. That's too hard. Let's just hire more TSA employees to molest people at airports.

And, you know, you have to be quite ignorant to think that "anti piracy" actions are working. It will literally take me about five seconds to retrieve a torrent file that I can use to pirate the latest game/movie/album. If I was a pirate, that is how easy it would be for me to do so.

Your claims that we're preventing piracy are absolutely removed from reality. It takes about five seconds to see that's not true. As such, the more likely explanation is something completely different (ignorance or the belief that paying the artist is a good thing). This has nothing to do with copyright enforcement. If most people wanted to pirate, you'd be screwed; even more so than you are now.

What world are you living in?

How is that proof? That's no copyright enforcement at all. How about showing proof that your draconian laws and DRM are good things? What's especially funny is that I never said anything about no copyright enforcement. But if it is to be enforced, it must be done so in a way that doesn't violate people's rights or privacy. And guess what? There is no reason that you cannot enforce copyright in a way that doesn't violate people's privacy and freedom. This is done on a case-by-case basis. How you could ever trust the government with such powers is beyond me.

If you're going to propose laws, the burden of proof is on you.

That's comical. The act of copyright infringement is an act which may or may not cause a loss of potential profit. That's all it is.

But I suppose all that matters is money...

Alternate reasons:

1) They might not even understand how to pirate to begin with.
2) They might think it's morally wrong, but not because a few websites got shut down.

So, yeah, your "anti piracy is working because most people don't pirate" is a nonsensical assumption. Rather than saying correlation is causation, prove that shutting down a few websites occasionally is responsible for most people not resorting to piracy.

You're playing word games. You cannot control the "who" without controlling the "what." After all, you do not know who the "who" is, and you don't know what they're planning to do. There is no magical way to determine this.

I don't know what kind of garbage DRM is in ebooks or movies, but music? I heard plenty of music is 100% DRM free. I guess the industry is dead, huh?

"extreme" is subjective to begin with. As I said, I think you're taking an extreme stance when you constantly go on and on about compromise.

But, I say again: "extreme" doesn't mean "wrong." Furthermore, if it's extreme to want to control the data you bought, then so be it. I'm an "extremist" according to you. I love freedom, privacy, and the ability to have control over my own property. To me, it's clear that you don't. It seems to me that you're one of those people who would support the TSA or the Patriot Act because they claim to protect us from all the big, evil terrorists. But in this case, at least in my opinion, it's even worse. I mean, at least terrorism actually takes lives. All that's at stake here is potential profit.

If it restricts what I can do with my own property, I'm not going to buy that garbage.

No, it's not. If you have, say, music on one device and DRM that restricts it to that one device, cracking it could allow you to play it on all of your devices. That is just one example.

Please tell me more about this magical DRM that places absolutely no restrictions upon the paying customer; I'd love to know more.

That has nothing to do with stopping piracy. Most people just don't pirate, either due to ignorance or because they simply don't want to. You're assuming it's because they've shut down a few websites, and that's simply removed from reality.

Not quite. Internet piracy is special since it doesn't have any noticeable effects on anyone (other than a loss of potential profit) and is mostly completely untraceable. It's also quite widespread (although most probably don't engage in it).

I didn't say otherwise. You're just putting words into my mouth. I stated a fact: piracy is fairly widespread and difficult to stop. That doesn't mean all or even most people do it.

[citation needed]

Not that it matters how many people believe that, but I'm interested to know how you know that.

No collateral damage is difficult to avoid, but DRM is arbitrary collateral damage. It isn't necessary at all. For one thing, its entire point is to stop unwanted copying: a 'crime' that can hardly be considered on the level of jaywalking. Yet people treat it as if it's a national security emergency.

They can use DRM all they want, but I'll never buy their garbage.

Doubt it, honestly. Probably the same ones who have a "nothing to hide nothing to fear" mentality.

DRM and draconian copyright laws aren't necessary for that. But even if they were, I'll have none of that. I will never buy anything with DRM.

There's no need to address that due to it being nonsense. Sometimes extreme positions are correct. I'm not saying that mine is, but it happens.

And if desiring freedom is considered "extreme," then I don't want to live in this country any longer.

I didn't mention anything about absolutism.

Non sequitur. Please tell me how you reached the conclusion that the absence of draconian laws and DRM would bring only "dismal content." And then prove it, please.

In my opinion, your stance on DRM, laws, and freedom are simply broken and completely incompatible with mine. In fact, just as you seem to find my views extreme, I find yours extreme. Not that that makes them wrong, of course.

But in the end, DRM always controls you, the customer, and what you can do with your own data. This is a fact. If it did not, cracking it wouldn't even be necessary.

And they obviously can't. We've seen them try, but they've failed. It takes ridiculous amounts of money just to shut down a single website, and pirates just move on to the next. In fact, sometimes they even waste taxpayer money on this nonsense. And for what? To stop a few people from copying data? Sorry if I don't think they're national heroes.

It continues to function not because they believe they can stop it, but because some (most, probably) people are still buying the media.

And we've failed time and time again. It's much more simple to catch commercial copyright infringement. However, when you have normal people all over the world infringing upon copyright, that is much, much more difficult to prevent. No, it's just impossible. Especially if they start using encryption/VPNs.

Bought? You don't even need to buy it; it's available for free. As I said, commercial copyright infringement is a bit more simple to stop.

Sorry, but if any of the "minuses" happen to be a loss of privacy or collateral damage, I would much rather have no copyright enforcement.

Freedom is absolutely more important to me than copyright, and I don't think there's anything you could say that would change my mind. Any defense of DRM will just fall on deaf ears.

However, if you have a solution that doesn't involve violating people's privacy, opening the internet up to dangerous censorship, or causing collateral damage, feel free to chime in. If you know of a single piece of DRM that doesn't restrict the customer in some way, please tell me. I know of none.

All DRM is restrictive. That is by design. If it wasn't, then you could freely do whatever you wanted with the data. In which case, it wouldn't really stop unwanted copying, now would it (not that it does anyway)?

Even Steam is a form of DRM. I've often wondered why you even need Steam to run the games rather than it just being a platform to download the games on.

And the pirates will just get rid of that, too. What a waste of time. I know of no DRM that protects publishers or customers. That concept sounds like pure unadulterated nonsense to me.

In short, this is far, far easier said than done.

Legislation? You mean like SOPA and the DMCA? Enforcing copyright is nigh impossible, and worst of all, the damage the legislation does to innocents is often even worse than the damage DRM does.

How would this be possible without a locked-down platform? DRM hurts everyone, including paying customers. Actually, it doesn't even stop the pirates at all.

What they need to do is to stop getting innocents caught in the crossfire when they're trying to stop the 'enemy'. This means no nonsensical DRM.

You're clearly incorrect simply because you commented in a way that indicates you think you're correct. You're not allowed to disagree with people! It shows that your conclusions themselves are wrong!

[citation needed]

Honestly? With the focus on rote memorization and teaching to the test so prevalent in public schools, just about anything is better.

Public education is awful because of the mentalities that rote memorization and teaching to the test are effective forms of learning. They're not, even if there is no other solution (but other solutions have been proposed).

Honestly, it isn't difficult to figure out why so many people don't find "learning" (really, it's "schooling") fun.

How lazy and short-sighted. Not even willing to consider an alternative that might drastically improve the public education system just because it costs more? No wonder no one cares about education.

It's obvious what I meant: neither of them give a shit about your freedom.

There is no difference. Sometimes they just support/oppose different things. You're looking at a single bill and drawing a strange conclusion from it.

I didn't say anything about creating exemptions (Or perhaps that wasn't directed at me specifically?). I despise the TSA in its entirety and would rather risk a terrorist attack (not like the TSA are at all useful, for reasons already mentioned, anyway) than give up freedom and privacy for security theater.

We're talking about the TSA, not airports.

Oh, but it doesn't protect you from being randomly searched by people employed by the government at airports? Where does it say that? That's incredibly dangerous thinking. It could allow the government to do whatever they please just because it happens at an airport (and they pretty much already do). The spirit of the constitution is being violated here.