"Its still barbaric. Just because this judge didn't give an even more severe sentence does not stop this being barbaric."

Yup. That's my point exactly.

"Remember this when you get an urge to say that America and Western society is oppressive..."

A different judge would have convicted Badawi of apostasy and sentenced him to death. Remember that when you get an urge to say this judge's sentence is barbaric.

You're wrong, Mr. Jaffe. Any website using DRM is "walled off" by design. Adding Encrypted Media Extensions to HTML5 doesn't change that, although it does allow its proponents to falsely claim that, as part of the standard, it opens up protected content to HTML5-compliant browsers instead of being tied to proprietary platforms like Flash and Silverlight.

Standard or not, encrypted HTML5 video will only run on platforms that support whatever proprietary DRM scheme the content producers have chosen. Instead of needing something like Flash or Silverlight, "DRM Flavor X" will be required for content to be decrypted. Since DRM schemes are only effective when users cannot alter them, there will never be such a thing as Open Source DRM. Open Source browsers that wish to be compatible with "DRM Flavor X" will therefore have to either incorporate proprietary code (in object form rather than source code) or rely on proprietary DRM hardware to handle decryption and display. Either way, it's "walled off" and proprietary.

"So that type of drawings and computer generated pictures are currently illegal in the USA."

Not necessarily. The key distinction appears to be whether or not the images are legally obscene according to the so-called Miller test. Obscenity has never enjoyed constitutional protection, so ultimately the PROTECT Act of 2003 changes nothing.

Besides, USA is not the whole world.

What about borderline content such as non-pornographic nudity, sexually explicit drawings of imaginary minors, and pornographic images of adults who look like teenagers? It's likely these will be branded as "child pornography", leading to images being suppressed that are legal in many jurisdictions including the United States.

Once service providers start censoring content based on third party reports of alleged child pornography, it becomes much easier to supress other content as well. Organizations such as RIAA and MPAA would love to be able to flag arbitrary content as infringing and have ISPs block such content automatically, bypassing even the need to file DMCA takedown notices. Think of how often YouTube videos are incorrectly flagged as examples copyright infringement and extend this to all ISPs who check against Google's database, and you can see the problem.

ISPs who participate in this system delegate the right to make judgment calls on material that isn't obviously illegal to the maintainers of a central database whose judgment may or may not be consistent with local law. Anything in the database is assumed to be illegal regardless of its actual legal status, and the ISPs just follow along instead of deciding individually whether or not the content is likely to survive a legal challenge. Once the system becomes widespread, ISPs may even feel it is necessary to follow it to avoid secondary liability for content posted by their users.

This is yet another example of a worrying trend, where content alleged to be illegal or infringing is removed without due process and often with little regard for the law and relevant jurisprudence. It's no way to run a network that for many has become a primary means of communication.

Internet users deserve better than to have their content blocked according to extralegal judgments with perhaps no bearing on local law, little or no chance of appeal, and no way to establish legal precedents protecting certain kinds of content.

Key disclosure law:

The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects witnesses from being forced to incriminate themselves, and there is currently no law regarding key disclosure in the United States. However, the federal case In re Boucher may be influential as case law. In this case, a man's laptop was inspected by customs agents and child pornography was discovered. The device was seized and powered-down, at which point disk encryption technology made the evidence unavailable. The judge argued that since the content had already been seen by the customs agents, Boucher's encryption password "adds little or nothing to the sum total of the Government's information about the existence and location of files that may contain incriminating information."[18]

In another case, a district court judge ordered a Colorado woman to decrypt her laptop so prosecutors can use the files against her in a criminal case: “I conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer,” Colorado U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ruled on January 23, 2012.[19]

In United States v. Doe, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled on 24 February 2012 that forcing the decryption of one's laptop violates the Fifth Amendment.[20][21]

The difference between the two rulings is in previous cases, the courts have held that when the government already knows of the existence of specific incriminating files, compelling a suspect to produce them does not violate the Fifth Amendment's rule against self-incrimination. On the other hand, if the government merely suspects that an encrypted hard drive contains some incriminating documents, but lacks independent evidence for the existence of specific documents, then the owner of the hard drive is entitled to invoke the Fifth Amendment. In the Colorado case, the police had intercepted a telephone conversation in which the defendant, Ramona Fricosu, acknowledged her ownership of the laptop and alluded to the existence of incriminating documents in the encrypted portions of the hard drive. The government successfully argued that this precluded her from claiming Fifth Amendment protection, since she had already acknowledged the existence of incriminating documents in the case. The Tenth Circuit let that decision stand, though it may consider the issue again later in the process.

In the Florida case, on the other hand, the government lacked any specific evidence about the contents of the encrypted hard drives. A forensic expert acknowledged it was theoretically possible that the drives, which were encrypted using TrueCrypt, could be completely empty. Hence, forcing the suspect to decrypt the drive would be forcing him to reveal whether any relevant documents exist, which would be inherently incriminating.

Microsoft is losing market share to tablets and smartphones, but these are shut tighter than the PC platform ever was. I'm not sure that's something to celebrate.

Because trojans can use legal API's to do work, and defense in depth means that there is actually depth to your defense.

This, of course, applies to both platforms. How, then, is running programs from outside the Google Play store is any less safe on Android than running programs from outside the App Store would be if iOS permitted it.

The platform is safe. No ifs, ands, buts or blaming the users for their stupidity.

If the platform is so safe, why does Apple have to review and sign every app before it's allowed to run? There's no need to do that if your platform is free of exploits.

Except they said they discontinued it because of user confusion rather than abuse. Besides, what's stopping users from distributing "50GB of [their] best porn" as part of a GIT branch?

How were people abusing Github downloads? How are people abusing Google Code? What makes Google think people won't similarly abuse Google Drive?

Just use a mirror (and turn the flash off) :)

And for God's sake put on some clothes!

In other words, when groups competed for resources, the ones with a larger or more effective central governments always won out. Always.

That's because a central government is also a monopoly on resources, labor, and defense. Just as it's difficult for smaller companies to compete against established monopolies, so it is difficult for smaller, locally managed groups of people to compete against those who would claim the whole world as their kingdom if they had the armies to maintain it.

Furthermore, the largest and most successful nations/organizations in history were marked by highly effective, pervasive and very large central governments.

As were some of history's greatest failures. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

You're saying we should stick to non-renewable sources of energy for the sake of the poor? Did UNICEF just merge with the CATO Institute?

So, if only the government were involved, we wouldn't have to worry, but because the government is involved, we have to worry?

Government is not involved in enforcement actions under the copyright alert system, but it was very much involved in its establishment. Sorry if I misspoke.