Can you please cite some examples of this harm? Thank you in advance.

That's absolute poppycock. I can't fathom how you were modded up to +5. According to your logic, in the US, if the Democrats are in power, no one is allowed to criticize Republicans and vice versa because they're not the governing party. Political debate, which is at the heart of free speech, would become impossible.

Or for that matter, the sound of a phone ringing. I mean literally ringing, with a real metal bell inside. Sure you can get that as a ringtone, and I've used it as one for a while, but a real authentic ringing phone seems to be a thing of the past.

But if the files are being shared on Bittorrent, they're being made available to every country in the world, and these could all be regarded as separate instances of infringement.

Well, if the files are shared on Bittorrent, then they are being made available to Americans, so most definitely yes! Certainly if the rights holder is American which most are.

No, the Canadian ISP is required to give the subscriber information to the rights holder, who may be American. With that information, the rights holder could then sue in a U.S. court.

While Canadian law does indeed cap infringement awards at $5000, there's no reason the rights holders can't sue in U.S. courts where there is no such limit. Once the ISP reveals the identity, which they are required to do under Canadian law, nothing limits what the rights holder can do with that information. Canadian courts may not comply with judgements of U.S. courts, but if the defendant has any assets in the U.S. or travels there, they could be at risk.

Interesting statement since my bank (which was then Wachovia and is now Wells Fargo) did.

I opened the account long before Netflix existed, so it wasn't for that purpose. Since I still don't have Netflix, I can't offer an A/B comparison of the difficulty levels.

That's a very good point. Floppy disks had write protect tabs, and the 3.5" ones had a little write protect slider switch. I don't know why thumb drive manufacturers don't include a similar feature on their drives. I think there'd be a real market for such a thing.

I live in Canada (near the border), I have P.O. Box on the U.S. side and I have a bank account in a U.S. bank. I had no trouble opening it, and I use it to pay for many purchases I make from the U.S. (I can often get much better travel deals through sites like Priceline when I use a credit card with a U.S. billing address.)

So, I don't know what difficulty you're alluding to.

It sounds like it is implicit in this law that ISPs are now required to keep records of IP address assignments in the event they are later given a notice of suspected copyright infringement so they can pass it along to their customers. Is this true, or does the law only apply to ISPs that already have this information? I understand most ISPs probably already to keep this information, but does this new law mean that they now have to? And what constitutes an ISP? If I use the free WiFi at Starbucks, do they need to keep my personal info in case I'm later accused of infringing copyright? What about the public library if I have to use my userid to log in? What about universities?

Seriously? Innocent people should be required to have technology on their property which ensures they are complying with the law? Domestic violence is a huge problem in our country, so why not mandate all homes come equipped with video cameras to make sure people aren't beating their wives and/or children? Drugs are a problem in our country, so why not mandatory drug testing for all citizens? While we're at it, lets mandate devices in all our computers to make sure we're not violating copyright or child pornography laws?

I was suspicious of the U.S. allegations that the North Korean government was behind it when the North Koreans denied it was them. If you're going to hack somebody to make a political statement, it makes no sense to later deny that you were involved. Someone might be trying to make it look like North Korea, but I seriously doubt they were directly involved in this.

The problem isn't with copyright. The problem is with additional laws that restrict the development, trade, or perhaps even possession of technology or software which may have the ability to circumvent technical schemes designed to protect copyright. Such restrictions often have unintended (or intended, but bad) consequences.