The U.S. government cannot prevent you from sharing particular content online, but the site that you use for hosting the content may.

... because that company is in danger of being sued for copyright infringement, which is a cause of action created by Federal statute and enforced by Federal courts (whose officers are paid with Federal tax dollars). So, the federal government is enforcing a censorship law. I don't see how you've argued around that basic fact.

I agree with you that Youtube is under no obligation to accept videos that infringe copyright, or any videos at all for that matter. But that doesn't mean that federal copyright law isn't acting here to censor Constitutionally protected speech.

The problem is that AP doesn't want to stop Google from indexing them, they just want to be paid more.

Exactly. Like I said in the AP story two days ago:

It's even more ridiculous and pathological than that: the AP is simultaneously whining about how aggregators link to their articles and also about how search engines DON'T link to their articles. This is typical schizophrenia from an industry that is in hysterical denial because the world has changed and their business model no longer works. They can't even articulate what they want; they just want to go back to the way things used to be, when Mommy used to play with them and feed them all day. Embarrassingly infantile.

A friend of mine tells stories about her little brother, who used to hate taking a bath as a little kid, alternating between "I'm freezing!" and "It's burning my skin off!" every few seconds as excuses to try to get out of the tub.

It's even more ridiculous and pathological than that: the AP is simultaneously whining about how aggregators link to their articles and also about how search engines DON'T link to their articles. This is typical schizophrenia from an industry that is in hysterical denial because the world has changed and their business model no longer works. They can't even articulate what they want; they just want to go back to the way things used to be, when Mommy used to play with them and feed them all day. Embarrassingly infantile.

That being said, it may well be the case that "social applications" -- email, instant messaging, and so on -- expanded the PC market significantly. I suppose the only absurdity, then, is to equate Facebook with "social applications" (which had their biggest effect about ten years before Facebook showed up).

Social applications made everybody from grandmas to 14-year-old girls want computers â" in a three-word-nutshell, Facebook killed TV.

I'll take any odds that the saturation of the PC market graphed against the rise of Facebook (in, what, 2004?) shows absolutely no support for this absurd statement. I strongly suspect that PC sales more or less level off before Facebook even gains any real traction; to support this statement (that Facebook "made everybody... want computers"), you'd need to show exactly the opposite. Seriously, this is just a silly claim.

If we refuse to break our windows, then the terrorists have won.

Used cars are sold all the time. It has no bearing on new car sales. If those people could afford a new car, they would buy one.

I guess you think that those auto-plant workers should just starve to death, huh? If you buy a used car, you're taking bread out of the mouths of the children of every assembly-line worker in Detroit.

Remember: RESALE = THEFT.

"Legal principles" are not synonymous with laws. No new laws were created in either of the cases you mentioned... Both decisions are firmly based in the pre-existing civil laws.

"Legal principles" are indeed "synonymous with laws". Really. I promise. This is how the common law works. Not every law springs from a statute. This is particularly true of civil law (as opposed to criminal law -- note that "civil law" is something that exists in common law jurisdictions as well as civil law jurisdictions -- you seem to be confused about the distinction between the civil vs. criminal and civil vs. common), but also occasionally of criminal law as well. Contempt of court, for instance, is a common-law criminal offense. Most of our torts have been enforced for centuries without being codified by statutes. Indeed, most of the statutes and codes codifying things like commercial law are distillations of common law rules that have been enforced for a long, long time by the courts. You have the historical tradition exactly backwards.

neither of those facts can be rationally interpreted as indicating that a court has any true say in what a law "ought" to be

Statutes need to be interpreted with reference to the constitutional scheme under which they exist. This means that one needs to impose particualr constructions on the statute to make it accord with the framework in place: i.e., one needs to determine what it "ought" to mean.

Common law courts can also invent new legal principles out of whole cloth. Most of our law was originally formulated this way. It continues to happen all the time: in the area of copyright law in the US, for instance, both the Sony and Grokster cases imported new concepts ("staple article of commerce" and "inducing infringement") into the law of copyright which had not existed before, and that were not found in any statute.

Like I said: if you don't understand the operation of the common law, you should read a book about it.

Using a constitutional law to overrule an illegal state law (as in Loving v. Virginia) is different to declaring copyright illegal.

"Illegal" doesn't really mean anything other than, vaguely, "contrary to law". Saying that an unconstitutional law is "illegal" makes as much sense as any other use of the word. And striking down an unconstitutional federal law (like the Copyright Act) isn't particularly different from striking down an unconstitutional state law (like Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute).

Also: what happened in Loving, IIRC, was that their marriage was not recognized in Virginia after they moved there, and they sued the state (hence "Loving [plaintiff] v. Virginia [defendant]") for whatever benefits they were being deprived of. It was not a case of criminal prosecution with the defendant pleading that the law under which he was prosecuted was unconstitutional. Although that happens too.

The court is just there to interpret laws, and activist rulings undermine democracy.

You should read a book that explains the system of common law that governs jurisdictions like the UK, US, Canada, etc. Then you would be less uninformed about how said system works, and how the common law system is perfectly compatible with democracy; indeed, how early conceptions of democracy (on the US constitutional model) embraced the common law system as a check on the excesses of the executive and legislature. You seem to think that living in a civil law jurisdiction would provide you with a more perfect democracy; if that's true, I encourage you to move to France or Quebec and keep us posted on the dramatic enhancement of your democratic experience.

So maybe soon we'll have "100% Open Source" (as supported by Mr Stallman) vs the new "Open Source" with proprietary lock-ware in it.

As you point out, this was exactly Stallman's main beef with "open source": once you start talking about "openness" instead of "freedom", you open yourself up to all kinds of redefinitions and goalpost-moving. If I hold the standard at one that preserves "freedom", then all the Microsoft-style "open code" nonsense is quickly revealed as the trap that it is.

It would help if they would be more responsive when companies are *trying* to do the right thing.

So... the FSF wouldn't give your privately owned company free legal advice? I don't think that's something to get huffy about, AC. Most people pay their lawyers when they want a license or contract interpreted; why should you guys get that service for nothing?

This seems to be a common misunderstanding among companies making their first baby-steps toward using FOSS: they somehow think that FOSS developers and advocates owe them some kind of duty of free labor for being so kind and enlightened as to, you know, actually comply with their legal obligations.

The patent could be useful to you and other users of the FOSS protocol/software as a defensive patent, i.e. you could use it to countersue anyone (e.g. a troll) going after you or any other user of the software. Whether it's worth $10k to your company for this extra protection for you and the community of users is something you should talk to a lawyer, and your company/community's business strategists, about.

"Attention, citizen! I am Robocop(rophage). Step away from the doggie doo and nobody gets eaten."

"Thank you for your copro-peration."

(Sorry, I just can't stop.)

What if this "biomass" were food scraps, animal feces, or some other waste product?

Paging John Waters... we have just the robot to star in your next movie.

Really, the thought of a poop-eating robot roaming the streets is just... what's that you say? They already have these deployed in Japan?