Maybe there are good reasons to give people control over intellectual property, but I don't get why anyone would think that's obvious or some inherent right or entitlement. Why should making something prevent other people from making the same thing with their own resources? When you introduce an idea into popular culture you are planting a seed on someone else's soil. Then, like Monsanto, you are saying "you aren't allowed to use this plant without my permission, or in ways I don't approve of". It clearly doesn't have the same strength as physical property, and I can't take it as obviously something a creator is entitled to.

no one wants to control people who create things; nobody is trying to force the people who create things to do anything. they just want to remove the control over people who reproduce what other people have created.

The simplicity is appealing, but you're just wrong. Some people will buy if they can't pirate. Some people will buy if pirating is difficult. Some people will buy if buying is easy. There are all kinds of people out there.

Who cares if you knew it all along. Any time there's news everyone and their mother comes out of the woodwork to say they already knew and how can anyone be surprised yada yada yada. Hearing it corroborated in this way has an actual impact, unlike slashdotters telling us they told us so.

The proper channels do not work. There is no "right" way to be a whistleblower. The systems are in place to define any possible effective attempt to whistleblow something this big as "wrong".

Maybe it's just that it's late, but I have no idea what that summary was trying to say.

You don't get a lot for free in life, but at least you get your ass.

Hope we get these with our porn filters in the UK

dur, why does finances and/or law prescribe an archaic method of multiple copies?

How does that bode for cosmic rays?

Even warm fusion has fun poked at it for being constantly "fifty years away".

I wonder if you could prepare yourself for Alzheimers by writing and learning songs about all your important memories

But your mouse remains safe, as predicted.

Is it really that unusual to be able to remember the details of something without remembering the details of where you learnt it?

I don't always attempt to identify an author, but when I do, I find the right author 80% of the time.