Actually, shocking as it may seem, virtually all U.S. Federal Judges (and indeed, the vast majority of U.S. judges generally), were once lawyers, "fighting on one side of a case."

I know Slashdot will scream bloody murder because this touches on something near and dear to their hearts (file-sharing, copyright, etc.), but if we're going to start barring judges from hearing cases based on former career choices, we're going to run out of judges pretty quickly. Lots of judges who hear criminal cases in the U.S. were once prosecutors or defense lawyers. Should they be excluded because of potential bias? Should a judge who once made a career as a plaintiff's attorney in medical malpractice suits be barred from hearing cases in that arena? We always have to give judges some measure of trust to be able to put aside their own ideologies; they're human beings after all. Even the summary notes Howell isn't the only judge to believe as she does; I rather doubt all the other judges who've ruled similarly could have been RIAA cronies. We can say it's bad to have a judge hearing a case in an area where she's previously practiced; is it better to have a judge with no practical experience in that area of law, and who knows nothing about it?

Perhaps that's because, unless you are approximately 200 years old, you haven't.

Have you or anyone you know ever been forced into a one-sided labor contract for a term of years?
Have you or anyone you know ever actually been forced into servitude and treated as the property of another person?
Have you or anyone you know ever been denied the right to vote based on your sex?
Have you or anyone you know ever been forced by law to undergo surgical sterilization based on a mental or physical handicap, ethnicity, or perceived antisocial tendencies?
Have you or anyone you know ever been forbidden by law to marry because your intended was of another race?
Have you or anyone you know ever been forced to relocate your entire family to a camp based on your ethnicity?

Every generation has its problems. America has in the past been guilty of practices far more dehumanizing than anything that's going on presently. While you may feel the urgency of your political views (and certainly you are entitled to), I think that in historical terms, the United States today are at a high water-mark in terms of both personal liberty and personal dignity. As to the "suppression of First Amendment freedoms," I always have a hard time viewing such claims, when expressed over the internet, as anything other than hyperbole. Really, just by dint of having access to the internet, we have more freedom to speak, and more power to reach listeners, than any other generation in human history. Use the First Amendment freedoms you enjoy, go and read some history, and then come back and complain about how bad things are these days. Is there room for progress? Of course--there always is. Personally though, looking back over the past several hundred years, I think Americans have never had it so good.

I'm sorry, I have a hard time believing this.

The study deals with "pricing problems" in emerging global economies. If the contention is that in such economies, digital media are priced out of the market, well and good. Reduce your prices, you will probably see an uptick in sales.

But isn't it a common Slashdot rejoinder, whenever someone claims to have "lost a sale to piracy," that a pirate is someone who would not have purchased your media anyway? You can't have it both ways. I live in the U.S., which I don't think would be considered an "emerging economy" for the purposes of the study. If prices here are at least more proportional to the perceived value of the product than in developing countries, why do Americans still pirate media?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the overwhelming majority of people who pirate media do so because their notion of a "pricing problem" is that the product has a price on it, period. Didn't we have a story here a while back indicating that most people who pirate in the U.S. do so because it's a way to get free stuff? Come on--technology provides people with a means to obtain what they want (albeit unlawfully), at no cost to themselves, with no apparent injury to any visible person, and virtually zero likelihood of getting caught. Do we really believe a significant number of the people who avail themselves of that opportunity do so because their acceptable price point is somewhere above nothing?

We can claim that reducing prices may reduce piracy (although, rather like the lost sales claims made by major rights-holders, such claims are difficult to back up with hard data). But pretending that cutting prices will make piracy vanish (or even meaningfully reduce it) is laughable.

So if I'm understanding correctly, your argument runs to this effect (and if I'm misinterpreting, please let me know): the MPAA has a tremendous amount of control over whether a film will be commercially viable (i.e., R and NC-17 ratings significantly reduce the potential profitability of a film in the eyes of a distributor). This I readily concede. I'm less certain that this amounts to censorship--merely providing a marketing incentive to remove or alter content isn't the same as actively suppressing it. All content distributors engage in this to some degree--an author seeking to publish a book, unless she's self-publishing, will need to submit her work to editorial decisions. She can scream all she wants about censorship--the publisher isn't required to publish her book under any circumstance.

And so it goes with film. Distributor says, OK, we'll make your film, but these cuts need to be made to get it to an R/PG-13 rating. You can say no. You may not get the funding you want. That's fine. Free speech rights go to individuals (or groups of individuals); films don't have an independent right to be made. Free speech REALLY doesn't mean that you have a right to have someone else bankroll what you want to say.

Which regulatory bodies are you referring to, specifically? The FCC? They don't regulate movies. The MPAA? They're a private outfit. They don't censor anything; they just attach a letter to most major studio releases so people can decide if they want to watch it or not. (Whether the letters themselves make sense is a separate question.) That movies like Watchmen are having a hard time getting financed these days has nothing to do with regulation--it has to do with Watchmen being an expensive film that did rather poorly at the box office.

As an aside, freedom of expression in the United States is at a higher point now than ever. There are more ways of expressing oneself, to a wider audience, and with less restriction, than at any other time in human history. Griping about some sort of repressive system, in 21st century America, doesn't make much sense.

I don't flatly disagree with any of your observations. My point is simply that "doing a lot of good," "making a difference," or even the laudable goal of holding governments to account for their actions are not a basis for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize.

I don't think even Wikileaks would suggest that their mission directly entails the reduction of standing armies, the promotion of peace congresses, or fostering fraternity between nations. Their claimed purposes have more to do, again, with transparency, free speech, and public accountability. Those are all good things, but they are not the principles on which Nobel originally wanted the prize awarded.

The fact that there is no Nobel Prize awarded for good work in advancing free speech principles does not mean the criteria for awarding an existing prize should be distorted just so we can give a shout out to some entity whose political aims we like or agree with. Unfortunately, this is more or less what the Peace Prize has become--an amorphous love letter from the Nobel Committee to whoever happens to be doing what they like at the moment.

The Nobel Peace Prize, according to Alfred Nobel's will, should be awarded to the person (or organization) who "...shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

Whatever you might think about WikiLeaks' contributions to free speech politics, government transparency, etc., it's hard to see how it's filled any of those criteria. The release of diplomatic cables arguably did a lot to damage fraternity between nations.

Of course, as others have observed, it seems to have been some time since the letter of Nobel's will has meant anything to the Peace Prize committee.

OK, here we need to point out that the phenomenon to which you refer isn't the result of "years of anti-Constitutional assholes"--it's actually part of the Constitution itself. Look at Article III, specifically the Case or Controversy Clause, and the related doctrine of standing to bring suit. The requirement that someone be injured in order to bring suit is actually an important check on the power of the courts. A judicial branch with unfettered power to abuse isn't a better situation for the citizenry than an unfettered, all-powerful executive.

I'm not sure if it's even a question of spine. If someone walked up to you on the street and said: "Here, have some of my cash!" handed you $10,000, then walked away, would you work really hard to find that person and return it?

Sitting executives who have been granted powers (by legitimate democratic process) aren't going to relinquish those powers, for reasons that have already been outlined at length in other comments. If would indeed be quite a fight to get the PATRIOT Act rolled back, and the end result would be a loss of both executive power and political capital for the Obama administration.

Bit off-topic, but it's for more or less the same reason that all the right-wing hoopla about repealing the health care bill will never get anywhere. Even assuming for argument's sake that a majority of the American people strongly opposed the bill, once health benefits start coming in, most of the ire will die down. It's a political non-starter in any arena to fight a hard battle in order to relinquish something that seems to serve your immediate interests (even if, in principle, you oppose it).

I think this is actually a fascinating idea. To play devil's advocate (or corporate counsel for content providers, if you prefer), I see one significant problem: your estimate of $12 for an "unlimited private viewing license."

Content providers would not like this. Right now, LucasFilm can release the Star Wars films over and over again, knowing they have a built-in purchasing base of people willing to pay $140 for the same product. If forced into a position of being compensated only once per consumer for the original IP, the cost of the license would immediately skyrocket past the means of all but the wealthiest consumers.

Amazon can also not jail me for attempting to publish ideas with which it disagrees. States have been known do that. Personally, I prefer Amazon's brand of "censorship."

You're not upsetting "the powers that be"--in this case, it's a retail outlet that's been "upset," and declined to carry certain titles. What's your alternative--that the retailer be required to carry those titles? Will that foster more freedom? Please consider: if you're looking to publish a text, regardless of its subject matter, you now have more ways to do that than at any other time in the history of the human race. Whining about freedom being abridged when Amazon drops a title seems ludicrous to me when the author can hop online and publish it near-instantaneously on any one of the dozens of internet-based distribution channels that are open to anyone with access to a computer.

I think this assumption says a lot more about your biases than it does about the OP's.

I'm not even sure what "valid" means, the way you're using it here.

Full disclosure: I don't like Apple. For lots of reasons. I dislike their corporate image, their advertising, their elitism, their general "cooler-than-thou" aesthetic. I'm not fond of Steve Jobs, his attitude towards consumers, or his sneering responses to even the gentlest, most reasonable criticism of the way he does business.

But doggone it, I have a hard time understanding a lot of the rage directed toward's Apples App Store, apparently based on nothing other the fact that Apple rightly thinks the app store indeed belongs to Apple. (I am not a software developer, so that may have something to do with it.)

From a strictly consumer perspective, then, I have no problem with Apple running their distribution channels however they want. They're free to reject any app they want, for any reason or for no reason at all. And I'm free to decide not to purchase their trinkets.

I'm no fan of Mr. Moore, but even the summary quotes him as saying: "I have put up $20,000 of my own money to help bail Mr. Assange out of jail" (emphasis mine). I don't see where he claims he single-handedly liberated Assange. Blame the headline on the Slashdot editors.

What are you basing that on?

Is there a candidate for whom this is not true?