I'm more afraid of the Christians enacting shit like this.

Should have mentioned that they make their money off of inventing problems after the contract is signed.

"Lowest bidder"

How many innocent bystanders will they take out as well?

but to study ways to build a sentient machine whose cognitive processes share in our human values

Or rather, what we like to think of our values as being. If it shared our actual values, we'd all be doomed.

Don't worry. The copyright will never expire anyway. They'll continue to extend it any time Steamboat Willy gets close to falling into public domain.

Yes. Lets follow the vague wording of people who have been dead for 200 years.

Rights are not granted by a creator, regardless of what the Founding Fathers felt that they needed to pay lip service to. They are granted by society. Rights are an entirely social construct, just like good, evil, and anything else having to do with morality.

I don't think that counts as being "created by the hand of man". It's the same DNA that evolved over millions of years. Humans just took it and made another copy in a lab.

Why not? Whether something has rights or not should be contingent on its own characteristics, not its origins.

If it works just like a human brain, at what point should it be considered to have the same rights as a human?

Beige Goo?

Yeah. That'll be a few versions down the road.

It's not self-importance. It's the exact opposite. We might know more and understand the issue better, but I seriously doubt that there are enough of us, or that we are close enough to the public eye, to make a difference.

Tech-savvy people will use those browsers and sites. The vast majority of people on the internet have no idea that this issue even exists or why it's important.

needs to actually be used sometime in the near future

How near?