If you hadn't mentioned this, I would have needed to.

And yes, this applies to dolls and building blocks too.

Jup. Take "Stealing". It's a crime. So that's why you get imprisoned 2 years and fined $183'000 for stealing a dollar. Because that $1 is probably the maximum amount of damage his DOS has inflicted.

Speaking of C. This would just about make all the software Microsoft or Oracle ever wrote a copyright infringement. Because they used C or a derivative thereof.

Oh yeah. I was system administrator of its ISP at that time.

Ah, yes, it sure helps to lobby for strong copyright protections so the poor won't be able to afford education. And while we're at it, also lobby for veto-rights on ideas, so if any poor sob has the same idea as you already patented can be sued into oblivion.

Hypocrisy at its best.

Actually, children up to the age of around 6 are unable to differentiate between reality and fiction. Those and politicians, apparently.

However, a lot of companies will be more comfortable if an agency from their own country will be spying on them, if only to keep US-companies from getting business intelligence.

From that point of view, the USA just got too greedy with their industrial espionage.

As long as XBMC is not able to read metadata in movie files, it's not ready for the living room anyway.

I quite simply won't buy if there's any DRM. Maybe I'll get a pirated version, maybe not, but in any case you've lost a customer.

The Florida government is sending a message: "We give a fuck about justice and due process"

I don't see where patents (what you probably meant) come into this debate. They don't have anything to do with "content creators".

And besides, in contrast to copyright, there is an extremely strong case that patents are ONLY destructive and have no benefit to society at all. So throwing in patents there makes me (and actually just about anyone who ever did a scientific investigation on the patent system) need to disagree.

Well, patents might behave like that. Or they might not. Because there is actually NO data on why patents should foster innovation. People (and even scientists) just think they do, but any investigations so far turned up no positive correlation. So the verdict from 1851 still stands:

Besides the caveats,
by which one man attempts wrongly to appropriate to himself the bounty
which the State gives for invention and which properly belongs to another,
the granting patents “inflames cupidity,” excites fraud, stimulates men
to run after schemes that may enable them to levy a tax on the public,
begets disputes and quarrels betwixt inventors, provokes endless lawsuits,
bestows rewards on the wrong persons, makes men ruin themselves for the
sake of getting the privileges of a patent. Patents are like lotteries,
in which there are a few prizes and a great many blanks. Comprehensive
patents are taken out by some parties, for the purpose of stopping
inventions, or appropriating the fruits of the inventions of others,
&c. Such Consequences, more resembling the smuggling and fraud caused
by an ill-advised tax than anything else, cause a strong suspicion. that
the principle of the law from which such consequences flow cannot be just.
(The Economist, 1851)

No, it bloody well didn't. But if the British only had social networking theory, they would have gotten this Paul Revere.

Well, it's not actually new. Democracies very much have the power to turn themselves into fascist states. Just take a look at Germany in 1932 or the USA today.

The DOJ, which illegally seizes domains from foreign holders? The DOJ which orchestrates illegal raids in New Zealand? The DOJ which is the bully of the Content Mafia?

It seems that these are not really the most technical-minded people, and you expect them to advise on Computer Security?

I'd rather follow the NSA Guidelines http://www.nsa.gov/ia/mitigation_guidance/security_configuration_guides/operating_systems.shtml