Yeah, I understand that the :60 exists in the real world. But from a computing standpoint, a small approximation seems to make things much easier.

Thanks - the kernel log on one of my machines seems to indicate that the :59 was repeated. That's what I would hope for the sake of software compatibility.

If there are other ways for artists to make a decent living in a world where everything is copied freely, then you're completely right.

I would go for that, and I love the idea. The governments just don't agree.

Yes, you can write all the books you want, you just can't actually sell drugs or kill people. That's the difference between censorship and law enforcement.

There's no entitlement to expect people to pay for your work rather than stealing it?

Why would a Unix application ever see the :60? Any time someone checks the clock, the time should be derived from Unix time (seconds since the epoch) which doesn't account for leap seconds. So to an application it should appear as a duplicate :00 or :59.

In the sense that the American government is run by Americans, sure. But the definition of government is that some people are in power and some aren't.

I'm saying it's okay for them to enforce laws. In this case, they're not doing anything to the Internet. They're making it easier for copyright holders to serve complaints. And by serving the complaint to your ISP instead of suing you, they're saving you money and court time.

It's a trade-off. People want to copy music, so it's a way for the artists to be compensated too. Yes, some people don't get any benefit for the tax, but nor do I get the benefit of every tax dollar that's spent here in the US.

Yeah, they could figure something out about the hard drive space. Just put a tiny tax on all drives if you want to, otherwise enforcement is a problem. But the real problem is copying. As I recall, the deal is that you can make a copy of something for your own use, but you can't distribute copies. In my opinion, P2P should count as distributing copies, because the effect is the same. But yes, I know there's a counter-argument.

If we were talking about fighting censorship, that would be a good point. But we're talking about law enforcement. Whether it's pirating or drug dealing, you can't let them carry out their business and bust them for it too. It's either legal or it's not.

We're not talking about censorship; we're talking about law enforcement. In the US and probably a few other countries, there's a difference between the two.

The blank media tax is a brilliant idea in my opinion. But yes, it seems to have been written for physical media and doesn't extend very well to the Internet.

Letting other people surf through my IP? Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.