Well, actually, I'm not :-)

I'm not arguing that society benefits from waste, quite the opposite in fact.

I'm only arguing that current measures of wealth (GDP) actually count these things on the plus side. Commuting is known to increase GDP, as is the kind of war the US is engaged in, accidents and indeed broken windows.

I was arguing GDP is a broken measure of wealth, Some agree, but it's unclear if you do!

Me too, but sadly "good use" is not a factor in GDP calculations.

Correct, but all my examples do.

Just like war, commuting and other essentially completely worthless phenomena, waste of programmer time makes money exchange hands, and therefore increases GNP.

In this case: who would want to be the first to go out on a limb publically and say "I want to decrease the IT sector by 50%"?

Don't blame me, I didn't design that stupid measure.

No, as more than 5/6 of parliament surely would override your immunity in this case.

In the TPB case, the illegality of the site is itself under question, and I don't believe 5/6 of parliament would want to override the immunity.

The post says "The European Parliament wants to monitor your Internet searches". The declaration said "implement Directive 2006/24/EC [Data retention] and extend it
to search engines", i.e. force search engines to do data retention.

I don't see what's wrong with the post.

You're missing that his declaration about registering all internet searches got adopted by the parliament (it got the required 369 signatures, top declaration here). Thus, the declaration is now no longer just his, but the opinion of the European parliament.

Porn might, ironically, be a key driver in securing a free and open internet. I agree.

I have never bought anything from apple, and I hope I never will. My worry is not about myself, but about the majority of internet users and what these developments will do to the market.

I don't want a world where every startup needs to ask themselves "will ths be accepted by the Apple censors?"

There's a huge difference between relying on potentially illegal modchipping and having an open platform to begin with, that lets the user choose what to install and use.

I don't worry about myself, I worry about the majority of internet users in the future, and where this development will take the market.

Just imagine a world where web pages start to get replaced by apps, controlled by apple. That is not a nice picture, but it's where current developments are taking us.