• Case 1: Fewer than, say, 5% of all queries hit the blacklist filter and are blocked.
  This of course means that the blacklist will only impede a small, acceptable percentage of people and therefore should be implemented.
• Case 2: Many more than 5% of all queries hit the blacklist filter and are blocked.
  This of course means that there is a raging epidemic of accessing undesirable material is going on and the blacklist is therefore urgently required.

Why does no one ever demand scientific accountability? Let the government state its case, make testable claims and see if reality bears them out - and and scrap it if it does not even work out on paper!

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
- H. L. Mencken

I think that pretty much covers it.

The Commission, on the other hand, has warned against alarmist scenarios. It emphasises that ACTA is about tackling large scale criminal activity, not about limiting civil or consumer rights.

I really, really hate stuff like this. Why doesn't anyone call the industry on this? Whenever I hear "but it won't be used against small-scale infringers" I want to shout at them THEN FUCKING PUT IT IN THERE! Put it in writing, in the treaty / law / whatever, that it can't be used if fewer than 200 files are shared. Spell it out that you won't prosecute anyone who possesses less than a quarter of his whole movie collection as illegal downloads.

Two reasons why we should not accept wishy-washy talk like this:

• This will have the force of a law, and I want to be able to interpret laws myself, so I know if / when I'm breaking them.
• The other one is to show the disconnect between what the media industry thinks is acceptable, and what the average citizen thinks is acceptable; I'd bet if forced to define their limits honestly the media conglomerates would have to explain their definitions as "non-commercial infringer: person with one or two illegally acquired mp3-files, either through downloads or by format conversion from a cd; large-scale commercial infringer: everything beyond that, including redistributing even a fraction of a file when downloading from a P2P service".

Why can people like that get away with blatant lies like that time and time again?