Are you sure about that? Here's New York State's law:

S 130.05 Sex offenses; lack of consent.
[snip]
2. Lack of consent results from:
(c) Where the offense charged is sexual abuse or forcible touching, any circumstances, in addition to forcible compulsion or incapacity to consent, in which the victim does not expressly or impliedly acquiesce in the actor's conduct; or

S 130.55 Sexual abuse in the third degree.
A person is guilty of sexual abuse in the third degree when he or she subjects another person to sexual contact without the latter`s consent;

Seriously? Nobody is holding a gun to your head and the EU member states are free to leave any time they wish.

Really? All of Europe you say? Even Great Britain? Finland?

Are you an American? If you are I wish you'd STFU; you're making the rest of us look bad. WW2 was a team effort. Could the Allies have beaten the Germans without the Russians? Possibly; we did in WW1 after the Russians quit. The butcher's bill would have been a lot higher though. The west (particularly the United States and Canada) got off pretty easy. As far as "Europe would have been under the Soviets", that's debatable. The example of Finland suggests there are limits to how far Stalin was willing to go to gain strategic depth. Germany certainly would have gotten a much rawer deal without American involvement, though ironically enough it was the United States that originally proposed turning Germany into a pastoral state after the conflict.

Yeah, well, the same problem is brewing in the United States and I haven't heard a single mainstream politician from either party come up with a proactive way of dealing with it. And guess what? There's no provision for a State to file bankruptcy like Detroit did. What happens when one of the 50 can't meet its obligations? Nobody knows but we're apt to find out in the coming decades....

That's because the EU is really an economic concern trying to masquerade as a country. It originally started as the European Coal and Steel Community. It has always been about economics. A handful of rich and powerful countries benefit from a common market and currency. Countries that would probably be better off outside of the Eurozone won't leave it because the rich and powerful therein benefit. Well monied interests calling the shots is hardly a uniquely American phenomenon.

Europe won't truly unite absent some sort of external and existential threat. It took such a threat to unify the United States back in the day and the American colonies had a shared culture, language, and no history of going to war with one another. Even at that there was a rather bloody Civil War and regional tensions that still simmer to this day...

The grandparent, in the stupid pissing contest EU vs. US thread. I really hate these threads; sure, we have quarrels, but we've also got a shared history, culture, and commitment to freedom. People would do well to remember that. They might also wish to remember that countries that share our values are most definitely in the minority on planet Earth; it's really fucking stupid to root for the EU to drag the US down or vice versa.

These idiots should get a bloody passport and go visit the "other side"; you'll find we're/they're not that much different from you.

Devil's advocate, how do you stop Google from operating in the EU? Google does have a physical presence in the EU, data-centers and all that, but strictly speaking they could run the whole operation from outside the EU. What do you do then? Block them at the network edge? Hardly seems compatible with free speech.

The troll mods may have had something to do with these gems:

Not only that, but the EUSSR doesn't seem to understand that an American corporation has nothing to do with European communists.

They should go and re-read their history books and remember how close all of Europe was to speaking either German or Russian.

My point is that the EU is a bunch of arrogant idiots who have no business telling an American company to split up.

"uber-feminist country?" Do you know a damn thing about Sweden or any of her neighbors? Have you ever visited or even bothered to peruse the internet on the subject of Swedish culture, customs, or her legal processes? It's awesome that you're willing to shit all over the criminal justice system of a country that I suspect you know nothing about, a country that Mr. Assange thought was just lovely until he happened to be accused of a crime by some of its citizens.

Frankly I don't know if he is a rapist or not. I do know that he's received due process of law in both Sweden and the United Kingdom and that there appears to be enough evidence to warrant a trial. I also know a thing or two about the judicial systems of the Nordic Countries; were I accused of a crime I didn't commit in one of them I would be willing to surrender myself and believe that I would receive as fair of a shake as I would get in my own country.

That's personal use; I do the same thing with my TiVo. What Aereo did would be analogous to you selling access to that dropbox'ed song to anyone willing to pay.

This is patently false. Prosecutors love to take down high profile political targets. Have you heard the name Rod Blagojevich? Tom DeLay? Duke Cummingham? Those are just from memory. Want a whole list? Here's a list of Federal politicians. Here's one for State and Local politicians.

I've read it; I've also read the US Federal Code and my own State's Penal Law. I don't commit three felonies a day. I don't commit one felony per day. That claim is massively overstated, just like everything else you've rambled about.

The most effective way the Feds have of getting the "innocent" is by jamming them up for obstruction. They ask you an incriminating (or just embarrassing) question that they already know the answer to, you lie to a sworn Federal Law Enforcement Officer, and presto, you're under Federal Indictment. This technique ensnared Martha Stewart, amongst others. Thankfully it's easily avoided by invoking your right to remain silent; alas, many people are too arrogant for that and think they'll get away with lying to the Feds. Repeat after me: "I do not wish to make a statement without consulting with counsel. Am I free to leave now?"

For better or worse Federal Law says you need the broadcaster's permission before you can retransmit their signal. In your examples you would be fine until the final paragraph where you strung a wire across the street. The apartment example is trickier, there are regulations governing shared antennas in such a scenario, meaning the landlord can mount a single antenna that each apartment has access to; you wouldn't need 50 antennas. Most shared antenna systems have fallen into disuse, because of CATV, but the regulations are still on the books.

To answer your last question, I think it became an Aereo rebroadcast when they sent the signal on a trip through the cloud. The single antenna argument was spurious but even if I bought it I would still think they were rebroadcasting. To contrast with TiVo, they charge their service, the guide data and so on; they've got nothing to do with getting the signal to you and what you do with it after that is arguably fair use.

No, it's the only TV I watch; I don't have the room in my budget for an $60/mo-$100/mo cable subscription and wouldn't pay for it even if I did. I can receive broadcast for free by putting up an antenna (this is what I did) or by paying a modest ($4.95/mo) fee to the local cable company. The cable company is required to get permission from the broadcasters to retransmit those signals under Federal Law and is further obligated under New York State law to make the broadcast tier available at cost. In this instance Aereo was taking the signals without agreement from the broadcasters and reselling them for profit. The word 'leech' comes to mind.

Which makes them a cable company, thus subject to the Federal Law that requires them to get permission before they can retransmit a third party broadcast. That law may be poorly thought out but it's a legitimate exercise of Congressional power so why is everybody pissed at SCOTUS for enforcing it? If you don't like the law write your Congressman and United States Senators....

They don't; so long as you're processing them in a manner that's consistent with your own personal use you can do anything you want with them under the Fair Use doctrine. Aereo wasn't doing this; they were piggybacking off those signals and selling them for a profit. I time shift and stream my OTA channels all the time, through a combination of one of these and one of these. Nobody cares. I'm pretty sure they would care if I started distributing my recordings to the masses for a monthly fee....

If you knew anything about our political system you'd know that US Senators have zero power to actually make good on those threats. They can't go after him judicially, that's the job of the Executive Branch (via the Justice Department) with checks and balances from the Judicial Branch. Nor can they go after him extra-judicially (*); intelligence agencies are also under the control of the Executive, with checks and balances from the Legislative Branch (that's the Senate). The Legislative can rein in the intelligence agencies if they so choose, via the oversight and funding process, but they can't issue them marching orders.

(*) They could actually go after him extra-judicially, in the same manner as any citizen could, i.e., walk up to him on the street and put a bullet in his head. I rather doubt any of them have the stomach for that, much less the time they'd get to spend behind bars for such an act....

The problem here is you're using logic and they're using emotion. He's a hero to them, David standing up to Goliath. It's the techie version of the rabid sports fan who refuses to believe his team's star player might just be capable of rape.

I've tried to explain numerous times in these stories that the judicial precedent in the United States almost certainly precludes charges from being brought against him. The United States has no Official Secrets Act; a normal citizen (i.e., a reporter) who comes into possession of classified material can do whatever the hell they want with it. Only those that have a duty to protect said information (e.g., people with security clearances) can be held accountable for the leaking thereof. So long as Assange simply received the information he is in the clear, just as the New York Times reporters who published the Pentagon Papers were in the clear. If Assange actively encouraged Manning to break the law he could have a problem but I've seen no evidence of that. The chat logs with Manning and Lamo left me with the impression that Manning came up with the idea without any outside influence.

In one of these stories I had the privilege of reading a rather lengthy summary of the Swedish legal system. The author of this post did no editorializing for or against Assange, they simply explained the process of how charges are brought and disposed of in Sweden. In any other context it would have been +5 informative but because it was in an Assange story it was -1 troll. Emotion drives these discussions and facts no longer matter.

They were taking OTA signals and retransmitting them across the internet for profit without paying the broadcaster a dime. You don't see a problem with this?