A 39-year-old UK man has been convicted of possessing illegal cartoon drawings of young girls exposing themselves in school uniforms and engaging in sex acts.

What if they write a sequel with a plot twist where the girl was actually a Taiwanese 25-year old police woman who was undercover in the school trying to find illegal song downloaders? Will he get out of gaol retroactively?

~Loyal

Something about wanting to influence politics by force or threat of force... something like that...

I was thinking more along the lines of torches and pitchforks.

Let's just hope you can filter for those legal sites.

The problem is less that people think they're anonymous. The problem is more that it's usually not they themselves that post "incriminating" content but their peers, and with the internet this means it's here to stay.

For reference, take Star Wars Kid and all the other involuntary internet celebrities.

While I agree that this would be the best way to deal with it, you seem to forget what most politicians also conveniently ignore: Their laws don't mean jack in Generistan. Slander isn't really a crime in some countries. At least countries that have real problems instead of first world problems are usually a wee bit, let's say, sluggish when it comes to your request to take down some article you don't like.

For a time I was busy trying to fight malware. Part of that fight included trying to take down command&control servers. You have NO idea how much trouble it can be to convince the executive in some far east countries to cooperate in something like shutting down such a C&C server. Even if said country does actually have laws against computer crime. Now take a wild guess how easy it may be to convince a provider in said country to do something against an article the content of which is possibly not even violating their local law (but is violating EU laws).

The EU can only policy the territory it controls. Some countries may think they own the world and can enforce their laws anywhere, I'm kinda glad the EU doesn't follow that train of thought. And I am DAMN glad they try to control it that way instead of the "Chinese firewall" approach!

A hosts file ain't no firewall...

Nobody said it wasn't way more efficient for the ad companies. The claim was that it was more efficient for the company advertising.

Not really. Most ads I get to see are for products that you can get either free or at least cheaper elsewhere.

It's through his enemies, not his friends, that man learned to build walls.

And it was ads that taught me how much fun it is to manipulate the content before displaying it.

As perverted as it may sound. yes. Your watching is being sold to the one that wants you to see the commercial.

Huh? What video ads?

The main reason ads are a viable business model is that most people don't mind them and those that do know how to get rid of them.

I think MS would complain if I called that vaporware, because even they didn't steep that low. This ain't even a "we kinda sorta think we might one day" announcement. It's some leaked (yeah, right) rumors about what some tech giant could be thinking about making.

How the fuck is this relevant in ANY way?

The problem is that the first, last and only point at which goods becomes valuable for the market is at their consumption. Only when something is consumed, i.e. eliminated from the economy, it generates the need for more. Someone has to go and make a new one that can be consumed again. No other economic action adds value to it.

When I produce something, that product (be it good or service, doesn't matter too much) does of course have a cost of its production. It has no value yet, though. Only when I can sell it, it gets a value and I get revenue. If this good is now in turn used to create more goods or services (i.e. if it's an investment rather than consumption), this only adds to the cost burden of whatever it generates, because whoever bought the good/service from me will have to reimburse that investment by means of selling himself. Either that or he will go bankrupt. But I hope we can agree that it's not really a viable business model on a global scale if we drive a good portion of the players in our economy into bankruptcy to keep some other businesses afloat.

Only when someone finally takes a product and removes it from the pool entirely by using it, the value of that good is returned to the market. Note that "use" doesn't necessarily mean "use up". I can consume a house by living in it. You can't live in a house I live in, so if you want a house too, you have to build one. If I use a car, it's mine and not yours, so another one has to be built to sell it to you.

Everything you say contributes to this basic problem, but the underlying issue is simply that goods have to be removed from the market to add value and to drive the economy. As long as they stay in circulation, producing more only devalues them.