A computer program is a literary work; not a song, audiovisual work, or similar. You don't "perform" a computer program, and executing it does not create a copy. If the concept as applied to literary works wasn't clear enough, the statute explicitly singles out computer programs as not infringing during the process of executing them.

They are terms for redistribution as required to legally make a copy under copyright law. It is not an EULA or other form of contract that must be agreed to prior to receiving a copy.

The GPL does this effectively: "You must include the source code (and other conditions) or you can't distribute a copy at all." This is the only restriction it can legally make, however. It can't restrict how you use the software in private when you don't make copies (including how you or others access it over the network).

But the source is free to the public, there's no terms and conditions I have to agree to. Indeed, it would no longer be Free Software, or at least it wouldn't be Open Source Software according to the Open Source Definition.

Please name the legal requirement that I accept the AGPL in order to use the software. In the US, there is:

* Copyright law
* Patent law

Patents aren't the issue here, and copyright law is not being invoked by merely making the software available on the network (and in fact, this use is explicitly defined as non-infringing).

This is incorrect. Songs are described differently than literary works in the copyright statute, software programs being literary works.

A performance of a song, as I listed, requires a license (and copyright law specifically singles out songs). However, the output of a software program is not copyrightable, and therefore no license is necessary.

Copyright law makes no distinction between using over the network and on your local monitor, and such usage is explicitly defined in US statute as non-infringing. How would you like it, or the FSF for that matter, if copyright law could be used to dictate that you sitting at your computer could be a copyright infringer by merely opening up the wrong application sitting at your desk? I suspect not very much.

Once I have a copy, you can't control what I do with that copy until I want to make another copy. This is defined by copyright law, and includes (among other things):

* Performing a stage play or audiovisual work
* A public performance of a song
* Remixing or arranging a song (a compulsory license can be acquired if the song is commercially released)
* Sending a copy of a novel, software program, or other literary work to another person

What's not on this list: Merely using a software program over the network, as no copy is being made. I don't need to accept the AGPL to legally download an AGPL'd program, put it on my server, and let the general public use it.

Except copyright law defines what distribution is, not the license. And the output of a software program is not copyrightable (by itself).

The AGPL may as well offer everyone a pony; if it's not being distributed (as defined by copyright law), the AGPL doesn't apply. Period.

Not all problems, it just causes fewer problems than any alternative.

If you're not distributing the software then the AGPL isn't going to help you.

Licenses only grant permission to distribute software; they're irrelevant if you're not distributing the software to begin with.

1787 wasn't the start of slavery nor could it have been the end.

No, it's called individual rights when you think that everyone should have equal rights regardless of sex, race, physical traits, or anything besides the mere fact you're human.

It's called feminism when you believe women should have the same rights as men, and not necessarily the other way around - an obsolete position at best, an appalling contradiction at worst.

When I buy a dedicated pipe at a data center, and they bill per Mbps, what do you think is happening? They're limiting the connection speed (i.e. dropping packets above a certain rate, which is how the Internet signals congestion).

Why does the list have to be hardcoded? Why not pull the records from DNSSEC... there's a whole specification for this, RFC6698

Again, Net Neutrality is a routing rule. Your router is either neutral or it isn't (and when it isn't, maybe in various degrees). It has nothing to do with the law per se. If I build my own router in my intranet that routes to i.e. give priority to my computer, then all other nodes, my router is no longer neutral; but that does not mean that it is "fraudulent" (I own the thing! It's obviously impossible to defraud myself).

Now when I sign up with my ISP, I expect that, absent other agreements, they won't care about where my packets are address to or from, just if I'm exceeding their bandwidth limit I agreed to - the only terms they mention that would result in packet loss.

If they end up dropping packets on some other mean, I'd call that fraud. But fraud is not for the FCC to enforce, and it has little to do with one ideology vs. another.

I really wasn't trying to get into Marxism, but as an armchair university professor, I would guess that a computer network is necessarily built of capital (i.e. nodes of routers and computers), and the alternative to prevent suppression of the working class would be collective ownership of the routers; with some arbitrary "equitable" and/or "fair" routing scheme, which I guess would look like Net Neutrality (and it is, so far as I can tell, a good routing principle).

Aside, Adam Smith also casually used Labor Theory of Value (lacking a better alternative to explain the relationship of costs to prices), the settlement on Marginal Theory of Value didn't come about until Carl Menger.

There's examples of rent-seeking and legal barriers to entry too numerous to list, but municipal networks would be an example of the latter. If I wanted to install a high-capacity line to houses, I'd have to compete with the taxpayer-funded installed lines - an artificial increase in costs (cost being the value of the next-best alternative).