"Lets tape all your private conversations with your lover, wife, friends, and acquaintances and post them on Wikileaks and see how they affect your relationships. Even if they taken in context, they will threaten your intimacy."

If I were purporting you represent you in these conversations with my lover, then I think you would have some right to know what I was saying. In democratic societies there are serious limits to what can be negotiated in private specifically because the population DOES have significant rights to know about them. That is how it should be. Too much has been negotiated in private. It is not right and it is time for that to stop.

Copyright infringement is already illegal, like murder.

This is more like thinking a ban on the sale of hunting knives will prevent murder. Actually it is a little more like telling the transit company that they can't have transit routes that pass by one store that sells knives, but doing nothing about people walking there or taking a taxi, or even the other stores.

Totally lame.

They already do. It's called inflation.

Your personal freedoms and right to anonymity end when you use equipment that is not your own (but your company) and you are doing it while on the clock for purposes other than those tasked to you while on the clock.

BS

By that token, even your home computer can be censured by your ISP, because hey, you're using their equipment to transmit the message. You also need to be careful what you say on the phone at work, or who you talk to. even during your breaks because it is company equipment you know. This excuse for expunging peoples freedoms is used frequently and is often even promoted by many of the people on this site who otherwise are against unreasonable limitations of freedom. I don't buy it, and no one else should either.

My question is would he have been fired if the school knew what he was doing, but he posted a less offensive message?

They should have enough by now to start their own country.

Don't they already own one? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/31/microsoft_screw_google/

Hell Yeah, Have you ever tried to buy a computer without windows on it? It is always cheaper to by a windows machine and wipe the OS then it is to buy a NoOS machine.

do I believe that a person should have a monopoly over the products of the labor of his/her own mind? Absolutely. Society has no right to something that someone has created. It is the property of the person/company that created it.

That is only true for as long as the person who created it keeps it to themselves. As soon as they allow it to become part of the culture, then they have to be willing to give up some control over it, and eventually all control. When it becomes part of the culture it is no longer their sole possession, they have conceded to share it with the world, and they must therefore also concede some of the ownership rights too.

Once works become part of our culture people will naturally use those works to reinterpret that same culture. Witness YouTube. People have to be free to create derived works and share them otherwise we have what I guess could be referred to as cultural tyranny.

No one relies on the Americans' "guns." Most of the rest of the world I'm sure would be a lot happier of the US buried their guns instead of using them to start wars.

You speak with sarcasm, but you are absolutely correct.

Society does have a need for music, and for more music (and other works to be produced) society NEEDs that music to enter the public domain at some point. The same holds true for pharmaceutical drugs as well. That is why copyright and patent protection are for limited times.

You make the common mistake of confusing real property rights with monopoly rights granted through copyright and patents. and the point you are trying to make illustrates where this analogy breaks down. I wish we user the term Intellectual Monopoly instead of property. It is more accurate and less likely to lead people to making these poor analogies.

Sorry but that IS what British citizens call it, because they are tried of hearing a bunch of dictatorial bastards say "no". That organization's job is to DENY care and reduce costs.

Any chance you may be confusing them with Americans HMOs? I've heard that's their job too.

-1 redundant

commodore, my man you already said this

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1352459&threshold=-1&commentsort=5&mode=nested&cid=29252481

Recyling your arguments so soon?

tsk tsk

Don't exaggerate. It's only around 15%... mostly people over 65. That's how "safety nets" work

Who's exaggerating?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States)#Eligibility In 2007, Medicare provided health care coverage for 43 million Americans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid#Budget In 2002, Medicaid enrollees numbered 39.9 million Americans

http://www.va.gov/NCPS/NEWS/NCPSBg/vha.html 7.9 million veterans enrolled as of October 2006 That is roughly 90 million of a US population of about 300 million or just under 30 percent. These are old numbers too. A lot of people lost jobs since then so I would fully expect the numbers to be well over 30%. Maybe not a majority, but you have to admit it is a significant minority.

Well that sure sounds like a big useless piece of rhetoric.

Freedom in America is an illusion. It's an illusion in the rest of the world too, but it is more pronounced in the states. The only people who have any sort of freedom in any country are the ones who are financially independant. All others lead indentured lives of one sort or another.

Since the US has a very poor social safety net the the need to work is all that much greater, and peoples freedom is then that much less. Most people are not free to pick and choose their health insurance. If you are employed then your employer picks it. If you are unemployed and can't affort $1000's of dollars a month then you have medicaid (if your lucky, and can even afford that) otherwise you have none. There are no choices here. You are only fooling yourself.

Americans' fear of "big government" is absolutely bizarre to say the least, especially in light of the fact that they have what is probably the biggest government in the world. Their government simply chooses to spend its money on guns rather than social infrastructure. A very poor choice indeed.

Too bad your reference is old

Canada Debt is now less that 500B not 868B http://www.debtclock.ca/
US debt is now over 11T, not 8T http://www.usdebtclock.org/

so your numbers are totally useless.