You had me up until that last one. Saudi Arabia is a staunch US ally.

The US sells them vast amounts of US military hardware every year and if the US government had any sort of problem with the utter lack of any democracy there it could bankrupt them very quickly by not buying their oil. Of course that will never happen though as the US would rather Saudi stayed as friendly monarchy with a shit human rights record as most of the general populace are muslim and would probably elect a bunch extremist anti-american nutters if given half the chance.

Also, when considering the wonderful US stance on human rights you might consider that that only applies to US citizens. The folks who have been held in Guantanamo bay might not have such a great opinion on the US and it's marvellous human rights record. Another group of people not exactly happy would be the families of children killed by Israel when they fired US made and paid for incendiary missiles at Gaza.

That is not to say that other countries you quote are better, far from it. My point is only that often these things look very different depending on which people are fucking you over. The US has often been party to installing utterly non-democratic oppressive regimes in countries in recent history just to benefit US companies economically.

This is maybe a reason to consider tempering a single countries control with some sort of body where no one country had absolute control. You might even use the model the US uses for it's own internal governance (constitutional democracy or whatever) where countries got a proportional vote depending on online presence. Big changes that went against certain core principles could even then be blocked by a certain percentage voting against. It make not make for a freer internet but at least might bog the governing body down in so much bureaucracy that it didn't get any less free at least.

This might make it a little harder for RIAA and whoever to boot sites off the net for enabling piracy or whatever.

How are we supposed to take your post seriously on a geek discussion site if you cant even post a link properly?

The link you wanted to post was here:

Libya

And btw, why should they not be on the council again in 2013? They are no longer a dictatorship and are making great strives towards democracy now that Gadafi is gone.

You did realise that was what it said on the link you posted didn't you? Here is the story stating they will be re-admitted:

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40438&Cr=libya&Cr1

They were kicked off the council for clamping down on their own citizens at the start of the arab spring.

Nope, frying all the stock market traders would help the economy :)

]

Wow, me too. I was in London for the whole week though due to work. Why don't we have our elections on Sundays like France does? It is such a pain in the arse having them during the week for people who work away from home a lot.

BT haven't been on the receiving end of a court order yet. When they are they will. They have actually been given more time for some reason.

http://www.ion.icaew.com/itcounts/24534

O2 have been given instruction to by the courts so are probably just pissing about for as long as possible before they implement it. This may mean that they actually implement a more effective block than the trivial to bypass joke that Virgin have apparently implemented. Of course anything the try is probably just going to be akin to big game of a whack-a-mole anyway.

Most PLC's exist to make money so have to obey the law in case they get fined. If they don't they the shareholders get antsy and boot the directors out replacing them with people who will toe the line. The only way this doesn't happen is if the company thinks it is in the their financial interest to pay the fines rather than comply.

The upshot of all this is that trying to take revenge on a company for doing what they are required to do by law is childish and most likely ineffective at getting anything changed anyway. If you want to stop this, then you need to get the UK government to pass laws abolishing copyright or whatever in order to make what the piratebay provide within the letter and spirit of the law. The best way to go about this is to convince a majority of the british public that copyright is no longer needed or useful in digital age.

The best people to start with are probably your parents, or their friends as they are most likely to vote (young people vote less so politicians listen to them less). If we cannot convince the older generation that copyright needs to be abolished than we have to live with it as this is what democracy is all about.

I have just searched on the web and cannot find a single meaningful survey of public opinion on whether we should abolish copyright law. My personal opinion though is that most people would actually support some kind of copyright law, even if they did want it changed to allow consumers more freedom to use works they had paid for.

The problem DDOS attacks on a legitimate business is that it actually makes people associate the people who support copyright reform with vandalism when they do not get their way. In a democracy that is not useful at all.

It's not "extra money" it's a policy called military first or some such crap. Basically it means the people can go starve if the army needs the money for a new toy.

What's even more relevant is that these service men or women should often be tried and sentenced in the country where the crime is committed. Especially in cases where the US has an extradition treaty with the country in question and would,expect to be able to extradite any criminals it wanted to stand trial in the US. The US policy seems to be though that their own law usurps any other countries (recently it seems to usurp the US constitution so that should not be too surprising).

This is a fine attitude to take if you intend to impose it by force, but it completely fails to let you take any sort of moral high ground. This does not help win any hearts and minds of the local populace so has a habit of encouraging terrorism amongst them, especially if there is mass unemployment and people feel like they have nothing better to do than blow themselves up anyway.

Normally I ignore AC's but in this case you hit the nail completely on the head.

This is ta big problem facing our society now: that juries made up of laymen or judges are expect to rule on things they have no clue about and the time taken to educate them is simply unfeasible.

I have been developing software professionally for a decade or so (3 decades if you count when I first learnt basic) and I still have a great deal to learn. I would still have to sit down and draw on much of my experience when it came to deciding this case. I do not see how someone who has just completed coding 101 could really understand the full implications of their decision, let alone someone who has not even got that far.

I also do not think that a sensible decision is that likely if the jury are only able to base it on which witness the sound of liked better.

It would be like basing who runs a country based on a some sort of popularity contest. Oh crap, we actually do that as well :(

God only worked like that in the old testament.

Its like that "signing your name" thing people make you do occasionally only with lots more of it and different, more complicated patterns.