Language evolves and drifts, but legal definitions do not.

Theft is a crime with a specific definition. Copyright violation is a different crime, with a different definition. They are both criminal actions, but they are _different_ types of crime. Trying to conflate the two is very successful PR by the media industry, since "theft" has negative connotations that "piracy" does not, but they are not the same.

For reference: try to find an instance of copyright violation which has been prosecuted (successfully or not) as theft. When copyright holders start charging violators with theft, I'll agree that the definition has shifted. Until then, they're not the same and should not be confused.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Dome_raid

But then, when the activation fails for a legitimate customer (because it WILL fail at some point), that customer doesn't know that he's paid full rate for a non-functional appliance.

There's not much harm in a "your device appears to be operating in a country on a list of Bad Places. Please call 0800 UNCLE SAM to resolve the problem."

It's not like they're likely to route all their traffic through a proxy in another country to avoid it. That's plausible, but so unwieldy it probably wouldn't be worth the effort. Esp not for a national government.

OMG. How did I not know about this? Want!

Close, but to be pedantic about it, "its" is a possessive pronoun. Possessive pronouns don't take apostrophes because, well, they're already possessive. And probably jealous too.

So: its, his, hers, etc.

The rule for most people seems to be "if I'm not sure, I'll whack in an apostrophe just in case." Which is fine - not everyone is comfortable with the weird vagaries of formal English. But I do wish it were the opposite: when unsure, leave it out. It would be a lot simpler for everyone, and they'd be correct much more frequently.

Er, no. "The press" is a group term for the media industry. The Constitution isn't talking about a singular printing device.

Sheesh.

Journalists add context.

Not everyone wants to read 250,000 cables. Journalists do - they're looking for _leads_. They'll find nuggets and draw the audience's attention to them.

Also, journalists know useful things like not taking every source at face value. What looks huge might be overblown, and what looks trivial may be the tip of an iceberg. Journalists try to spot those. And they second- (third-, fourth-) source facts to try to ensure it's really a fact and not just a rumour.

That activity frequently does require protection. Protecting sources, for example, without which many stories would never come to light. So yes, journalism does need special treatment. But maybe not as special as many journalists would like to think (and I say that as one :)

However, journalists aren't perfect. They miss things, or gloss over things. So in many cases the source material should always be available, but that's not the role of the journalist. Let them find the stories for you, but if you want to wade through the mass of data, knock yourself out.

Open information keeps governments AND journalists honest.

Keep your print preview. Give me a master password already, damnit.

Do you think it's fair to force non-smoking employees (including, potentially, external contractors like facility-hired security and cleaners) to breathe second-hand smoke? Or to discriminate against non-smokers by refusing to hire them?