What about my right to control my server. I look at this 'right to be forgot' as the same sort of over reach which allows media companies to put DRM on my ebook reader or smartphone, then make it illegal for me to remove it. My equipment. My decision. You want to force be to keep or remove any software/data, then you get yourself a court order. I don't see why phantom Imaginary property rights seem to keep trumping rights over real property. Sheesh.

How does that work

Maybe, or perhaps he's a dedicated OSS geek, and when his wife started talking about upgrading to Apple, he started talking about upgrading wives. :-/

"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.