I remember saying very close to the same thing quite a number of times to various people when I was... 10?

On the subject of blackmail, I finally figured it out

Could the DA possibly be feeling guilty of something and looking for a way to repent?

Off topic from parent thread: There should be no substantial evidence that there ever was any child pornography in the first place. If there was, then I demand that everyone (Including the DA and any school officials) that viewed it also have a a case filed against them for viewing child pornography.

Child porn should be like playgrounds. (alright, maybe a bad example...) As a child, you play on them, but once you get older you grow out of them and move on to bigger things. Most of the time. The end result of the creepy guys that don't are usually the same anyhow.

In my mind, there are goods and there are services.

The movie/music industry is providing me with a service, entertainment. That is what I pay for after all, entertainment. I don't go to the theatre in the hopes of receiving something that I can take home and use or show off to others.

*pet* Hush now, it's alright.
  It was only the steam escaping from under the lid, don't cry.

Just a quick thought,

Copyrights can only be applied to goods, I believe, right? If this is the case, then why is IP of this nature even copyrighted to begin with?

It would, in my eyes, seem to be more of a service than anything. By purchasing a legal copy of a movie online to download, I'm receiving nothing physical for what I payed for. It's not a good.
  I am, however, being provided with the service of entertainment.

Can services be copyrighted?

If I were to go down the street, find a street performer and start to copy him (See: Eurotrip, silver "robot"), and other people were to start paying me, would that be considered copyright infringement? Can he copyright his "act" to begin with?

Maybe I misunderstand something, but this seems messed up to begin with...

Money may not be much of a concern, but what about time and skill?

I had family overseas recently and had the same thought, but didn't have as much money to spend. I decided to go the DIY route and made one of these Solarize your backpack and power all your gizmos

It's handy because it's lightweight and can be strapped (as the description says) to nearly any backpack, including most military ones, or taken off and set up somewhere stationary.

It also adds more of a personal touch to the whole idea. Buying something nice and expensive for a soldier is nice, but I've often times heard from them that having something personally made (even if it's a letter) is worth gold over there as well. Reminds 'em of home and all, y'know?

If you know how (or know someone that does) I would recommend making one of these.

If you want crime to drop, give people the chance of a great education, the opportunity for a decent job, and those alone should be incentive enough not to join a gang.

While an education is something that ever human being should strive to achieve, the right to an education isn't something that needs to be earned.

Phew... glad to know I'm not the only one that has this problem.

Can you imagine my disappointment:

coffee:/home/fire# perl -e 'print scalar localtime(1123581321),"\n";'
Tue Aug 9 05:55:21 2005

:-(

The students have it just as bad sometimes. I attend one of the "high tech high" schools and not only go to school for 7 hours, come home and do academic homework for another hour and a half, and generally work on my lab (Network Systems Technology Prep.) homework (Business Professionals of America, SkillsUSA, College Tech Prep Showcase competitions) for another two and a half hours, then if I'm up to it I'll do some freelance programming for a little bit of cash out of the whole ordeal.

That's assuming, of course, that I haven't been "assigned" some "extra credit" work (ex: going through my instructors state curriculum for examples as to why popular security software such as nmap and ethereal/wireshark should be taught in a Network Systems class in the use of diagnostics).

You're right on the summer thing though, it's nice.

I completely agree with you that there are many youth out there that could greatly benefit from having high speed internet access (hell, any access at all in some places!).

The only problem I have with the whole idea, is that for every young adult that will contribute in any way, there will be three that w1ll b3 74lk1ng l1k3 7h15.

In a utopian society, this would work great. Unfortunately, utopia is a mark that the U.S. falls far short of.

Snooping of network traffic on an ISP level would be far easier than examining mail on a post office level.

It may be my tinfoil hat on a little too tight, but if you ask me, putting something as authoritative as a government in a position such as this, censorship and snooping is going to be an imminent.

In my opinion, it's a man in the middle waiting to happen.