I Am Not A Lawyer, but theoretically a lawyer would understand that "copyright infringement" and "theft" are different things. Theft deprives someone of property(Yes, theft can have a broader meaning, but under that broader meaning murder is theft, too). Copyright infringement deprives someone from exercising their limited-term(and limited-scope) monopoly.

This doesn't mean that copyright infringement is okay; just that it's different in important ways when someone steals a CD rather than pirate the MP3s.

All that said, I think you missed the original poster's point, which is that "copyright is not theft", not that "copyright infringement is not theft".

Speaking as a Wisconsinite, I'd say that Russ Feingold both proves and disproves your statement. Disproves because he's still pretty poor for a senator, and obeys a higher ethical standard than is necessary(voluntary spending limits, voluntarily telling outside groups to not advertise for him, etc.). He proves it because he originally got elected because the other two candidates didn't take him seriously, and destroyed each other quite successfully through negative advertising. Then, when Feingold took a stand against soft money and his opponent didn't, he won an extremely close election.

He was the only one to vote against the original PATRIOT act, and he voted for John Ashcroft in Bush's cabinet because he figured a president should have the right to choose his advisors.

Sadly, while I could probably name 20+ senators without having to think terribly hard, I am unaware of any other politician who would be anywhere near those standards.

That said, given that Feingold(along with every other senator) dropped the ball on the DMCA, I have no great faith that he'll be all that helpful in at least making a stink about ACTA.

I watch NASCAR, too, and it's not safe to drive like that.

Weasel words defeated by a weak single piece of anecdotal evidence! Bam!

...and your anecdotal evidence said nothing about the PSP's(or even better, the PSP Go's) chance of winning versus the iPod. Personally, before I thought of the PSP as a reasonably strong competitor in the handheld gaming system field. The PSP Go seems like a wonderful competitor against the Zune. I suppose it might be ready to take on NGage, too.

The summary of the article mentioned that his previous work included overseeing a discredited study, and until now he had been overseeing a program that seems to not be doing terribly well.

This departure would seem a net positive.

Unless, of course, Timothy and fleaplus have led me astray with that summary of Steve Cook's nineteen years at NASA.

I care about the amount of time it takes me to understand someone when I'm reading stuff on the internet -- if they can't be bothered/aren't able to make their point in an understandable way, I fail to see why I should bother deciphering it.

Beyond that, any usage that takes me out of the, "what do I think of their idea?" mode, and puts me into the, "what are they saying?" mode is a loss of time.

So, yes, the scrutiny is put on other things because legibility used to be the biggest obstacle to quickly communicating ideas, but now it's grammar and spelling.

Maybe that's just me. I hope not, though.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html?_r=1

That appears to be a reasonably balanced look at who/what was "responsible" for the budget being $1.2 trillion in the hole, rather than $800 billion to the good.

To save you the trouble of reading it, it's the economy, Bush 43, and then Obama, in that order. Bush messed the budget up and Obama is either making it worse or not fixing it.

Sure, Obama's stimulus package didn't help, but neither did Bush's tax cuts, drug benefit, spending on homeland security, or increase in military spending.

Copyrights have expired in the past. When that happened, copying became legal. At no point does stealing something become legal. There is also no "fair use" defense with theft.

Equating copyright infringement with theft ignores the fact that copyright law is there "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".

In my fantasy world, the penalty for taking digital copies would be less than the penalty for taking digital copies AND a physical item.

I find it interesting that you bring that up, as my biggest annoyance with "Outliers: The Story of Success" is that it says "Outliers", then immediately focuses on the successful without including the unsuccessful. Taleb ripping on "success" books for failing to look at all the people who took risks makes me think that he'd likely consider Gladwell an intellectual charlatan.