In fact, fair use can include the reproduction of an entire copyrighted work. That is why judges decide these things; there is no hard-and-fast definition.

Had people simply refused to fly as long as the TSA continued to exist, the expansion would have ended. People kept flying, even when they could have taken a train or bus, and so the TSA never felt the heat, and eventually grew larger. People will not boycott sports events either, nor will they refuse to drive when the TSA starts creating highway checkpoints, nor will they refuse to go to malls when the checkpoints come there.

Boil the frog slowly is how the major parties operate; the major parties consist of politicians either too corrupt to stop or too inept to even realize what they are doing.

Talk about a slanted description. He set up video cameras and microphones in a theater. That is not wiretapping, that is copyright infringement in the worst case.

Nobody is accused of that.

Propaganda term.

No such thing happened here.

So?

Did a judge decide that IMAGiNE was not engaged in fair use? See, long before our copyright system was hijacked and turned into a weapon aimed at the Internet, we relied on judges to decide if an act of copying was legal or not. You know, back when copyrights were meant to encourage industries that helped bring knowledge and entertainment to the masses, which is the only thing copyright was ever meant to do.

Maybe because the movie theater is profiting from the work of the MPAA, which profited from the work of the artists who created the movie? What makes one of these enterprises more legitimate than another? He used technology in a way that allowed him to bring entertainment to people at much lower prices than movie theaters can.

You must have spent a long time rewiring your brain to think that makes any sense.

Since when? Oh, right, never, because someone has to be willing to pay the price you demand; the whole idea in capitalism is that no single person or entity gets to decide these things. The movie industry gets to inflate its prices because the government gives them assistance, and apparently that assistance now includes the use of prisons (which are supposed to exist to keep us safe from dangerous people, not to keep obsolete business models alive).

Copyright makes no sense in an age where people have the methods and apparatus needed to distribute information on a global scale in their house. Throwing people in prison for it does not change the simple reality that copyright is hopelessly dated and is in desperate need of reform (or simple elimination).

Prison time for copyright infringement? Really?

Just another sign of how completely out of control the copyright system has become.

Probably because they are too hard to forge and are based on terrifying mathematics instead of "common sense."

Really? I know people who rotate their monitors 90 degrees. This is a non-issue at this point.

No kidding. Major shifts in how people do things require major investments.

You mentioned the relevant standards already:

• email
• PDF
• OpenPGP or S/MIME
• HTTP

Imagine a world where instead, you dealt with:

1. Invoices sent by Facebook messages
2. Invoices sent via Myspace messages
3. Invoices sent via LinkedIn messages
4. Invoices that you had to dial in to an online service to receive
5. Invoices with EBCIDIC encoding
6. Invoices sent as MS Word formatted files
7. Fly-by-night startup of the month's proprietary invoice system, that places contextual ads in your invoices

So really, be glad that the worst of your problems is that one company uses PDF, another encrypts the PDF, another encrypts the email, and another makes you go to a website on the Internet. We could live in a much worse world.

I have seen restaurants that send receipts via email, and have an entirely paperless payment system -- and as an added bonus, the Android device that is being used in lieu of paper will divide your bill in whatever arbitrary way you want. There are a lot more computers today than there were 50 years ago, and a much more robust communications infrastructure for those computers.

It will be a while before paperless business is common, but eventually it is going to happen. Printing things costs money, and a lot of businesses have computers that are underutilized (like cash registers); eventually, saving money will begin to outweigh the resistance to change.

Sure, but do we really need printed invoices in this day and age? Send the customer a digitally signed invoice by email (encrypted if the invoice should remain private), and save paper and ink. While you're at it, look into ways of reducing IT electrical costs.

That average probably includes people who work in offices where they print hundreds or even thousands of invoices per day.

That there are two categories of people -- those who abuse and become dependent on alcohol, and those who do not -- is itself a myth that has become widely accepted because of twelve step programs. There are some people who are simply never able to maintain the self control needed to drink responsibly; there are others who can develop that self control with the assistance of a psychologist; and there are some for whom alcohol abuse and even dependence is temporary and who overcome it on their own. The twelve-step philosophy begins by excluding everything except the first group, but tells people who are in the second and third groups that they, in fact, are unable to develop any self control. That is one of the reasons twelve step programs are so unsuccessful: they start by ruling out any possibility of a person actually changing for the better.

Then you have not met people who abused alcohol in college, then grew up and stopped abusing alcohol. I knew someone in college who used to get drunk every day, who was skipping his classes and generally headed down the wrong path; then he became interested in joining the NYPD after school, and found that he was indeed capable of having one beer in a night and that a bottle of whisky did not have to completely consumed in one sitting. Keep in mind that drinking to the point of neglecting responsibilities meets the clinical definition of alcohol abuse; yet that same person stopped abusing alcohol on his own. In AA terminology, he is a "dry drunk" -- in other words, despite the fact that he is not abusing alcohol anymore, despite the fact that he cleaned up his act and is living a healthy life, he is still not "recovered" according to the twelve steps (should you point out this obvious logical fallacy, you might be told that he was never really an alcoholic at all, despite meeting the clinical definition of alcohol abuse).

Well, what else would you call it if a person once had a condition that negatively affected their life, and does not have that condition today? If a cancer is in remission for five years without any medical treatment, we call it a cure. If a person once abused alcohol but has since stopped, and is able to not abuse alcohol without having their hands constantly held, how is that person not cured?

I think you are looking at the problem the wrong way. It is not a problem for a person to lack the discipline needed to drink in moderation; the problem is when a person who lacks that discipline decides to start drinking, even though they know they will be unable to stop themselves. One does not need to drink alcohol to enjoy life. Let's put it this way: I know a rabbi who has an allergic reaction to alcohol, so he drinks grape juice instead of wine for religious ceremonies (and he is just as happy during festive holidays as all the people around him who can drink).

Again, the definition of substance abuse is a pattern of behavior where someone uses a substance in a way that is dangerous or to the point where they are neglecting their responsibilities (e.g. their job, their family, etc.). If the only way for a person to not abuse alcohol is to not drink at all, then that person is cured by not drinking at all. That is a fairly extreme case, of course; most people can learn to use alcohol in moderation and to develop habits that ensure they do not abuse alcohol (in the case of my friend in college, he simply needed a clear goal in life). If a person stops abusing alcohol, they have been cured; there is simply no other way to state it.

It is also worth pointing out that dependence is not always a negative thing. Plenty of people develop a dependence on prescribed medications, but find that their quality of life improves while on those medications. A basic example is ADD treatment: it is not hard for a person to develop a dependence on the stimulants used to treat ADD, yet people with ADD often find their lives improve with the treatment -- and so despite the fact that they may have difficulty quitting the use of the drugs, and despite the fact that they may find themselves taking their medication even when they know they have no need for improved focus (say, while on vacation), there is a net improvement in their life. Dependence becomes a serious problem when the dependence is coupled with abuse i.e. when satisfying the dependence involves abusing the drug (cigarettes are probably the best example: if you smoke enough cigarettes in a day to develop a dependence, you are already abusing tobacco, because of the danger it poses to your health).

Here's the problem: the law only allows relatively narrow bands for unlicensed use (courtesy of the ITU), and so getting "more channels" is not easy to do. You could mandate that the standard operate on more bands -- 900MHz, 24GHz, 60GHz, etc. -- but that will drive up the cost of the equipment.

Or you purchase repeaters (cheaper) or you purchase higher-gain antennas (even cheaper, but will probably only improve coverage on one floor), or you illegally plug your AP into a linear amplifier and hope the FCC never comes for you (and it is unlikely they will). I know someone who uses a repeater in his house; it is not all that uncommon nor is it difficult.

This is kind of like asking, "What is the point of having 100 megabit ethernet when hardly any ISPs have 100 megabit service?"

Well, if praying to deities (or doorknobs, or trees, or to the group itself) helped your family members overcome their character defects, great! On the other hand, the fact that the 12 steps begin by telling people they have no hope of self control is probably the reason 12 step programs are amongst the least successful approaches to substance abuse treatment.