Someone, it appears, actually read "A Brief History of Time."

"If society doesn't reward people for their time, they're going to stop doing it." You know, people created voluminous works of creativity before the invention of copyright.

The reason the differences from the Jackson films vs the books don't bother me, is that these are tales from a legendarium as Tolkien called it. To be told and retold, as legends are. He retold many of the stories in various formats, and with variations in the stories. So for me the movies are just a variation on the war of the ring legend, and for the most part damn good.

The problem lies in allowing our government to have discretion over what's considered artistic or scientific. Clearly these are not areas in which the government knows best.

..follow in the footsteps of China, by protecting it's citizens from the internet. Good luck with that.

So do you avoid movies with Scientologist actors? This would seem to be exceedingly difficult if you like movies. I'd go as far as to say avoiding companies that continue to put out big movies with Tom Cruise in them would be a good thing. Like this new WWII flick he's got coming out. I won't be seeing it.

And I forgot to mention, I'm a musician, songwriter, composer and also a web designer. So I know what it's like to be on the content creation end as well.

He didn't go deep enough into the history of copyright to understand what copyright is really for. The original purpose of copyright has been so distorted by the lobbying and propagandizing power of various industries, that most lawmakers don't even know what it's really for. Everyone thinks, like this article's writer that it's to give "property rights" to content creators, so that they can protect their "intellectual property." What it's really therefore is to encourage the creation of creative works for the benefit of the greater good of the people (the greater good of the people should be behind all laws in a supposed democracy right?). It's purpose is to enrich a very important and undervalued concept called "the public domain." The temporary monopoly, is an incentive to content creators to create works which will ultimately enrich the public domain, at least in theory. The Public Domain has been completely destroyed by this process of lobbying and propagandizing corporate desires into legislation. Much of the significant creative work of the past century is caught up in it, even if it's not available to the public (this is more common than you might think.) So, let's always remember that the people in general are a much larger and more important group than the content creators. Copyright is a privilege granted by the people. The fact that "right" is part of the word I think is a bit misleading. It's not an inalienable right like life and liberty, as many people, this author included seem to not understand.

It sounds beautiful until steam decides you've done some questionable activity on your steam account, then they have the option of using a kill switch on your entire collection. I don't think they necessarily use it, other than to kill people's online gaming if they cheat, but the fact that they have the ability to take back what I paid for freaks me out. At first I was very happy about Steam and I have a few steam games, like Defcon, and HL2, but I don't play them because I took steam off my computer. I gave my steam account to my son cause he likes those games.

The fit and finish of a fine automobile is nothing compared to an orbiter or even the older Apollo spacecraft, which are still marvels to behold. I know, I've traveled around to see all the ones that are available for viewing. I don't think you grasp the complexity of these machines whatsoever.

Most breakthroughs come from standing on the shoulders of giants. Before you can get taller than the giant by standing on his shoulders, first you have to climb up there.

No one helped Einstein formulate his theory. Others have consistently confirmed it's predictions, and continue to do so, but the stroke of genius was his alone. Going further back, guys like Newton etc. were pretty much solo artists.

I can't see a future in which such a system would not be gamed hard. But as it is, a means of letting the average citizen regain some access to our president, even if it's virtual, is a large leap over what we've had for a long time now. Does anyone think a McCain administration would even make the attempt at transparency? I don't.

Manages to stay alive and keep making hit games with no DRM.....Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 are all bona fide hits, surely making the company a big pile of money, and yet none contain DRM. Hmmm.....I wonder how that works....Maybe it has something to do with the fact that these games are great, and can yield years of entertainment. Morrowind is one of my most played and replayed games of all times, with it's open ended nature (in terms of game play and modability), and both Oblivion and Fallout 3 follow this trend. If you make quality stuff, you don't need DRM, apparently.

Doesn't matter what the "suspicious activity" was. If I commit suspicious activity in my Tahoe, should Chevy be able to come to my house and get it back? If I bash some drunk's head in with my strat, should fender show up at the gig wanting the guitar back? When you buy something, you buy it. There shouldn't be a kill switch. I've already bought two steam games, halflife and defcon, but I don't even play those because I don't want steam even installed on my machine anymore.