

Regarding SOPA; Other Examples of Free Tools Taken Away From Us? - TobiasCassell

Are there other examples of us going back in time due to public policy? To this degree?... People in Countries that are other than Democratic have had this happen, but what about a modern, Western Democracy? Has this happened before?<p>Edit; I know I am painting with some pretty broad strokes here- but I feel there are already a ton of threads all over the boards dedicated to the finer elements.
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nextparadigms
DHS sent a letter to Mozilla earlier this year to take down the MAFIAA Fire
add-on that redirects the seized sites to the new domains. Mozilla refused and
DHS didn't follow-up on that because it got public.

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pasbesoin
Try to buy a "junior chemistry set" that provides real chemistry. Or a Pyrex
flask, for that matter.

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Tangaroa
Drugs and guns. Everything that has ever been banned by decree was once a free
tool.

The types of chemistry sets popular in the mid-20th century have been banned
for being too dangerous to children.

The democratically-elected governments of Turkey and Venezuela have
effectively outlawed opposition parties from owning television, radio, and
newspapers by alleging unpaid taxes in amounts that would bankrupt the
companies if they paid, and having partisan judges hand their assets to the
government. Media that echo the party line do not face these charges.

In the early 1990s, the Anti-Defamation League was caught using a private
investigator to collect information on neo-Nazis. They were prosecuted and
forced to stop collecting information on racists as a condition of a plea
bargain. Collecting information on one's political opponents is now a standard
practice of both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Your right to use a courtroom is being taken away. If you are lucky enough to
have a job, did you read your contract? If it contains the word "arbitration",
you have given up your right to sue your employer for any cause. They can
decide not to pay you this month or demand sexual favours from you or your
spouse, and you cannot take it to court. You can take it to a private, for-
profit judge who is paid by your employer to rule in their favour, and they
can order you to pay your employer's court fees for daring to challenge the
situation. If you don't like it, you can quit; good luck finding a job in this
economy. And people say there's no need for a union in the tech industry...

Specific to computer technology, the DMCA made it illegal to tell people how
to crack access-control schemes. The two guys who cracked Cyber Patrol and
published its list of blocked web sites were sued and had to surrender the
copyright to their work. Warez and porn BBSes were shut down in the early
1990s; this is fairly equivalent to seeing warez sites shut down today.

