I like this, but it feels hypocritical after the recent domain seizures and bullshit internet and digital media laws, and past censoring / banning of documents. It's OK to break other nations' walls, but not your own, apparently.
Believing in "The Machine" - a single coherent entity running things seems almost like the belief in Thor, the god of thunder.
Sure, stuff happens for crazy reasons. That's not because of the agenda of some mysterious weather god, or an elusive organization; it's because of a complex system of dumb entities bumping into each other. You can rationalize it as gods or Illuminate, but it's probably just random noise.
Sometimes stuff like the Patriot act can give a single actor a disproportionate amount of power, but they usually have no idea what to do with it; thankfully.
It's another example of shortsightedness by the USG,but fortuitous in this case. The technology described in this article will likely be used to circumvent domestic USG intentions within 10 years.
It's not so clearcut as this. Projects like these give the US government knowledge in how to disturb or thwart those that try to circumvent US-imposed restrictions.
What, because one arm of the US Government is doing something bad at any given time means that another arm isn't allowed to do something good?
These are very separate sets of issues, and I think it's kinda sad that about half the comments in this thread are ignoring the issue this is about and jumping straight to whining about how the US Government won't let you pirate Battlestar Galactica.
No, not separate issues. Our government are hypocrites because they work to undermine censorship imposed by foreign governments on their respective populations, while at the same time imposing censorship on their own people for nothing more than "unauthorized viewing" of Battlestar Galactica.
Or perhaps you think Battlestar Galactica is actually a better reason to censor and oppress than, say, the threat of riots and political unrest. Not being snarky; I really can't tell from your comment.
I never made such a judgement. I would agree that, in general terms, censorship of political speach represents a greater degree of oppression.
However, that's not to dismiss the oppressiveness of our current copyright regime, where the content industries are lobbying for even non-commercial infringement to be criminalized, and our government seems largely willing to go along.
Not at all. But we're all stuck funding all branches, so we do have a right to complain about the bad ones. And they do harm the image / reception of the good ones, as well as waste scads of money that could be doing (more?) good.
As to the differences, yes, this is far from the piracy issues. But not from banning books or bypassing due process.
