RMS: «The US and EU and Canada want border guards to check everyone's laptops for unauthorized copies. They are trying to impose this nasty law through a treaty, secretly negotiated, so as to bypass democracy.

The prohibition of sharing can only be enforced with draconian cruelty. This shows that prohibiting sharing is wrong.

Even if you have done nothing wrong, the government agencies examining your files have no contractual obligation to you to keep them safe, nor even to get rid of all their copies once they've determined you're not guilty or that they pulled the wrong party's data.

«When record companies make a fuss about the danger of "piracy", they're not talking about violent attacks on shipping. What they complain about is the sharing of copies of music, an activity in which millions of people participate in a spirit of cooperation. The term "piracy" is used by record companies to demonize sharing and cooperation by equating them to kidnaping, murder and theft...»

The chairman of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman, has called for internet file-sharing to be legalised in order that people could benefit from sharing material that they should rightly be able to.

When the idea of sharing software comes up, people frequently break out in debates over Capitalism vs. Communism. It doesn't take long before someone starts equating - derisively, no less - sharing software with Communism. But since when did the Communists corner the market on sharing?

"FSF's John Sullivan will talk about copyleft, copyright, the War on Sharing, and the GNU/Linux free software operating system at the Connecticut Film Festival." -- via Copyleft and the War on Sharing - Free Software Foundation

Today, free speech on the Web is impeded by far more restrictions than just what is, or isn’t, pornographic. On the Web in 2010, even the appearance of enabling file-sharing of copyright materials seems to be enough for the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to shut down Web-sites without notice.
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RMS: « Another federal court ruled that file sharing does not violate copyright law.

I am concerned that Leahy's nasty law could change this »

Linux user for a couple of years. Only Linux and I love it. Still, some things are wrong, they are wrong, and unfortunately, as I see it, they will always be wrong (yes I'm paid by Microsoft to say this; and yes I get the big bucks from them; and yes that's true, and unfortunately it seems like it's true for a long time now :(