People still want to kill people in any country and are quite willing to do a machete job in the street if they deem it necessary.

Freedom of speech – Who owns the press?

The judiciary – Who runs the courts?

Also, it’s telling that Congress has time for this. At this rate you may as well not vote. Your vote will be meaningless the minute your “representative” gets his yearly bribe.

The difference being this: A hefty wedge.

Criminalization of what used to be a misdemeanor means anyone even under suspicion will have police visits and impounded computers to look forward to.

It’s quite unproportional.

However, that option vanishes into thin air when at the mere suspicion that what you are sending might be a stream, the FBI has free reign to run a RAT on your computer hardware.

Translated as “I don’t have a clue what I’m talking about”?

Jammie Thomas was using Kazaa to download music with. as commercial as the average citizen on a bittorrent client.

Aaron Swartz was downloading research data which had been paid for by public taxes with the intent on making it available for everyone.

Commercial? LIKE HELL

“The SOPA version did not have the requirement that it be for commercial gain…”

No, what we NEED to watch out for is when someone pushes for legislation to have a CIVIL act of unlawfulness changed into a CRIME which carries a different set of circumstances.

Uhh…why not use any of the free alternatives to begin with? Of all things to pirate…a firewall…?

Bit like suggesting pirating a linux distro imho…

All you would find is a list of enforcement and lobbying companies, like ACS:Law, Aiplex, and Prenda.

Of which, if accused, the MPAA would simply throw their hands in the air and carole “Oh, my goodness me what villains! We would NEVER employ such untrustworthy and unreliable people. How COULD we have known?”.

See, any company performing real dirty work for the MPAA/RIAA will be in another country, hard to reach (Aiplex) and under an official contract which makes it pretty damn clear both parties are expected to abide by the law.

That you’ll find an Andrew Crossley or a Prenda Law’s worth of unhung crooks doing dirty jobs in order to earn their consultants fees is something you’ll never be able to smack any part of RIAA/MPAA with.

You won’t find any mention in any computer of one CEO asking an Aiplex tech to “fuck up TPB”, for instance. The RIAA/MPAA executives simply hire people they know to be slimy bastards to perform a job and then pretend they see nothing of how the work is done.

To use an example, if you hire a private detective for a job the detective will fulfill that job according to his work ethics.

If you offer the dope-dealing neighbourhood thug the same contract, said thug will perform the job according to HIS ethics.

As long as you don’t know anything – plausible deniability – you’re in the clear.