Quote Originally Posted by Geoffrey S
That seems to me a gross misrepresentation of what I actually said. No, I find such an application of copyright laws thoroughly counterproductive, and no, I don't believe the laws right now are correct. What I said is that current laws, and I quote:

There is too little clarity, too little account taken of modern technology, and the laws are thoroughly un-enforceable. They need changing, since as things stand now it's clear both the consumer and the corporations lose, the consumer if laws were strictly followed and the corporations in practical reality. I don't favour one or the other side myself since I view access to goods like cds and movies as a luxury rather than a right, but the fact that people download media illegally in large amounts and the lengths that corporations appear to go to in order to prevent that show how flawed current copyright laws are.

Your post implies I'm in favour of giving the corporations virtually unlimited power and time when it comes to copyright. I'm not, I don't see where you get that from, and I find it a curious attempt to project such a view on me. And then you suddenly bring civil rights into it...
Oh well, that was what I had inferred from the context, seeing how virtually all the copyright-related laws are laws that restrict rights of the user, and empower the corporations, practically (although a lawyer could argue that the laws empower the "content owners", but for all practical purposes, those are the corporations in most cases).

Also, this is one of the commonly waved arguments of these corporations: the laws are obsolete (they don't consider the Internet as a cheap and efficient distribution medium), and they need to be fixed. It's exactly the same phrasing.

So you can see how I took it to be in the same spirit...

So if I misinterpreted it, my apologies.

The civil rights part: is only partially in reply to you; earlier in this thread people mentioned the laws and all that, and my point was that laws don't always make sense, and sometimes it's not a bad thing to break these laws. And I gave the Rosa Parks example, where she broke the law - which was a stupid and unjust law - much like I consider some of these copyright and IP-related laws (DRM forced upon you, no rights to private copies, etc).
I can understand, for example, that Kukri has to enforce the rules of this forum, but we should still be aware that the fact that something is passed into law does not make it right.

I hope I managed to clear a bit of the confusion...
Also, I wrote that _very_ early in the morning, sorry if it wasn't coherent enough.