| > It is possible to generate a random symmetric-encryption key on your computer ... IP law is only really enforceable with a police state. Non sequitur and false dichotomy. It is also possible to get away with murder [1] or robbery [2] or rape [3]. Does that mean it's useless to enforce murder or robbery or rape laws? All laws are only perfectly enforceable with a police state. But we don't need perfectly enforceable laws, only practically enforceable laws. And as you yourself admit, pretty much nobody goes through that trouble of keeping their communications secret, and that is why people only need to look to find the IP addresses of all those pirating content. If everyone had to go through the process of encrypting pirated content and walking over to their friends' and then downloading that content, you can bet piracy rates won't be in the range of terabytes per month in the US alone. I'd guess that's a level of enforcement people can live with. > ... if a Google sysadmin decides to publish my emails to the internets, I will be offended and expect him to at least lose his job, and I may have some complaint against Google, but I do not believe I have the right to subsequently prevent anyone else from making copies and spreading them around; they were not bound by any contractual agreement with me. You choose a facile example with "emails", because that has little economic impact to you. What about your social security number? Credit card numbers? You have to give that information out everywhere to all kinds of third parties with no explicit "contractual agreement" in place. Yet once it leaks to nefarious parties, the more widely that private information is spread around, the more pain you will experience. > It is unfortunate that IP laws and rhetoric have given them such an expectation. It is not IP laws and rhetoric that have given them such expectation, it's just the age old tradition of being expected to get paid when you produce something of value to somebody else. What is unfortunate is that just because it's so easy to get away with piracy, people have the expectation that they are entitled to taking somebody else's work. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_deaths#Unsolve... 2. https://www.google.com/search?q=unsolved+robberies 3. http://www.safecalifornia.org/facts/unsolved |