At 1:18 PM +0200 2/16/01, Sampo Syreeni wrote:
On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, Tim May wrote:
(But some of us had the last laugh. The "Home Recording Act" tax came with the proviso that unlimited "non-commercial" copying was now unprosecutable.
Somehow I think no one even thinks about creating such a provision, here in Europe...
Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
Without intending to insult Europe or Europeans, the main reason your kleptocrats haven't thought about such a proviso is because they...haven't thought about it. Don't assume that because you don't have some of the same laws we in these united states have is because you have "more freedom." As for copying CDs and the Home Recording Act, let me hasten to add that there has _never_ been a prosecution of an individual for copying CDs, before or after the Home Recording Act. Tens of millions of persons have been making libraries of records, CDs, etc., borrowed from friends and libraries, for many decades. Not a single prosecution. I was merely noting that when the kleptocrats formulated their new "Home Recording Act," the new shakedown tax came with a proviso that made such a prosecution impossible even in principle. Finland and France and all of the other European "havens of freedom" (yuck yuck) will eventually figure out what these united states and their fascist rulers figured out decades earlier. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns