From the first article linked above:
\"From a criminal penalty standpoint, this is overkill in my view,\" James Muraff of law firm Wallenstein Wagner & Rockey told TechNewsWorld. \"It\'s pretty stiff compared to U.S. law.\"
He explained that in the United States, there are no criminal penalties for authoring software that may be used for copyright infringement. Such authors, however, could become targets of civil actions for contributing to copyright infringement.
So... it IS legal to develop P2P, and other software, in the US.
Another quote:
Police quoted Kaneko as saying: \"I am doubtful about the current ways businesses control digital content. It\'s wrong that big business uses the police to crack down on violations and maintain the status quo. The only way to destroy that system is to continue to spread ways to violate copyright laws.\"
...
\"These guys have so much money and they\'re spending so much money in lobbying that it\'s difficult to protect anybody\'s rights,\" Wayne Rosso, CEO of P2P software maker Optisoft of Madrid, Spain, told TechNewsWorld.
I talked with some friends the day before yesterday over this subject during lunch. The US businesses are built up on the concept of building limitations of the normal, easy, way to do things in order to pressure (or force) the general public into buying their goods or using their services. As time moves on more and more laws are passed to create additional income flow for big businesses at the expense of the individuals. ...but most people don\'t notice this because the change is generally slow. For example, the \"Copyright Law\" in itself is not a natural law... it isn\'t mentioned in the Bible. In fact, if anything, Christ said \"and the truth shall make you free\"... Information and truth longs to be free. The only reason it often times isn\'t isn\'t because of the laws big bussiness has put in place to controll the flow of information in order to get additional dollars from the individual.
(Some will say that \"Thou shall not Steal\" applies, but you have to remove something to steal it. Copying something isn\'t stealing, since the original is still in its place untouched. And those who think it IS stealing should wake up from the brain washing they\'ve been subjected to for their whole life, and realized they\'ve been lied to. If I could copy an entire building to a location accross town, could the people who own the original building charge me with \"stealing\" their building? Don\'t be ridiculous!)
You realize, of course, that if we ever were to get close to developing a device that could \"copy\" matter (using an inflow of energy), then these same kinds of people (and businesses) would stand in the way its development and would stop us from eventually creating \"replicators\" like those on Star Trek. They would likely call the use of those devices \"stealing\" and they would start immediately to brainwash our children into thinking that using a \"Replicator\" is \"stealing\"... and then those children would grow up calling it \"stealing\" and would stand AGAINST their own brethren when the resistance fights against this idiotic way of thinking.
Don\'t these layers of control sound familiar? Isn\'t that what tyrranical goverments do to their citizens? Those governments place controll on the flow of information in order to maintain their power.... since most people don\'t realize the power they have to change society.
Well... I\'ve realized, and I will march with my brethren as we change our society and let information become free again.
