While, simplistically you’re right all infringement of the rights and liberties of a people start “innocently” enough but end up, first linearly, then exponentially extinguishing all other rights until none are left.

You might, as one has suggested, learn something from history.

The death of the Roman republic began with the megalomania of a fella named Julius Caesar. his son Octavian who because Augustus the emperor all the time promising a restoration of the republic to a nasty bit of goods named Tiberius who simply scared the people that counted into compliance, to Caligula who openly and publically killed anyone and every one he didn’t like sometimes shortly after screwing them including his own sister, to Claudius who just gave up all pretense of restoring a republic a nice enough chap in himself but whose wife sometimes made Caligula look sane, to Nero at which point the Claudian line ended and the republic was dead even if there would still be a Senate for the next thousand years. No one really took it all that seriously.

Not to say that the United States will follow that path but the same thing applies. Rights were removed a little at a time. First by Julius Ceasar, then a bit more by Augustus, the accelerating with Tiberius, to completely gone with Caligula in the space of less than 4 years to the final madman of the Claudian line by which point it was all gone.

Begins incrementally the accelerates exponentially until nothing is left.

It’s for that very reason that the founders of the United States left the message not to trust government. To resist and oppose it where necessary and to overthrow it when necessary, by electoral means of course. Though it seems Jefferson, if I remember correctly, thought otherwise at times.

People in the States are seeing the slow erosion of what they consider rights and the US Constitution says are rights in the text itself, inherited from sources such as Magna Charta and rulings by the US Supreme Court since independence was gained.

Some see it starting and accelerating under the Patriot Act and interpretation of government powers contained in it and now with SOPA/PIPA adding to what they consider to be an alarming loss of the rights, freedoms and liberties so central to being an American.

I’d have some fear for the future, Joe, instead of a narrow reading of law to guide you but to look for trends that go beyond law itself and into what it means to be an American where they see the early linear part of the loss of liberty and fear the exponential loss that invariably happens as power assumes more and more rights to itself taking them away from “We, the People” to take on themselves.

The sad irony is that all this is happening while up here in the great White North we are moving in the opposite direction with our relatively new Constitution and its Charter of Rights and Freedoms where the courts and the people are chipping more and more power FROM government.

At one time we had a draconian piece of legislation known as the War Measures Act. It’s purpose was to control media and people during World War One and later for World War Two. It was reimposed on us in 1972 in response to a terrorist act inside Canada by a home grown lot who kidnapped and murdered two people in support of their aims. Pierre Trudeau, probably the greatest supporter and promoter of political, social and individual rights ever to hold the Prime Minister’s Office, imposed the Act in an attempt to smoke out the terrorists which led to troops on the streets of Montreal, Ottawa and elsewhere including “sensitive” installations like the Port of Vancouver and Vancouver International Airport both of which suddenly had soldiers guarding them. Unlike the Patriot Act once imposed the War Measures Act had 120 days to be passed through both houses of Parliament with a timeline to remove it included. The imposition of the Act actually lasted for far less time than that, if memory serves.

Once the Charter passed the first bit of law declared unconstitutional was the War Measures Act, again, going on memory.

SOPA/PIPA may not end up going to the extremes some here are afraid or terrified that it will. But there’s not much comfort there as the Patriot Act keeps applying more and more broadly as the chances of another outside terrorist attack become less and less likely which is what it was passed to prevent.

Two long time friends, neighbours and allies moving in different directions. The northern one taking the first halting steps to kicking the slats out of government while the southern one seeming to move the other way.

With all due respect, Joe, narrow legalism allows the first while a vision of how we want Canada to be allows the second. As what we want is what America had pre-Patriot Act and without stuff like SOPA and PIPA.

Our war measures act was an over-reaction to war and,finally, “apprehended insurrection” before it got tossed into the chuck. The Patriot Act always struck me as an over-reaction and that, as you know is about the nicest thing I can say about SOPA/PIPA. The reality of either of the latter is they’re just not needed and will totally and completely backfire, in my opinion, back up on not only law but as a lifetime passionate student of history.

By all means defend copyright, if you must. But not copyright as a long term, if not permanent should they get their way, welfare plan for profitable, if fading, industries.

Censorship is censorship regardless of the excuse for it. Narrow legalism and the lies and exaggerations of Hollywood don’t excuse it.

Particularly as it cannot and will not work.