USA just ‘average’ on Freedom. Australia becomes as bad as Mediocre now.
Wikipedia - USA PATRIOT Act - Government access to library records
Emule can be your library. In addition to bypassing the law and being difficult to be under survaillence (mostly b/c of large number of suspicious but dead-ends having bad chemistry with the overburgeoning and badly backlogged FBI beaucracy), you got no take-out limit, no due dates, no reservations (already checked out; no limited supply), and no fines. Its not quite there yet and progress is currently stagnet, but if you like roleplaying games, science, politics, or computers, Emule is better than the real library (about equal on science and polotics). Thats because when you download or upload a book, one or more of the machine-automated collaboration of uploaders (both passive and active; passive bigger role in Emule / EDonkey and Azeurous / BitTorrent) manufactures (most likely not copyright-legally though! depends on book(s) possibly other kinds of illegal in other countries) part or all of the book and ships it to you, to keep for free!
.Wikipedia - Australian Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 - The “Reckless Funding” Clause
So much for Austrailia being one of the free-est countries in the world. At least one can assume assets as strictly investment type assets as goods are excluded (but are technically assets in accounting terms), and goods probably assumes files. So Emule’s indiscriminate distribution of files would make every file-sharer in austrailia a crinimal of sedition or treason if they wanted to include information or data in the law.
Wikipedia - Australian sedition law - Current Law
“(a) to bring the Sovereign into hatred or contempt;” combined with the “Extraterritoriality” section - I wonder if an American in America or an isreali in Isreal or a Chinese in Malaysia could get extradited to austrailia in they spread some queen-bashing? Or to spread gossip that the Aussie parliament is stupid for passing this tyrannical law. No freedom of speech in Australia. Watch the press freedom ratings drop from their near-perfect ratings to mere mediocre now. Whoops looks like I just violated Austrialia’s anit-sedition law. Wonder if the odds of me being extradited elevates when the same act gets similar penal offensiveness in america?
The internet is global. Exploitation is fun. Stop passing these stupid laws, Get a world government or live with the loopholes or just let the paranoid or controlling contries isolate their internet from the global internet. Thats actually easier for the USA to do than China because of the large number of black-market connections between China and Russia and also a little to Pakistan.
Believe me though, Both USA and Australia are better than say, China, Iran, or Saudie Arabia. Better than Peru and Indonesia too.
