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Why stop with browsers? With enough creativity you can use any network protocol to download copyrighted material, so they should just ban computer networks.



Because the law doesn't take kindly to "well, technically" arguments.


So what does it mean when someone says "he got off on a technicality"?

There have been plenty of cases where exactly that happened.

There's the spirit of the law and the letter of the law, and many are persuaded that when someone hasn't violated the letter of the law, they haven't violated the law.

Judges, lawyers, and juries will vary on this, but in many cases the letter of the law will carry the day, and people will in fact "get off on a technicality".


Because browsers and network protocols were not created with the primary purpose of violating copyrights...

Intent matters in the law.

After after all, two guns can be physically and functionally identical, but if one is purchased to be used in a conspiracy to commit murder then it's evidence of a crime, and the other gun is still just a gun.


Any input or output device


No joke -- if they could get the legislation signed into law they would be thrilled.

They could care less about side-effects and collateral consequences for adjacent technologies and use cases.


They would prefer it if you only used DRM input and output devices that only run approved code rather than general purpose devices that can run any code you can conceive of or download [1]

[1] "The Coming War on General Purpose Computation" https://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-...




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