This is now perfectly legal, shockingly

Sharing No Longer a Crime

Crushing blow to anti "piracy" terrorists

In a blatant act of democracy that would make Mussolini spin in his grave, the UK government reluctantly conceded that if everybody does it, it probably shouldn't be a crime.

Instead, as a nod to the intellectual monopoly gangsters, those dastardly "pirates" (i.e. everyone) will receive four spam letters a year from the Content® manufacturing industry, in a futile attempt to convince the rigidly bored audience to pay for Hollywood's increasingly derivative and uninspiring garbage.

Other than that, no action will be taken, at least not against the "pirates", not even so much as a menacing glance, much less a fine or prison sentence.

This is my analysis and response to Thomas Babington Macaulay's speech to the House of Commons, delivered on the 5th of February 1841, opposing the then proposed "Life + 60 Years" copyright term.

First I should state that I also oppose any extension to the copyright term, but moreover I oppose copyright in general, and seek its total abolition.

Macaulay's speech is good overall, inspired in places and clearly well-intentioned, but makes what I believe to be a fundamental logical fallacy which must be addressed. He also tends to waffle, giving far more examples than is necessary, most of which I've edited out. Therefore the following comprises a summary of the relevant parts of the original speech to which I wish to respond, and my indented responses (in blue) to each point. With the exception of Macaulay's final summary, I will only respond to those points I disagree with, so you may assume that I agree with the rest.

My objective is to demonstrate that copyright is not only morally indefensible, but also quite unnecessary.

I've found a disturbing trend in GNU/Linux, where largely unaccountable cliques of developers unilaterally decide to make fundamental changes to the way it works, based on highly subjective and arrogant assumptions, then forge ahead with little regard to those who actually use the software, much less the well-established principles upon which that OS was originally built. The long litany of examples includes Ubuntu Unity, Gnome Shell, KDE 4, the /usr partition, SELinux, PolicyKit, Systemd, udev and PulseAudio, to name a few.

I hereby dub this phenomenon the "Poetterisation of GNU/Linux".