I would suggest simply – very publically – asking the CEO of major corporations if this is what they want on their conscience; that through their actions pro-democracy activists in emerging countries were tortured and executed as a consequence of a copyright dispute. Whatever activists may think about corporations, they’re still staffed by real people who don’t want to be thought of as evil….

Vladimir: As someone who has spent 15 years involved in development work in Africa, I agree wholeheartedly with you. But Africa’s internal problems are an entirely different debate from this court case. If Africans are to create an environment for themselves that allows for development it will not be helped if we create the means by which authoritarian regimes can find and “disappear” the only source of viable opposition to their rule.

This ruling isn’t only about Africa. Zimbabwe is a great example because China has bankrolled Comrade Bob and provided him with Internet snooping software to hunt down opposition. The point is, globalisation isn’t only about the trade in goods and services. It is also about the way tyrants trade in ideas and systems.

Last thing we need is to give them more tools to work their evil.

As for your point about US lawmakers shopping dissidents to other governments I completely agree, and hope this idiot judge will be overturned before he gets people tortured, raped, or killed.

Alas, I don’t see how to do that without someone like Wal-Mart or ExxonMobil first asserting that they are extraterritorial entities in the U.S. with their own laws, as per much cyberpunk literature.

And maybe Africa isn’t to your taste. But how about dissidents in Russia, or Pakistan, or Russia … hmm, Mr Lenin?

Or better yet, how about corporate or political whistle-blowers in the US?

It may surprise you that the Internet has greater uses beyond the distribution of pirated videos and free porn. Many people – albeit a small minority – use it to disseminate views that can get them into a lot of trouble.

I don’t give a shit about what happens in Russia, for instance, but I don’t believe that US lawmakers have a right to decide to shop dissidents to their governments. In the US, or anywhere else in the world.

That way lies an end to any free speech at all.

Subtitle: With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.

It appears that most news sources and bloggers are more worried about the copyright infringement aspect of the release of information, though:

BBC Q&A
Judge Protects YouTube’s Source Code, Throws Users To The Wolves
CNet news

Ok, I’m going to ask some inconvenient questions. Who really gives a rats ass about the people living in Africa? We have some shining examples of the most hideous crimes being perpetrated there. Robert Mugabe is just the latest in a string of tribal strongmen who have completely failed the countries that they purport to love. Taking a world class food exporting nation, and driving it into complete economic disaster is a noble feat. Thabo Mbeki of South Africa is another in a string of leaders who seem bent on breaking their country. Patronage of the worst sort, by tribe is infesting the civil service in South Africa less than a decade after the White run economy was passed into the hands of the native Zulu and Bantu tribesmen. They did do a good thing in not simply slaughtering all whites that didn’t leave upon the act of political transference, and the Commission for Reconciliation is a single light shining from the Cape.
But what about the average person living in any of the country’s nations? Where is the rule of law? Where is there any chance to better him or her self by working hard, getting a better education, and striving?
Nowhere. The rule of law has been supplanted by the corruption of greed and tribalism run amok.
In the North, the Arab nations, fueled by vast oil revenues maintain idiotic conditions for their people, refusing to allow even the taint of Western music into daily lives. In the equatorial regions, the struggle for life against the diseases of tropical conditions is made even harder due to the politics of diamonds and the funding of any number of so called revolutionary movements that draft children as young as eight years to butcher their fellows.
In the East, Islamic rulers butcher all those who are not followers of the Prophet, peace be upon him. We have all seen the sanctity of life in the Sudan and in Mogadishu, where gunmen use pregnant women as both cover and concealment while they shoot at whichever peace-keeping force has been selected to try to maintain any kind of peace at all.
So, who really cares about Africa? The answer my friend is blowing in the wind. Go listen. Tell me if you get anyone to answer you. Anyone at all. Please.

In 2004, Yahoo turned over user information to the Chinese government that was used to track down a dissident journalist, Shi Tao, and send him to a labour camp. It was the moment that the Internet knew sin….