Quote:
Originally Posted by Keroberos
Just like roads are tools used to transport people and goods, and they may be and are used to commit crimes, should we block those too?
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As a general principle, the law should look at the primary purpose for the tool. In much of the US, there are laws against laypeople possessing tools specifically designed to pick locks. Now there are other tools, such as ice picks, that might also do the job, albeit not as easily. Those are always legal. And there are legal things you could do with a lock picking tool -- including, I think, breaking apart blocks of ice. It's hard to imagine any tool with no legal purposes, or any society in which every tool is unregulated.
I've posted before that I would rather this ruling be overturned because I think dictatorships will use it as an excuse to censor ideas. But if it was just a question of whether Pirate Bay is more like a road, or more like a set of lock picking tools, I'd say the latter.
Question: Press accounts I have read say little about the possibility of the ruling being appealed, even though there are two UK appeals levels above the High Court. Will it be appealed? And how often is the High Court overruled?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mr ploppy
We had a judge once who said women who wear skimpy clothes deserve to be raped.
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Unless that judge now sits on the High Court of Justice of England and Wales, this sounds like guilt by association. Just one of my personal bugaboos.