[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

I would disagree that the law has given up on the Internet, in the light of THIS:

These are aren't the only guys looking at federal time.

There are plenty of high-profile, isolated cases of the law going after people who cause a great deal of damage, financial or otherwise, to specific, identifiable victims online. The law is much less interested in stopping outright fraud (I cannot tell you how many emails have promised me a bigger penis if I click on their links), hate speech (Stormfront still has a website), privacy invasions, and various forms of illegal and coercive contracts.

I repeat: when I see legal action meant to shut down spam categorically, I'll take seriously the claim that the gov't intends to eliminate illegal data transfers online. Until they're willing to address the millions (billions?) of emails that promise benefits they won't and can't produce, they're not addressing the problem of "people using the anonymity provided by the internet to perform actions they couldn't legally do in person."

I'm also not accepting that copyright infringement is causing more damage than DDOS attacks, viruses, phishing, identity theft, and other types of online attacks.

Then there's Megaupload.

Aside from the problems currently going on in the Megaupload case... where's the assault against the dozens of other online storage/exchange sites?

The Avengers movie came out after Megaupload went down... did it take longer to hit the internet?

Clearly, the DOJ hasn't given up on bringing the rule of law to the Internet

They haven't given up on arresting high-profile criminal site managers. That's not the same as "bringing the rule of law to the internet." There's no attempt to go after the thousands (millions?) of small cases of fraud, defamation, harassment, and hate speech that occur every day.

If a person stood in the middle of a town square and yelled about how his ex was a vicious lying douchebag [insert string of profanity here], the police would arrest him for "disturbing the peace." Are there similar situations online? Are there arrests--or even legal warnings--for being deliberately rude and obnoxious?

"Rule of law" doesn't just mean "we go after the big criminals where the fines will be worth the cost of arrest." It's supposed to mean "we go after a lot of things, including tiny ones, so that people are careful to treat each other politely, for fear of retribution if they don't have the decency to do so for other reasons."

Does the law has some catching up to do? Sure. The Obama Administration says that more legislation is needed in order to root out the worst foreign pirate sites.

Translation: if it's illegal in the US, it should be illegal everywhere. And the US should be the ones to prosecute.

Somehow, I doubt that translates to "if it's illegal in Australia, we should send people to Australia for prosecution, even if they were in the US at the time they 'broke' the law." (I have written stories that are illegal to publish in Australia. They're freely available online. Should I be prosecuted?)

Once such legislation is passed, you will see the DOJ go after such pirate sites AND spam sites AND spoofing sites (The same type guys tend to be behind all those kinds of sites).

Do you have evidence for that? The claim that they're all run by the same types of guys, I mean? Or do you just assume that anyone breaking the laws you think are important must all be alike?