Looking back I feel I was too anti-american, I usually like you guys but you rustled my jimmies when you came off, as I felt, as a bit imperialistic.ecoho said:
Judge Rules Megaupload Raid Illegal
- Thread starter Karloff
- Start date
I think acts of asserting your will over another can be useful in the long term. Or it's so long term, nobody cares because they aren't going to live long enough to see it fail. Combine that with only people in power making the decisions instead of nations as a whole (then I wouldn't have a problem with that, and even then there is the risk of "tyranny of the masses" which happened in Ancient Athens) and you've got a recipe for mistreating nations. But bullying other nations in that way would be illegal, right? And I suppose you think illegal pushing of interests is wrong with which I agree. So I guess we just have to fight the illegal kind. I would just add that because of what I already said we have to keep an eye on the governments so it doesn't make exploitative laws such as SOPA and PIPA.Navvan said:
If the governments really realized their long term interests, why didn't that realization reflect on the recent Rio+20 Environmental Summit? [http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/06/22/analysis-rio-20-epic-fail/] Why is there only 10 words (out of 514) like "must" and "will" (as in, must lower environmental pollution) in the document that deals with the future of worlds' ecology? [http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?205248]
I believe we badly need international/global courts for that XDNavvan said:
On topic: I hear this a good balanced article about the Magaupload case. [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/why-the-feds-smashed-megaupload/]
Nenad said:
I would consider something to be illegal if it violates human rights or International law [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law] in general.
Theoretically I suppose it is possible, but I am unaware of it ever working indefinitely. In the cases it was temporary successful (such as the Roman Empire or Mongolian Empire) there was a major monopoly of power that can no longer exist today because it requires continuous conquest that simply isn't possible with the level of globalization and nuclear weapons of the modern age. That is the way I see it anyway. That isn't to say its impossible to push your will onto another, but I don't see it as ever being good in the long run in our current era of globalization.
Now we're moving into intranational affairs. It is entirely the duty and right of every citizen to make sure their nation is acting in their interest the same way it is the duty of a nation to act in their own interest.
They do realize their long term interest (for example there would be no summit at all if they did not), but there is always a balance between short-term and long term interests. For an extreme example it does no good if you address an issue that will become relevant 100 years from now instead of an issue that is 5 years into the future and leads to your collapse or hardships. This happens if your short term interests directly conflict with your long term interests and the tricky part is balancing the two. Sometimes nations do well in balancing it, and sometimes they don't.
Well there is such a thing as an international court [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_court]. The problem is that no matter how you set it up you'll need member nations to supply the power of the court, and the member nation with the most power will have greater influence or immunity. It works to an extent, and is certainly better than nothing, but it still leaves a differential of power.
