chilling effects (was TV shows)

[Seth Cohn]

> > Rather scary how a mere discussion of the legalities elicts such a
> > furor,  another chilling effect illustrated... when you can't discuss
> > the issues (and use illustrations such as links of the sort of things
> > that are under fire), what's left but to cave in and give up?
>
> Point of clarification here: you pointed to a resource that had an rss
> feed of BitTorrents of other people's copywritten material. I had no
> objection to the discussion. I objected to the link.

In other words, I pointed to a link (RSS feed) which compiled links to
torrent files (items in the RSS, stored on various servers elsewhere
from the RSS one) which themselves (in each file, which you'd have to
download) pointed to a link to a server (the bittorrent tracker, on
other different servers) which if contacted via the right protocol,
then will provide links to others (other bittorrent clients, some in
countries where it's 100% legal) who were also interested in sharing
materials, some of which are copywritten.

Please notice the number of levels of distance from any actual
copyright violation from that posted link (as opposed to 'click here
to download' in your browser), and then, as individuals, we should all
consider that the chilling effect here is staggeringly powerful
considering the number of meta-links required to actually violate any
copyright, and the need to directly seek to do so.  Write your
congresscritter, cause that makes little sense to me, and if geeks
like us don't point that out often and frequently, nobody else will.