oh saaaaay can yooou seeee

[waider]

America is a great place, we have fair use- it's why we're great innovators...

Hi. Hello. DMCA mean anything to you? Now, ah, where did that come from? And, ah, who subsequently pushed it out to WIPO in an attempt to make it a world-wide thing - depressingly successfully, I might add? You know, I get on fine with my American friends, but the phrase, "America is a great place" invariably seems to be a lead-up to some mindless, meaningless piece of crap about how much better/freer/more innovative/whatever it is than the rest of the world. Let's put it this way: the politicians are owned by big business, just like pretty much every other alleged democracy. The innovation has either all been outpaced by the Far East, destroyed by things like the DMCA and a faulty patent office, or outsourced to cheaper countries where they're smart AND they work for buttons. The legal system is a laughing stock the world over, due to the popular image of a prevalence of nonsensical lawsuits - regardless of coherence with reality or not, although these images have to start somewhere. The freedoms that so many people spend their time blathering about are being steadily chipped away at by things like the PATRIOT act and "reasonable exceptions that the framers of the constitution couldn't have forseen". The president is a world-wide joke for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact that he doesn't appear to recognise that there is a world. Human Rights are a joke - never mind Abu Gharib and all that, what about demanding immunity from prosecution for war crimes? What's that about? You know, "if you've nothing to hide, you'll have nothing to worry about", hmm? America's not the greatest country in the world. It's not the biggest. It had a good run at being the most successful, and it's got the biggest armed forces (who are, incidentally, being shredded by a combination of poor deployment strategies, local insurgents, and bad press generated by their own actions) but it's rapidly turning into just another tinpot example of a nation gone to seed. Maybe if the espousers of the "America is great" theory spent less time spouting off about the wonders of the nation and more time actually doing good things, y'all could have yourselves a great country. Until then, you know, stuff it.