As the noose tightens on the necks of citizens around the world from the DMCA, the proposed FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), European Directive, citizens are becoming concerned about the loss of their freedoms. as if freedom was like apples in a bag, and people were stealing one at a time, with only a few left.

The fact is, governments do not give you your rights! Your rights are inalienable and appear when you become a human being. In fact, just the notion of rights is as much of an artificial human construct as government.

The fundamental truth is that rights "come with" being born, they are not "allowed or given" by government. All any law, government , or king can do, is try to limit your freedoms. They cannot give you something you already have.The RIAA, DMCA,MPAA and other four letter words, are using the mechanism of governments, courts, and law enforcement to artificially limit your freedoms. With due respect to any "NATURAL LAW" adherents, I assert that the normal and natural state of a human born on a desert island, is to be "lawless". Anarchy (lack of government) is the natural and normal state of humans.

If you put five people on a desert island, usually one person will become dominant. This is not because this is the way it HAS to be, or SHOULD be, but because people (and groups) who want to impose their wills on others, and to unfairly take advantage of their physical or mental aggressivity, TEND to assert that "We need to organize". Someone who says "we need to organize" has an agenda. The agenda may be deemed good or bad, but it is an agenda nonetheless. An example of someone who said "we need to organize" was Adolf Hitler. Nazi Germany was one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Proportionate to its repression, was its extreme concern with organization, bureaucracy, and records keeping. As government in Germany became more "organized" the more that civilians rights were being obliterated, albeit artificially.

A right that a human being has at birth, does
not go away or disappear because a government passes a law denying that right. That right is still there, it is just the government saying it is gone.
In Nazi Germany, they passed all kinds of unjust legislation targeted at the violation of large numbers of groups including Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled persons, and deformed people.

When the laws were passed, did these people as humans, LOSE their rights? NO. As a human being, they still maintained all rights they were born with, it was just a government saying they were going to actively prevent people from exercising these rights.

The point in all this is that, governments around the world are trying to illegally deny your rights through globalistic laws and directives.

As in Nazi Germany, the more laws they pass, they more they try to limit the free exercise of your rights. And, as in Nazi Germany, if you want a regime that limits what you download, what you copy, where on the Web you go, what you buy online, etc., then just sit there and do nothing,
because the trends in the news indicate, that raising the right arm to a 70 degree level in front of you and saying Seig Heil, may not be far away.

-Bulkeraser

Good points, bulk.

This is all not so much about protecting our rights, per se, as it is making sure the government knows that we will only tolerate so much before it's time for us to stand up and throw a collective tantrum.

George, you are right!
It's time to stand up and be counted.

Please Check out Code's petition online.

http://www.petitiononline.com/codewarr/petition.html

Thomas Jefferson would probably be saying "What the hell did I write the Decleration of Independence for?"

Another analogy of this would be if Goliath had succeeded in crushing David in the Biblical accounts. Because, unformtunately, this is what we're seeing worldwide. Elites who think that what are universally considered "inalienable" rights are essentially privileges targeted for permanent nullification, invalidation and revocation because they're considered "misused" or "abused." Though they don't necessarily come right out and say it, that's basically what we're talking about here.

And secondly: These exclusivist dictates have been plotted by those in the elite who were NOT elected by the public. Did anybody out there actually vote for the likes of Rosen or Valenti or Eisner or Sherman or Bainwol or Oppenheim or Weiss? No . . . but those who *WERE* elected have essentially been bribed into being stooges and lackeys for these unelected potentates. Namely, Hollings . . . Hatch . . . Levin . . . Conyers . . . you know the rest.

good point bulk, we all need to stand on this issue.

The root of the problem is corporations have personhood. In other words, they have the rights of a living breathing person.

I mentioned in another thread how corporations basically stole our rights in 1886 and made them theirs. The founding fathers knew from the very start that entities such as corporations (there was no equivalent back then) need to be regulated to protect average citizen. Corporations used to have to sign a charter stating they were created to "to serve the public good" and if they violated that charter, they could be dissolved. The RIAA would have been in violation of their charter from day one. Corporations have won battle after battle in court to attain more and more of our rights and use them against us.

If citizens want to have rights amended or added they would have to go through normal legislative channels, but corporations are able to win their rights by having 5 judges agree that it is fine and dandy. How is this fair?

Because of the right of FREE SPEECH that corporations took from us and made theirs, they can give huge donations to the candidate of their choosing. Do you think there is a single Democrat or Republican that has not received massive “donations” (I like to call them loans)? Do not believe for a second that the people in charge are doing a single thing in our interest.

If corporations did not have personhood, we would not even be discussing twisted copyrights laws; they would not exist. Abolish corporate personhood and kill the root of the weed, don't just pop the head off of the dandelion.

BTW: I am not some radical or kook. I do not run around in the street fire bombing people. My ideas are based in fact and we are living with the proof that corporation have way too much power every day of our lives.

We can change this. This country is not for the corporations, it is for the people and of the people.

The points raised by 'BlackOrchid' about the timeline since corporations started being treated as people, are VERY valid. This has been raised more than once by quite a few individuals, notably Jim Hightower.

BlackOrchid- great point(s) !
thanks for the info.

History tends to repeat itself. Take a look back when corporations were first being formed. Many of those corporations became monopolistic megapowers that stifled small business and took advantage of the people who were middle class and lower class so that they could become superpowers that put their ideology of the almighty dollar over the well being of the average American... This sounds a lot like the direction America is heading in today...

I don't think this theory is exactly right. I believe that social contract is the real meaning of government. Social contract is basically giving up some rights to the government in order for them to protect others. i.e. we give up our right to kill people and the government promises to protect us from people killing us. Three philosophers wrote about this: Hobbes, Locke, and Rossuea (i think that's how its spelled). Their ideas are slightly different but achieve similar ends. It is important to understand that the government doesn't take rights away from us we Give them those rights. When the government fails to protect our rights then we have the ability and duty to change the government because it is here for us. We give the power and we can take it away.

Few children , born into a "civilized" society, know anything about the notion of giving up of rights . Certainly, there is not any point in life that most people consciously say "I shall give up my rights to be a citizen", nor do they vocalize, verbalize, or commit to writing, "I hereby give up certain itemized rights." As for the philosophers listed, I shall discuss those you list. More is found on Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1754-1762 at http://www.uoregon.edu/~jboland/rousseau.html

Most remember him as the philosopher associated with the image of the Native American as the "noble savage". But, more to the point, Locke and Rousseu talk about the "General Will". The general will was like the collective will of the people who come together under the social contract. But, Rousseu derived the notion of the General Will, starting from the a priori that man as an individual is free. Rousseau believed that man does not achieve natural freedom until he enters into a social contract. I personally think this is balderdash, and would point to BigKahunah, that neither Locke nor Rousseau have the franchise on being right. I can be just as correct as they can, since these are philosophical positions that do not owe their rightness or wrongness owing to any objective standard by which such matters can be arbitrated. Now, on to Hobbes.

It is generally accepted that the hallmark of Thomas Hobbes work, as far as rights, is the work called The Leviathan, which was published in 1651.
Hobbes, as many of the philosophers you referenced did, thought that humans could not exist well outside of entering into the "social contract". This a priori, or first assumption is unproven, and,as most students of syllogistics know, if your "given" is not true, then all things deduced from it are suspect. According to Hobbes, we have a natural right to do absolutely anything that we believe will benefit us. In fact, all three of these philosopher had fairies dancing on the head of the pin, meaning they were making up these arbitrary sets of rights they placed generally into "natural rights" and "social or societal rights", as if this dichotomization, gives some sense of scientific exactitude to these concepts they create.

The natural rights would equal the rights I am talking about. The "societal" rights are the ones you seem to be talking about. In essence, this unhappy trio of philosophers advocated the notion that for men (they talked little about women, which may not be surprising since the word "chauvinism" originally was referring to the beliefs of Chauvin, who like Rousseau was French, and he believed that the French were the only superior people, so originally, chauvinism was really an early form of ethnocentrism) they relinquished their "natural rights" , basically begging to approach and become accepted by society, in exchange for being part of the society and thus, having these artificial "societal rights". Hobbes did maintain that citizens retain ONE natural right, the right of self defense. This right is not part of the social contract and not given up. Actually, it was Hobbes contention that it is impossible to give up this right. Hobbes notion was that except for the right of self defense, the other societal rights are legal (or artificial) rights, and are defined quite capriciously by whatever the monarch (king or government) decides your rights are.

But, since you retain the natural right of self defense, Hobbes advocated that if the sovereign and her troops came after you to put you in jail, you do not have to go to jail, and have the right to do anything to stay out of jail, even including KILLING THE SOVEREIGN!

Now, I would say that there are many people who, though not versed in these teachings of these philosophers, especially those of European extraction, would go along with this silliness of natural versus social rights. I point out the European origin part, because part of my heritage is Native American, and I can state that this artificial creation of natural versus social rights would seem like a foreign concept. And, as your name is BigKahunah, which comes from Hawaii and the huna religion (most of what we know about the religion of Max Freedom Long), I assert that the native Polynesians did not have a historical perspective of natural versus societal rights. This kind of excessive artificiality on what is a basic human element, is something that I think has been created wholecloth out of those who want to promote the notion that civilization, (and this is usually, in an ethnocentric way, is traditionally taken to mean Western civilization) is somehow superior to a less structured arrangement, ala the notion of the nomadic tribes of the steppes of Russia. This crazy notion can be traced back to Greece and Rome. The Romans looked at people like the Germanic tribes as being "barbarians" because they failed to dress in uniforms and march in geometric patterns. They learned the folly of this notion when the Romans were slaughtered in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, by a coaltion led by Arminius. History is full of these stories where the "civilized" group had their glutes kicked by "barbarians". Even here in the States, the haughty Hessian mercenaries, and British regulars, were contemptuous of the Americans because they found in an "uncivilized" manner, meaning guerilla tactics like hiding behind trees. The British wanted them to line up in rows and shoot at them in a face off.

I know I seem to be wandering far afield here, but really I am not. Now, from what you are saying, I see you have bought into the "natural rights" vs. "social rights" and "General Will" theory. And, for you, I see why you believe I am wrong. But, I assert that you and I can BOTH be right.

You may ask, how can two people with diametrically opposite opinions both be right? Here's an example. If you and I were facing each other, and a third person orders both of us to point to the right, we both face in opposition directions, and yet are both right.

Although I strongly disagree with your view, I appreciate that you brought this discussion into a deeper, more philosophical realm. It doesn't hurt from time to time to discuss the notions of past philosophers.

But, I did find a nexus of agreement with you that, when a government fails to protect our rights (although I claim one cannot really loose any rights, or what Hobbes would call "natural" rights) the citizens have the duty to rise up and oppose that government. Our founding fathers left us with that charge.

But, ending on a thought provoking notion, if each of us is born as a free person (thanking God that the Roman empire was destroyed by "barbarians", God bless those barbarians), and has natural rights given by God (or "just there" if one is an atheist) how would it ever be possible to "give them away" since they are not tangible things. One could "enter into a social contract" where one would say "I will not use certain natural rights" but that would not mean they went away, didn't still exist, or were not still there , just awaiting the individual to get enough courage to move away from an oppressive society in which he or she found themselves.

Sure, might equalls "right." If we want to remain free, we need to become MIGHTY. If I had the ability to become a benevolent dictator, I certainly would! But no individual does have that power on their own. We must join en-mass in order to overthrow the RIAA/DMCA/MPAA/and all these other 4 letter words that we find so repugnent. And MORE importantly, get the average citizens motivated to join our cause.

SOME things are more "right" than others when a SOCIETY is involved.

Shmoo

for the people, by the people crack a bell anyone?

these rains are hovering in the clouds, but a hard reign is going to fall.

What is the purpose of the declaration of independence? How much of that declaration are you willing to ignore?

maybe the wise words "for the people, by the people" will crack your bell.