Blah, blah, blah, opinions, rambling superficial thoughts

I am not a philosopher but sometimes I pretend to be one.
I went to college many years ago.
What I found interesting was the study of what makes people do what they do. There is not a lot of original thought in the world. People follow trends. This happens locally, nationally, and on a global scale.
I think we are heading out of an age of individual liberty and self determination and into an age of where personal freedom and self determination are an illusion and mass groups of people are manipulated by a central government or perhaps an organization.
I don't have this all down to a collection of buzzwords and catch phrases. Rather it is, from self-control to outside control, from the age of the Magna-carta to the age of The Patriot Act.
I should never have read Orwell.
What brought this all up?
I witnessed a couple guys get arrested for driving buzzed on an empty lake.
I came how and saw that Monsanto won in the lawsuit with Martin Bowman.
I've listened to my neighbor who is a Democrat lecture me about the supreme court decisions during the Bush administration. I've witnessed the Supreme court decisions with the new appointments of the Obama administration.
They are nearly always consistent.
The decisions may differ, but they will always limit individual rights.
The Bowman vs Monsanto lawsuit can be understood better if you look at it in terms of individual rights. It was essentially a test on two levels.
First was the technical question of patent law. Does the patent extend past the first sale and the original patent agreement?
Second was the ability of an individual with limited finances to take on a mega-corporation.
The Supreme Court seems to be reinforcing the trend to limit personal property rights. There have always been limits to patents. The patent process was designed to allow inventors to make money off their inventions and pay for research, it was not to insure a monopoly. Of course if you have a great money making patent then you want a monopoly and you do what ever you can to ensure that monopoly. This is natural and reasonable and since you are supposed to have the impartial witness of the court system to provide a balance, it works well.
But the times are changing.
One the ideas of individualism are replaced by things like collective good and contract enforcement then the process changes.
What Bowman was doing was in a gray area. If I were doing it I would feel that I was breaking the technology agreement, if I had signed one.
However, it is not really a threat to the company. If I were planting soybeans I would not get generic beans for animal feed and then bust my planting rate by 20 percent and spray it. There is no control over what you are doing and the amount of money involved in the planting process would scare me. Bowman was double cropping and could take a gamble. It is not really a slippery slope argument.
Neither is giving guys a serious lecture for drinking on an empty lake and pointing out that in the peak season it would be a quick trip to jail.
While we are on this sort of subject...
I do not understand the questions of cell phone and email privacy.
Cell phones are the same as a landline and email is the same as written letters sent in the mail. There is no difference between using a listening device or requiring internet service providers to give up information than steaming open a letter sent in the mail. However, if you are working for a company and using their computer system and their email system and they have the backup and you are doing it on their time, then that is different, unless you log in to your private email account.
And anything that is password protected has an intent of privacy. It should require a warrant.
A person's home is his castle.
This talk about the differences in the digital age is just an attempt to roll the clock back past several centuries of common law. Back to the day of serfs and kings. Do you really think King John wanted to sign the Magna Carta?