Charismatic

...Not the Somalian ones stealing cargo vessels to hand back in exchange for millions of dollars or the Nigerian ones scamming the credit cards of old ladies. Those things apparently are of no immidiate concearn to us (much like reducing agricultural pollution of waterways, global warming, improving public transport, quakeproofing buildings...they can wait).

No these are against the real dangers to society...people downloading episodes of TV shows years before TVNZ may or may not show them (with bits cut out so they can fit adverts into the time slot). I know, you are horrified such an aweful thing could happen in our fair land, in New Zealand.

Now you may be wondering how or why we are even slightly bothered with this given our slightly more immidiate concearns about...well nearly everything actually . In short we bowed to U.S. pressure which is a pitty really given our history of "Our country, our laws". Didn't we descide in the 1984 (New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987) not to let foreign pressure dictate our laws?

I'm dissapointed because we didn't stand up to those principals that bind us all as a country. I'm disheartened we sold out an important part of our history for the promise of a quick dollar for our biggest export companies.

Given our isolation shouldn't we be embracing the digital age? First perhaps to realise that a new computer age has dawned, the dreams of our ancestors realised with information spread for free across the world almost immidiatly.

Now we can only look to jury nullification* in place of the common sense that should have prevailed in law.

*