As for the 'torrent' thing, IP lawyers might be arguing that Google is helping users commit infringement via Autocomplete specifically with how instant displays results
The same argument is used against guns and dangerous knives as well, as they help users commit murders. The arguments against banning of guns is that "it is not the gun that kills, it is the person" and "if they really wanted to kill, they would have found another way". (Whether these arguments are good or not is another debate...)
I have not really done that much research on the gun debate, but couldn't those arguments be applied to this case as well?
If you want to do some research into the gun debate, a good place to start is the movie "Bowling for Columbine". Some people will think of it as an extreme left-wing-nutjob propaganda piece, but my recollection of the movie is not that it hammers you with a conclusion, but that it presents a bunch of different scenarios that are all 'odd' in their own way. Accusing BfC of being a propaganda piece is like calling Borat a propaganda piece, stylistically they are quite similar.
Anyway, one of the things that really struck me about that movie was the difference in gun related deaths (per head of population) in Canada and the U.S. Basically both countries have buttloads of guns and the justification in both is that they are for 'hunting'. I don't remember the exact figures, but the deaths per 1000 from guns was enormously much higher in the U.S. than in Canada. Moore doesn't give an answer to that dilemma per se, but he does throw it out there for people to think about and make up their own minds. Frankly, if that is propaganda, I think the U.S. and the internet in general need a lot more of it.
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As for the guns debate, you could make an analogy to poison, where you say that poisons are sold at the supermarket, so why not sell guns at the supermarket too? I guess the reply would be that the poisons that are sold invariably have some other practical use, e.g. cleaning products. Whereas guns are pretty much designed with the express and only purpose of killing stuff.
Then the gun-nut will reply "oh, there's lots of other uses for a gun, like sport (target practice), hunting and personal defense as a deterrent". The problem isn't that those things are wrong, the problem is that - unlike pretty much every other country in the world with guns - people in the U.S. don't seem to stop at deterrent, they are much more likely to use the 'personal defense' guns to try to kill someone else.
Why is that?
What is it about the U.S. that as soon as they get a gun in their hand they want to go 'pop a cap in yo ass'?
And why doesn't that happen in Canada?
Some of the scenarios I remember from the movie that were presented:
The bank that gives you a shotgun when you open an account
The mall store(?) that was selling ammo in massive aisles
The five year old that took a handgun to school and shot one of his class-mates dead
The Columbine massacre
The gun lobby holding a big pro-guns rally in Columbine immediately after the massacre
Moore harassing Charlton Heston (figurehead of the gun lobby) (this one was most like a scene from Borat - it was an uncomfortable 'excuse me while I invade your personal' thing and went on for ages)
The same argument is used against guns and dangerous knives as well, as they help users commit murders. The arguments against banning of guns is that "it is not the gun that kills, it is the person" and "if they really wanted to kill, they would have found another way". (Whether these arguments are good or not is another debate...)
I have not really done that much research on the gun debate, but couldn't those arguments be applied to this case as well?