Domain: euractiv.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to euractiv.com.
Comments · 52
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Re:US foreign policy made this inevitable
If you study history you will know that the Europeans have been killing each other for centuries and the US had to clean up the mess of two World wars.
Not the best example to choose, given that your idea of cleaning up the mess appears to be becoming the only nation in the history of the world ever to actually use a weapon of mass destruction, with the resulting death of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The US government, like any other is run by fallible humans, but is still limited under a constitution that has stood the test of over 200 years. What other countries of the world can you name that have had the same democratic governmental system and authority for that long?
That depends on whether you believe that the US today still honours the principles of that constitution. Countless past discussions on this forum suggest that not everyone does.
US businesses go into third world countries and create jobs for many. The jobs may be at low wages, but conditions are still better for people who then have SOME means of earning a living rather than having nothing or nearly so. People like you call that exploitation.
That's because a lot of it is exploitation. The conditions are usually pretty poor, and in some cases they really are obscene, but since the megacorp is messing up the local economy people have to work under those conditions because setting out on their own doesn't bring in enough money. All the time, the US corps are bringing the fruits of the cheap labour back home, instead of reinvesting in the foreign locations as a local firm would. It's the classic give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish thing, and US big business is firmly in the loaning a man a fish at an exorbitant interest rate category.
You are right in that a lot of evil people despise the US because we stand up against their evil ambitions toward their neighbors. It is a great honor and shows that we are doing the right thing when we are despised by the many evil doers around the world.
That's great. And what about all the other people who aren't evil, but disagree with your government's position on (for example) the environment for entirely constructive reasons?
Now the incompetents at the UN want to run the Internet so they can try to stifle and control free expression and commerce.
That depends. I have no problem with them stifling US commerce, given that the typical US approach to big business and trade is directly harmful to their trading partners, and only works because the US can basically force it in the current economic climate. Did you really think the rest of the world would accept this indefinitely? Of course not, and I imagine the knives will really come out when the US's self-imposed economic crisis blows up sooner or later and it's vulnerable to the same tactics itself.
As long as Mr. Bush is in the White House, those DNS servers are very safe in the US and will continue to do their job for the whole world for free. The US owned and run GPS system will also be safe and useable by others around the world for not so much as a single cent.
You know that there are active plans to construct an alternative GPS network as well, right?
Overall, you score about 4/10; must try harder if you really want anyone to believe you, I think.
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Re:Details?
Yeah, very few details.
Best I could find with a cursory search was from EurActiv (which looks like a pretty interesting site):
http://www.euractiv.com/Article?tcmuri=tcm:29-1421 90-16&type=News
BBC sums it up pretty well:
"The proposal by the European Commission will now be discussed by member states and industry bodies.
EU officials hope agreement on a way to implement the idea can be reached by October."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4663731.stm
The Guardian:"EU plans online copyright licence":
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,15 23746,00.html