Effective government agencies that competently enforce existing law beats commited lunatics.
Possibly all that's needed is to remove political appointees and avoid situations where honest hard working people are repremanded for arresting (even just investigating) the "wrong kind of terrorists". It is certainly a very bad thing where police are actual aiding terrorists, as has been recently revealed to have happened in Northern Ireland. Or in the US where people who have been behaving suspiciously have been quietly put on trial, even allowed to leave the country, simply because they arn't Arab or Moslem. Dangerous nutcases are dangerous nutcases regardless of their religion, ethnicity or nationality.
I think that benefit balances the perhaps slightly increased harm from terrorist acts.
In many parts of the world, the risk from terrorism, ranks alongside "freak accidents". Even amongst actual terrorist threats anti-abortionist and "animal rights" groups may be more of a problem than anyone following a perverted version of Islam (which is unlikely to be much different from perverted Judaism or perverted Christianity...)
Your driver's license is still valid in other states.
Your drivers license should not be required for anything except for driving ever.
Actually it's only driving on a public road. On any private road it's up to the owner to set the rules. The fundermental problem here is treating what is effectivly a machine operator's permit as anything else is daft.
You may be required to display some form of identification to verify your age when purchasing alcohol. That is because when prohibition was repealed, states were specifically authorized to regulate all aspects of alcohol by the constitutional amendment.
Though the actual requirement is more likely to be proving you are over a certain age. Your exact age/DoB, even your name, address, job, etc shouldn't be relevent.
And it is bullshit that your California license is invalid in other states. It is valid because the states have agreements with each other to honor each others driver's licenses.
It dosn't even need to have been issued in the US, even if you are a US Citizen.
Even if they didn't, Congress could pass a law stating this (if they haven't already) because one of the powers they explicitly do have is regulating inter-state commerce.
Similarly they have the right to regulate international commerce. With respect to driving this isn't just in relation to countries where driving to and from the USA is possible.
A bank may require identification for cashing a check. A bank is not the government.
Arguably it should be up to banks or the banking industry to come up with methods for verifying their customers. Rather than simply assuming that they have some optional document. Regular commercial competition would tend to weed out banks who require their all their customers to be drivers.
The biggest problem with your comment is that you feel that being allowed to do something is "increasing your rights." That is incorrect. What you are really referring to is the authorization to do something. Of course, I would expect thinking like this from the land of fruit and nuts.
Especially when what is actually going on is a restriction in what you can do. e.g. Banks actually charge quite a bit for the service of looking after your money. At the very least they lend and invest your money and collect the interest on in.
We're supposed to believe that the enemies you allude to have vast resources and total commitment. Such pedestrian measures as standardized ID is not going to be an effective protection.
It's quite likely that such "standardization" would make the task of creating bogus ID's easier rather than harder.
The "9/11" terrorists could have been caught without PATRIOT, without mandatory ID requirements or any of the other shenanigans. That incident happened because dozens of agencies simply dropped the ball.
Or possibly told to drop the ball
Nothing has been done since that actually fixes the problem to the slightest degree.
At best things havn't gotten worst.
They are all actions done under the guise of fixing them but are simply misdirections to make people think something is being done.
Or misdirections away from the fact that proper investigations were not carried out.
So are you telling me that Congress can not pass laws? Why do we keep sending those slackers to Washington for? I thought that was their job! Shows what I know!
They can pass laws, as well as ammending and repealing existing laws. Subject to the restrictions on those laws described in the US Constitution.
Does that mean that weed is really legal?
It's known as "weed" for the reason that there are plenty of places where the plant will grow as a weed. Expecting plants to follow legislation made by humans is rather daft. Hopefully the actual laws address delibrate cultivation...
As originally setup, the United States was NEVER supposed to function the way it does now. Each state was to be effectively an independent country that makes it's OWN laws regarding its citizen.
In only a few places does the US Constitution use the word "citizen". In many place the term "people" is used, which is applicable to both citizens and non-citizens who have lawfully entered a country. It may also be applicable to non-citizens who have entered in some unlawful way. e.g. those claiming refugee status/political asylum or those who were abducted into the country in some way. (Even those who were simply lost and didn't realise they had crossed an international border.)
and they were to be very loosely tied together by the federal government;
Which had specific set of functions.
Somewhere along the way that morphed into "the federal government is all powerful and the states get to do whatever little legislation we ALLOW them to do".
Things such as "regulating interstate commerce" are probably more executive than legislative in the first place.
The 17th Amendment, in an attempt to avoid the deadlocks that were occurring in these elections, was passed, giving electoral power over the Senate to the people (why have a bicameral legislature when they're all popularly elected, duh?)
This is actually a very important issue. One reason for having a multi-chamber legistature is to help ensure that proposed legislation is subject to critical examination. e.g. "Will it do the job?", "What loopholes exist?", "Is it necessary at all?", etc. To do this well you need a way to ensure that the different chambers are actually different. Differing selecting methods help here. Even if they were to all include some kind of popular vote the elections need to be different. Possibly including such features as "stand for one chamber and you are barred from standing for a post in another chamber for 10-15 years"...
And to the GP - none of those programs are Constitutional, and I'm personally having a hard time justifying even things like the FDA and FCC.
About the only obvious thing would be "standardization of weights and measures" as applied to "interstate commerce". Which is probably a rather smaller job that their current role.
Note that I'm also a fan of a small standing military, with a very large trained reserve force, far in excess of the current size of the military reserves, frankly, and with units controlled and trained by the damned states as they were prior to the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
You'd probably need a consitutional ammendment. Which would probably also need to state the purpose of the standing force. e.g. first line defense and training of the reserve. As well as addressing issues about who has control of complex weapons systems.
It doesn't matter if it violates any fundamental human rights like free speech, etc.
Actually it does matter if it violates something such as free speach. Since the US Government is explicitally forbidden from doing so...
The fact that it violates the states' rights and the people's rights by going far beyond what could reasonably be construed as "regulating interstate commerce" is enough to make it unconstitutional.
Let alone all the creative definitions which have been applied. Whilst it may be constitutional for the US Government to insist on people wishing to board commercial airliners to hold certain specific documents it is really only reasonable that they do the issuing. e.g. it might be constitutional to require all passengers and crew to hold valid passports.
I'll show you as soon as you show me where in the Constitution it authorizes HUD, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and everything else our gov't does that is not specifically spelled out in the Constitution. Just because it's not stated, does not mean it is forbidden.
The 10th ammendemnt explicitally restricts the US Federal Government from having any powers not enumerated. Thus you'd need to either find explicit authority within the text as currently ammended or a later ammendemnt which alters the 10th.
The Social Security -program-, or any other public "needs" program that's similar (Medicare, Medicaid, HUD, etc) must be explicitly permitted, at least in -function-, in the Constitution.
If it isn't and there is a good reason to have it then there is a constitutional ammendment process. This is complex for the very good reason that such action should not be undertaken lightly or for trivial reasons (e.g. stopping people burning flags).
Period. Basic civics, people, basic civics.
Such understanding appears all too uncommon in the US today.
I agree with you completely. Letting the individual citizens vote directly for federal senate was the worst mistake in the history of this country.
One problem is that more voting does not always equate to more democracy.
It essentially invalidates local politics in the minds of a lot of people, because they figure they already voted for someone who "outranks" state representatives, therefor they don't need to care.
Probaly also killed off the possibility of state and regional political parties.
We've gone from a system of independent states which were more like individual nations in a loose alliance, to one large state with funny names for the different sections.
Together with a political system dominated by two large parties which are quite similar in many ways.
What authority does the state of Maine have to set the standards for ID's?
They probably don't. Which is part of the reason they cannot comply with a request to treat a "driver's license" as an ID... They do, however have have the right to set rules relating to public roads within the state of Maine. Including traffic laws and specific requirments for vehicles & their operators. (Except in cases where a more local government can apply their own rules to public roads within their jurisdiction.) This is because public roads are built, maintained and policed by the relevent government.
Umm, it's not a substitute for the driver's license, it is the driver's license. With the added bonus that as long as you keep it you don't need yet another card.
Except that this isn't always a bonus. Since the one card may come with various abilities you may rarely, even never, want to use. An analogy would be would be is it better to carry one "master key" to every door you might possibly want to open any time in your life or a bunch of keys for the doors you regularly use.
The driver's license is supposed to identify the user anyway, so it only makes sense to make it a real ID.
All the "identity" it needs is to prove that the holder is the holder for a fairly restricted set of activities. i.e. those related to driving a vehicle on public roads.
This Federal ID idea is definitely rediculous. I'm glad someone is actively opposing it.
It is also good that these legislators appear to understand some of the reasons why the idea is bad.
I suppose it is good they are trying to push states to actually have good ID cards. Some of them (West Virginia, New Jersey until recently) are rediculously easy to fake.
It would make sense to tackle the actual problem. That of overloading one document with multiple, even mutually exclusive tasks. i.e. the only people who need to know your SSN are employers and banks (if they are paying you interest). A driver's license should be used only for driving vehicles on public roads. If there is an actual need for an identity document (or a document to demonstrate the holder is older than a certain age) then the best thing to do is create one which just does this. Indeed for many purposes proving "identity" isn't of much practical use. What matters when boarding a commercial flight is that you are threat to the aircraft, its crew or your fellow passengers. It would make more sense to have everyone boarding take a breathalyzer test. Since drunk passengers are a known hazard, drunk pilots even more so.
If Congress refuses to significantly change the Real ID Act, then rebellion is the way to make it fail. The Act is built on a flimsy deck of cards. If a few of the most populated states like CA, NY, IL, MI, TX decide to blow it off. The Federal Gov't would be in a bind. On one hand, if they enforce it, it will kill the airline industry. On the other hand, if they don't enforce it, they are disobeying the law that Congress passed.
Are public roads federal or state. Since there dosn't appear to be federal police enforcing traffic laws it would appear that the latter applies.
It needs to be completely repealed. It was passed without discussion, without debate. It became law as a "rider" on a must-pass piece of legislation. With the Democrat Congress, its demise is more likely. We should contact Contact Congress and ask the law be repealed completely concerning the driver's license provisions.
The primary purpose of the document is what type of vehicles the holder can drive on the public road. i.e. nothing to do with their being a passenger in any vehicle. (Let alone such unrelated tasks as operating a bank account or buying goods). How do these provisions help with the primary purpose?
So Maine doesn't have to accept the fed's ID standards. Then the TSA doesn't have to accept Maine DLs at airports. Who will win?
It should hardly be relevent in the first place. It's not like you can drive a car around a depature lounge or along the aisle of a passenger aircraft. AFAIK it's also not a requirment that all people in the other 49 states must drive.
But there must be something more to it - why do Linux programs conform and Windows not conform? Most likely because Windows has always encouraged you to log in as admin, while Linux distros, on the whole, have *never* encouraged general use as root.
There also appears to be a strong cultureal element amongst Windows developers to write software as though they are writing for a single user machine with no security. Hence the first thing they do is circumvent the security model. As well as doing things like scattering files randomly through the Windows folder and keys throughout the registry. (Which may stay there even after uninstalling.) Whereas in unix the culture is much more to develop as a regular user.
Pratchett's current publisher in the US is HarperCollins.
Although the books are now released at approximately the same time in the US as in the UK (and in a few cases a few days before the UK!) they have different covers. (Many American fans order the books from Canadian bookstores in order to get the Paul Kidby covers.)
I was thinking more is the text the same. Or is the situation like the Harry Potter books which have different text in the US from everywhere else. The other thing which makes little sense is why the North American Free Trade Agreement does not make it trivial for Canadian (or Mexican) editions of books to be sold in the US. Apparently "free trade" is one of those terms which means something other than it's dictionary definition.
Now there is, roughly speaking, one store. They can afford to stock everything, they have nothing to lose by doing so (in contrast to the limited physical space and economic investment an in-person store could use).
There might still be a limit. But a physical store would need to decide how many copies to stock. Thus stocking an additional copies of something would decrease the range they could carry. When you are copying data you only need to store one original regardless of how many customers you have. Thus you can stock both popular and obscure tracks.
Music companies (and tv/movie content) are behind the times, they are accustomed to releasing music/movies/tv shows gradually world wide, instead of a universal date. (E.g. how do you sell a TV show to a station in every country, when it hasn't even been tested to work in one country.)
Of course your "test" may be a broadcast in a place (or on a station) where it wouldn't "work". However at what point is "testing" considered to have been done? e.g. such delays are present with Stargate SG1 which has running for nearly a decade!
Isn't this what globalization is all about? If corporations can buy goods and labour in the countries that are more beneficial to them, why should I not be able to buy entertainment products where they are cheaper?
Except that suppliers tend to get very annoyed when individuals do it, even more annoyed when retail companies do it and tend to reach for their lawyers...
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Effective government agencies that competently enforce existing law beats commited lunatics.
Possibly all that's needed is to remove political appointees and avoid situations where honest hard working people are repremanded for arresting (even just investigating) the "wrong kind of terrorists". It is certainly a very bad thing where police are actual aiding terrorists, as has been recently revealed to have happened in Northern Ireland. Or in the US where people who have been behaving suspiciously have been quietly put on trial, even allowed to leave the country, simply because they arn't Arab or Moslem. Dangerous nutcases are dangerous nutcases regardless of their religion, ethnicity or nationality.
I think that benefit balances the perhaps slightly increased harm from terrorist acts.
In many parts of the world, the risk from terrorism, ranks alongside "freak accidents". Even amongst actual terrorist threats anti-abortionist and "animal rights" groups may be more of a problem than anyone following a perverted version of Islam (which is unlikely to be much different from perverted Judaism or perverted Christianity...)
Your driver's license is still valid in other states.
Indeed most of the planet.
Your drivers license should not be required for anything except for driving ever.
Actually it's only driving on a public road. On any private road it's up to the owner to set the rules. The fundermental problem here is treating what is effectivly a machine operator's permit as anything else is daft.
You may be required to display some form of identification to verify your age when purchasing alcohol. That is because when prohibition was repealed, states were specifically authorized to regulate all aspects of alcohol by the constitutional amendment.
Though the actual requirement is more likely to be proving you are over a certain age. Your exact age/DoB, even your name, address, job, etc shouldn't be relevent.
And it is bullshit that your California license is invalid in other states. It is valid because the states have agreements with each other to honor each others driver's licenses.
It dosn't even need to have been issued in the US, even if you are a US Citizen.
Even if they didn't, Congress could pass a law stating this (if they haven't already) because one of the powers they explicitly do have is regulating inter-state commerce.
Similarly they have the right to regulate international commerce. With respect to driving this isn't just in relation to countries where driving to and from the USA is possible.
A bank may require identification for cashing a check. A bank is not the government.
Arguably it should be up to banks or the banking industry to come up with methods for verifying their customers. Rather than simply assuming that they have some optional document. Regular commercial competition would tend to weed out banks who require their all their customers to be drivers.
The biggest problem with your comment is that you feel that being allowed to do something is "increasing your rights." That is incorrect. What you are really referring to is the authorization to do something. Of course, I would expect thinking like this from the land of fruit and nuts.
Especially when what is actually going on is a restriction in what you can do. e.g. Banks actually charge quite a bit for the service of looking after your money. At the very least they lend and invest your money and collect the interest on in.
We're supposed to believe that the enemies you allude to have vast resources and total commitment. Such pedestrian measures as standardized ID is not going to be an effective protection.
It's quite likely that such "standardization" would make the task of creating bogus ID's easier rather than harder.
The "9/11" terrorists could have been caught without PATRIOT, without mandatory ID requirements or any of the other shenanigans. That incident happened because dozens of agencies simply dropped the ball.
Or possibly told to drop the ball
Nothing has been done since that actually fixes the problem to the slightest degree.
At best things havn't gotten worst.
They are all actions done under the guise of fixing them but are simply misdirections to make people think something is being done.
Or misdirections away from the fact that proper investigations were not carried out.
So are you telling me that Congress can not pass laws? Why do we keep sending those slackers to Washington for? I thought that was their job! Shows what I know!
They can pass laws, as well as ammending and repealing existing laws. Subject to the restrictions on those laws described in the US Constitution.
Does that mean that weed is really legal?
It's known as "weed" for the reason that there are plenty of places where the plant will grow as a weed. Expecting plants to follow legislation made by humans is rather daft. Hopefully the actual laws address delibrate cultivation...
As originally setup, the United States was NEVER supposed to function the way it does now. Each state was to be effectively an independent country that makes it's OWN laws regarding its citizen.
In only a few places does the US Constitution use the word "citizen". In many place the term "people" is used, which is applicable to both citizens and non-citizens who have lawfully entered a country. It may also be applicable to non-citizens who have entered in some unlawful way. e.g. those claiming refugee status/political asylum or those who were abducted into the country in some way. (Even those who were simply lost and didn't realise they had crossed an international border.)
and they were to be very loosely tied together by the federal government;
Which had specific set of functions.
Somewhere along the way that morphed into "the federal government is all powerful and the states get to do whatever little legislation we ALLOW them to do".
Things such as "regulating interstate commerce" are probably more executive than legislative in the first place.
The 17th Amendment, in an attempt to avoid the deadlocks that were occurring in these elections, was passed, giving electoral power over the Senate to the people (why have a bicameral legislature when they're all popularly elected, duh?)
This is actually a very important issue. One reason for having a multi-chamber legistature is to help ensure that proposed legislation is subject to critical examination. e.g. "Will it do the job?", "What loopholes exist?", "Is it necessary at all?", etc. To do this well you need a way to ensure that the different chambers are actually different. Differing selecting methods help here. Even if they were to all include some kind of popular vote the elections need to be different. Possibly including such features as "stand for one chamber and you are barred from standing for a post in another chamber for 10-15 years"...
And to the GP - none of those programs are Constitutional, and I'm personally having a hard time justifying even things like the FDA and FCC.
About the only obvious thing would be "standardization of weights and measures" as applied to "interstate commerce". Which is probably a rather smaller job that their current role.
Note that I'm also a fan of a small standing military, with a very large trained reserve force, far in excess of the current size of the military reserves, frankly, and with units controlled and trained by the damned states as they were prior to the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
You'd probably need a consitutional ammendment. Which would probably also need to state the purpose of the standing force. e.g. first line defense and training of the reserve. As well as addressing issues about who has control of complex weapons systems.
It doesn't matter if it violates any fundamental human rights like free speech, etc.
Actually it does matter if it violates something such as free speach. Since the US Government is explicitally forbidden from doing so...
The fact that it violates the states' rights and the people's rights by going far beyond what could reasonably be construed as "regulating interstate commerce" is enough to make it unconstitutional.
Let alone all the creative definitions which have been applied.
Whilst it may be constitutional for the US Government to insist on people wishing to board commercial airliners to hold certain specific documents it is really only reasonable that they do the issuing. e.g. it might be constitutional to require all passengers and crew to hold valid passports.
I'll show you as soon as you show me where in the Constitution it authorizes HUD, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and everything else our gov't does that is not specifically spelled out in the Constitution. Just because it's not stated, does not mean it is forbidden.
The 10th ammendemnt explicitally restricts the US Federal Government from having any powers not enumerated. Thus you'd need to either find explicit authority within the text as currently ammended or a later ammendemnt which alters the 10th.
You're giving these guys too much credit. They're not taking a principled stand for state's rights, they just don't want to spend the money.
The principle here is that they don't want to be voted out of office for wasting their employer's (i.e. the people of Maine's) money.
The Social Security -program-, or any other public "needs" program that's similar (Medicare, Medicaid, HUD, etc) must be explicitly permitted, at least in -function-, in the Constitution.
If it isn't and there is a good reason to have it then there is a constitutional ammendment process. This is complex for the very good reason that such action should not be undertaken lightly or for trivial reasons (e.g. stopping people burning flags).
Period. Basic civics, people, basic civics.
Such understanding appears all too uncommon in the US today.
I agree with you completely. Letting the individual citizens vote directly for federal senate was the worst mistake in the history of this country.
One problem is that more voting does not always equate to more democracy.
It essentially invalidates local politics in the minds of a lot of people, because they figure they already voted for someone who "outranks" state representatives, therefor they don't need to care.
Probaly also killed off the possibility of state and regional political parties.
We've gone from a system of independent states which were more like individual nations in a loose alliance, to one large state with funny names for the different sections.
Together with a political system dominated by two large parties which are quite similar in many ways.
What authority does the state of Maine have to set the standards for ID's?
They probably don't. Which is part of the reason they cannot comply with a request to treat a "driver's license" as an ID... They do, however have have the right to set rules relating to public roads within the state of Maine. Including traffic laws and specific requirments for vehicles & their operators. (Except in cases where a more local government can apply their own rules to public roads within their jurisdiction.) This is because public roads are built, maintained and policed by the relevent government.
Umm, it's not a substitute for the driver's license, it is the driver's license. With the added bonus that as long as you keep it you don't need yet another card.
Except that this isn't always a bonus. Since the one card may come with various abilities you may rarely, even never, want to use. An analogy would be would be is it better to carry one "master key" to every door you might possibly want to open any time in your life or a bunch of keys for the doors you regularly use.
The driver's license is supposed to identify the user anyway, so it only makes sense to make it a real ID.
All the "identity" it needs is to prove that the holder is the holder for a fairly restricted set of activities. i.e. those related to driving a vehicle on public roads.
This Federal ID idea is definitely rediculous. I'm glad someone is actively opposing it.
It is also good that these legislators appear to understand some of the reasons why the idea is bad.
I suppose it is good they are trying to push states to actually have good ID cards. Some of them (West Virginia, New Jersey until recently) are rediculously easy to fake.
It would make sense to tackle the actual problem. That of overloading one document with multiple, even mutually exclusive tasks. i.e. the only people who need to know your SSN are employers and banks (if they are paying you interest). A driver's license should be used only for driving vehicles on public roads. If there is an actual need for an identity document (or a document to demonstrate the holder is older than a certain age) then the best thing to do is create one which just does this.
Indeed for many purposes proving "identity" isn't of much practical use. What matters when boarding a commercial flight is that you are threat to the aircraft, its crew or your fellow passengers. It would make more sense to have everyone boarding take a breathalyzer test. Since drunk passengers are a known hazard, drunk pilots even more so.
Now if any congressman, senator, Bush or Cheney had sent his daughter/son to fight and die in Iraq, people would really understand they are tough.
Or even gone themselves, "real leaders" do so from the front...
If Congress refuses to significantly change the Real ID Act, then rebellion is the way to make it fail. The Act is built on a flimsy deck of cards. If a few of the most populated states like CA, NY, IL, MI, TX decide to blow it off. The Federal Gov't would be in a bind. On one hand, if they enforce it, it will kill the airline industry. On the other hand, if they don't enforce it, they are disobeying the law that Congress passed.
Are public roads federal or state. Since there dosn't appear to be federal police enforcing traffic laws it would appear that the latter applies.
It needs to be completely repealed. It was passed without discussion, without debate. It became law as a "rider" on a must-pass piece of legislation. With the Democrat Congress, its demise is more likely. We should contact Contact Congress and ask the law be repealed completely concerning the driver's license provisions.
The primary purpose of the document is what type of vehicles the holder can drive on the public road. i.e. nothing to do with their being a passenger in any vehicle. (Let alone such unrelated tasks as operating a bank account or buying goods). How do these provisions help with the primary purpose?
So Maine doesn't have to accept the fed's ID standards. Then the TSA doesn't have to accept Maine DLs at airports. Who will win?
It should hardly be relevent in the first place. It's not like you can drive a car around a depature lounge or along the aisle of a passenger aircraft. AFAIK it's also not a requirment that all people in the other 49 states must drive.
As you'd understand stations around the world aren't run by one giant corportation.
There certainly are transnationals in the TV broadcast business. e.g. News Corp.
But there must be something more to it - why do Linux programs conform and Windows not conform? Most likely because Windows has always encouraged you to log in as admin, while Linux distros, on the whole, have *never* encouraged general use as root.
There also appears to be a strong cultureal element amongst Windows developers to write software as though they are writing for a single user machine with no security. Hence the first thing they do is circumvent the security model. As well as doing things like scattering files randomly through the Windows folder and keys throughout the registry. (Which may stay there even after uninstalling.) Whereas in unix the culture is much more to develop as a regular user.
Pratchett's current publisher in the US is HarperCollins.
Although the books are now released at approximately the same time in the US as in the UK (and in a few cases a few days before the UK!) they have different covers. (Many American fans order the books from Canadian bookstores in order to get the Paul Kidby covers.)
I was thinking more is the text the same. Or is the situation like the Harry Potter books which have different text in the US from everywhere else.
The other thing which makes little sense is why the North American Free Trade Agreement does not make it trivial for Canadian (or Mexican) editions of books to be sold in the US. Apparently "free trade" is one of those terms which means something other than it's dictionary definition.
Honestly, I think this is another of the ridiculously outdated aspects of copyright law that really needs to change.
Except that those who bought the copyright laws don't think things are "outdated". Indeed the whole "region coding" thing is fairly recent.
Now there is, roughly speaking, one store. They can afford to stock everything, they have nothing to lose by doing so (in contrast to the limited physical space and economic investment an in-person store could use).
There might still be a limit. But a physical store would need to decide how many copies to stock. Thus stocking an additional copies of something would decrease the range they could carry.
When you are copying data you only need to store one original regardless of how many customers you have. Thus you can stock both popular and obscure tracks.
Music companies (and tv/movie content) are behind the times, they are accustomed to releasing music/movies/tv shows gradually world wide, instead of a universal date. (E.g. how do you sell a TV show to a station in every country, when it hasn't even been tested to work in one country.)
Of course your "test" may be a broadcast in a place (or on a station) where it wouldn't "work". However at what point is "testing" considered to have been done? e.g. such delays are present with Stargate SG1 which has running for nearly a decade!
Isn't this what globalization is all about? If corporations can buy goods and labour in the countries that are more beneficial to them, why should I not be able to buy entertainment products where they are cheaper?
Except that suppliers tend to get very annoyed when individuals do it, even more annoyed when retail companies do it and tend to reach for their lawyers...