And Chinese products are such export successes because... they are so valuable? No, they are export successes because they are cheap.
And they're cheap because China has low wages and is efficient - devaluing their currency under market value wouldn't have helped in the long run.
Or is the USA artificially keeping up the value of its currency today, and you're talking about reducing the value closer to the actual one?
Seems to me that would fix all the problems Europeans keep complaining about: American unilateralism, American superpower status, American military expenditures, America's trade imbalance, America's energy consumption, and America's control of international oil and financial markets.
I agree, I just don't think the USA keeps from devaluing out of care for international economic stability. It could have devalued slowly over a long period if that was the case.
America is like Europe: it's a landmass encompassing 50 small countries with varied laws and cultures.
That's true, but the US states with more guns don't tend to have less crime either.
I agree it's a good idea to teach people self-defense, but I don't think standing on the side and calling the police is a bad idea either. Robbers usually only kill or wound their victims if they resist. Or is it different where you live?
Look at it from a US perspective: a large number of Americans are descendants of refugees from Europe and Europe has been a constant source of problems. And it didn't end with WWII: there were several military dictatorships in Western Europe, Eastern Europe was communist, and there were religious wars in Ireland and the Balkans. You may think all these things are unlikely now, but from the outside, people have little reason to believe that Europe isn't going to erupt in war and genocide once the economy goes really bad.
That's interesting; I had no idea Americans looked at it that way.
Devaluing your own currency is also a very bad solution. It temporary increases export, but everything you need to buy from abroad also becomes more expensive. It doesn't address the underlying issues - that wages are too high, or the goods not valuable enough for other countries to buy.
If the dollar starts losing its value, there's a high risk people will switch to Euros or Chinese Yuan for international trade. The oil-producing countries in the Middle East want to switch to Euros to become less dependent on the USA, and China just wants to become the next superpower, and one of the strategies is to make it attractive to save and trade in Yuan.
Absolutely: the benefit is that Europe remains free, wealthy, and open, as opposed to being taken over by fascists or communists or religious extremists. I mean, the US didn't help Europe after WWII because Europeans had been such nice people, they helped because Europe had been a disaster area for centuries and it was getting worse and worse.
I agree that a strong defence force was a good idea during the Cold War, to deter the Soviet Union from invasion (and Europe DID have a much stronger defence force during the cold war).
But fascists? They're kept down in Germany through laws against free speech. If they gain political power in a European country again, the other countries will have time to build up their militaries too.
And religious extremists? There are no religious extremists who are a military threat against Europe. Those who are a threat are terrorists, and can't be defeated by the military. (Incidentally, most terrorist attacks in Europe are carried out by separatists, like the Free Catalonia movement in Spain, and in previous decades, the IRA on Northern Ireland, not by religious extremists.)
Instead, European nations found it convenient to continue to divert defense funds into social and economic programs.
Having a healty society and economy is a good way to prevent war; see below.
In principle, I agree with you. The reason the US hasn't done that (or balanced its trade or done other obvious things) is because the risk involved: unilateral withdrawal from Europe might destabilize Europe, balancing US trade might destabilize the world economy, etc. But it can't go on like that.
I think you're exaggerating the importance of the USA. It has a large military influence, but as you say, it's economy is smaller than Europe's.
After WW2, Germany was forced to sign the coal-steel union. It was a trade union which controlled the two materials which were most important to warfare: coal and steel. The idea was to make the major European powers so dependent upon each other they couldn't wage war against each other.
The coal-steel union later became the basis for the European Union, and today, the economies of the Western European countries are very tightly tied together. Besides the political stability since WW2, I think that's the major reason we haven't had any wars between them. The recent wars in Europe have been in (or between) former Communist states, which were thrown into political turmoil when the Soviet Union fell. Their economies were largely separate from the rest of Europe's.
I doubt the world economy can be destabilised if the USA applies tariffs or import restrictions. It would sure hurt some countries, but not the whole world. I doubt even more that's the reason the USA is not doing anything about its trade imbalance - I think the major reason is that trade balance is not that important to the economy, and applying tariffs and import restrictions costs more than you gain.
I wasn't suggesting that countries keep their own separate DNS systems for the same TLDs. Only that there is nothing stopping them from creating their own. Trying to maintain a separate DNS would indeed be silly.
If the USA insists on blocking foreign.com domains, creating independent DNS databases may be the least harmful option. For example, a Korean company with a well-known.com address may not want to switch to a.ko address, and 1) lose visibility to their customers, and 2) risk that a competitor or spammer registers their old.com domain. Nor does the Korean government want that to happen to their businesses.
As you say, if people don't like the rules the USA decides for their ball, they should make their own balls. You can keep playing with yours in any way you like.
Population-wise, yes. But in this context, it's about power, isn't it? As you say, Europe has failed to achieve a common foreign policy.
But, realistically, do you really think most Americans or American politicians care what Europeans think of them? Europeans have looked down its noses at the US since the US was founded.
I don't think Americans will care what Europeans think about them until Europeans get the power to do something about it (or the USA loses their power). It's up to the Europeans to do something about it.
I don't think American politicians would have kept spending on NATO, if they didn't believe they benefitted from it. US foreign policy is based on having a strong military presence in the world, which requires a large standing army. It also gives them leverage over Europe.
I absolutely think the USA should withdraw from NATO, if it no longer benefits from it. It would force Europe to build up their own armies and become more independent.
I thought you were under the impression that bail conditions were only to prevent the accused from fleeing. That may be true in the USA, but not in the UK.
I have a hard time imagining the type of crime that gets stopped by people with guns in real life.
Rape? It's usually committed by someone the victim knows, often in the home. If someone is assaulted and raped in a public place, where people with guns can chance upon them, wouldn't the assaulter be scared away just by being seen?
Convenience store robbery? Possibly. If someone realises the owner may have a gun, it could deter them, at least in theory. But if the owner actually tries to pull out his gun when he's being robbed, he's more likely to get shot.
Bank robbery? Do private citizens ever band together to stop bank robbers in real life?
Then there's the fact that the USA has a very large number of guns kept for self-defence, and still has a very high rate of violent crime. I suspect that private citizens with guns are so ineffective as crime-fighters, they don't make any noticeable difference.
So we agree that the action normally needs to be illegal in both countries?
I'm not familiar with the Hew Griffith case, but you're writing that Griffith claimed his action wasn't a crime in Australia. Is it possible the court didn't agree with him, i.e, thought the act was a crime in Australia, so dual criminality was fulfilled?
Your point being? The US is a sovereign nation. Of course, it is going to have strategies for defending its interests. Do you seriously think European governments don't have their own strategies? That's not "bullying", that's called "negotiations" and "diplomacy".
Well, I'd like to call it "bullying" if one party is much bigger and more powerful than the others, and uses that power to force their will onto others. Sure, most other nations would probably do the same thing if they could - the USA just happens to be the biggest kid in the school yard.
We also need to remember there're a lot of dirty tricks involved, like for example, when new copyright provisions were sneaked into the ACTA agreement during negotiations, so the politicians weren't able to protest them until it was too late. If I understand international politics right, it's usually USA who's driving the changes. American corporations lobby their government and bureaucrats, who in turn try to push the changes onto Europe and the rest of the world.
European politicians are just as guilty, of course. It's their responsibility to stand up against changes which are not for the common good of their nations.
That's not bullying, though. The US spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year on that military, and Europe saves tons of money because of it. The US keeps telling Europe that Europe should start carrying its own weight in its defense and keeps getting ignored. 3/4 of NATO expenses come from the US, and the 1/4 that Europe contributes is mostly useless in terms of defense effectiveness.
I'm not disagreeing with you there. European politicians need to grow a spine and tell their voters they need to pay for a bigger military if they don't want to become USA:s lap dog.
What makes the US more successful at diplomacy is that it actually has a goal, while Europe is still a bunch of squabbling nation states that is united only in pointing at the US when they can't get their act together, as they usually can't.
I think you've got a point there. The EU is still a somewhat chaotic collection of states with different languages, cultures and legislations. It's a wonder they can agree on as much as they do. The EU is still mostly a trade union with legislative powers - much like the US Federal government started out.
The US can't make Europe happy because Europe doesn't even have a consistent voice.
You can't make everyone happy, but you'd draw a lot less criticism from Europeans if you stopped pursuing your interests so aggressively.
I'm not expecting American corporations or politicians to start acting differently because some Europeans get upset, but sooner or later, discontent may become so great the EU will do something about it.
It's also possible the balance of power in the world will shift - for example, the USA has a huge national deficit, and sooner or later, I think you'll be forced to either cut down on your military, or be unable to pay the interest on your debts.
That's quite funny, given that pretty much the only wars the US has engaged in have been wars that the Europeans or Asians dropped on its doorstep.
The USA has been almost constantly involved in one war or the other since the 1800's. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Haiti, Kosovo, Sudan, Somalia, Korea, Vietnam, and so on, and so on - check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States. In many of them, the USA was the aggressor.
While European nations were busy raping and pillaging across the globe, American was mostly farming and building up an industrial base.
I'm not making excuses for European colonialism, but you have your fair share of raping and pillaging too:
1) Importing slaves for labour from Africa. 2) Genocide o
The Founding Fathers believed that liberty was paramount because God endowed men with natural rights. Now that the existence of a deity is not taken for granted (and is in fact expressly rejected by many on this site), the only defensible political system seems to be some form of utilitarianism: you can have only so much freedom as others are willing to allow you in their pursuit of what they believe is the common good.
Many atheists believe in natural rights. Haven't you noticed how many libertarians and objectivists are atheists?
Personally, I think the concept of natural rights is metaphysical, but apparently, many atheists are able to reconcile it with their world-view.
Actually, the Wikileaks cables showed how the USA has a plan to systematically push their copyright and patent legislation onto other nations (if it wasn't clear already). They've requested and received legislative changes in European countries, among others.
I'm not sure why European politicians are leaning over backwards for the USA. Part of the reason may be that USA has such a large military, they're helping to protect Europe too. Part of the reason may be the USA is simply better and have more experience at the lobbying game. It's has always been a very interventionist nation. Part of the reason may be policy laundering, like you say.
By enacting laws or concluding treaties or agreements, countries determine the conditions under which they may entertain or deny extradition requests. Common bars to extradition include:
* Failure to fulfill dual criminality - generally the act for which extradition is sought must constitute a crime punishable by some minimum penalty in both the requesting and the requested parties.
The Xbox was set as bail to ensure the kid showed up to face the charges and dispose of them properly. That is the reason why bail is even set at all.
No. This was in the UK. Bail isn't just a valuable or monetary amount set to motivate the accused to come back and face trial, or to hire a bounty hunter. It's a set of conditions for release, and may be used to prevent the accused from fleeing or from committing additional crimes, if the risk is deemed high.
If the judge bothered to point out that the accused would learn a lesson from the bail conditions, I think we can assume it had something to do with his motivation. It's not a judge's place to dispense general life advice.
The USA doesn't own the Internet. Each nation and corporation owns its own physical networks and servers. The underlying ideas and technology (like TCP/IP) were originally developed in the USA, but is owned by nobody. Since the 1990's, the ideas and technology have been developed internationally. For example, the World Wide Web was invented in Switzerland for European grant money.
The only "ball" in question is the.com DNS database, which is controlled by a US-American organisation. It resides on a few servers, which would be easy to duplicate anywhere in the world. If a country really wanted to have its own DNS database, they could probably set up one in a few weeks, to a reasonable cost.
The problem is that it'd be idiotic. It would fracture the Internet namespace so that different domain names connected to different IP addresses depending on where in the world you looked it up. If you logged in to a web service, and typed in the address to a third-party server, you could no longer be sure the web service saw the same site as you did. You couldn't be sure you and your friend were talking about the same site. Antivirus and anti-spam software would no longer be sure which sites they were blocking. And so on.
People are not protesting the "go play with your own ball" mentality because they're too cheap to buy their own DNS servers and set up their own DNS databases. They protest because they realise it'd hurt everyone, and it'd probably hurt the USA more than the rest of the world.
If your culture tries to suppress all violent tendencies, it necessarily removes your only means to defend yourself and others, and thus encourages a culture of cowards who do nothing to protect those around them from the few resistant violent criminals.
For those who don't know what the Berne Convention is, it's a treaty where the signatories treat the copyright of one country as if it is copyrighted in theirs. Most of the countries in the world have signed this convention.
So, regardless of what one may thing of pirating, the US and UK are well within their rights by doing this. So are many other countries, which either do not or are not making headlines.
I thought this was Slashdot, not Slanderdot?
*groan* It's not about the right to protect copyright, it's about who decides when a site should be shut down on what grounds.
If a site hosts both legal and illegal content, is it right to shut down the entire site (without even hearing the site owner)?
It's happening, possibly to a lesser degree, in other countries too. For example, Sweden has decided that Swedish citizens can be prosecuted in a Swedish court for having sex with minors, regardless of where in the world it takes place. Some politicians are working towards doing the same for prostitution - a Swedish citizen could be prosecuted for hiring a prostitute anywhere in the world.
I believe you have that backwards. Internationalism was our parents' thing with wonderful organisations like the EU and UN supposed to eliminate nationalism; now the younger generations are seeing the problems 'globalisation' brings and the EU is on the verge of collapse as Germans don't want to pay higher taxes so Greeks can retire early and spend the rest of their lives drinking at a beach-side cafe.
Saying that EU is a step towards globalisation is only half true. The EU works for free trade between its member countries, but towards the outside world, it keeps maintaining tariffs and trade restrictions.
But since you want to be childish and put it in those terms, then this is the more realistic analogy: The US was playing with its ball, and others saw that it was good. They wanted to play, too. And the US let them play with its ball, rather than making them go get their own (which it easily could have done).
And now that the rest of the world have built their own balls and play not only with the USA, but also with each other, the USA can no longer decide the game rules. It either has to listen to the other players, or go and play by itself. And that'll hurt the USA more than it hurts the rest of the world.
But if you want to talk about absurdity, then how absurd is it that you think you can adopt the network system that we built, then demand control over it?
If the USA persists in censoring sites directly in the DNS system, sure, I think the rest of the world should create their own. But it'll fragment the Internet and be bad for everyone in the long run, including the USA.
Slashdot Mirror
And Chinese products are such export successes because... they are so valuable? No, they are export successes because they are cheap.
And they're cheap because China has low wages and is efficient - devaluing their currency under market value wouldn't have helped in the long run.
Or is the USA artificially keeping up the value of its currency today, and you're talking about reducing the value closer to the actual one?
Seems to me that would fix all the problems Europeans keep complaining about: American unilateralism, American superpower status, American military expenditures, America's trade imbalance, America's energy consumption, and America's control of international oil and financial markets.
I agree, I just don't think the USA keeps from devaluing out of care for international economic stability. It could have devalued slowly over a long period if that was the case.
America is like Europe: it's a landmass encompassing 50 small countries with varied laws and cultures.
That's true, but the US states with more guns don't tend to have less crime either.
I agree it's a good idea to teach people self-defense, but I don't think standing on the side and calling the police is a bad idea either. Robbers usually only kill or wound their victims if they resist. Or is it different where you live?
Look at it from a US perspective: a large number of Americans are descendants of refugees from Europe and Europe has been a constant source of problems. And it didn't end with WWII: there were several military dictatorships in Western Europe, Eastern Europe was communist, and there were religious wars in Ireland and the Balkans. You may think all these things are unlikely now, but from the outside, people have little reason to believe that Europe isn't going to erupt in war and genocide once the economy goes really bad.
That's interesting; I had no idea Americans looked at it that way.
Devaluing your own currency is also a very bad solution. It temporary increases export, but everything you need to buy from abroad also becomes more expensive. It doesn't address the underlying issues - that wages are too high, or the goods not valuable enough for other countries to buy.
If the dollar starts losing its value, there's a high risk people will switch to Euros or Chinese Yuan for international trade. The oil-producing countries in the Middle East want to switch to Euros to become less dependent on the USA, and China just wants to become the next superpower, and one of the strategies is to make it attractive to save and trade in Yuan.
The trademark claim is so easy to dispute, I'm guessing the lawyer is just trying to get attention.
Absolutely: the benefit is that Europe remains free, wealthy, and open, as opposed to being taken over by fascists or communists or religious extremists. I mean, the US didn't help Europe after WWII because Europeans had been such nice people, they helped because Europe had been a disaster area for centuries and it was getting worse and worse.
I agree that a strong defence force was a good idea during the Cold War, to deter the Soviet Union from invasion (and Europe DID have a much stronger defence force during the cold war).
But fascists? They're kept down in Germany through laws against free speech. If they gain political power in a European country again, the other countries will have time to build up their militaries too.
And religious extremists? There are no religious extremists who are a military threat against Europe. Those who are a threat are terrorists, and can't be defeated by the military. (Incidentally, most terrorist attacks in Europe are carried out by separatists, like the Free Catalonia movement in Spain, and in previous decades, the IRA on Northern Ireland, not by religious extremists.)
Instead, European nations found it convenient to continue to divert defense funds into social and economic programs.
Having a healty society and economy is a good way to prevent war; see below.
In principle, I agree with you. The reason the US hasn't done that (or balanced its trade or done other obvious things) is because the risk involved: unilateral withdrawal from Europe might destabilize Europe, balancing US trade might destabilize the world economy, etc. But it can't go on like that.
I think you're exaggerating the importance of the USA. It has a large military influence, but as you say, it's economy is smaller than Europe's.
After WW2, Germany was forced to sign the coal-steel union. It was a trade union which controlled the two materials which were most important to warfare: coal and steel. The idea was to make the major European powers so dependent upon each other they couldn't wage war against each other.
The coal-steel union later became the basis for the European Union, and today, the economies of the Western European countries are very tightly tied together. Besides the political stability since WW2, I think that's the major reason we haven't had any wars between them. The recent wars in Europe have been in (or between) former Communist states, which were thrown into political turmoil when the Soviet Union fell. Their economies were largely separate from the rest of Europe's.
I doubt the world economy can be destabilised if the USA applies tariffs or import restrictions. It would sure hurt some countries, but not the whole world. I doubt even more that's the reason the USA is not doing anything about its trade imbalance - I think the major reason is that trade balance is not that important to the economy, and applying tariffs and import restrictions costs more than you gain.
I wasn't suggesting that countries keep their own separate DNS systems for the same TLDs. Only that there is nothing stopping them from creating their own. Trying to maintain a separate DNS would indeed be silly.
If the USA insists on blocking foreign .com domains, creating independent DNS databases may be the least harmful option. For example, a Korean company with a well-known .com address may not want to switch to a .ko address, and 1) lose visibility to their customers, and 2) risk that a competitor or spammer registers their old .com domain. Nor does the Korean government want that to happen to their businesses.
As you say, if people don't like the rules the USA decides for their ball, they should make their own balls. You can keep playing with yours in any way you like.
But the US is actually smaller than Europe.
Population-wise, yes. But in this context, it's about power, isn't it? As you say, Europe has failed to achieve a common foreign policy.
But, realistically, do you really think most Americans or American politicians care what Europeans think of them? Europeans have looked down its noses at the US since the US was founded.
I don't think Americans will care what Europeans think about them until Europeans get the power to do something about it (or the USA loses their power). It's up to the Europeans to do something about it.
American politicians fully agree with you: http://goo.gl/SRDOX
I don't think American politicians would have kept spending on NATO, if they didn't believe they benefitted from it. US foreign policy is based on having a strong military presence in the world, which requires a large standing army. It also gives them leverage over Europe.
I absolutely think the USA should withdraw from NATO, if it no longer benefits from it. It would force Europe to build up their own armies and become more independent.
Will try to comment on your other points later.
I thought you were under the impression that bail conditions were only to prevent the accused from fleeing. That may be true in the USA, but not in the UK.
I have a hard time imagining the type of crime that gets stopped by people with guns in real life.
Rape? It's usually committed by someone the victim knows, often in the home. If someone is assaulted and raped in a public place, where people with guns can chance upon them, wouldn't the assaulter be scared away just by being seen?
Convenience store robbery? Possibly. If someone realises the owner may have a gun, it could deter them, at least in theory. But if the owner actually tries to pull out his gun when he's being robbed, he's more likely to get shot.
Bank robbery? Do private citizens ever band together to stop bank robbers in real life?
Then there's the fact that the USA has a very large number of guns kept for self-defence, and still has a very high rate of violent crime. I suspect that private citizens with guns are so ineffective as crime-fighters, they don't make any noticeable difference.
So we agree that the action normally needs to be illegal in both countries?
I'm not familiar with the Hew Griffith case, but you're writing that Griffith claimed his action wasn't a crime in Australia. Is it possible the court didn't agree with him, i.e, thought the act was a crime in Australia, so dual criminality was fulfilled?
Your point being? The US is a sovereign nation. Of course, it is going to have strategies for defending its interests. Do you seriously think European governments don't have their own strategies? That's not "bullying", that's called "negotiations" and "diplomacy".
Well, I'd like to call it "bullying" if one party is much bigger and more powerful than the others, and uses that power to force their will onto others. Sure, most other nations would probably do the same thing if they could - the USA just happens to be the biggest kid in the school yard.
We also need to remember there're a lot of dirty tricks involved, like for example, when new copyright provisions were sneaked into the ACTA agreement during negotiations, so the politicians weren't able to protest them until it was too late. If I understand international politics right, it's usually USA who's driving the changes. American corporations lobby their government and bureaucrats, who in turn try to push the changes onto Europe and the rest of the world.
European politicians are just as guilty, of course. It's their responsibility to stand up against changes which are not for the common good of their nations.
That's not bullying, though. The US spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year on that military, and Europe saves tons of money because of it. The US keeps telling Europe that Europe should start carrying its own weight in its defense and keeps getting ignored. 3/4 of NATO expenses come from the US, and the 1/4 that Europe contributes is mostly useless in terms of defense effectiveness.
I'm not disagreeing with you there. European politicians need to grow a spine and tell their voters they need to pay for a bigger military if they don't want to become USA:s lap dog.
What makes the US more successful at diplomacy is that it actually has a goal, while Europe is still a bunch of squabbling nation states that is united only in pointing at the US when they can't get their act together, as they usually can't.
I think you've got a point there. The EU is still a somewhat chaotic collection of states with different languages, cultures and legislations. It's a wonder they can agree on as much as they do. The EU is still mostly a trade union with legislative powers - much like the US Federal government started out.
The US can't make Europe happy because Europe doesn't even have a consistent voice.
You can't make everyone happy, but you'd draw a lot less criticism from Europeans if you stopped pursuing your interests so aggressively.
I'm not expecting American corporations or politicians to start acting differently because some Europeans get upset, but sooner or later, discontent may become so great the EU will do something about it.
It's also possible the balance of power in the world will shift - for example, the USA has a huge national deficit, and sooner or later, I think you'll be forced to either cut down on your military, or be unable to pay the interest on your debts.
That's quite funny, given that pretty much the only wars the US has engaged in have been wars that the Europeans or Asians dropped on its doorstep.
The USA has been almost constantly involved in one war or the other since the 1800's. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Haiti, Kosovo, Sudan, Somalia, Korea, Vietnam, and so on, and so on - check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States. In many of them, the USA was the aggressor.
While European nations were busy raping and pillaging across the globe, American was mostly farming and building up an industrial base.
I'm not making excuses for European colonialism, but you have your fair share of raping and pillaging too:
1) Importing slaves for labour from Africa.
2) Genocide o
Well, it's up to the European companies to make it the American companies' problem by no longer using their products them.
The Founding Fathers believed that liberty was paramount because God endowed men with natural rights. Now that the existence of a deity is not taken for granted (and is in fact expressly rejected by many on this site), the only defensible political system seems to be some form of utilitarianism: you can have only so much freedom as others are willing to allow you in their pursuit of what they believe is the common good.
Many atheists believe in natural rights. Haven't you noticed how many libertarians and objectivists are atheists?
Personally, I think the concept of natural rights is metaphysical, but apparently, many atheists are able to reconcile it with their world-view.
Actually, the Wikileaks cables showed how the USA has a plan to systematically push their copyright and patent legislation onto other nations (if it wasn't clear already). They've requested and received legislative changes in European countries, among others.
I'm not sure why European politicians are leaning over backwards for the USA. Part of the reason may be that USA has such a large military, they're helping to protect Europe too. Part of the reason may be the USA is simply better and have more experience at the lobbying game. It's has always been a very interventionist nation. Part of the reason may be policy laundering, like you say.
From Wikipedia:
By enacting laws or concluding treaties or agreements, countries determine the conditions under which they may entertain or deny extradition requests. Common bars to extradition include:
* Failure to fulfill dual criminality - generally the act for which extradition is sought must constitute a crime punishable by some minimum penalty in both the requesting and the requested parties.
The Xbox was set as bail to ensure the kid showed up to face the charges and dispose of them properly. That is the reason why bail is even set at all.
No. This was in the UK. Bail isn't just a valuable or monetary amount set to motivate the accused to come back and face trial, or to hire a bounty hunter. It's a set of conditions for release, and may be used to prevent the accused from fleeing or from committing additional crimes, if the risk is deemed high.
If the judge bothered to point out that the accused would learn a lesson from the bail conditions, I think we can assume it had something to do with his motivation. It's not a judge's place to dispense general life advice.
The USA doesn't own the Internet. Each nation and corporation owns its own physical networks and servers. The underlying ideas and technology (like TCP/IP) were originally developed in the USA, but is owned by nobody. Since the 1990's, the ideas and technology have been developed internationally. For example, the World Wide Web was invented in Switzerland for European grant money.
The only "ball" in question is the .com DNS database, which is controlled by a US-American organisation. It resides on a few servers, which would be easy to duplicate anywhere in the world. If a country really wanted to have its own DNS database, they could probably set up one in a few weeks, to a reasonable cost.
The problem is that it'd be idiotic. It would fracture the Internet namespace so that different domain names connected to different IP addresses depending on where in the world you looked it up. If you logged in to a web service, and typed in the address to a third-party server, you could no longer be sure the web service saw the same site as you did. You couldn't be sure you and your friend were talking about the same site. Antivirus and anti-spam software would no longer be sure which sites they were blocking. And so on.
People are not protesting the "go play with your own ball" mentality because they're too cheap to buy their own DNS servers and set up their own DNS databases. They protest because they realise it'd hurt everyone, and it'd probably hurt the USA more than the rest of the world.
If your culture tries to suppress all violent tendencies, it necessarily removes your only means to defend yourself and others, and thus encourages a culture of cowards who do nothing to protect those around them from the few resistant violent criminals.
Isn't there any police where you live?
For those who don't know what the Berne Convention is, it's a treaty where the signatories treat the copyright of one country as if it is copyrighted in theirs. Most of the countries in the world have signed this convention.
So, regardless of what one may thing of pirating, the US and UK are well within their rights by doing this. So are many other countries, which either do not or are not making headlines.
I thought this was Slashdot, not Slanderdot?
*groan* It's not about the right to protect copyright, it's about who decides when a site should be shut down on what grounds.
If a site hosts both legal and illegal content, is it right to shut down the entire site (without even hearing the site owner)?
It's happening, possibly to a lesser degree, in other countries too. For example, Sweden has decided that Swedish citizens can be prosecuted in a Swedish court for having sex with minors, regardless of where in the world it takes place. Some politicians are working towards doing the same for prostitution - a Swedish citizen could be prosecuted for hiring a prostitute anywhere in the world.
I believe you have that backwards. Internationalism was our parents' thing with wonderful organisations like the EU and UN supposed to eliminate nationalism; now the younger generations are seeing the problems 'globalisation' brings and the EU is on the verge of collapse as Germans don't want to pay higher taxes so Greeks can retire early and spend the rest of their lives drinking at a beach-side cafe.
Saying that EU is a step towards globalisation is only half true. The EU works for free trade between its member countries, but towards the outside world, it keeps maintaining tariffs and trade restrictions.
The action for which extradition is requested also needs to be illegal in both countries.
For example, if someone in the UK targets people in France with a scam, the scam needs to be illegal in both countries for extradition to occur.
But since you want to be childish and put it in those terms, then this is the more realistic analogy: The US was playing with its ball, and others saw that it was good. They wanted to play, too. And the US let them play with its ball, rather than making them go get their own (which it easily could have done).
And now that the rest of the world have built their own balls and play not only with the USA, but also with each other, the USA can no longer decide the game rules. It either has to listen to the other players, or go and play by itself. And that'll hurt the USA more than it hurts the rest of the world.
But if you want to talk about absurdity, then how absurd is it that you think you can adopt the network system that we built, then demand control over it?
If the USA persists in censoring sites directly in the DNS system, sure, I think the rest of the world should create their own. But it'll fragment the Internet and be bad for everyone in the long run, including the USA.
I think you should reconsider for your own sakes.