I think they're worthy of mention, so why are they always systematically ignored in sound bites about WW2? I'd like to hear why you personally omitted such a numerous group.
They certainly desserve a mention, but as far as I know they were killed "on the spot" by the regular army ; while that's a serious breach of the laws of war, that's not something that was unheard of before, and not a crime that has never been committed again since. The case of deaths camps is different, because it amounts to the building of an industrial slaying machine. Something very unique in history, and in fact the only disputed point by revisionnists.
European system is based on a balance (just as your system is a balance between conflicting interests, albeit weighted differently).
The idea between the law is that it's illegal to make public calls of hate against a category of people (in this case, jews). Denying Shoah is held as a call of hate, because that's basically saying that jews lied about the nazi attempt of killing every one of them. It's also more or less considered and insult against the very bodies of those who died.
Why isn't there an upsurge of protest against this law ? Consider that in every european family, someone died because of the nazis somehow, whom memory is still held by the survivors, and not as a combattant, but as a civil casualty - hostages, freedom fighters, communists (there was *plenty* of them) etc. That's something you as an american, may not be very aware of. But when someone's writing that nazis were basicaly nice peoples, a bit aggressive on the side maybe but no more than any regular army, that's very upsetting for many, many, many persons ; so we tend to prefer a bad law over public words of bullshit.
Forewords : I'm european, I'm positively sure Shoah did happen, that it was a mass-murder of 6 millions of jews, plus some hundred thousands of gipsys, plus a couple hundred thousands of gays, communists, mentally disabled etc.
I'm all against trials of writers and so-called revisionnists, because I don't believe in state imposed truth : a truth you can't debate is a myth in the full, dictionary, sense of the word. Those morons desserve to be laughed at, not sent to jail.
This said, your comparison is fallacious, because you're mixing two completely different things:
religion is not true or false : you believe it or not, that's the end of it. It then is compatible for one to worship what's making his neighbour smile, none of them being more stupid than the other, both desserving respect.
On the other hand, historical facts can be proven, first hand, by testimonies, memories, clues or whatever. Denying those facts makes you at best an idiot, who deserve the contempt you get.
Therefore, by siding religious feelings and historical facts, you're fuelling the arguments or religious zealots willing to enforce their own myth as a state-held truth, and / or justifying racism toward those holding beliefs we don't share because they're holding a supposed "truth" we don't believe in. Both moves being equally dangerous.
While it is probably true that languages are evolving, which implies there's no risk for future genrerations to become unable to communicate, it's also a social fact that the more one is educated to be fluent in its mother tongue, the better he is to become part of the elite.
So, yes, my young friend, speak |_33t if you like to - but don't come and ask for a position, cause it'll be given to the one who can master both old and new world.
PLease, come on. Public libraries are places where you should be able to look at whatever you feel inclined to, be it for entertainment or work. It's not a matter of personal taste. Libraries around the world have a long time policy of storing even the most offending materials, in the event of someone wanting to contradict them. In ancient times, those parts of collections where called "inferno" (I don't know in english if "hell" was in use). Interstingly, even when laws where harsher than today, in Medieval Europe where blasphemy wasn't taken lightly, monastic libraries kept storing and gave access (not general access, granted) to the most pagan books, and without them Plato would be all lost, as well as many philosophers universally looking like pornographs today. Words are words, images are images : it's not the real thing, merely a shadow of it. Even an illicit picture is only a memory of something which is no more real. You can only fight what you know, that's the purpose of record keeping.
Now, I'm all in favor of separated spaces between children and adults in public libraries, and even a separated space between general public and a more controversial area.
Can't answer in details, but the Sord sold quite well in many countries despite a hefty price tag (twice an IBM PC, roughly). As a matter of fact, it's well known that Sord computers corp. went bankrupt not because of the sale figures, but because they upset the Japanese industry enough for bigger players to cut their credit at the banks, while refusing to deliver microchips at the same time. Facing the imminent death of his company, Mr. Shiina sold all remaining estates of Sord to Toshiba (one of the few japanese manufacturers which didn't took part in the onslaught).
A very sad story for the computer buisness, because Sord was well ahead of its time in design ; for instance, all their computers were somehow compatible at source level, while running on widely different cpus (Intel, Moto, Zilog), and different operating systems.
Add to the picture the first 'office suite' in the world (PIPS), and you'll understand why every Sord user has very fond memories of these machines.
My first and beloved computer (still working like a charm today, preciously kept to inspire awe into future generations) was a japanese Sord M68. While I soon was given an IBM compatible PC/XT, I used my trusted Sord well into the 90's because no PC felt 'right' in comparison ; I gave up with a brand new and shiny 486, but I've since always felt ashamed for putting the Sord into retirement.
Features:
Cpu : both Motorola 68000 and Zilog Z80;
Ram : 256 Ko, up to 1 Mb expandable;
Screen : 640x400x16c, graphic mode and text mode not separated, but genelocked together (could show both at the same time);
Sord Graphic Langage : neat ansi extension to draw vectorial graphs natively with a cross-language ~ 100 instruction set;
systems : whatever you may wish, from Sord private OS to CP/M (80 or 68K);
languages : more than you could learn, but mainly Basic II (veryyyy cooool, compiler included, + basic tables manipulation primitives).
In my (un)biased view, the best computer ever devised.
As a Jew, I would like to be able to read Mein Kampf because I need to understand what hatred looks like before it comes knocking on my door. If I were in Germany or France it would be illegal, and Google would hide that information from me.
Mein Kampf isn't illegal in France. There's only one edition allowed to buy in paperback, full text, but without any commentaries (that's the forbidden part - to avoid pro- or neo- nazis justifying the content). You can get it in many public libraries, too.
Having read parts of it, I can swear to you you're losing nothing. It's full of air, very terse and emphatic, sometimes looking toward esoterism. You won't find any hint of the shoah in it - but a poisoned speech, mostly promoting selfconfidence and respect of the "line of command", as well as glorification of the "master race". Yuk.
There is this very prescient article written while the shuttles were being built.
That's fascinating to read afterward something so cleverly forethought. The greatest part being how the author described the failure modes of the shuttle as being rooted deeply into the bad choices, wrong political arguments and outright stupid decisions taken to push to production a sketch doomed from day 1, for lack of any meaningfull mission to begin with.
That stubborness at its very best. Criminal stuborness.
By "treatment" I meant "vaccination just after the bite" ; that's how Pasteur proved himself right on the 6th of july, 1885, by curing young Louis Meister.
Easy : if you can come back, then you've never been there all the way. Therefore, it's not different from a normal coma, except it's an induced one.
Think about it : without proper medication, some illnesses are 100% fatal (rabies [hydrophobia]) ; so if you let them evoluate, you end up in heaven or hell. But there's a cure - should we stop using it because it delays our potential face to face with destiny ?
[...] the old one is dying but there is a new religion coming up in France [...] If things don't change, I predict that within 20 years an average woman in France will have a set of Islamic friendly clothes [...]
That's grossly wrong ; in fact, figures show that muslims regular attendance to mosque is even less than the 6% of catholic born attendance to the church. There are social issues, but they are definitely not related to religious beliefs.
I am glad I have managed to move my gene pool into much more sane and safer place - on the other side of the pond.
If your intent was to make a reference to the recent riotting events in some suburbs, you might be glad to know that there wasn't a single casualty during those events, and that it was and probably is safer to walk in those suburbs at night, even during the course of the events, than in certain US town's suburbs on a normal saturday night. But you're right to have moved, your genes were probably not very welcomed here.
a significant percentage of the churchgoing population (who, in turn, are a significant percentage of the population at large)
Less than 6% in France. Churches are very peacefull to visit on sundays, you're not much troubled by the crowd - provided the church is actually open, that is, because there's not much priests left either.
Since you mention it, and while not strictly on the developpement side, french 'gendarmerie nationale' (a kind of police, but under military status) is switching to FF, thunderbird and Openoffice.org as main computer programs. And they're seriously considering Linux as the next move for their 80.000 computers. http://linuxfr.org/2006/01/04/20155.html
I understand your point of view, but I still firmly believe I'm right ; for instance, you say "with the whole internet thing, the situation has been blown wide open" : NO. There sure was an escalation of an order of magnitude in nature, but no fundamental change in essence. You'd be amazed to know how much we shared when I was at the uni in the 90's - ratio being somewhere around 1 bought for 10 copied. Nobody ever thought it was troublesome to buy blank tapes and spend 15 min to copy 45 min of music (high speed dubbing, for the youngest among the readers), because there was no alternative.
And about Napster, which you point as the root of RIAA actions, I'd bet in fact that RIAA was actually thankful they so blantly fell into their plan : in our old world, you could buy music. After Napster, the RIAA spinned so much the media that everybody is now nearly convinced entertainment is something you rent and you never own. More, thanks to Napster, RIAA is on the verge of having the so-called 'analog hole' plugged, but what's the 'analog hole' ? It was your former fair use right, mind you !
That is a change in essence, and not in nature. Thank you for the article, very intersting, btw.
May I respectfully disagree ? I think the situation is far worse than the one you describe. Basically, you're stating that the old economic model of entertainment industry is doomed because it can't cope with Internet. But it's in no way different than in old times, when you could copy whatever LP at hand on a tape ! And that didn't stop the old model from being profitable, last I checked.
I personaly think that instead of being aslept, the industry did had a new model at hand for the internet since a very long time. This model is the pay per view, and all we see around us is a fanatical attempt to force that new model down our consumer's throats.
We are very happy with our Olympus camera with a 10x optical zoom.
Don't get me wrong : you're perfectly entitled to be happy with your zoom ; but if you had a chance to compare your pictures with some of the same subject taken with a high end glass, then, you'd probably change your mind about them. And I'm quite an oly fan myself, btw. But I expect first from a glass to have straight lines being, well, straight on all the range, and I still have to see a 10x zoom achieving that.
Many times if you don't have 10x zoom, you just can't get the picture.
The more I look at pictures books and portfolios, the less weight I carry with me : most of the internationaly well known pictures were taken with a basic lens, generaly 35mm (24x36 eq.) or 50mm. Now I just take a 28 mm, a 50, and a 135. It just does the job. I admit that if I were shooting wildlife animals, I certainly would have a good 300, but big tele / zooms are nothing if you can't shoot indoors without a flash.
10x zooms are crap (all of them). You can't expect to have a sharp picture with this. Never forget the 2 rules of photography : if the picture is bad, you were not close enough (Capa) and everything farther than 500 yards from the car just isn't photognic (weston).
What bugs me is the money invested in this device ; it's like a modern Hindenburg : massive, ridiculous boarding capacity, sucks energy like there's no tomorrow, yet years of improvement for no tangible benefit.
Do boats move with their rudder ? Do plane flap wings ? Do cars run on tripod like insects ? NO. Because the wheel proved to be more powerful than anything nature can produce, _because_ life can't flow out of a body in a wheel.
But I reckon exoskeletons have a damn coolness factor that no other machine can match.
Sorry, I won't discuss your answer in details because 1) I know your arguments as well as mine, and we both could go on and on without reaching a compromise 2) it's Xmas day, I've presents to make, and little time ; so peace on earth is in order, let's bring our share to it.
But, just to single out a point : basically, your argument is centered around the motto "volonti non fit injuria" attributed to Immanuel Kant - that's perfectly OK, but this excerpt of Kant is alwayd used on purpose out of context, because Kant wrote it in a disputatio where he proved that motto is not always right ; for instance, in case of suicide, oneself injures himslef by free will (Kant self given example).
There are many conceptions of what law should be ; natural, technical, etc. You have your side, I don't share it. Happy Christmas, anyway.
ID isn't about creationism, and has no religious motivations whatsoever.
To the opposite, ID is all about religion and faith, since you have to believe it - there are no proofs, not even a single clue to back up that belief.
All it says is that we shouldn't dismiss the intelligent design THEORY out of hand, it is important in humankinds search for the ultimate answer to life the universe and everything that we look at all tha available options to explain where life originally came from. There is a problem with evolution, in that darwinian THEORY cannot explain where life came from, only how it continued to change.
The interesting part of this is : you're right, evolution as a real, scientific theory, can't be used for purposes outside its scope. Clearly, the question of the prima causa is in essence transcendantal, hence, unscientific, therefore ouside the scope of scientific theories, be it big bang, quantum mechanic or gravitation. And by this criterium, ID is clearly unscientific : by postulating the answer to the question of origins, it fails the scientific test. That doesn't prove ID is false, but it proves that ID shouldn't be taught outside sunday schools, which is the very root of the debate. Being unscientific, ID has no room in science lectures, period.
I could very well postulate on my own that universe was created this morning, by an intelligent designer who somehow implanted memories in our brains ; or I could think that I'm alone and dreaming of humanity. Those postulates are no more backuped than ID - but I resist the temptation to submit them to be included in school curriculum. Even if I believed it, it would be meaningless because the world I would be hypotheticaly dreaming of would still be governed by scientific laws, therefore the answer to the theological question of origins would be pointless to live in that world.
>> Amazingly, it has been proven to work pretty well for 150+ years, so that must not be that bad !
> And the system used in America has been proven to work pretty well for nearly 300 years, and traditionally hasn't had anything like moral rights. Moral rights are crap. Utilitarian copyright is where it's at.
Thank you very much for your reply, so much helpful to show the inherent flaws of copyright logic:
1) Your system has been working since mankind exists, because it amounts to jungle law : the powerful can kick the crap out of really creative people, bribe them, starve them, nobody gives a f*cking shit about it ; hence, this is not *law* as a means to create social balance.
2) If copyright was utilitarian, why the hell the end consumer would not be entitled full distribution rights on something he utimately paid for ? Well, it doesn't, because copyright obviously favors captation of the rights by industry, therefore it's not a true capitalist law, but a legislation of unbalanced privilege.
In fact, this is exactly the reason why french authors did revolt and forced the adoption of our intellectual property laws under the leadership of Victor Hugo.
As it happens, it's an amazingly terrible idea. It tends to discourage people from doing business with authors since the author can always break his promises and get away with it. This ends up being bad for authors too, since they get fewer opportunities.
Amaizingly, it has been proven to work pretty well for 150+ years, so that must not be that bad ! It didn't starve creation a bit, amainzingly authors still managed to find producers / distributors, and it didn't raise the number of litigations to a fraction of what you're accustomed to.
What's amainzing here is the wonderful propension for outsiders to outright tell we've got things backward when we actually did invent the very notion of IP you're frowning at, the one you did emasculate into the copyright laws.
Now, think what someone like Orson Wells would have done if he had had means to loosen up a bit the tight grip of Hollywood.
Appart from internal EU procedures, we're bound to the USA by reciprocal treaties under which EU decisions are automaticaly enforced by US juridictions and vice-versa. Would US juridictions refuse to give the aexequatur to EU decisions, then EU would retaliate by suspending the treaty, meaning *billions* lost by US economy because they basically would have to come to EU to plead for anything instead of going to their local court and have an immediately EU enforceable judgement on anything from trademarks dispute to patents litigations etc. That's a no-win situation everybody wants to avoid, so an american judge will force Microsoft into paying for the sake of global economy.
Ok, nevermind that, but this ammendment assumes everybody is guilty of usurping copyrighted material. In fact, you will be taxed no matter what the content of your file tranfers, even if you have never used P2P software in your life.
The law states that the tax will be declarative : you want to copy, you pay the tax, you don't, you pay nothing (but there are chances you'll be monitored a bit...)
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They certainly desserve a mention, but as far as I know they were killed "on the spot" by the regular army ; while that's a serious breach of the laws of war, that's not something that was unheard of before, and not a crime that has never been committed again since. The case of deaths camps is different, because it amounts to the building of an industrial slaying machine. Something very unique in history, and in fact the only disputed point by revisionnists.
The idea between the law is that it's illegal to make public calls of hate against a category of people (in this case, jews). Denying Shoah is held as a call of hate, because that's basically saying that jews lied about the nazi attempt of killing every one of them. It's also more or less considered and insult against the very bodies of those who died.
Why isn't there an upsurge of protest against this law ? Consider that in every european family, someone died because of the nazis somehow, whom memory is still held by the survivors, and not as a combattant, but as a civil casualty - hostages, freedom fighters, communists (there was *plenty* of them) etc. That's something you as an american, may not be very aware of. But when someone's writing that nazis were basicaly nice peoples, a bit aggressive on the side maybe but no more than any regular army, that's very upsetting for many, many, many persons ; so we tend to prefer a bad law over public words of bullshit.
I'm all against trials of writers and so-called revisionnists, because I don't believe in state imposed truth : a truth you can't debate is a myth in the full, dictionary, sense of the word. Those morons desserve to be laughed at, not sent to jail.
This said, your comparison is fallacious, because you're mixing two completely different things :
Therefore, by siding religious feelings and historical facts, you're fuelling the arguments or religious zealots willing to enforce their own myth as a state-held truth, and / or justifying racism toward those holding beliefs we don't share because they're holding a supposed "truth" we don't believe in. Both moves being equally dangerous.
So, yes, my young friend, speak |_33t if you like to - but don't come and ask for a position, cause it'll be given to the one who can master both old and new world.
Now, I'm all in favor of separated spaces between children and adults in public libraries, and even a separated space between general public and a more controversial area.
A very sad story for the computer buisness, because Sord was well ahead of its time in design ; for instance, all their computers were somehow compatible at source level, while running on widely different cpus (Intel, Moto, Zilog), and different operating systems.
Add to the picture the first 'office suite' in the world (PIPS), and you'll understand why every Sord user has very fond memories of these machines.
Features :
In my (un)biased view, the best computer ever devised.
Mein Kampf isn't illegal in France. There's only one edition allowed to buy in paperback, full text, but without any commentaries (that's the forbidden part - to avoid pro- or neo- nazis justifying the content). You can get it in many public libraries, too.
Having read parts of it, I can swear to you you're losing nothing. It's full of air, very terse and emphatic, sometimes looking toward esoterism. You won't find any hint of the shoah in it - but a poisoned speech, mostly promoting selfconfidence and respect of the "line of command", as well as glorification of the "master race". Yuk.
That's fascinating to read afterward something so cleverly forethought. The greatest part being how the author described the failure modes of the shuttle as being rooted deeply into the bad choices, wrong political arguments and outright stupid decisions taken to push to production a sketch doomed from day 1, for lack of any meaningfull mission to begin with.
That stubborness at its very best. Criminal stuborness.
By "treatment" I meant "vaccination just after the bite" ; that's how Pasteur proved himself right on the 6th of july, 1885, by curing young Louis Meister.
Think about it : without proper medication, some illnesses are 100% fatal (rabies [hydrophobia]) ; so if you let them evoluate, you end up in heaven or hell. But there's a cure - should we stop using it because it delays our potential face to face with destiny ?
That's grossly wrong ; in fact, figures show that muslims regular attendance to mosque is even less than the 6% of catholic born attendance to the church. There are social issues, but they are definitely not related to religious beliefs.
I am glad I have managed to move my gene pool into much more sane and safer place - on the other side of the pond.
If your intent was to make a reference to the recent riotting events in some suburbs, you might be glad to know that there wasn't a single casualty during those events, and that it was and probably is safer to walk in those suburbs at night, even during the course of the events, than in certain US town's suburbs on a normal saturday night. But you're right to have moved, your genes were probably not very welcomed here.
Less than 6% in France. Churches are very peacefull to visit on sundays, you're not much troubled by the crowd - provided the church is actually open, that is, because there's not much priests left either.
Since you mention it, and while not strictly on the developpement side, french 'gendarmerie nationale' (a kind of police, but under military status) is switching to FF, thunderbird and Openoffice.org as main computer programs. And they're seriously considering Linux as the next move for their 80.000 computers. http://linuxfr.org/2006/01/04/20155.html
And about Napster, which you point as the root of RIAA actions, I'd bet in fact that RIAA was actually thankful they so blantly fell into their plan : in our old world, you could buy music. After Napster, the RIAA spinned so much the media that everybody is now nearly convinced entertainment is something you rent and you never own. More, thanks to Napster, RIAA is on the verge of having the so-called 'analog hole' plugged, but what's the 'analog hole' ? It was your former fair use right, mind you !
That is a change in essence, and not in nature. Thank you for the article, very intersting, btw.
I personaly think that instead of being aslept, the industry did had a new model at hand for the internet since a very long time. This model is the pay per view, and all we see around us is a fanatical attempt to force that new model down our consumer's throats.
Don't get me wrong : you're perfectly entitled to be happy with your zoom ; but if you had a chance to compare your pictures with some of the same subject taken with a high end glass, then, you'd probably change your mind about them. And I'm quite an oly fan myself, btw. But I expect first from a glass to have straight lines being, well, straight on all the range, and I still have to see a 10x zoom achieving that.
Many times if you don't have 10x zoom, you just can't get the picture.
The more I look at pictures books and portfolios, the less weight I carry with me : most of the internationaly well known pictures were taken with a basic lens, generaly 35mm (24x36 eq.) or 50mm. Now I just take a 28 mm, a 50, and a 135. It just does the job. I admit that if I were shooting wildlife animals, I certainly would have a good 300, but big tele / zooms are nothing if you can't shoot indoors without a flash.
10x zooms are crap (all of them). You can't expect to have a sharp picture with this. Never forget the 2 rules of photography : if the picture is bad, you were not close enough (Capa) and everything farther than 500 yards from the car just isn't photognic (weston).
Do boats move with their rudder ? Do plane flap wings ? Do cars run on tripod like insects ? NO. Because the wheel proved to be more powerful than anything nature can produce, _because_ life can't flow out of a body in a wheel.
But I reckon exoskeletons have a damn coolness factor that no other machine can match.
But, just to single out a point : basically, your argument is centered around the motto "volonti non fit injuria" attributed to Immanuel Kant - that's perfectly OK, but this excerpt of Kant is alwayd used on purpose out of context, because Kant wrote it in a disputatio where he proved that motto is not always right ; for instance, in case of suicide, oneself injures himslef by free will (Kant self given example).
There are many conceptions of what law should be ; natural, technical, etc. You have your side, I don't share it. Happy Christmas, anyway.
To the opposite, ID is all about religion and faith, since you have to believe it - there are no proofs, not even a single clue to back up that belief.
All it says is that we shouldn't dismiss the intelligent design THEORY out of hand, it is important in humankinds search for the ultimate answer to life the universe and everything that we look at all tha available options to explain where life originally came from. There is a problem with evolution, in that darwinian THEORY cannot explain where life came from, only how it continued to change.
The interesting part of this is : you're right, evolution as a real, scientific theory, can't be used for purposes outside its scope. Clearly, the question of the prima causa is in essence transcendantal, hence, unscientific, therefore ouside the scope of scientific theories, be it big bang, quantum mechanic or gravitation. And by this criterium, ID is clearly unscientific : by postulating the answer to the question of origins, it fails the scientific test. That doesn't prove ID is false, but it proves that ID shouldn't be taught outside sunday schools, which is the very root of the debate. Being unscientific, ID has no room in science lectures, period.
I could very well postulate on my own that universe was created this morning, by an intelligent designer who somehow implanted memories in our brains ; or I could think that I'm alone and dreaming of humanity. Those postulates are no more backuped than ID - but I resist the temptation to submit them to be included in school curriculum. Even if I believed it, it would be meaningless because the world I would be hypotheticaly dreaming of would still be governed by scientific laws, therefore the answer to the theological question of origins would be pointless to live in that world.
> And the system used in America has been proven to work pretty well for nearly 300 years, and traditionally hasn't had anything like moral rights. Moral rights are crap. Utilitarian copyright is where it's at.
Thank you very much for your reply, so much helpful to show the inherent flaws of copyright logic :
1) Your system has been working since mankind exists, because it amounts to jungle law : the powerful can kick the crap out of really creative people, bribe them, starve them, nobody gives a f*cking shit about it ; hence, this is not *law* as a means to create social balance.
2) If copyright was utilitarian, why the hell the end consumer would not be entitled full distribution rights on something he utimately paid for ? Well, it doesn't, because copyright obviously favors captation of the rights by industry, therefore it's not a true capitalist law, but a legislation of unbalanced privilege.
In fact, this is exactly the reason why french authors did revolt and forced the adoption of our intellectual property laws under the leadership of Victor Hugo.
Amaizingly, it has been proven to work pretty well for 150+ years, so that must not be that bad ! It didn't starve creation a bit, amainzingly authors still managed to find producers / distributors, and it didn't raise the number of litigations to a fraction of what you're accustomed to.
What's amainzing here is the wonderful propension for outsiders to outright tell we've got things backward when we actually did invent the very notion of IP you're frowning at, the one you did emasculate into the copyright laws.
Now, think what someone like Orson Wells would have done if he had had means to loosen up a bit the tight grip of Hollywood.
Appart from internal EU procedures, we're bound to the USA by reciprocal treaties under which EU decisions are automaticaly enforced by US juridictions and vice-versa. Would US juridictions refuse to give the aexequatur to EU decisions, then EU would retaliate by suspending the treaty, meaning *billions* lost by US economy because they basically would have to come to EU to plead for anything instead of going to their local court and have an immediately EU enforceable judgement on anything from trademarks dispute to patents litigations etc. That's a no-win situation everybody wants to avoid, so an american judge will force Microsoft into paying for the sake of global economy.
The law states that the tax will be declarative : you want to copy, you pay the tax, you don't, you pay nothing (but there are chances you'll be monitored a bit ...)