Israel refuses to verify whether it has nuclear capabilities or not
Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty.
Israel refuses to allow IAEA to determine whether it has nuclear capabilities or not
While Israel refuses to divulge any nuclear capabilities their military doctrine maintains the right to use a preemptive strike with any and all weapon systems.
Since Israel refuses to allow IAEA insight into it's nuclear capabilities any and all embargoes employed against Iran is by the same logic also reasonable against Israel and what do you think Israels response would be against an embargo that essentially amounts to prohibiting any trade either to or from Israel?
Sure Iran is not someone I would like to have nukes but I don't think they are any more likely to use them than Pakistan, North Korea or Israel are.
I doubt that the US is any more afraid that Iran would use any nukes than say North Korea, on the other hand if Iran gets nuclear capabilities it would force Israel to play a lot nicer and Israel would most likely have to stop occupying the Palestinian territories and it would change the entire balance of power in the middle east and Israel is pretty much an ally of the United States...
Yes the events in Libya is most likely largely due to the fact that Libya had general conscription and a very large part of the male population had atleast some limited experience handling weapons. But in the end a conscription based military means that the military is directly tied to the local population and as such the limit for what atrocities the military is willing to commit/allow comes fairly soon because it could just aswell be their mothers, sisters, sons and daughters etc.
When the situation is like in most of the countries ruled by a tyrant the military is closely tied to the tyrant, they and their families have much higher living standards than the average population and they generally live apart from the average population.
And since they derive all their wealth and security from the tyrant the military is more closely tied to the tyrant than the population and thus as long as the tyrant keep the military happy the atrocities will continue.
Another important thing is that without international support the rebellion in Libya would have been brutally crushed, the rebels and most able bodied males in the rebelling areas slaughtered and their wives, sisters and daughters brutally raped. Look instead at the situation in Syria, the population is trying to rebel and the result is that the tyrant sends in the military to mop up and the rebels are powerless to do anything about it because they lack enough weapons, training or international support to resist effectively.
ehmm... so if they own the content they should risk loosing the right to it just because of a incorrectly filed notice??
Yes, at least when it should be obvious that the take down notice is illegitimate, for example things that are obviously covered by fair use (dancing babies with music in background etc). If a case is less obvious the first case should set a precedent and instead of copyright forfeiture the punishment should be a heavy fine, but any and all subsequent cases covered by that precedent should result in forfeiture of copyright.
If you send out blatantly false take down notice, such as for content the notice sender obviously does not own the punishment should be forfeiture of copyright of the allegedly infringing work(only if the notice sender owns said work or is acting on behalf of the owner of course) as well as their most profitable copyrighted work(or in case of movies the one expected to be most profitable) at the time of the sentence(oh sorry you claimed you owned copyright on some random indie movie, well you don't and that's too bad because now you don't own copyright on the new transformers movie that went on the big screen 2 days ago either)
Of course I don't mean incorrectly filed notices but those sent with blatant disregard of fair use where it should be obvious that the notice is invalid etc.
If it's just a filing error then scrap it and have them file a new one but be sure to tell them not to do it again, if they persist and keep sending out incorrectly filed notices then that is a malicious behavior and should suffer the same consequences as any other falsely filed take down notice.
This would force big media to start erring on the side of caution instead of sending out take down notices for everything even remotely related to something they hold copyright on and that in my opinion is a good thing, besides it benefits the public a great deal because all forfeited works are now in the public domain and free for everyone.
Poses no threat... Oh really?
The US has repeatedly shown itself to be hostile to Iran(overthrowing the democratically elected president and replacing him with a despot, supplying arms to Iraq and generally supporting Iraq's invasion), Israel is very closely linked with the United States and since US poses a threat so does Israel.
Also, Iran(and many western nations) considers Israels occupation of the Palestine territories to be illegitimate and illegal and as such funding and supporting groups resisting Israeli occupation is very much comparable to the Allied support of Polish and French resistance groups during WWII which most people see as a very legitimate action by the Allies.
Also, IF the reports about Mossad killing Iranian scientists that is definitely an act of aggression which obviously means that Israel is a threat. And if it's true that Israel was involved in stuxnet then that is yet another act of aggression.
Israel has also multiple times threatened military intervention if Iran continues it's nuclear program.
I'm definitely not a supporter of the current Iranian regime but I do think that Iran is no more likely to nuke another country than for example Pakistan(funny thing that no one is complaining about North Korea anymore now that they got their nukes operational), however if Iran ever gets nukes then that would of course change the entire balance of power in the middle east and Israel would probably have to stop bullying the Palestinians.
No a better punishment would be that if a court finds a DMCA notice to be illegitimate the copyright holder(assuming that the notice sender is either the copyright owner or acting on their behalf) permanently and irreversibly looses copyright over the work the DMCA notice claimed infringement upon. This would force copyright owners to think things through VERY carefully before taking any action.
Iran was innocent when the CIA first got involved but these days they are playing the game with the big boys and getting what they deserve (as is the CIA).
When you are talking about getting what they deserve I assume that you are talking about the gift wrapped advanced US stealth drone the CIA recently sent them. Christmas came early in Iran this year it would seem.
Yes they are but exactly how is that different from the CIA supporting say Osama bin Laden(against the soviet invasion) and Saddam Hussein(in his invasion of Iran) etc?
Iran rightly sees the US as a hostile nation(as it is an irrefutable fact that the US has committed acts of aggression against Iran) and given US and Israels historic relations and Israels aggressive stance it is not especially far fetched for Iran to view Israel as an ally/puppet of the US
And well supporting "the enemy of my enemy" is a tried and tested US tradition.
Well said if a bit oversimplified.
For example, what happens if when India and China refuses we(the western world) puts some exorbitant import tariffs on everything exported from India or China?
Sure this would hurt us but it would hurt them a lot more.
This is of course not reasonable action especially since a very large part of the US national debt is controlled by China but I'm just saying that the western countries are not without options, everything is not black or white.
If politicians really wanted to get at the problem they could for example enact laws that apply directly to companies(situated in America/Europe/Japan or with a physical there presence since that would nake said companies subject to local law) that does business in India/China either directly or through subsidiaries.
Well the problem with any sort of uncommanded weapons release is that once someone figure out that the drone starts shooting when they jam the command & control signal the enemy can make a children's hospital or a school seem like a potential target.
And once the US military regularly starts bombing schools, hospitals and catholic missionaries the PR fallout from that debacle would be absolutely massive regardless of whether they can prove that the enemy provoked the attacks by jamming UAV cnc signals.
Oh yes EU is soooo biased against US companies that the biggest fine they've handed out so far was to a European company and the majority of fines they are handing out still goes to european countries...
But yes pulling out of europe is certainly a valid option, the only options they do have is to either obey local law OR pull out of Europe.
Or are you trying to suggest that US companies should be above the law?
Copyright don't start ticking until the work is published but yes small publishers ought to be able to get a limited extension say another 5 years. Since they might take longer to get things printed and distributed etc.
No 5 years is not really a long time but as I said the purpose of copyright according to the law is to give creators incentive to release the works to the public by giving them a limited monopoly on the distribution and based on the average published work it's expected to make a profit within a year(Movies and Cd's for printed books maybe a little longer), thus 5 years should be ample time to earn a reasonable profit margin.
So you see it's not whether or not 5 years is a long time or not but if it's enough time for the average work to earn a resonable profit margin.
maximum 5 years is a much more resonable time.
How many studioes/publishers accept a movie/book that is not likely to turn a profit within a year or at best 2?
Copyright was explicitly made to entice creators to make their works availible to the public, by giving their work certain protection, the protection itself is not the main purpose of the copyright.
The US parliament has voluntarily elected to secede sovereignty over the area that the UN building occupies to the United Nations(same as with any other embassy, an embassy is legally the sovereign territory of the nation granted said embassy).
Of course the US can REQUEST that the United Nations return said sovereignty and leave their soil but should the United Nations refuse and if the US elects to enforce their request and eject the UN officials it is a formal act of war just the same as if you had forcibly landed troops on another nations territory(because that is essentially what you are doing).
Besides the United States is not innocent of committing atrocities either so far the US is the only nation to ever detonate nuclear weapons on a civilian population for example(the intentional targeting of civilians and causing superfluous damage with systematic bombardment was forbidden even before the Geneva conventions by the Hague convention to which the United States is a signatory).
No they are not buying something from Google but Google is providing an opt-out service and Google is a dominant actor on the search provider market they are forced by EU competition law to give everyone who pays nothing for the service the same service.
Because Google has such a dominant market share the effect of being limited to it's competitors would be an unfair trading condition which is something covered by EU competition laws.
Certainly Google knows what the effects of being de-listed would be and as such they would have to know that this was not what the newspapers were asking for. It seems like an obvious case of malicious compliance to me but I guess we will see what the presiding judge says.
I disagree.
The economic definition of a monopoly is when an individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it.
Google is the de facto market leader when it comes to search engines aswell as a >60% market share(I've seen figures that claim as much as ~85%) which means that Google have sufficient control over the search engine market to determine the terms on which others have access to it.
A monopoly does not necessarily mean that there is a single actor on the market(though that is the typical example), just that one actor have sufficient control over the market segment to dwarf any other actors.
I don't mean that you are a racist and I wasn't trying to indicate that you are. My interpretation of your comment was that you meant that a company should have the right to refuse to do business with anybody for pretty much whatever reason they want. That reason could in extreme examples be because they had the wrong skin color or because they have the wrong religion, political opinion etc.
Your post didn't talk about refusing to do business with "companies that sue us". Your post talked about Google being forced to do business with somebody they don't wish to which is a very broad term.
I intentionally used an example at the extreme end of the scale to try to show why companies under some circumstances should be forced to do business with people they might not want to.
Yes the newspapers sued Google and won and Google interpreted the court order as broadly as possible in order to punish said newspapers, since Google has a dominant market position it is my opinion that Google should be prevented from doing so because it would very adversely affect the newspapers ability to do business and I think that it is wrong to allow the defendant to punish the plaintiff for attempting to protect themselves when you infringe on their rights, especially when the court sides with the plaintiff because then the plaintiffs complaint obviously had merit.
Google is also considered to have a dominant position according to EU competition laws as it currently holds a market share well above 39.7%.
Which means that if their interests or fiduciary responsibility is contrary to EU competition laws they soon will find it very much in their interest to comply with the law or they will be fined until the comply with said law.
EU don't care what Larry and Sergei thinks or feels. "(a) directly or indirectly imposing unfair purchase or selling prices or other unfair trading conditions. (c)applying dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties, thereby placing them at a competitive disadvantage." is expressly forbidden and will be punished no matter what Larry or Sergei thinks is in Google's best interest because what the EC thinks is in the best interest of EU trumps what Google thinks is best for Google.
First of all, that is exactly the same as saying "I can't fathom a world where stores are forced to provide service to anybody they don't wish to." an argument that was used by racism apologists for decades.
Secondly, Many legal systems takes a dim view of people/companies who tries to punish someone for using the judicial system to force someone to respect their rights. The legal system is there to arbitrate conflicts and to enforce the law and and attempting to prevent someone from using their rights or punishing them for using that right
Thirdly, Google is a monopoly(last time I looked Google had more than the 39.7% market which is the EU threshold has set for when a company is obligated to follow antitrust laws) which means Google has to follow a lot of additional regulations which forbids them from treating customers differently.
According to Article 102c of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, applying dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties, thereby placing them at a competitive disadvantage. Is expressly forbidden. And hence delisting someone without a valid reason such as breaking rules(if they are reasonable) would be a breach of the antitrust law.
You are wrong. Any successful attempt to disable vital infrastructure when the aggressor is another state is an act of war regardless of how it was accomplished.
To use a rather extreme example: If hackers employed by the Chinese government hack a US nuclear silo and launch a missile against a major US city you claim that it does not constitute an act of war because the software was flawed?
Sure this is a rather extreme example that should be impossible to accomplish because of physical safeguards(i.e the missile has to be launched manually and is not in any way connected to the internet). Or atleast so we hope.
This would however make a geiger counter next to useless since they can't tell what type of radiation they are detecting.
In normal cases what you need to worry about is beta and gamma radiation because they can penetrate the skin which alpha radiation is normally unable to.
However when ingested alpha radiation is roughly 20 times more dangerous than either beta or gamma radiation if I remember correctly. This means that either they have to assume that all the detected radiation is alpha decay which would typically mean a huge overestimation of the actual levels of alpha radiation or assume that the majority is beta or gamma decay and thus risking underestimating the levels of alpha radiation.
So what they really need is an accurate and reliable way to detect alpha radiation(in addition to a geiger counter) or a device that is able to distinguish between different kinds of radiation, a geiger counter will do neither of the above.
Does US law force the ISP's to retain the ability to identify the user of an IP?
I can only speak about the situation here in Sweden but over here the law only forces the ISP to keep enough information to be able to accurately bill the customer and since IP addresses is not necessary for billing several ISP's have started deleting that information meaning no positive identification can be made, others keep the information for a few weeks meaning there isn't enough time for the **AA equivalents to get a court order to hand over the information but ample time for the police to make a request on a suspected pedophile etc.
This might all change with the EU mandated Data Storage Directive ofcourse.
Brazil didn't break patents, they used a paragraph of Brazilian copyright law that under certain circumstances allows the government to grant a production permission to a local company without the consent of the rights holder.
Such an exception "to protect public health, including medicine for all" is specifically allowed in TRIPS and the UN has several times reaffirmed that access to AIDS medication is an essential human right, the latest vote was unanimous with the exception of the United States which abstained.
US patent =/= Brazilian or even European patents. Patents are administered nationally, not internationally.
This means that nations will only grant and protect patents as long as they see a substantial benefit from doing so. Please remember that Intellectual Property is NOT a right but something that a nation has granted inventors in return for the inventors releasing their work and to encourage further investments into more inventions.
This is a careful balancing act because when the people/government feels that they do not get enough in exchange for granting these exceptions to inventors they will withdraw said exceptions.
Actually it is about that, according to the proposed law simply explaining that the cookie is necessary isn't enough, you have to give the user an option to decline the cookie(which as far as I know can be a link off the site), or the site has to configured so that cookies are turned off by default and the user can set preferences to allow them.
Also this can not be fixed by adding it to the EULA since the typical Eula is not considered binding according to Swedish law unless it's a multistep process(there has to be at least 3 steps for an online agreement to be considered valid) and then the hosting part is fully responsible for the text in the EULA meaning that if a clause is found to be against the law or otherwise unenforceable the signing party can petition the court to annul the EULA in its entirety.
And even then the agreement is only valid for the single user who accepted the agreement, any other person using that computer has not signed the agreement and is therefore not bound by the agreement.
This of course only affects sites that are hosted in Sweden, or is using the.se TLD or belong to a company or person that resides in Sweden or does business in Sweden)
You are trying to create a problem that simply does not exist.
Even in metric you can make a simple diagonal length:side length relationship, sure for that exact angle the relationship would most likely be something that includes decimal points(for the angle of 22.6 degrees the relationship would be 13:5 meters/decimeters/centimeters or whatever you feel like using.
Even if the construction workers does not know how to convert angles into previously mentioned diagonal:height relationship whoever made the drawing that told the construction workers of the pitch that this particular roof should have could just as easily convert the measures into metric.
The reason engineers use angles and metrics isn't because they're self important assholes but because they have to calculate how much load that roof can bear etc and that is a lot easier using angles and metrics rather than imperial and pitch relationships.
Drawings are made in metric and angles because the industry needs an objective standard and metrics and angles are considered more precise and easier to read.
The strongest and most obvious evidence in my favor is simply this:
European construction workers does not need a PH.D in order to do their jobs, they have roughly the same basic education that their American or Canadian counterparts do despite using metrics so obviously it can't be much harder. Or do you claim that the average European is that much smarter than the average American?
Slashdot Mirror
Israel refuses to verify whether it has nuclear capabilities or not
Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty.
Israel refuses to allow IAEA to determine whether it has nuclear capabilities or not
While Israel refuses to divulge any nuclear capabilities their military doctrine maintains the right to use a preemptive strike with any and all weapon systems.
Since Israel refuses to allow IAEA insight into it's nuclear capabilities any and all embargoes employed against Iran is by the same logic also reasonable against Israel and what do you think Israels response would be against an embargo that essentially amounts to prohibiting any trade either to or from Israel?
Sure Iran is not someone I would like to have nukes but I don't think they are any more likely to use them than Pakistan, North Korea or Israel are.
I doubt that the US is any more afraid that Iran would use any nukes than say North Korea, on the other hand if Iran gets nuclear capabilities it would force Israel to play a lot nicer and Israel would most likely have to stop occupying the Palestinian territories and it would change the entire balance of power in the middle east and Israel is pretty much an ally of the United States...
Yes the events in Libya is most likely largely due to the fact that Libya had general conscription and a very large part of the male population had atleast some limited experience handling weapons. But in the end a conscription based military means that the military is directly tied to the local population and as such the limit for what atrocities the military is willing to commit/allow comes fairly soon because it could just aswell be their mothers, sisters, sons and daughters etc.
When the situation is like in most of the countries ruled by a tyrant the military is closely tied to the tyrant, they and their families have much higher living standards than the average population and they generally live apart from the average population.
And since they derive all their wealth and security from the tyrant the military is more closely tied to the tyrant than the population and thus as long as the tyrant keep the military happy the atrocities will continue.
Another important thing is that without international support the rebellion in Libya would have been brutally crushed, the rebels and most able bodied males in the rebelling areas slaughtered and their wives, sisters and daughters brutally raped. Look instead at the situation in Syria, the population is trying to rebel and the result is that the tyrant sends in the military to mop up and the rebels are powerless to do anything about it because they lack enough weapons, training or international support to resist effectively.
ehmm... so if they own the content they should risk loosing the right to it just because of a incorrectly filed notice??
Yes, at least when it should be obvious that the take down notice is illegitimate, for example things that are obviously covered by fair use (dancing babies with music in background etc). If a case is less obvious the first case should set a precedent and instead of copyright forfeiture the punishment should be a heavy fine, but any and all subsequent cases covered by that precedent should result in forfeiture of copyright.
If you send out blatantly false take down notice, such as for content the notice sender obviously does not own the punishment should be forfeiture of copyright of the allegedly infringing work(only if the notice sender owns said work or is acting on behalf of the owner of course) as well as their most profitable copyrighted work(or in case of movies the one expected to be most profitable) at the time of the sentence(oh sorry you claimed you owned copyright on some random indie movie, well you don't and that's too bad because now you don't own copyright on the new transformers movie that went on the big screen 2 days ago either)
Of course I don't mean incorrectly filed notices but those sent with blatant disregard of fair use where it should be obvious that the notice is invalid etc.
If it's just a filing error then scrap it and have them file a new one but be sure to tell them not to do it again, if they persist and keep sending out incorrectly filed notices then that is a malicious behavior and should suffer the same consequences as any other falsely filed take down notice.
This would force big media to start erring on the side of caution instead of sending out take down notices for everything even remotely related to something they hold copyright on and that in my opinion is a good thing, besides it benefits the public a great deal because all forfeited works are now in the public domain and free for everyone.
Poses no threat... Oh really?
The US has repeatedly shown itself to be hostile to Iran(overthrowing the democratically elected president and replacing him with a despot, supplying arms to Iraq and generally supporting Iraq's invasion), Israel is very closely linked with the United States and since US poses a threat so does Israel.
Also, Iran(and many western nations) considers Israels occupation of the Palestine territories to be illegitimate and illegal and as such funding and supporting groups resisting Israeli occupation is very much comparable to the Allied support of Polish and French resistance groups during WWII which most people see as a very legitimate action by the Allies.
Also, IF the reports about Mossad killing Iranian scientists that is definitely an act of aggression which obviously means that Israel is a threat. And if it's true that Israel was involved in stuxnet then that is yet another act of aggression.
Israel has also multiple times threatened military intervention if Iran continues it's nuclear program.
I'm definitely not a supporter of the current Iranian regime but I do think that Iran is no more likely to nuke another country than for example Pakistan(funny thing that no one is complaining about North Korea anymore now that they got their nukes operational), however if Iran ever gets nukes then that would of course change the entire balance of power in the middle east and Israel would probably have to stop bullying the Palestinians.
No a better punishment would be that if a court finds a DMCA notice to be illegitimate the copyright holder(assuming that the notice sender is either the copyright owner or acting on their behalf) permanently and irreversibly looses copyright over the work the DMCA notice claimed infringement upon. This would force copyright owners to think things through VERY carefully before taking any action.
Iran was innocent when the CIA first got involved but these days they are playing the game with the big boys and getting what they deserve (as is the CIA).
When you are talking about getting what they deserve I assume that you are talking about the gift wrapped advanced US stealth drone the CIA recently sent them. Christmas came early in Iran this year it would seem.
Yes they are but exactly how is that different from the CIA supporting say Osama bin Laden(against the soviet invasion) and Saddam Hussein(in his invasion of Iran) etc?
Iran rightly sees the US as a hostile nation(as it is an irrefutable fact that the US has committed acts of aggression against Iran) and given US and Israels historic relations and Israels aggressive stance it is not especially far fetched for Iran to view Israel as an ally/puppet of the US
And well supporting "the enemy of my enemy" is a tried and tested US tradition.
Well said if a bit oversimplified.
For example, what happens if when India and China refuses we(the western world) puts some exorbitant import tariffs on everything exported from India or China?
Sure this would hurt us but it would hurt them a lot more.
This is of course not reasonable action especially since a very large part of the US national debt is controlled by China but I'm just saying that the western countries are not without options, everything is not black or white.
If politicians really wanted to get at the problem they could for example enact laws that apply directly to companies(situated in America/Europe/Japan or with a physical there presence since that would nake said companies subject to local law) that does business in India/China either directly or through subsidiaries.
Well the problem with any sort of uncommanded weapons release is that once someone figure out that the drone starts shooting when they jam the command & control signal the enemy can make a children's hospital or a school seem like a potential target.
And once the US military regularly starts bombing schools, hospitals and catholic missionaries the PR fallout from that debacle would be absolutely massive regardless of whether they can prove that the enemy provoked the attacks by jamming UAV cnc signals.
Oh yes EU is soooo biased against US companies that the biggest fine they've handed out so far was to a European company and the majority of fines they are handing out still goes to european countries...
But yes pulling out of europe is certainly a valid option, the only options they do have is to either obey local law OR pull out of Europe.
Or are you trying to suggest that US companies should be above the law?
Copyright don't start ticking until the work is published but yes small publishers ought to be able to get a limited extension say another 5 years. Since they might take longer to get things printed and distributed etc.
No 5 years is not really a long time but as I said the purpose of copyright according to the law is to give creators incentive to release the works to the public by giving them a limited monopoly on the distribution and based on the average published work it's expected to make a profit within a year(Movies and Cd's for printed books maybe a little longer), thus 5 years should be ample time to earn a reasonable profit margin.
So you see it's not whether or not 5 years is a long time or not but if it's enough time for the average work to earn a resonable profit margin.
maximum 5 years is a much more resonable time.
How many studioes/publishers accept a movie/book that is not likely to turn a profit within a year or at best 2?
Copyright was explicitly made to entice creators to make their works availible to the public, by giving their work certain protection, the protection itself is not the main purpose of the copyright.
The US parliament has voluntarily elected to secede sovereignty over the area that the UN building occupies to the United Nations(same as with any other embassy, an embassy is legally the sovereign territory of the nation granted said embassy).
Of course the US can REQUEST that the United Nations return said sovereignty and leave their soil but should the United Nations refuse and if the US elects to enforce their request and eject the UN officials it is a formal act of war just the same as if you had forcibly landed troops on another nations territory(because that is essentially what you are doing).
Besides the United States is not innocent of committing atrocities either so far the US is the only nation to ever detonate nuclear weapons on a civilian population for example(the intentional targeting of civilians and causing superfluous damage with systematic bombardment was forbidden even before the Geneva conventions by the Hague convention to which the United States is a signatory).
No they are not buying something from Google but Google is providing an opt-out service and Google is a dominant actor on the search provider market they are forced by EU competition law to give everyone who pays nothing for the service the same service.
Because Google has such a dominant market share the effect of being limited to it's competitors would be an unfair trading condition which is something covered by EU competition laws.
Certainly Google knows what the effects of being de-listed would be and as such they would have to know that this was not what the newspapers were asking for. It seems like an obvious case of malicious compliance to me but I guess we will see what the presiding judge says.
I disagree.
The economic definition of a monopoly is when an individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it.
Google is the de facto market leader when it comes to search engines aswell as a >60% market share(I've seen figures that claim as much as ~85%) which means that Google have sufficient control over the search engine market to determine the terms on which others have access to it.
A monopoly does not necessarily mean that there is a single actor on the market(though that is the typical example), just that one actor have sufficient control over the market segment to dwarf any other actors.
I don't mean that you are a racist and I wasn't trying to indicate that you are. My interpretation of your comment was that you meant that a company should have the right to refuse to do business with anybody for pretty much whatever reason they want.
That reason could in extreme examples be because they had the wrong skin color or because they have the wrong religion, political opinion etc.
Your post didn't talk about refusing to do business with "companies that sue us". Your post talked about Google being forced to do business with somebody they don't wish to which is a very broad term.
I intentionally used an example at the extreme end of the scale to try to show why companies under some circumstances should be forced to do business with people they might not want to.
Yes the newspapers sued Google and won and Google interpreted the court order as broadly as possible in order to punish said newspapers, since Google has a dominant market position it is my opinion that Google should be prevented from doing so because it would very adversely affect the newspapers ability to do business and I think that it is wrong to allow the defendant to punish the plaintiff for attempting to protect themselves when you infringe on their rights, especially when the court sides with the plaintiff because then the plaintiffs complaint obviously had merit.
Google is also considered to have a dominant position according to EU competition laws as it currently holds a market share well above 39.7%.
Which means that if their interests or fiduciary responsibility is contrary to EU competition laws they soon will find it very much in their interest to comply with the law or they will be fined until the comply with said law.
EU don't care what Larry and Sergei thinks or feels. "(a) directly or indirectly imposing unfair purchase or selling prices or other unfair trading conditions. (c)applying dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties, thereby placing them at a competitive disadvantage." is expressly forbidden and will be punished no matter what Larry or Sergei thinks is in Google's best interest because what the EC thinks is in the best interest of EU trumps what Google thinks is best for Google.
First of all, that is exactly the same as saying "I can't fathom a world where stores are forced to provide service to anybody they don't wish to." an argument that was used by racism apologists for decades.
Secondly, Many legal systems takes a dim view of people/companies who tries to punish someone for using the judicial system to force someone to respect their rights. The legal system is there to arbitrate conflicts and to enforce the law and and attempting to prevent someone from using their rights or punishing them for using that right
Thirdly, Google is a monopoly(last time I looked Google had more than the 39.7% market which is the EU threshold has set for when a company is obligated to follow antitrust laws) which means Google has to follow a lot of additional regulations which forbids them from treating customers differently.
According to Article 102c of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, applying dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties, thereby placing them at a competitive disadvantage. Is expressly forbidden. And hence delisting someone without a valid reason such as breaking rules(if they are reasonable) would be a breach of the antitrust law.
You are wrong. Any successful attempt to disable vital infrastructure when the aggressor is another state is an act of war regardless of how it was accomplished.
To use a rather extreme example: If hackers employed by the Chinese government hack a US nuclear silo and launch a missile against a major US city you claim that it does not constitute an act of war because the software was flawed?
Sure this is a rather extreme example that should be impossible to accomplish because of physical safeguards(i.e the missile has to be launched manually and is not in any way connected to the internet). Or atleast so we hope.
This would however make a geiger counter next to useless since they can't tell what type of radiation they are detecting.
In normal cases what you need to worry about is beta and gamma radiation because they can penetrate the skin which alpha radiation is normally unable to.
However when ingested alpha radiation is roughly 20 times more dangerous than either beta or gamma radiation if I remember correctly.
This means that either they have to assume that all the detected radiation is alpha decay which would typically mean a huge overestimation of the actual levels of alpha radiation or assume that the majority is beta or gamma decay and thus risking underestimating the levels of alpha radiation.
So what they really need is an accurate and reliable way to detect alpha radiation(in addition to a geiger counter) or a device that is able to distinguish between different kinds of radiation, a geiger counter will do neither of the above.
Does US law force the ISP's to retain the ability to identify the user of an IP?
I can only speak about the situation here in Sweden but over here the law only forces the ISP to keep enough information to be able to accurately bill the customer and since IP addresses is not necessary for billing several ISP's have started deleting that information meaning no positive identification can be made, others keep the information for a few weeks meaning there isn't enough time for the **AA equivalents to get a court order to hand over the information but ample time for the police to make a request on a suspected pedophile etc.
This might all change with the EU mandated Data Storage Directive ofcourse.
Brazil didn't break patents, they used a paragraph of Brazilian copyright law that under certain circumstances allows the government to grant a production permission to a local company without the consent of the rights holder.
Such an exception "to protect public health, including medicine for all" is specifically allowed in TRIPS and the UN has several times reaffirmed that access to AIDS medication is an essential human right, the latest vote was unanimous with the exception of the United States which abstained.
US patent =/= Brazilian or even European patents.
Patents are administered nationally, not internationally.
This means that nations will only grant and protect patents as long as they see a substantial benefit from doing so.
Please remember that Intellectual Property is NOT a right but something that a nation has granted inventors in return for the inventors releasing their work and to encourage further investments into more inventions.
This is a careful balancing act because when the people/government feels that they do not get enough in exchange for granting these exceptions to inventors they will withdraw said exceptions.
Actually it is about that, according to the proposed law simply explaining that the cookie is necessary isn't enough, you have to give the user an option to decline the cookie(which as far as I know can be a link off the site), or the site has to configured so that cookies are turned off by default and the user can set preferences to allow them.
.se TLD or belong to a company or person that resides in Sweden or does business in Sweden)
Also this can not be fixed by adding it to the EULA since the typical Eula is not considered binding according to Swedish law unless it's a multistep process(there has to be at least 3 steps for an online agreement to be considered valid) and then the hosting part is fully responsible for the text in the EULA meaning that if a clause is found to be against the law or otherwise unenforceable the signing party can petition the court to annul the EULA in its entirety.
And even then the agreement is only valid for the single user who accepted the agreement, any other person using that computer has not signed the agreement and is therefore not bound by the agreement.
This of course only affects sites that are hosted in Sweden, or is using the
You are trying to create a problem that simply does not exist.
Even in metric you can make a simple diagonal length:side length relationship, sure for that exact angle the relationship would most likely be something that includes decimal points(for the angle of 22.6 degrees the relationship would be 13:5 meters/decimeters/centimeters or whatever you feel like using.
Even if the construction workers does not know how to convert angles into previously mentioned diagonal:height relationship whoever made the drawing that told the construction workers of the pitch that this particular roof should have could just as easily convert the measures into metric.
The reason engineers use angles and metrics isn't because they're self important assholes but because they have to calculate how much load that roof can bear etc and that is a lot easier using angles and metrics rather than imperial and pitch relationships.
Drawings are made in metric and angles because the industry needs an objective standard and metrics and angles are considered more precise and easier to read.
The strongest and most obvious evidence in my favor is simply this:
European construction workers does not need a PH.D in order to do their jobs, they have roughly the same basic education that their American or Canadian counterparts do despite using metrics so obviously it can't be much harder. Or do you claim that the average European is that much smarter than the average American?