Not if the subnet allocation itself changes from time to time.

Trademarks have probably evolved even further form their original intent than copyrights, since originally they were about consumer protection and preventing passing off, whereas now they've become almost a property right and can be used as a weapon even where there is no possibility of confusion.

There are situations where it does make sense - for example, parts of Tolkien's works are much older than the rest of the books they are published in (especially parts of the Silmarillion and History of Middle Earth, or the unfinished works), or books which were previously censored or were unpublishable at the time for some other reason.

The difference between what GP suggested and the Stasi was that in the GP's idea the surveillance would be symmetric - if prosecutors decline to act against their buddies, copies of videos along with the registered post receipt can be sent to the press and their opponents. Also, in a reasonably democratic society, people can vote in favour of legalising their own activities, which becomes worthwhile if they can't rely on getting away with petty violations.

Tradesmen would probably find them useful, at least in a next-generation with eyeball tracking so you can check drawings and specifications hands-free while up a ladder or whatever. (Also, it would allow them to get additional information about callers, like how many weeks ago they'd promised to finish the caller's job, before answering the phone on their hands-free kit.)

The word "milliard" was sometimes used in en-gb, although not as often as "thousand million", and is still used some languages.

Apparently the house pieces around the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney go up every time there's a big bushfire in the news, because you know that the fire commanders will use whatever it takes to keep fires away from there.

If Abbott gets pushed out by a Wet, Assange might get more support form the Liberals - remember that Turnbull's first major political activity was being the lead defence barrister in the Spycatcher case. At the very least, they could use Assange as a bargaining chip to help get better terms in the TPP, which would help get them forgiveness for the FTA.

The Greens (and, to a lesser extent, the Labor Left) are torn between supporting Assange for being anti-American (which gets lots of points with their most active members) and for opposing him for being an alleged rapist

Conceivably, a defendant could argue that the damage done is only the proportional loss from royalties paid by authorised distributors - that is, by uploading a song once, the damage done was the royalties that iTunes didn't pay, or the royalty portion of the price of a CD that would have been sold at Walmart (and that's counting downloads as lost sales).

The big issue is that if other companies also kow-tow to the "moral guardians" like this (and it obviously is that, since they're not doing it in other countries) then not going along with "industry standards" in protecting the innocent little kiddies is just asking to get sued by some church-backed soccer mom.

I don't know about where you live, but when I went to school we were taught enough sex ed to know the basic concepts of sex and masturbation by about 11, including the use and acquisition of contraception, STDs, and so on, and that was in a Catholic school[1] (although, IIRC, they didn't really explain how homosexuals had sex). That was on the basis that it was better to tell us as soon as we could understand, rather than letting us ask older siblings and so on and getting potentially garbled information. That means that it was actual policy to serve sexuality before they're into it.

I also remember that people in my cohort first began to think about sex as soon as the first pretty girl started to grow boobs (though it was a couple of years before anyone got her into bed, and it wasn't one of us) - if we'd put anywhere near as much effort into our studies as we did into perving on them, that last year of primary school would have been a lot more productive.

[1] in before the paedo priest jokes

It might well have been sexual for the guys involved, but if your 13yo finds that it is sexual for them, it is probably too late to hope that any kind of censorship will make them "normal" (not that abnormality is necessarily bad, of course).

Now, I don't know if the building in question actually was a consulate, but you do sometimes get them in obscure places: in my city, the British consulate is an antique shop, and the French consulate is, IIRC, in a restaurant, and the Italian one doubles as something else too. Since the old French consulate closed, the only "proper" consulate is the Greek one. Remember that consuls aren't necessarily full-time jobs, especially if your local ex-pat population is small.

The relevant local government could sent the DPRK a littering fine, if only for the entertainment value of sending a large number of bureaucrats running in circles trying to figure out what the diplomatic implications are if you want to take an unrecognised government's agency to court.

It is long and tedious, and involves you telling the government a whole lot of information they already know about you.

Also, several of the questions are leading: in the Australian census, they ask "What is your religion?", which gets an inflated answer compared to "Are you religious?If yes, which religion?", because people put down whatever religion their parents or grandparents were, or the church they were married in, rather then what they actually believe in. That then allows the Christian Lobby to claim that they represent far more people than they actually do.

(Also, God condemned census-taking in Kings, so there's a good religious argument against doing it.)