Bodies like the UN aren't even close to democratic ((1 country == 1 vote) != (1 person == 1 vote).
Sure. But is that less democratic or more democratic than (1 country decides, 7 billion people have to live be the decision)?
What you're saying is basically 'the propose solution isn't perfect so we better stay with the current set-up which is even less perfect'.
The GEMA is the organization who sole purpose of being is to license rights to broadcaster.
Thus the statement is correct: The GEMA would be the one who has to granz a license, and no such license was granted (as of now). The statement does NOT say that the GEMA refused to grant a license. That would be a lie, but that's not what YT says.
Digging a little deeper I'm starting to agree with GEMA on this one, it seems the bad press really started when a webcam feed from the Kiev protests was blocked by YouTube's automatic scanner.
No. Youtube shows this message for a long time, the GEMA complains about it for just as long, and the case was file long before the events in Ukraine.
However the message leads everyone to believe they are to blame when it's really YouTube at fault.
I know the German original, and in my opinion it does NOT put the blame on the GEMA.It does NOT say that the GEMA refused to granz a license, but only that no license was given.
Nor is it correct to blame Youtube for not finding an agreement with the GEMA. Neither party are willing to give enough ground for them to meet half way.
Luckily, not everyone lives in the US.
Some countries have different laws, even consumer protection laws that are worth that name.
And yes, even companies operating out of the US have to conform to at least some of these laws if they want to do business in Germany/Europe. An yes, they WANT to, because Europe is not an insignificant market.
Unbelievable. Only desperate government bureaucrats could possibly look at administrative fines as a source of income that might save the EU from its financial woes. Excessive taxes, fines, and other means of taking money from the people they are supposed to protect are not the keys to prosperity.
Reality check: Big companies are not the people the European governments are supposed to protect. That are still the citizens of thoes countries. And the rights of those citizens are ignored by Google et. al.
So the governments are actually doing exactly what they should: Protect the rights of the citizens.
"There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order." Marginalized people like Neo Nazis* aren't allowed to speak in countries like France and Germany, they know there a minority so voting won't work, and no way that they would be allowed on a Jury. With that in mind it's surprising that we haven't seen more violence out of people like them.
Yeah. Isn't it strange that the oh so free US has more problems with extremists (Unabomber and the like) than the countries that you say should expect those kind of problems?
Yep, the Euro has its own problems and can't keep its own house clean, so some good old fashioned attacks on a US company will generate enough good will to keep them relevant in
the eyes of the people there.
I'm really getting tired of this.
You're just plain wrong.
European companies are fined just as much for this kind of thing.
The difference is: European companies are used to these laws and break them less often, and fines for EU companies are rarely talked about in the US
Most of the time this is not about 'oh, it's a US company, let's hit them' but about 'US companies think they don't need to care about local law, so the break it at need to be fined'.
Solution: Fine them for random stuff for a lot of money.
This isn't random stuff.
Just because the US doesn't know what proper consumer protection and privacy laws are doesn't mean it isn't important.
There's no way a business can afford a longer warranty period without collecting for it somehow.
Well, they could build their products to last at least 2 years, that should drastically reduce the number of repairs/replacements needed... but I know, that's just a fantasy.
A strike is a bunch of people deciding to take unauthorized unpaid vacation at the same time, not a bunch of people quitting their jobs.
Not in Germany.
Here, if the labor unions follow the rules (which they usually do) a strike is people taking an authorized (not by the employer but by the law) leave of absence to bring the employer to the negotiation table.
German labor unions aren't using strikes as excessively as the unions in other European countries seem to do, thus the whole systems works out fine for everybody involved most of the time.
There are lots of current Android phones with SD card slots.
Nexus devices don't have them because somebody at Google doesn't seem to like them.
High end devices of other companies sometimes don't have them because the manufacturer wants you to buy the model with 32 or 63 gig rather than the model with 16 gig and a cheap MicroSD card.
But the mid-level devices of the same manufacturers usually come with a CD card slot as they cut down the onboard flash memory to reduce the price.
I have never "lost" a playlist.
Lucky you.
I made the same experience as GP. Some times (I haven't found any cause) some of my playlists have a filesize of 0.
Also (and this is independent from the above mentioned lost playlists) foobar only saves changes on playlists on close. So if I rearrange stuff in playlists and then keep using foobar and it later crashes those changes are gone.
If taxes are reduced, will companies pay better wages, decrease their prices, hire more people?
Hell no! They will still outsource everything, reduce wages and pay the upper management more for increasing profits.
Ha-ha. Who do you think pays the money to the corporations that they then hand it to the government?.
Let's see: If the American company Apple does business in Italy but moves it's money to Ireland to pay taxes there, the taxes lost to the Italian treasury are paid by... ah yes, here it is: The Italian people.
The Italian people first pay the multinationalcompany for the products and then again have to make up for the taxes that this company evaded paying.
And the multinational gets richer and richer...
The way Android is structured, some apps are in a read-write filesystem and can be uninstalled, some are in 'ROM' (a read-only filesystem in the flash that is only modified when you do a firmware update)
Usually you can remove pre-installed apps once you rooted your android device, as that gives you the option to get read-write access to this 'ROM'.
Only on a few devices with unusual partition schemes does that not work.
The best way to accelerate a Macintoy is at 9.8 meters per second per second.
