In Canada the courts basically said that personal copying of music is legal due to the (audio) media levy. The media companies never did really try for a levy on video media as that would have made copying video legal so now a blank DVD is much cheaper then a blank CD.

Bill C-54, kind of a stronger version of the Patriot Act that allows all kinds of snooping in the name of "stopping the evil terrorists" and before that the law that they finally got passed on the pretext of stopping online bullying that forces ISPs to save data and pass it to the authorities when asked.

Which raises another question, are military pilots included in the general pilot category? You and some of the other posters are right about pilot being a fairly broad category which I didn't consider at first.

True that H2 is usually produced in a non-optimal way. The main point that I was making is it is possible to build an internal combustion engine with close to zero carbon emissions (some lube will leak into the combustion chamber). Maybe not currently practical but hydrogen can be produced in a non-carbon producing way, eg electrolysis using hydro, nuclear or even wind..

Well here many roads have electric trollies running up and down them instead of street cars, not too different. We also used to have an inter-urban tramway that was 50+ miles and if still functioning it would be an hour+ vs the 3 hours that commuting now takes as the other side of town is now about 50 miles away, and getting further as the price of housing continues to climb. With the cost of housing around here, the average person often has to spend a lot of time commuting.

The problem is "maximizing profits" at the expense of safety. We already had one town burn up due to cost savings from a railroad (eliminating the conductor and the engineer being too tired to set the correct number of hand brakes leading to the train rolling into town and blowing up) and numerous close calls.
As to other professions, there is quite a bit of evidence that Doctors make mistakes when on 24 hr shifts, and it seems that airplane pilot is the third deadliest occupation with 53.4 deaths per 100,000. Many jobs such as retail are not inherently dangerous and overworked employees will only hurt the bottom line of the company.

I care as a Canadian that it is hard to compete with an uneven playing field, drive 30 miles south and airlines flights are much cheaper which makes it hard for Canadian airlines to compete.
On topic, there is the question about infrastructure costs for railroads vs airlines. If one industry is getting subsidized they have an unfair advantage. Eg, it has been mentioned here that railroads get hit up for property taxes in quite a few counties in the States so if airports don't have to pay taxes/rent on land, that is an advantage. Rail is a very efficient form of transport and for passenger service should easily be able to compete with airlines over shorter routes where the time savings from flying don't exist or are very minimal (including travel to airport, going through all the stuff before boarding and the reverse at the end of the trip).

So American Airports/Airlines have to pay rent on the land? Pay for their security services (Homeland Security)? Put money aside for future improvements? Pay the full cost of traffic control?
Couple of articles comparing Canada vs the US, Google has lots more.
http://business.financialpost....
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

At one time there were rails in most cities and the negative part of capitalism helped get rid of them as GM and friends really wanted to build up its bus monopoly. To quote wiki,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Capitalism is a high stakes game and if you can get away with cheating, the rewards are large.

They also (at least in Canada) work horrible shifts including being almost permanently on call. Overtired engineers and conductors are a problem that the train companies aren't interested in fixing as they want to maximize profits.

Not to mention the airports which all seem to be publicly funded.

Always surprises me that Aircraft pilots are so high on that list considering how safe air travel is. The rest make sense.

You are talking about one of many forms of socialism, I'm talking about a different form, one that predates Libertarian Capitalism and is the original form of Libertarianism. You're probably American where the brainwashing against socialism was/is very strong and even includes the corruption of Libertarianism into a weird capitalist form where power is concentrated in the wealthy instead of everyone being closer in economic and social status and therefore being able to share equally in liberty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

When the mill down the road was going to shut down, the workers got together and bought it. Now they're all still working, perhaps not for as high of wages as previous but on the other hand they have a bigger stake in being successful and an understanding of what limits their wages. That is a form of socialism, the workers owning the means of production and government involvement was minimal. (I believe some property taxes were deferred and the amount owing reduced, much the same kind of deal that other companies get)

Sadly too often it ends up with the sales person getting most all the profits as you're just a technician.