And what about kids who are exposed to vaccine preventable diseases before they are old enough to get the vaccine?

And what about the kids who have medical conditions (allergies, immune system issues) that mean they can't be vaccinated?

And what about kids who are vaccinated but whose vaccines don't "take"? (The vast majority do work, but some don't.)

If all other kids are vaccinated? These kids will be fine because herd immunity will protect them. There will be so many vaccinated kids that diseases won't be able to find their way to the vulnerable ones.

#4 is why the anti-vaccine movement was able to grow. The anti-vaxxers said "You don't really need the vaccines. Just wash your hands real well or take HOMEOPATHIC REMEDY and you'll never get whooping cough," Sure enough, they didn't get whooping cough, but the reason wasn't washing hands (though that is important) or homeopathic remedies (which isn't good for anything). It was because the anti-vaxxers were few enough that they were protected by herd immunity. Even though they weren't getting the vaccines, they were still enjoying vaccines' protection.

But then the anti-vaxxer ranks grew and herd immunity began to break down. Now we're starting to see outbreaks of diseases that, by all rights, should be lining up behind smallpox for inclusion in the "wiped out" club.

There may not have been any public demands by the content industry

That's because the demands were copyrighted and not in the public domain!

Exactly this. Soon, everyone will slowly move to the "US Standard" of 95 years except for one country who will go with 110 years. Then we'll need to move to that to harmonize our copyright terms... except for that one country that enacted 130 years. Infinity Minus One copyright terms, here we come!

The other problem is orphaned works. Take a random video game from the 80's and try to find who owns the rights to it now. Unless it was a big name company at the time, you're likely to have to navigate through a thicket of legal acquisitions, sales, bankruptcy proceedings, etc. It can be an extremely challenging effort just to find out who owns a work published 30+ years ago.

Now imagine that it is 2095 and you want to publish a "classic" from 2015. How would you track down the rightful owner over 80 years?!!

I'd like to see a renewal system in place. Ideally with limited renewals (e.g. 2 renewals and you're done) or ever-increasing renewal fees (e.g. $5 for first renewal, $50 for 2nd renewal, $500 for 3rd, etc.). This way, you would not only have a public record of who owns what, but you would force companies to either give up their unused works or pay more for them. Maybe Star Wars is worth renewing for a 10th time, but is RANDOM_CULT_HIT_FROM_1975?

IP does not exist. It's a figment of our collective imagination.

Exactly this. When copyright was at a sane length, the reason for it was so you didn't release a work and have that work immediately re-released by a dozen shady publishers who didn't give you a dime for your efforts. When something like that happened, it was a serious threat to creativity. After all, why work for years writing a great novel just to have six publishing companies steal it, print their own editions of it, and not give you any money for it. Worse, their editions would compete with your own edition and you would be making less sales/money as people bought the "wrong" edition.

The balance to this, though, was that your temporary monopoly only lasted a short time. After 14 years (28 years if you filed for a one-time extension), your work went into the public domain and almost all bets were off. You still couldn't republish it and attribute it to someone else, but you could write a sequel or base another work on it without the original author's consent.

This went fine for the most part until copyright holders saw the works entering the public domain and envisioned dollar signs leaving their pockets so they got the copyright terms extended again and again until they are, for all intents, perpetual. If a work is created today, is corporate-owned (so we don't get into "life of the author", and the terms aren't extended again (the latter being a big IF), my 8 year old has only the slimmest of chances of seeing that work in the public domain. (He would need to live to 103.) If he has a child at 25, my grandchild would see the work in the public domain when he turns 78.

I know we love extolling thinking long term, but what possible incentive does it give knowing that a work you create in 2015 will only enter the public domain in 2110?!!!

The best thing that can be said about Blurred Lines is that the Weird Al parody of it was fantastic.

They realize they will eventually become a dumb pipe and need to find ways to extract extra money out of that pipe, be it by caps or trying to limit other entrants such as municipalities or Google.

Also, caps with overage fees help to raise the price of streaming videos online. If you hit your cap and use another $10 worth of bandwidth every month due to using Netflix, then it will be as if Netflix costs you $10 more a month (albeit with that money going to Comcast). Then, the cable company can claim that their video option (which doesn't get impacted by the caps) is cheaper.

I wouldn't go that far. Even in the US, we have limits on free speech. However, I'd say that our limits are pretty sane. You can't spread lies about someone and expect to be able to claim "free speech" when you are sued. You can't threaten to hurt/kill people, claim "free speech", and expect to get off scot-free.

However, if you say something bad about someone ("X is a crook") and you can back it up with evidence/facts ("here's a photo of X taking a bribe"), then you can't be successfully sued for libel/slander. You can also express a wide range of political opinions so long as you stop short of advocating killing fellow citizens. (You would be fine to say "Those LIBERALS/CONSERVATIVES/DEMOCRATS/REPUBLICANS/CHRISTIANS/ATHEISTS/PASTAFARIANS [pick one or more] are ruining America. We would be better off without them." You just can't continue with "... and that's why I want to round them all up and shoot them to death.")

Israel did what they could to minimize civilian casualties. I said minimize, because it is impossible to totally avoid them, given what Hamas was doing.

And just to elaborate unless someone skips over this important point:

When Hamas fires a missile at Israel, there is no warning and it hits civilian areas indiscriminately (there is no real set target).

When Israel fires a missile at Hamas, they are targeting a specific military target, albeit one that has been stuck in a school or hospital. Knowing this latter point, Israel actually warns the Palestinian people of the attack. They will say "clear out of X because we're firing a missile there in Y hours." This is done to minimize civilian casualties. Unfortunately, Hamas has been known to either prevent their citizens from leaving to have more bodies to show to the media. (I've heard reports that they even bring in other bodies to make it seem as though even more people were killed there, but I don't have any corroborating evidence at the moment.)

Right, but as these are rarer, I didn't list them as a "main threat." A random company has more to fear from a roaming script kiddie or disgruntled employee than being targeted by a highly sophisticated hacker. Of course, if the company is a big name organization (Microsoft, Sony, etc), they are bigger targets and this possibility get much more likely.

Bah, you kids and your "sleep." If becoming a parent taught be anything, it's that it is amazing how little sleep you can operate on.

With the prospects of losing a their seat, being fined, or jail time these "representatives" will pay a hell of lot more attention to what they sponsor and vote for. There will a lot less or "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" in Washington.

And if you think Washington's bad, State politics can be even worse. In NY, we recently had a budget vote with some items that were extremely unpopular. Democrat after Democrat stood up saying how awful these provisions were - just before voting FOR the budget "with a heavy heart." They all used the exact same phrase. It was clearly a "the governor is leaning heavily on us politically because he wants this passed RIGHT NOW so we can't go against him no matter what our reservations." Only one Democrat went against the flow and I fully expect him to face political reprisals. (The Republicans opposed the budget, but that was to be expected.) And that's just scratching the surface.

A lot of people claim that more power to the states will solve all of the problems, but it just moves many problems down a level and can make it even harder to bring these issues to light than with the Federal government. Don't even get me started on Local governments. Forget turtles, it's dirty politics all the way down.

Just to bring this back to the situation at hand, though, you might have the right to do what you want to your own body, but you don't have the right to do that and then operate a motor vehicle. You can down a six pack of beers all you like, but if you get behind the wheel of a car afterward, you are violating the law. There is a very good reason for this: You don't have the right to put other people's lives in danger and call it "your right to do as you please."

Of course, then the burden for the police officers shifts from "we found drugs in his car" to "we have this evidence that he was under the influence of drugs while driving."

In that case, the ruling would probably be: You can't pull a motorist over for speeding, write him a ticket, and then force him to wait until a Drug Detector 9000 can arrive on the scene.

Now, if all police had small, portable devices that could instantly detect illegal substances (something like a police officer's version of a Star Trek tricorder), then there might have been a different ruling. After all, then the driver would just need to wait for the officer to turn on the device and measure the car for a few seconds. Much less of an inconvenience than "wait almost 10 minutes until a dog gets here." If/when Police Tricorders are invented and rolled out, I'm sure there will be legal cases to define when it is and isn't appropriate to use them.