But individual lawyers and legal secretaries could make this database their full-time job, in which case it wouldn't be a conflict for them any more. There is already an industry publishing books that list references from the law to cases where it was applied. This would be a natural extension, wouldn't it?

So level 1 should be some branded driving school training track, then Winslow, Arizona, progressing through New York, and working up to Cairo? There's something there, and lots of product placement and local tourism authority opportunities for alternate revenue streams. The overhead is just one web cam location with internet connection per level. Maybe "Frogger Route 66?"

Is 5th Ave. harder at 9am or 2am?

My first thought was "Brilliant!" but something like the Massa incident in Hungary 2009 might end up looking a little too much like life imitating art.

It's an unwillingness to work together. Most European countries prefer to negotiate trade agreements individually whenever possible. Look at the power the EU should have when negotiating with Russia for natural gas, and compare it to how Russia has split the EU up into individual arrangements. If the EU made some general economic move against the U.S.A., then the individual members would see it as an opportunity to make special exceptions in exchange for some sort of return that prefers them over other EU members.

Thanks for the clarification. If something like this were to be enacted, I guess it would be fantastic news for the electronics shops near the border in Spain.

Isn't 64 x €0.02 closer to €1.28? Even at the originally quoted €0.2 that sounds very high.

Talk radio is exactly what I was wondering about. Radio is certainly an "electronic or digital device," and people from Howard Stern to Rush Limbaugh are in the business of using that it to offend and annoy people. It's the main goal of their shows. Does the new law apply, or does the "constitutionally protected activity" clause save them?

My memory is that you could buy Windows for $60, or OS/2 for $500 or thereabouts. Always thought that might have had something to do with it.

The lost sales weren't due to copyright violations, they were due to a baseless legal action (actually, a threat of a baseless legal action) to enforce a non-existent copyright. It's easy for a person to think copyright is over-zealously enforced in general, and also be happy that people fail spectacularly when they try to use that zealous enforcement on copyrights they don't even have claim to.

Sorry: Italian! Missed an important one. Northern predjudice.

and Romansch and German and Swiss German and French. We've come to expect a lot from the Swiss, and someone seems to be letting us down dammit! If you can't get an idiomatic expression in your fifth language clear enough that everyone can understand, the PISA reports must be right. Let me help: caning refers to a corporal punishment popular in the earlier part of the 20th century, and salami slicing refers to the tactic of introducing something undesirable a bit at a time, as referenced in popular culture in a "Yes Minister!" episode in the 70s. Good luck with English, whatever your first language is. You'll be able to read all of these posts one day.

I agree with your summary of the issue. I'm against it on general free-market liberal grounds, but it was never an on-line vs. brick-and-mortar issue. (It looked like the on-line stores were going to be able to get around it anyhow.) It was about the grocery stores buying 50,000 copies of the most profitable books, taking the cream of the market. Because the grocery stores have more total turnover, they can get by on smaller margins, but they are only ever going to carry the most current best sellers.

If we take the on-line sellers out of the equation, the cultural question is whether it's obviously better to have lots of cheap Danielle Steel books than to have more book stores with robust selections. I'm not sure of the answer to that, but I still think that allowing limited cartels is probably not the best approach to promoting culturally-valuable businesses.

As for organizing a reading event for the cultural benefit that would otherwise come from better availability of books, don't forget that allowing the grocery stores to undercut the book sellers will probably mean the books that aren't best sellers will be more expensive, since the retailers who actually stock a decent selection will have lost volume on their most profitable items. A lot of the votes for the price fixing were from people who read books not available in grocery stores, and who didn't want to see the prices increase.

Police speeding to get to an emergency are not breaking a law. There are legal conditions under which the speed limits are suspended. There are also legal conditions under which evidence can be destroyed, like illegal drugs are destroyed after the trial and period for appeal are over (or whatever the specific conditions are). Destroying evidence on your own initiative is not allowed. That's why it's different.

Give a bit of credit here. I think the point was that enabling positive interactions also enables negative interactions. You don't have to think the negative outweighs the positive to still think it's bad. Good things often have a downside, and for people to point that out doesn't mean they are against the thing itself.

The downside of chocolate is that it can cause tooth decay. I'm not against chocolate. (Arguments about sustainable trade in cocoa aside.)

I saw an article a few years ago that gave a great comparison. Sorry I can't find the reference, but at the time it said your chance in a hospital of getting the wrong medication ("wrong" defined as not what you were prescribed; never mind unnoticed conflicts and so on) was higher than the chance on a commercial flight of having your luggage lost. Some of those are certainly from illegible prescriptions or poorly labelled units, but I bet more are from procedural mistakes.

Still, electronic prescriptions sound like a good idea for everyone concerned.