Copyright, as in "intellectual property", is a notion that exploded from The Shining City on the Hill, namely Jesus's country, America. We've rammed each and every treaty down the world's throat for almost thirty years. Now that it's established, of course European copyright lords are helping seal us in with our cask of Amontlliado. But it is American in origin.

Well done, madam or sir. Exactly so.

They don't want to eliminate the internet. They want to turn it into a paid cable TV service with data for a fat extra charge. They want to own the internet, turn it into another corporate-owned asset. And they have won.

This is ME saying this, but in Betamax decision, the SCOTUS said that *even though* VCR sometimes infringed on copyrights, that the non-infringing uses outweighed the "bad" use. Yes, that makes little sense, but blame copyright laws for that. Change the laws, change the decisions.

"Is it one of those things, like sex and human organs, that you can give away for free but you can't charge money for it?"

You can't charge, either. You must remain a virgin until they license you to have sex, er, watch TV.

Um, Scalia tried that with Bush V. Gore. "Only applies to this one election." Bull.
No, it doesn't work like that, unless someone is crookedly applying law. Law is law, and they don't get to choose what the consequences of their STUPID decision is.

"Fair Use"? HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA! That was FUNNY! "Fair Use"!! Why, grampa here just peed in his Depends when he heard you mention that dead fish. Fair Use indeed. Whoo. Whee.

Those consequences were quite intended by the broadcast industry which sued Aereo. Only Scalia, amazingly, got it right when he warned they were after this endgame. Blind adherence to the tiny details of the law give us this stinking pile to live with, just as when they ruled that eternal copyright was fine as long as there was *some* time limit mentioned, even if it was a century, even if the limit would be eternally extended, as it just obviously had been.

The US writes all the treaties. Amazing how that works.

"How can the government of country A fine a company from country B any money when that company's dealing has NOTHING to do with country A in the first place ???"

Empire. Rules of an empire. We've thousands of nukes, hundreds of military bases in a hundred+ counties, and we create every single "treaty" that governs our actions. You are either a vassal, or a cooperating and subordinate power.

Americans are fine with this idea. They never leave home much, and even if they did, they would not mind the hate. We are the fhining City on the Hill, the Nation Favoured by Providence, the people chosen by God Almighty to lead the world to a perfect age, so that Jesuf can come back, deftroy the world, hurl the unbelieverf and the wicked into the Pit of Fire for ever and ever and build a new Fhining City of Gold for uf, the chofen, to live with Jefus forever, along with perhaps a few foreigners who listened to the Holy Word of America.

If you don't understand the news coming from America, the above is THE explanation. You need no others; it is not hyperbole. And it will get so much worse.

American incomes have been stagnant, or declining in real purchasing power for thirty years. That hasn't not happened in Germany, which allows unions to exist - and operate properly.
A large number of the American middle class are months away from losing their homes, given a health cost issue or a job loss, a situation that doesn't happen often in Germany.
We are adopting private solar plants at a slower rate primarily because a chunk of our middle class can't afford it, not with the hell that they've been taking since the "free marketers" took over. Germany's people are more secure and more prosperous, because they've made fewer ideological decisions about income distribution.
Germany ain't perfect, but it's middle class is richer than ours. It's that simple.

It seems Germany is leading the way in showing, by example, that every bit of American futzing about solar power and unions is, to put it down hard, a load of cultish crap designed to make rich people much richer.
They are an economic powerhouse with strong exports, a union-based worker's economy, and now they've shown you can run 50% of an industrial economy off the power of the sun, in something less than ten-twenty years. WHILE they absorbed a pauperized East Germany after the Soviets finally gave up. Oh yep - they innovate like mad. With health care for everyone.
Randites, avoiding the No True Scottman fallacy, examine why you are wrong on this. Seriously, before your wreck us beyond repair.

The universe is indeed full of life. And life becomes intelligent and thrives. And every ten million years or so...
Gets hit by a meteor.
Another meteor.
Comet this time.
Solar flare.
Nearby nova, supernova or far-away hypernova fries them.
Ice age.
Heat age.
Bacteria this time.
Here comes some volcanoes.
Food poisoning.
Drought.
Floods come.
War.
Mutations.
And finally, time happens, if nothing else. The universe is full of life - BUT NOT ALL AT THE SAME TIME, and not all at a time that happens, in each case, to emit radiation that arrives at our sensors at this tiny opportunity of ours to detect it. The universe is full of little flashes of life in the dark that wink on and off like fireflies, and we can't possibly see them - in time. We are alone, and we had better damned well take care of ourselves.
PS: what makes people think that successful life stays on a planet? That's a surefire way to die, by the list of events above. Successful life gets off the planet, builds terraria in orbit, and sends some off into the darkness to spread and survive the death of the home planet. At the very least. At the most, they spread into adjacent universes or dimensions. Or even travel in time, whatever that is. Life, successful life that lives a long time, grows up and gets out of the petri dish. Or dies with all the other failed flashes of life.