Methodology detailed here.

And know it was inaccurate to begin with, which is the opposite of the Streisand Effect.

Amen!

Duuuh, your post is confusing. Since Germany has civil law, offenses have to be specifically defined in statutes. Which is the exact contrary of your "it doesn't" in the first part of you post. The second part is more accurate, but comes in almost perfect contradiction to the first.

Disclaimer: my German is rusty and IANAL, so I don't know how much leeway German courts have to apply established laws to individual cases, nor to which extent the notions of jurisprudence constante and doctrine apply in Germany.

It's funny that you left out the last part of the GP's sentence, that made a comparative reference to (albeit unspecified) other countries. Comparing the outcome of different conditions is not a post hoc fallacy. I'm not saying it's not faulty, but not on this basis.

Or maybe it could be said that yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater objectively causes risk of harm due to panic, but that it can be deemed as necessary if there actually is a fire.

You know, just like some people have a legal pass for stabbing you with sharp objects under some circumstances.

Oooh, thank you! I wouldn't have bothered to look that up, but I'd have been missing out if it weren't for your post. I'm still giggling insanely while typing this.

Secretly?

I mean, I'm fundamentally against death penalty and I have a wide range of arguments for that, but if someone ended up shooting the Prenda guys my reaction would be somewhat similar to how I felt about Osama Bin Laden being shot down by CIA operatives: I wouldn't think "Justice Has Been Done" by any stretch, but I wouldn't shed a tear either.

[citation needed]

Seriously, though: imprisonment for slander? You're full of shit.

Yeah, I mean, seriously. Every wiretaping scandal in the past years in the USA is due to non-compliance with due process. Only the judiciary branch can suspend the fundamental rights of individuals. That's what due process is for.

It's really a matter of reputation. Google's business model turned out to be largely relying on their being Open Source friendly. With this pledge they reinforce this image. If they betray this image, the backdraft could be painful. Probably not fatal, but painful.

I'm really as defiant as the next guy about Google's behaviour, and I don't take at face value their motto of not doing evil, but on the matters of IP they seem to have been consistently opposed to maximalism, and have supported many open stuff. I watch them closely on data privacy matters, but in most other issues I find their position decent - so far.

Because unless you use the private message feature (if there's one), it's not actually private. And even then it's just as private as the terms of service state it is.

It's freedom that dictates that a mayor can't refuse a marriage as long as it's within the scope of existing laws. The laws are in the process of being changed to extend the marriage to same sex couples. Aside from that, I don't see your point.

Nope, only based on what the law specifies..

In France, any marriage has to be handled by a mayor in order to be officially recognized. Whatever party or religious ceremony people want to have is completely besides the point.

This makes it unnecessary for the government to put into law what is a religion and what isn't. As such, separation of Church and States works as a separation of concerns.