I think you might be right. But the figures are impossible to analyse in any meaningful way as the android market has been rolled out in Europe during the period. Still, in swedish tech forums we would never see the amount of people that are in favour of copyright and creators rights as we can see here on slashdot for instance. We also have the Pirate Party that got 7%!!! of the votes in last years election. This year they only get 1% though.

Btw currently (13 July) Android market is available in: Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States.

There are two principles at work here. 1. EU decides more and more over time and the member states gradually lose power. 2. The individuals right to internet access.

This is a good decision just because it leaves power with the member states. It doesn't matter for the functioning of the EU what laws the individual member states have in this area, therefore no EU-law should be written about it. If a law within the EU is against someone human rights, there is a separate way of correcting that, in the confusingly named in the Council of Europe that has the The European Court of Human Rights. This court is not part of the EU system even if their charter of human rights is referred to in the EU-treaties.

The European Court of Human Rights is a court that convict the 47 member states (among them France and UK) when they have written a law that infringes on the citizens human rights. The laws related from France and UK are most likely to be struck down by The European Court of Human Rights. Therefore the Member States are doing the right thing when not interfering in this area.

To talk about what you are doing is a great learning tool. If you pair a smart student with a bad student you will give that bad student teaching that you cant do yourself. If two equally gifted students work together they will learn from each other. It is however very easy to give out tasks that are only time sinks and not enough thinking. Then there is no gain in collaboration.

The difficult thing about group tasks is that you have to be a lot smarter as a teacher and be sure of what you want the pair programming to accomplish. There is no magic in group work. You have to add the magic by perhaps giving them different roles, or ask them to do different parts that must fit togheter, or whatever.

One trick I like is to hand out a test and then group students according to result. That will give all incentive for the test, and allow good students to learn from a matching partner.

To expand on this. You need both learn one language in depth and concepts. To focus only on concepts will make you a great football manager but not a football player. If I have to pick one language: Java. The smartest choice is often a balance act. The psychologically correct choice could be to go where your passion leads you, if your heart tells you to know a lot of Fortran (yeach): follow that and do not look on the map too much.

I think you might be right about the Berne Convention, but after that there have been new treaties concerning copyright, partly by UN. I guess that one of them contain the 70 year after death clause. Sweden has 70 years after death and that is EU standard I think.

US law=UK law=worldwide copyright laws. The copyright laws are more or less the same all over the world since most countries (=all countries you have heard of) have signed the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. The US signed this convention much later than all western countries, and therefore Orwells estate should be protected a long time.

The interesting part is not if you go to a country, that country can attack you anyway. (Se my previous post 'Even if...') The interesting thing is if you make your company vulnerable to a jurisdiction. If you have a billion dollars in Iran, you will follow the Iranian governments judgements or get out.

Yahoo is subject to EU law. Belgium is a part of EU.

EU law says that it is ok to transfer information to countries with similar level of privacy protection. As Belgium and the US have similar levels there is no problem, unless you are a nationalist and US lover. I am not (a nationalist).

Which is morally worse a) a European court to want to know details about a US citizen from a Yahoo, or b) a US court to get information about a European citizen from Yahoo?

If you think that a) is worse than b) perhaps you haven't grasped that the internet is a worldwide phenomenon, and you are probably wearing you nationalistic goggles.

Or if Yahoo has offices in the EU, which it has, it is enforceable.

The more interesting question is why Yahoo, wouldn't want to cooperate with Belgian courts. They should be at least as good as the US courts.

..but first we connect our brains. Since the Romans each country has decided their own jurisdiction. If you go to a country to play (or sell) like Yahoo did, you have to accept that the locals make the rules. Even if you don't go to a country, they make their own rules. If you don't want to follow those rules: keep away. Yahoo didn't keep away: EU is a union. Since 911 the EU countries have strengthened their cooperation in legal matters. Yahoo have residency in the EU, in about a dozen places which makes this fine easily enforceable. Jurisdiction+enforcement=Yahoo in trouble. I understand if you think that Yahoo only should rat out foreign nationals to dictatorial countries like China and that US citizens child porn crimes should be protected worldwide, but others people might have another view.