Which, oddly enough, was my entire point ... the Irish judge can make judgements about what they have to do on the servers located in Ireland. And all of those servers not in Ireland are, unsurprisingly, not under the jurisdiction of an Irish court.

Why do you seem to believe that I believe all Google servers are in Ireland? Because I sure as hell never suggested that.

I think you should read more than the subject before commenting and claiming someone else is ignorant

I did read it. And while he can legally put pressure on Google et al to remove it in Ireland, if someone has put it on any server outside of Ireland (which by now I'm sure they have out of sheer spite), then there is nothing at all this judge will be able to do about that.

Trying to take stuff down from the internet tends to be a losing battle, because people then immediately start sharing copies of it.

Google threatening to relocate its business to a friendlier European state is probably enough to make Irish politicians crap themselves and change the law to suit Google.

Except Google uses Ireland as a tax haven, so first they'd need to find another jurisdiction in which it would be beneficial for them. And I'm not sure they'll easily find one.

Methinks the judge may have little understanding of both how the internet works, and what his jurisdiction actually is.

If a judge in Ireland believes he somehow has the authority (let alone the technical ability) to order this, he's grossly mis-informed.

He can make rulings on what happens in Ireland, but for the rest of the world ... well, Iran can make all of the demands they want about taking stuff off the internet too, but nobody will care either.

This basically demonstrates he doesn't understand either the internet, or the application of law as it pertains to the rest of the world.

If it wasn't for the graft and greed or incompetence of the employees of the patent office, they never would have.

And since the US has set themselves up to be an economy highly dependent on patents and copyright, I seriously doubt you'll see these patents repealed.

The people lobbying for expanded IP rights don't want patents lessened, and they're not going to allow the politicians to take away their meal ticket.

When Microsoft makes more revenue from Android licenses (for patents I'm not convinced they've ever disclosed) than they do on their own OS, nobody is going to allow patents to stop being so widespread.

At this point, all of the "too big to fail" companies are so dependent on this as to make it inseparable from their core business.

It's always nice to have someone follow and translate the legalese for the rest of us.

Here's to another 10 years!

What say you?

Lay on, Macduff, And damned be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"

Not sure why the default response to "I don't give a shit about YouTube" is always to give me links to YouTube.

It's like saying I don't eat meat and you suggesting chicken.

You think I'm going to install Flash so I can find out the wonder of the two links you provided? Thanks, but no -- I genuinely don't care about internet videos, and I genuinely despise Flash.

Who's being evil now???

Well, since the TOS for a site have been held as legally binding by courts, it's Microsoft.

If I'm legally bound by the TOS, surely Microsoft must be? They can't just decide they're going to be non-compliant because it's inconvenient.

Microsoft isn't championing for your rights, they're championing for their right to try to provide software which makes their platform more attractive, and they're doing it by violating the terms for YouTube. You know, to pad out their own bottom line and make sure people buy their phones.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that Google is moving away from their pledge of do no evil, but that doesn't make Microsoft the good guys here. It makes them leeching bastards who figure they're big enough to ignore the TOS for something.

I just ask that the law be consistently applied -- which means both Microsoft and your average Joe are bound by it unless Microsoft signs a deal with Google giving them better access.

Of course you need Flash. Even YouTube is not able to offer all videos in HTML5 format.

Who cares about random cat videos? I watch maybe 5 YouTube videos a year.

Now they'll decree the press are terrorists and say it's illegal to do this since it prevents 'awful' monitoring.

I think this whole snooping on the reporters thing has them deciding to fight back and send a big "F you".

Plugins are there for every browser and the worst offenders tend to be things like Flash which aren't always easily avoided

Except that Flash is easily avoided ... if you don't want Flash, don't install it, and don't use sites which require it.

You might decide that there's stuff you can't live without, and I definitely agree that in company environments it can be damned near impossible as it seems there's usually one or two things you need which requires it.

But if you decide you don't want it and won't use it, it's actually not difficult at all to avoid. I've been doing it for over a decade, and it hasn't been on any of my own machines. My work machines, I've never been able to avoid having it, but only in IE which is the browser of last resort for those company things you have to visit a few times each year (like the ethics training courses we all know and love).

You just have to decide that not having it is worth more than the sites which need it, and there hasn't been a single site which made we think "OK, for this I'll install Flash".

In this case, I'm not sure how much a lawyer could help you. They have your IP, you can try arguing that IP != person, but you're pretty much caught red handed at this point making the settlement a lot more attractive.

If someone came to me with my IP address as a claim of proof I've downloaded a movie (which I've never done), I'd refer them to Arkell V Pressdam, because their proof would be utter crap.

An IP address isn't proof of anything, and it certainly isn't proof than any specific person did something.

And, let's face it, it's not like they have a great track record of getting the right information -- or, for that matter, that the people doing these suits fall into the category of ethical.

I can make up IP addresses and claim all sorts of things, but it sure as heck doesn't constitute proof of anything.

How would such a business plan make money?

Private donations? The idea of drones doing constant overwatch isn't going to make many people happy.

Because, of course, sooner or later this gets used for speeding tickets and all of the inevitable mission creep something like this will undergo.

Given that our current understanding is that the universe has no end, is infinite, then the number of any type of planet you could imagine would be infinite.

I'm not sure it's understood to be truly 'infinite', but 'so damned big as to be infinite for purposes of discussion'.

And there was a time (not even all that long ago) when it was thought that planets around other stars would be very rare and uncommon.

In university I hung out with a bunch of astrophysicists, and the idea of finding exoplanets was still something we weren't sure of, and it was assumed there was a relatively small number of stars which would have planets.

It's only just over 20 years since we confirmed the first one, and in that time the rate at which we detect them keeps going up at a pretty staggering rate. To the point now that if you look at Drake's equation, it's hard not to conclude that, somewhere, some form of life has probably evolved elsewhere in the universe, and probably even intelligent life existed at some point.

Admittedly, the distances and time spans are so vast as to make it highly unlikely we'd ever find them. But, to me at least, it just seems so improbable that we're the only life to have evolved anywhere in the entire universe.