What would prevent Amazon or Netflix from just approaching some YouTubers in these countries, offering them 100 euro for the worst and most crappy movies ever produced in French, German and all the other European languages, and putting these on their platform as the 'required local content quota fillers'. Hey, if 20% has to be European, nobody ever said it had to be the best European movies and shows... I would be more than willing to produce Dutch content for Netflix, consisting of hourlong diatribes against ridiculous European regulations designed to protect crappy content from competition. Hell, I'd probably do it for free. My German is just good enough to even produce a rant in German, which could potentially be submitted under comedy, considering my mediocre german vocabulary and pronunciation skills.

If this continues, what I expect to see soon is encryption that decrypts in 2 different unencrypted versions, dependent on the decryption key used. I can't imagine its that difficult. Make an encryption program that has the option of just normal encryption with 1 decryption key, but the added option of using a second decryption key, and a second set of files. For example: John Doe has 2 harddisks, each with 40 GB of information. One contains the blueprints of the F22 Raptor, the other the complete works from the Gutenberg Project, in 7 different languages. John Doe uses the encryption program to create a single encrypted file, size 80+ GB on a bigger harddisk. If John enters the password Gutenberg, the program decrypts the file into the Gutenberg library. If John enters the password Raptor, he gets the blueprints for the F22. Now law enforcement, if they find the file, not only have to force him to decrypt it, they have to prove there is a SECOND decryption key. If the program uses standard padding of the encrypted file with 100-200% of the original data, they could not even prove that there is a second decryption key just by looking at the size difference between the encrypted file and the Gutenberg library file.

I don't think that is possible. If you have a specific law and a general law that you broke with 1 single action, as far as I understand, you have to prosecute under the specific law, not the general one. VW lawyers would just tell the judge that there was a more specific law applicable here.

Except that by extending the duration of copyright to absurd lengths, it starts to invalidate the whole concept of copyright. If copyright was just 5 years, rights owners would have a much stronger moral case about doing something about infringement. I don't infringe copyrights anymore (did it when I was in university, but now I have too little time to watch TV anyway and more than enough money to pay for the few things I do still watch), but on a fundamental level I have zero respect for copyright, simply because how far it has strayed from its original, quite noble origins under the influence of money-grabbing companies and the politicians they have bought to do their bidding. Now if copyright were 5 years long, I'd say that would be a reasonable amount of time that a creator can claim protection for its creation. 10 years? Bit long but acceptable. You could even cut copyright in two: commercial copyright and non-commercial copyright. Make non-commercial copyright last 10 years, make commercial copyright last 50 years. With the difference being that after 10 years people are allowed to copy your stuff, but not try to make money with it until commercial copyright ends. But the current system? I'd rather see zero copyright than the idiocy we have today.

If its all negative, why not abolish the minimum wage? Now to answer your question. Simply put, because there are trade-offs. Now we can argue until we are blue in the face at what level of minimum wage the outcome is best, but I think its safe to say that a level of $500 dollars an hour is sub-optimal. Also please note that even the most ardent unionist, at least as far as I know, ever argued for a $500 an hour minimum wage or even a $50 an hour minimum wage, so clearly they too are aware that there are trade-offs.

As an economist, I could not agree more. If the minimumwage is higher than the equilibrium price, that will cause unemployment. However, have you considered the possibility that the equilibrium price rises if wages rise? If I have a shop in LA, yes I will have to pay a higher wage to the guy helping me stock the shelves. But if at the same time, the people who frequent my shop buy more stuff, I may still need him to prevent my customers from seeing empty shelves and moving to a competitor down the street. So in effect, raising the minimum wage has increased the equilibrium price of having a guy help me stock shelves as I stand to lose more if customers go elsewhere in that circumstance. Now that still doesn't tell me whether THIS increase in the minimum wage increases unemployment or not. For example because what we also don't know is what the current equilibrium price is. You seem to assume that is lies somewhere near the current minimumwage. Why? If I look at profits for corporations, I might assume that the equilibrium wage is considerably higher than the current minimumwage. What if the equilibrium price for most labor in LA is already 14 dollars an hour or more? And the fact that millions are paid less than 14 dollars an hour just means more money in the pocket for a few business owners 2000 miles away? In that case I would expect the increase of the minimumwage to have a beneficial effect on employment. After all, it would mean a huge increase in wages for many people who live and spend locally, at the detriment of some business-owners who may live thousands of miles away, and even if they live in the area certainly will not consume every bit of their earnings locally. The increase in wages could even very well push the equilibrium price to a level higher than 15$ an hour.

name the diseases after fictional characters? Name diseases after Palpatine, Cartman, Wile E. Coyote etc. etc. Instantly recognizeable, no feelings get hurt. And personally I vote to rename Ebola to Nurgle's disease!

They can't judge the constitutionality of laws and treaties, but they are allowed to judge whether a law is against a treaty, which is what they did in this case. And treaties in the Netherlands are senior to laws.

Very old news. After all, isn't a landmine just an updated type of punji pit?

I wasn't really referring to the detection thingy. I have no clue what we can or cannot detect. Mirrors would be in the invasion scenario. Considering that if they wanna invade us, there is no need to be subtle, just efficient. After all, we can discuss for ages what their advantage would be technologically, but there is one advantage which is undeniable if they are hovering over us in big-ass ships, and that is that gravity is on their side. If they can destroy us without even setting foot on the planet or ever entering our atmosphere, our near complete inability to send anything into space would doom us from the start.