The purpose of patents is not to reward inventors for being clever. A patent is an extremely powerful monopoly, against which even independent reinvention does not protect and is a privilege that in a free market economy should be granted with extreme reluctance, because of the negative effects monopolies can have on competition and economic freedom.

We have patents because in some fields inventors may be discouraged otherwise because the financial outlay for R&D is too high and it is too easy to duplicate the invention. Patents thus encourage inventors (or the people who bankroll them) by making the financial risk manageable; in exchange, the invention enters the public domain after a set period of time, so society benefits too. I.e., ideally we have a win-win situation where both the inventory and society benefit.

But when R&D does not require expensive labs, materials, or processes, that rationale disappears; instead, patents are likely to become the tools of rent-seeking and regulatory capture and impede progress rather than furthering it. And when independent reinvention is common –as is the case with computer science – society does not benefit from granting inventors such an extremely broad monopoly. The narrower monopoly of copyright is instead more suitable when it comes to protecting the genuine interests of software developers, because the costs associated with software projects are generally caused by sweat of the brow effort (especially when managing a large project), not the underlying novelty.

This is median household income after taxes and social contributions. The US ranks so high on that list because it's a low tax country (but also provides few benefits). In other countries, you pay more taxes, but you'll also get free healthcare, paid parental leave, free or heavily subsidized daycare, a month or more of statutory paid leave, and free or almost free tertiary education (college or vocational schools) out of the deal.

As an American expat with two children currently living in Germany (and previously in the UK), the daycare subsidies alone are pretty massive difference makers (even with our older daughter now in school). The average American family struggles to make ends meet with two incomes. In Germany, the percentage of dual income households with children is considerably lower (largely because it isn't necessary to have two incomes for a middle class family). The average German has trouble even relating to concepts such as "sick days" or "college funds".

Section 95a (2) of the German copyright law defines specifically what an effective technological measure is. It specifically includes "encryption, scrambling or other transformation". It does not require that the encryption etc. need to be unbreakable, just as a physical lock does not have to pose an unsurmountable barrier in order to make breaking it illegal.

This is a horrible summary (or more precisely, the first sentence of it is). First of all, the judgement in the case Delfi AS v. Estiona was handed down by the European Court of Human Rights, which is not a court of the European Union, but exists to adjudicate the European Convention on Human Rights, and violations thereof. Almost all European Countries, including the non-EU ones, are signatories to the convention and thus have agreed to abide by the court's judgement. But that's just international law, not EU law (though the EU also requires accession to the ECHR for membership).

Second, the court did not rule that a website is legally responsible for the statements its users make. The court does not even have the power to make this determination. It only ruled that the national law of Estonia, which under certain circumstances allowed websites to be held liable for what their users said, as applied in this case, was not a disproportionate response incompatible with article 10 of the ECHR (freedom of expression, a.k.a. freedom of speech).

The press release summarizing the judgement is here. The judgement itself appears to not be online yet.

First, the Information Commissioner's Office is an independent body, subject to supervision by the courts, not any ministry. It cannot and does not care (modulo human error) whether the responsible entity was a public or private body, except where the law distinguishes between them.

Second, an NHS trust (which NHS Surrey is) is technically not part of the government, but a public sector corporation with separate auditing requirements and separate liability. Another example is that NHS trusts are also vicariously liable for malpractice by doctors and nurses they employ.

While it is correct that in the end all the fines do come out of the UK's budget and go back into the UK's budget, separate liability arrangements allow for more fine-grained auditability and accountability. Fines may be budget neutral overall, but they still are highly undesirable for the sanctioned body, creating an incentive to avoid them.

It's an IEC standard, not something that the EU thought up. The same standard will presumably come to the United States and Canada in a year or two. Note that this also affects several non-EU countries (Switzerland and Norway in particular).

Also, it hasn't been "short notice". The amendment was published in December 2009, over three years ago.

Actually, in Germany (and several other countries), it largely means that. The levy on blank media, photocopiers, etc. is intended to compensate authors for the right to make copies for personal use without compensating the author or owner of the copyright. Personal use does not only include for yourself, but also family, friends, and acquaintances -- basically, it excludes commercial use and making the work available to the general public.

Whether that works well in practice is another question (DRM is a particularly tricky issue), but that is the stated intent.

This strikes me as wishful thinking. The principles for "Störerhaftung" (disruptor's liability) are fairly well recognized at this point (analogous application of section 1004 BGB in conjunction with section 97 UrhG), including by the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH Az. I ZR 121/08).

Disruptor's liability under these principles is generally not particularly onerous; it only applies when you are failing to exercise due diligence (Prüfpflichten), and the threshold for due diligence is not particularly high (e.g., having a good password on your wireless router to ensure that it's not abused as an open gateway for infringing activities), However, an "I just don't want to know what you're doing" approach does not even meet these relatively low standards.

Finally, disruptor's liability only entitles the victim of the infringement to injunctive relief; he or she is not entitled to damages. The LG Hamburg decided accordingly. There's really nothing outlandish about the decision.

While it is very likely (based on the text of the judgment) that the plaintiff did engage in forum shopping, I do not see why it is likely that another court elsewhere in Germany would have ruled much differently.

The actual text of the judgment can be found here (in German).

The European Commission is not unelected nor unaccountable. Its president is first proposed by the European Council and then elected by the European Parliament. The European Council, in agreement with the president of the commission, then appoints the commissioners, which are then also subject to a vote of approval by the European Parliament. The European Parliament can also dismiss the European Commission (basically, a motion of no confidence), though not individual commissioners. In fact, an angry European Parliament did famously force the resignation of the Santer Commission, which it considered corrupt and arrogant.

It's the same basic process that is used to appoint/elect cabinets in most parliamentary democracies; heck, the British Prime Ministers do not even have to be confirmed by the House of Commons; they are appointed by the reigning Monarch (Queen or King) once they can be assumed to command a majority in the Commons.

The European Commission's problem is generally a lack of transparency, not a lack of democratic legitimacy.

H-1B visa holders by definition do not have a green card.

For visa holders (H-1B or otherwise), the requirement is generally to carry their I-94 form with them while within the country (and to surrender it when leaving). However, the law does not mandate that you carry all the rest of your paperwork with you, especially not form I-797, which, if lost or stolen, condemns you to months of lengthy paperwork in order to have it replaced (and is also a bit on the bulky side).

It is now being suggested that (contrary to what has been considered good practice in the past) that foreigners carry their immigration documents with them in their entirety.

Regarding the drivers license thing, no, it is not proof or citizenship. However, it creates a presumption of legal residence (because you can only get one as a citizen or legal alien). At that point, the burden of proof presumably would shift to the police officer to show that the drivers license has not been legally obtained or that your legal residency has ended.

No, the primary problem is poverty.

If you control for socioeconomic status, a whole lot of the differences in testing just go away.

But, you say, isn't America a rich country? Yes, it is, but we also have a huge poverty and especially child poverty problem. Not just in relative terms, but also in absolute terms due to high inequality. Within the OECD, we have above average poverty and child poverty (absolute meaning that most OECD countries have a lower percentage of the population live below the US poverty line). We also have lots more wealthy people, of course, but that doesn't make children with low SES learn better, while the educational benefits of high SES eventually hit diminishing returns.

In short, standardized tests largely test the socioeconomic status of the student body, and not the quality of schools or teachers.

This particular test also appears to be norm-referenced rather than criterion-referenced, so it's a poor choice for evaluating student or teacher performance in different states (whereas it might be useful for comparing school curricula in different states; e.g., to critique California's science curricula).

Of course, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't also fix other problematic aspects of our educational system, but "let's dissolve teacher unions and throw out the bad teachers" isn't going to fix much. For starters, you'd either end up doing very little or end up with a teacher shortage: because being a teacher in America, as opposed to, say Finland is a comparatively low-status, low-income profession. Note that low-income is relative; it's not that teachers are necessarily starving, but the income you make based on a MAT degree is much lower than what you can get out of many other graduate degrees -- so, why go into teaching unless you're either (1) truly motivated or (2) can't hack it elsewhere? Contrast that with Finland, where teachers are well-paid, highly regarded people; a graduate degree is required (though university education is basically free) along with additional practical training; as a result, Finnish schools get to pick from the best of the best.

This mirrors my experience, too. I had a bad Nvidia card in my Macbook Pro myself, and when it failed after about 2.5 years, it took the logic board with it as well. I went to the local Apple store, they took a look at my laptop and were happy to have everything repaired for me ASAP. I was covered through Applecare, but the plaintiff had that, too.

My experience with Apple so far has been that customer service seems to be a friendly affair with zero fuss for me involved. And that's really a major reason why I pay a premium price -- I may be a computer scientist myself, but between a husband, two children, and a job, I have better things to do with my spare time than figuring out how to fix computer problems; I'm happy to pay money to have someone else take care of them. So I'm surprised that Apple suddenly decided to be stingy in this case, especially considering that it was so clear-cut.

This is not quite what I would say. Yes, first-past-the-post voting encourages a two party system. That does not mean it's completely unassailable.

First of all, look at the recent Bradford West by-election, where Labour lost nearly half its vote and the Tories got stomped into the ground in favor of a socialist candidate. Admittedly, the circumstances were quite unique -- Galloway is quite the character, and Respect is not going to win in a whole lot of constituencies in a real general election -- but it's not like things are quite that cast in stone if the government manages to frustate the electorate enough (cf. Margaret Thatcher, poll tax). That is more likely to happen over economic reasons (austerity in particular), but privacy concerns could add to the mix.

Second, if you live in Scotland (like me), then a fair number of government powers are devolved, meaning that the Scottish Parliament (which is elected using a mixed-member proportional system) gets to decide those. We have a bit of a grey area here, because national security is in the hands of Westminster, while Scotland otherwise has its own criminal justice system. (And yes, I realize that you spoke about England -- but moving north of the Tweed is not all that difficult if you have any mobility; it's already a concern in practice because of the different university tuition systems.)

Actually, I'd argue it is more expensive in most other countries (not counting those that allow child labor and sweatshops).

The problem is that employees are human beings, not pieces of furniture that don't have any needs. They need a place to live, they need food, they need healthcare, and often not just for themselves but for their spouse and children, too (for many people it's not even possible anymore to support a family on a single income). That doesn't come cheap if you don't enjoy living at the poverty level.

That is unfortunate, but unless you enjoy living in a society with an across-the-board lower standard of living (which will also affect you, because it drags the GDP down, increases crime rate, and so forth), it's pretty much unavoidable.

That doesn't mean that you have a duty to hire people. Trust me, I understand that it can be difficult to make ends meet as a small business. But you have to recognize that you can't both have your cake and eat it, too. If all employees suddenly were paid 20% less across the board, then you'd eventually see a drop in sales, too. Someone has to buy your products or services.

The article is not entirely clear on the minimum sentence part. From the body of the text it appears that it's that the maximum sentence should be at least two years (which makes sense, given that individual member states would be free to set higher maximum sentences if it's a directive), and five if there are aggravating circumstances. Also, given that petty offenses should not carry criminal sanctions at all does not mesh with a minimum two year sentence.

The only part that mentions a two year minimum sentence is the summary paragraph, which may be the result of poor editing.

There's a video recording of the committee meeting, but I don't really have the time to search through it to find what was actually decided. I guess it'll become clearer within the next few days.