Another plus of German: You will finally understand those funny SAP variable names :-)

Who can explain what this 632305222316434 thing is about? It tells: "Everyone who disagrees with criminal behaviour of Russian president, government and all those rascals, must do that." but what does it mean?

>In Germany, newspaper publishers are lobbying for 'a new exclusive right conferring the power to monopolize speech e.g. by assigning a right to re-use a particular wording in the headline of a news article anywhere else without the permission of the rights holder

This is not quite true. The auxiliary copyright ("Leistungsschutzrecht", draft leaked: http://www.irights.info/index.php?q=node/880) is mostly aimed against big players such as Google (News) who systematically and continuously reuse headlines, snippets and images from publishers for their own profit (selling ads) without paying (in the publisher's mind: adequate) royalties. The average blogger commenting (and quoting) a certain news story is not meant to be affected... but, of course we know, laws like these tend to get out of hand.

> GERMANS risk two years in prison if they illegally download films and music for private use under a new law agreed yesterday.

That is in the text of the proposed law, but(!) two years of jail are the _maximum_ punishment one can get for copying related crimes that are not done with commercial background (i.e. selling copies, where the maximum sentence is five years in prison).

Another thing that maybe will cost a lot of people a lot of money and time is the following: There is going to be passed another law in Germany that basically will give to the industry the power to request from ISPs costumer's data in any case of suspected terrorism ... or data crime (yes, let this combination impress you for a second). Add to this either the already present offers of companies that automatically scan p2p-networks and file ten thousands of compensation lawsuits or nice lawyers who can easily earn 1-2 k by, well, reminding you that you are in some way illegally interfering with a client's business ("Abmahnung") and you have a nice system of money making by money taking with least effort. . .