In case it isn't clear from the summary and you don't wanna read tfa. The actor is Peter Serafinowicz.

Never heard of him.

This draft is so vague I don't even know when I am supposed to feel angry or sad.

Oh this one's easy. Check Article 29.2 of the UDHR: "In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society." All UDHR Rights, if they were capable of judicial interpretation, are qualified. Besides, in the order of the articles, one can argue that even cultural life takes precedence over copyright.

I would be quite shocked myself that living on your copyright is a fundamental human right of gross importance.

The BBC article has some pretty interesting comments from Paul Stoddart, Microsoft UK search lead.

Huh?

<quote><p>Democracy is the force of the majority over the minority. It doesn't matter if you have elections or not.. that's just a formality.</p></quote>

That's just a facet of first-past-the-post democracies.

There are actually democracies where it's virtually impossible to get a majority.

Americans...

Parent may not be accurate in stating that this was a jury trial, but his general point still stands: you can't appeal just because you don't like the law. In common law, there would be a procedure where you have to convince a judge that the appeal is worth hearing by the superior court. You can't raise novel points of law, and appeals are generally slow to overturn convictions unless the judge obviously got the case wrong.

Nevertheless, this tactic of letting the highest court hear cases just because there are new and interesting points of law is stupid. Unless TPB has a lot of cash to burn.

As the article already mentions, the case against TPB is very much a moral victory for the MAFIAA. They need to show you can't "get away" with it.

If Google wants to "co-operate" and avoid this kind of shitstorm, they'd enter into agreements with content owners where they'd agree on what kind of limitations is acceptable, in exchange for giving them a break and not pressuring governments to act.

The bad thing would be that this is all settled privately, and not checked by some kind of "rule of law". You might not even be able to tell how they'd modify their search to support such agreements without studying search results all day...

... And for those of us who already know the answer, this is a good opportunity to find out whether there's something new we should be looking at too.

And the worse part is then, you have to imagine that half of the voters are worse than that.