What is Digg?66 Comments
- Crisender111, on 09/25/2008, -1/+89Now we know why Europe has got bigger balls than America.
- koorb, on 09/25/2008, -1/+82Europe is still focused on civil liberties. America is run by a ruling class who are only interested in stuffing their own pockets.
- yessuz, on 09/25/2008, -2/+60said once, said twice, and it will be forever:
Europe FTW - MattBlackCat, on 09/25/2008, -2/+44Every country gets the government it deserves.
- HarryRag, on 09/25/2008, -1/+36I'm damn proud to be European. At least our politicians make sense!
- TnTBass, on 09/25/2008, -1/+36Cause America sold them to the corporations?
- balliamo, on 09/25/2008, -0/+25I wish I could say the same, unfortunatelly I am Italian and our goverment is a joke.
- compgeek, on 09/25/2008, -0/+22Way to go EU. Same style laws as Canada download all you want as long as you don't reupload you're in the clear
- shutaro, on 09/25/2008, -2/+22Only if you speak Europese.
- mastgrr, on 09/25/2008, -0/+16This is why we need to give more power to the European Parliament (give it more power over the Commission and Council). It's the only EU institution that seems to really understand what the people think.
- pintomp3, on 09/25/2008, -1/+17the problem is privatization of things that shouldn't be privatized. you create an incentive for profit at the expense of social justice. now we are stuck with things like the prison industrial complex, military industrial complex. and health insurance industry.
- lilhelper, on 09/25/2008, -2/+17I hate the politicians of America...
- jakem1, on 09/25/2008, -0/+14Sadly that's true but you're not alone. I live in the UK and our government is just as much of a joke and there's no alternative.
With any luck this will prevent our government from introducing cut-off laws next year but we'll have to see. - theodenking, on 09/25/2008, -0/+14digglet08 that's simply not true. Contrary to popular propaganda, liberty wasn't invented in America nor is it confined to it.
- JPHR, on 09/25/2008, -0/+13Think about this: RIAA and MPAA are close to irrelevant in Europe except for large scale commercial counterfeiting. Does that tell you something about the US legal system including your legislators.
More general: credit card companies are simply not allowed to charge all those outrageous fees and rates in Europe. Thanks to your Supreme Court individual states can make their own rules, so credit card companies simply persuaded a few states to essentially give them free reign without any consumer protection. In the US everything seems to be for sale.
There are a lot more of such examples. The essence seems to be that Europe considers a market and companies only as efficient tools, however society defines the overall framework and application of such tools. Part of that is the recognition that free markets are not stable and companies are narrow minded and driven by self interest only. So society retains the final word and ensures through monitoring and regulation that market and companies serve consumer/taxpayer. That's for instance why broadband is both cheaper and faster in Europe. Regulators forced competition on natural monopolies. - venne54, on 09/25/2008, -0/+12I digg that I am a European living in the USA America is so scared of the European way they will go out of their way to be different, to their own determent
- ekso, on 09/25/2008, -0/+12Well said.
- valimar77, on 09/25/2008, -0/+12" the European Parliament spoke out against these anti-piracy measures, by saying it would be “conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness"
There is hope for the future. - inactive, on 09/25/2008, -4/+16europe is today what america was once before it was overrun by white trash republicans.
- pintomp3, on 09/25/2008, -1/+13three strike laws and minimum sentencing guidelines are simply a show of force for a vengeful public. they do not represent justice.
- inactive, on 09/25/2008, -0/+11The sad thing for us Frenchmen is that Nicolas Sarkozy is trying really hard to apply the worst American ideas to France instead of the best. As W. Bush is for you guys, this is a presidentcy we will remember for being extremely destructive of all the country's good sides.
For exemple the national electricity company and the national post office (EDF, and La Poste) are all public services that are very reliable, but also very profitable. So Sarkozy and his shark friends are like "hey, how come we can't tate a bite of that huge profit" and they want to privatize them. It will be only at the cost of quality of life here. Same went for water. Water distribution is public in France, but in some regions they tried the private model, and after 2 years the price of water there rose up by almost 3 times, and people demonstrated to get the public water back (in some cases they succeded). - heystoopid, on 09/25/2008, -0/+9So all that lobbying/bribing by Mrs Vivendi , was a complete and utter failure , sweet .
- keithloughnane, on 09/25/2008, -3/+12The difference is very few people are stupid and bilingual
- burketo, on 09/25/2008, -0/+8It's also the only one that's elected directly by the people.
- e68895f, on 09/25/2008, -0/+8So they say YES to a law that prevents the three-stikes law to become a real law....
Yep, European Parliament ... - aolshove, on 09/25/2008, -0/+7Allowing people to download music without paying!?! That's Un-American!! Oh wait....
- zcreem, on 09/25/2008, -0/+7Today I am proud of the European parliament, but you have a lot more to do. Our rights are threatened more than ever by fear mongering government's like Britain and Italy. At last we see the real value of the European parliament, thanks guys and in the oldest pan European language Illegitimi non carborundum.
- kero552, on 09/25/2008, -0/+7It works in some states of EU. You pay hidden tax in every harddrive, flashdisk, printer, DVD... BUT you can all download all you want for personal use.
- atgmac, on 09/25/2008, -0/+7Ja oui sí.
- sjmulder, on 09/25/2008, -0/+6Doe ik hoor ;-)
- ErickStevenson, on 09/25/2008, -0/+6Sad, I wish it was like that here in the US Inc.
- oscarolim, on 09/25/2008, -0/+5What government isn't? As a portuguese, my government is probably the biggest joke in europe. If it wasn't for the USA, it would be the biggest joke on the world. So thank you america, for being the top one :)
- pintomp3, on 09/25/2008, -0/+5privatizing water is one the most disgusting corporate moves so far, right after patenting seeds.
Bechtel tried that ***** in Bolivia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_protests_o ...
the World Bank is always trying to push this free market ***** on countries, like they did in Indonesia. L. Paul Bremmer made a mess of Iraq trying to privatize everything and setup another free market experiment. even after what happened in chile, south africa, poland, and russia, the chicago school boys keep pushing their ideology. - Onestone, on 09/26/2008, -0/+5Da be da >-|
- chase001, on 09/25/2008, -1/+6But the ruling class roll up their sleeves when they deign to speak with us!
- jaysont34, on 09/25/2008, -0/+5The Romanian government is a circus, we have a ***** cartoon show making fun of our government (it uses the same drawing style as South Park which is kind of cool i guess).
- Narishma, on 09/25/2008, -0/+4What's an internet lawyer?
- EarlOfLade, on 09/25/2008, -0/+4And you call yourself a lawyer? LOL
The issue here is about the music and movie industry and their total lack on innovation and adaption to new channels of distribution.
And an individuals right to privacy is paramount and much more important than any law guarding a corporation.
Did you get you law degree from a diploma mill? - Oddish, on 09/25/2008, -0/+4Let's not get carried away.
- jaysont34, on 09/25/2008, -0/+3Just out of curiosity, I'm really bad with EU law and politics, but is the Treaty of Lisbon going to give more power to the European Parliament or some other part of the EU? If it gives more power to the European Parliament, how come Ireland voted against it? Thanks in advance.
- theodenking, on 09/25/2008, -1/+4I think we can all agree our respective governments are jokes right now, which is why we need to be transferring power to modern institutions like the European Parliament.
- shutaro, on 09/25/2008, -1/+4Are we talking about the band, or the country?
- theodenking, on 09/25/2008, -0/+3To be fair, no, we're not. This kind of thing is definitely the exception to the rule. Or at least it is in my corner of Europe.
- burketo, on 09/25/2008, -1/+4It is alot more complicated than that. The lisbon treaty was actually a load of amendments to be made to prior treaties to make a de facto constitution out of them (due to the EU constitution's failure to pass in France and the netherlands). The treaty was to give more power to the commission in some areas and more to the parliament in others. The idea was to move the commission away from being an each country representative thing.
One of the biggest changes was that, in the parliament, Most of the areas where unanimous agreement is now needed would changed to percentage majority agreement. It would also have changed the numbers around giving more MEP seats to larger countries and less to smaller ones. For Ireland these two things together would have massively decreased our ability to have any impact at all. It also, infamously, would have given the commission the ability to add extra areas to be voted on this way AFTER the treaty had passed. This would have in effect made the treaty self amending.
On the commission side of things, the lisbon treaty was to decrease the members of the commission so that there would be a rota system which would leave ireland with one commissioner for ten years out of every 15. 10 years on, 5 years off etc. This, again, was unacceptable as we couldn't have no commissioner for 5 years with all the power that the commission has to change peoples way of life.
There was also the fact that there are 450 million people in the Eu and our country of 4.5 million was the only one with a vote. Something is not rigfht about that.
In the end though, it all boiled down to a bad show by our own politicians at home. Basically every party bar one (there were 6 parties with elected public reps in ireland at the time. Now there are 5) was for the treaty but they were incapable of giving any reasons why. They gave a string of bad debates and speeches and the people just decided they weren't going to vote for something they didn't understand.
I was very proud to be an irishman when that treaty failed and it rekindled my faith in democracy. It was one of those rare instances when politicians are given a harsh reminder that they serve the people and no-one else.
Now they are talking about Lisbon 2. I find that insulting. - MrHappyMan, on 09/26/2008, -0/+3and who says the EU doesn't do anything for us?
- burketo, on 09/25/2008, -0/+2Well it seems to me that America is constantly trying to de-federalize (if that is even a real word) things and give power back to the individual states. It makes sense in a lot of cases where demographics and resources are different in each place. This is magnified in the EU where even languages and cultures are different in each country.
I'm not convinced that the EU should be meddling in civil/social matters at all, although I have no real evidence of the EU making any big mistakes on that front as of yet. Also I think there is a need in europe to protect each nations sovereignty which of course is different to the US. Infact i think it is the fact that we are a union of sovereign nations capable of making our own choices that makes us so strong.
I do think a strong Economic Union is important for all of our prosperity and the open borders and trade agreements should be dearly protected. I also recognize that the way things are in terms of administrative setup is just not good enough for such a big union so there will have to be another treaty. Lisbon is not it though.
Honestly i don't know quite what needs to be done but i guess that's why i'm not being paid the big bucks! - jaysont34, on 09/26/2008, -1/+3You are absolutely right about us, the EU, being a different case regarding nations sovereignty. The way the USA was set up is much different from the way the EU was set up. The EU is in many regards, a completely new way of governement, which makes me proud to be an EU citizen. We are the first to take a whole group of countries and try to put them together in a good way, such as free trade and freedom of people to go from one country (or state if you will) to another.
I am not originally from Romania (I was born in the USA, but recently moved to the EU, my father is Romanian), but I strongly believe the EU has a very good future ahead of itself. While I believe that we need to have more common laws between the states, I also believe that we must not give complete power to the EU. The EU should be more of a representation of all of us (EU members) and how it can help us more unify yet still keep our national identity. It seems as a difficult task, but I feel we are getting there.
***** I think I had 1 too many beers, long live the EU :) - jpkeisala, on 09/26/2008, -1/+2It might be ok today but believe me EU is heading to US. There is already growing lobbyist army in Brussels and politicians are turning slowly to their puppets.
New fashion in EU area is to vote famous people to governments instead of politicians. Finland for example has ex-models, folk singers, poets and other artists running the country. Once great welfare country is falling. Kids goes to school to shoot others and government is unable to do anything else than blame internet for it... - P5ycHo, on 09/26/2008, -0/+1You are probably not from holland.
- HarryRag, on 09/26/2008, -0/+1Wat denk je zelf?
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