Google Found Guilty of French Copyright Infringement 254
adeelarshad82 writes "A Paris court on Friday found Google guilty of violating copyright by digitizing books and putting extracts online, following a legal challenge by major French publishers. The court found against Google after the La Martiniere group, which controls the highbrow Editions du Seuil publishing house, argued that publishers and authors were losing out in the latest stage of the digital revolution."
Yeah, but it's France.... (Score:3, Funny)
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Be careful though - they have had some amazing military strategists in the past, and they are a bit overdue in that department, so it could happen again one day soon.
The LAST thing I need is France Attacking the States, Occupying Canada, and then forcing us to put Eggs on our pizzas.
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Have you ever tried putting some eggs on a pizza just before it goes into the oven? If not you should; it's great!
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I refuse. There are some things an Egg is good for. Pizza is not one of them.
No, this is not my opinion, this is scientific FACT. Don't make me cite a source.
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Have you ever tried putting some eggs on a pizza just before it goes into the oven?
That might be okay - however, what I got in Paris was a raw egg cracked over the pizza AFTER it came out of the oven. I found that very disappointing. Though the the waiter may have been playing a prank, as he seemed put out that I already knew to ask for a carafe of water (since "I'd like some water" defaults to an expensive bottled water in most places).
Re:Yeah, but it's France.... (Score:5, Informative)
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The lesson learned by Vietnam is to take the exact opposite stance on Foreign Policy as the French. Had we to the French to STFU and get out of Vietnam after WWII, there's a chance Vietnam would be a capitalist system today.
surrender.... (Score:5, Insightful)
True, as the French surrendered (again) before we became fully engaged there. Prior to their (typical) surrender we helped back them in terms of money and troops. Yet even with the quagmire that sadly enough was Vietnam I don't think it's comparable to the poor choices that Nappy made back in the day...
Yeah, It's not like the USA had to haul ass out of Vietnam with it's tail between it's .... uh... oh wait it did.... If there is one thing we learned from Vietnam (at least the ones of us that haven't been brainwashed with an overdose of extreme right wing ideology) it's that not all problems on this earth can be solved with the lavish over-application of obscene amounts of firepower. Maybe one day you will wake up and realize that the world is not a Rambo movie.... and that line about the French and surrender is getting really old and very tired. You people seem to find it awful easy to forget that it was French money, French guns and French ships that picked your revolution up out of the N-American mud at a time when the British army was wiping the floor with George Washington and his continentals and eventually brought you your independence. At the end thousands of their soldiers and sailors proved instrumental in that process as well. Apparently French troops outnumbered the Americans at at their key victory, the famous siege of Siege of Yorktown.
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Except that before Napoleon even shared a border with Russia, he had to own most of Europe. I can see how the geographical details might be lost on Americans, though.
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Uhhh....how does extending an empire have anything to do with borders? After all England extended their empire to faraway places they didn't directly border. Maybe I'm missing something though, since I'm just a dumb American who knows nothing about geography. But I am real good at gazintas and cipherin' (Beverly Hillbillies drop)...
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But getting troops to Russia is a bit of a tough nut to crack when you're in France, especially when the Black Sea route is carved up between Turks and Russians, and the northerl
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Napoleon was a great strategist earlier on, that was how he defeated all the other European powers. But I guess he went a little nuts at the end.
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Don't worry, the french government is too occupied looking good to make war.
Sure about that? They are nearly tied with the UK for 2nd largest arms manufacturer in the world.
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More likely, they'd try to make the French Canadians pay attention to the diktats of the French Academy and stop using all those perfectly good words the Academy had declared "obsolete."
What I was wondering... (Score:2)
_Some_ US authors and publishers (Score:5, Informative)
It agreed to a settlement with some US authors and publishers. Most authors were not involved.
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It agreed to a settlement with some US authors
I think there were 7, or something like that.
Of course, last I heard the settlement agreement was thrown out and is being rewritten.
War of the cultures (Score:4, Interesting)
It's just sad to see the French surrender yet another battle.
Re:War of the cultures (Score:4, Informative)
the world would be more apt to find Victor Hugo in English than in French.
Because...Victor Hugo died more recently in France than he did in the rest of the world? Because copyright laws apply differently depending on the source language? I'm sorry, I have no idea what point you're trying to make here, but I'm pretty sure Victor Hugo's works are in the public domain in every country and language.
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To paraprhase, if it becomes too difficult to deal with French copyright, Google may simply avoid the quagmire and avoid all books with French copyrights all together.
Oddly enough I chose Victor Hugo because he is a) French and b) his works are in the public domain. However if the cost of dealing with French copyright is too high, Google simply won't deal with it.
So.... (Score:2)
Time to go after book reviewers next?
I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
I cannot believe that google extracts are in any way damaging book sales, and therefore causing harm to the authors or publishers.
So what are they complaining about?
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
So what are they complaining about?
I'm not sure, but I think one of the extracts included something about Snape killing Dumbledore.
The French were quite upset.
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HOW COULD YOU!? I just can't believe you would say that, I thought it was Harry in the library with the candle stick..
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
French publishers have bit the hand that feeds them. The obvious solution is for Google to no longer digitize French books, and laugh as people buy less of them.
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I would imagine that an only exception to this would be if the book wasn't worth buying in the first place. In that case, an excerpt may very well dissuade someone from buying the book.
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Maybe it allows people to see how awful the writing of the author is? Not that I can write, but if the author is truly bad, it would probably show in an excerpt.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
The effectiveness of a particular promotional channel is irrelevant if the act itself is illegal.
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That of course was not the way it was working. In most cases people where only interested in the bit of information they were after. So do the search, find the paragraph and you have your answer, no need to buy the whole bloody way overpriced textbook. Now this sounds bigger than it really was, often the paragraph rarely answered you full question, however it did reinforce the habit in searching the internet to find your answers and never buying text books (the answer you seek is always somewhere on the in
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They overstepped the bounds of the latest French copyright law. The one that makes the US DMCA look fuzzy and friendly.
Really impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't understand why you are impressed. Looking down on other people comes easily to most of us.
Re:Really impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
2) From what I have heard, the country French are a very hospitable people, warm and willing to share their culture with the world. It is really only the Parisians that have a (deserved) reputation for being arrogant. Unfortunately, Paris is the only part of France that most people ever visit.
3) The Quebecois have earned some degree of disrespect since their insistence on the use of French goes far beyond "bi-lingualism" and may be regarded by some as discriminating against the majority English-speaking Canadians.
In general, France was once a big global superpower; France was once the center for tecnology, and French was the "Lingua Franca" used in diplomacy throughout the world. The French appear more than a little pissed off that this is no longer true. However, this just gives us a preview of the kind of attitude we will be getting from the Americans in a few years when China becomes the economic and technological center of the world. If you thought the French were acting like arrogant assholes before, just wait 'til you see what the Americans act like!
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French were acting like arrogant assholes before, just wait 'til you see what the Americans act like!
We've already got them beat!
when China becomes the economic and technological center of the world.
Whiel that may eventually happen, I do not foresee an Asian Langauge replacing English. That is, unless they adopt an alhpabet.
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1) It hard to "speak with people" who insist that everyone speak perfect French or be subject ridicule, especially when you don't speak French.
I've been to France quite often, and on most of my visits I did not speak a word of French. I was never subject to any ridicule, but I never expected anyone to speak more English or Finnish then I spoke French. I understand somebody could have bad luck and meet an asshole, but if everybody you meet are assholes you should look in the mirror for a cause.
2) From what I have heard, the country French are a very hospitable people, warm and willing to share their culture with the world. It is really only the Parisians that have a (deserved) reputation for being arrogant. Unfortunately, Paris is the only part of France that most people ever visit. 3) The Quebecois have earned some degree of disrespect since their insistence on the use of French goes far beyond "bi-lingualism" and may be regarded by some as discriminating against the majority English-speaking Canadians. In general, France was once a big global superpower; France was once the center for tecnology, and French was the "Lingua Franca" used in diplomacy throughout the world. The French appear more than a little pissed off that this is no longer true. However, this just gives us a preview of the kind of attitude we will be getting from the Americans in a few years when China becomes the economic and technological center of the world. If you thought the French were acting like arrogant assholes before, just wait 'til you see what the Americans act like!
My findings with modern young french people is that most of them do actually speak some English (mind you this is just Paris I'm talking about). However they
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I've been to France quite often, and on most of my visits I did not speak a word of French. I was never subject to any ridicule, but I never expected anyone to speak more English or Finnish then I spoke French. I understand somebody could have bad luck and meet an asshole, but if everybody you meet are assholes you should look in the mirror for a cause.
Most people go to Paris and Parisians can be very rude which is completely unexpected from a big city. Everyone in London, New York and L.A. come off as people you'd find running a little "Mom & Pop" store in the country.
English, in France (Score:3, Informative)
In the Alsace, almost all speak German as well, and in the South West Spanish "je n comprend pas" is very much a thing of the past, largely as a consequence of the mobility of labour in the EU.
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I was trying to pick up a package in Berlin. I walked into the office and muddled my way through an explanation that I lived next door and the landlord asked me to retrieve the package. Half way through my second sentence, somebody at the back of the office blurted out "SPEAK ENGLISH!!". The girl I was talking to spoke back to him in German "I like it when they try to learn the language"
In Berlin it seemed that every young person wanted to learn English, that English was the language of business and th
Re:Really impressive (Score:4, Insightful)
1) It hard to "speak with people" who insist that everyone speak perfect French or be subject ridicule, especially when you don't speak French.
You mean like the numerous Americans and English who mock immigrants who don't speak perfect English even though the immigrant knows two or three languages and the native English speaker can only (if lucky) manage one?
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My distaste for French people is based entirely on how they post on Slashdot.
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see the kind of reactions such a post, made with an open-mind, would get as replies.
You must be... know what, nevermind.
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The US, unfortunately, kept a hold of the islander mentality that the English have so many of them are afraid of anything different.
Found? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google wasn't found guilty. They were openly, admittedly, unabashedly guilty of digitizing and putting up excerpts of books they did not hold ANY copyright to.
They only thing that happened was that the court decided the this law is valid even for a mega corp like Google.
THAT, my friends, is the real shocker.
And all you Googlebots can bitch about the law all you want, that's fine. Get the laws changed (in France, here, wherever). But Google brazenly did shit that was completely illegal. I am glad they got hit for it.
Corporations should NOT be above the law.
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I absolutely agree, sort of. What this will likely do, however, is force a settlement between Google and the French publisher for the rights...and I don't think it will go in the publishers favor.
See, Google has gotten us addicted to information. Easy searching. The world at our fingertips. What happens when Google pulls the plug on all French language sites, citing the French interpretation of the right to excerpt for search reasons? People are going to have a fit over it. Somebody is going to have to gi
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> I absolutely agree, sort of.
Is that agreeing more or less than, "I sort of agree, absolutely."?
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Until today I didn't know Google had a presence in France. How many billions of dollars would a judgment need to be to make it worthwhile for them to just pack up and leave?
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Maybe for once, they can change the law to be for the better... Not likely of course, since if they do get the law change, the new law would probably end up screwing over authors. But still, one can hope.
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Sounds to me like Google is doing a little civil disobedience here. The publishers and libraries had now a good 10 years to get their act together and put a decent online offering up, but what have they done? Pretty much nothing. So Google being a little ignorant to the law and doing what they think is the right thing to do, really sounds like a good thing, as it might one way or the other, lead finally to a situation where the Internet is no longer ignored by the other side.
Re:Found? (Score:4, Interesting)
But this is not the case, and google is testing how far it can push the copyright laws to enhance it's business position. Many firms do this. MS did this. I don't like Google doing this because they are not trying to open information. Rather, they are trying to control information so that eyeballs have to view ads brokered by Google.
However, my like or dislike is not relevant. What is relevant is that google is the method many people use to find information. What is relevant is that France is a tiny little country with a language that diminishing number of people speak, and diminishing influence. Many schools in the US are more likely to teach Russian or German or Japanese rather than French. There was a time when France actively tried to fight this negative position by liberally distributing french material. It's seems that they have now given up and will become a country just go to for vacation, like Jamaica.
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Many Cubans are offended that you have lumped them in with the French.
Make sense (Score:4, Interesting)
Google makes unauthorized copies of people's work to store in their servers, in some way similar to how Psystar is found guilty of making unauthorized copies of Mac OS X when it loads it into memory.
Then Google makes money hand over fist from it by selling search results/ads and the people producing the content get nothing or -at best- a very tiny fraction of the income. 'Take from the rich and keep for our own rich selves' sounds a lot like 'do evil' to me.
If your content shows up in Google's results and they make any money off it, then you as the creator of that content should get a portion of that money. Otherwise why do we have copyright laws at all? In a fair world, google and bing should need to set up accounts for each website and pay back a portion of their revenue each time that site's contents appears in a search result with ads in it.
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That's quite the matter-of-fact statement there, chief. Lots of folks actually want their creative works indexed by Google et al. Google indexes an excerpt of my work, and links back to some form of source content. Note that I haven't paid a dime for this service ...
Note also that the individuals who are complaining are the ones who currently have a s
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Quite possibly, but your emotional reaction tends to indicate that it isn't.
A little narrow minded to restrict this to books, but we'll entertain this constraint for now, as it is relevant to the original story. You are correct, without some form of "advertisement," be it w
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something else to consider...
The publishers are the ones who are selling books to those same distributors that pay for click-through sales. The publishers are already making their money (now). The problem for them is when cheap online printing services pair up with authors (content creators if you prefer) and with google to eliminate the traditional publishers, publicists, and distributors.
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Democracy doesn't always produce the right answer, and not all laws are worthy of respect, or even legitimate.
Compare speed limits (respected but usually broken), Prohibition (not respected, usually broken), and Civil Rights laws (initially not respected, initially usually broken).
I'd say that usually the government should enact laws that conform with the stated wishes and actual behavior of its people. Sometimes it is good for the government to get in a fight with the people, such as the federal government
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But what the majority wants still isn't reason enough to allow any kind of behaviour.
I agree. It isn't good enough to live in a democracy; not only must the democracy be moderated, so that it doesn't devolve into mob rule, but there must also be protection for minorities, particularly unpopular minorities. Thus the example of the government finally living up to its obligations to protect the civil rights of black people, over the objections of many in the white majority.
Let's face the truth, what the major
Make NO sense (Score:2, Flamebait)
The difference is "Fair Use".
The Doctrine of Fair Use states that very small excerpts of a copyrighted work may be used for academic teaching, political commentary, and indexing.
Competition with the actual author of the work with a verbatim copy, as in the Psystar case, is clearly not fair use.
This ruling, upholding the French version of the DMCA (except far more draconian), essentially says that you can sue a Phone Book company for putting the copyrighted name of your business in their phone book. It als
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Well, you're talking web sites, rather than books, but there's a couple of problems with your post.
First, a typical search engine doesn't have to rely upon fair use; the DMCA safe harbor is more accomodating.
Second, your analysis is wrong and incomplete in the fourth factor. Web sites do not, as a rule, suffer financially by being indexed without authorization. There is no market for selling rights to index a site. And it's trivially easy for any site to have itself removed from the Google index, if it does
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DMCA safe harbor protects providers from the unlawful acts of others. Google is copying material without authorization on their own accord.
Mea culpa. Thanks for the catch.
''Some terms in the clause are used in archaic meanings, potentially confusing modern readers. ... "Science" is not limited to fields of modern scientific inquiry, but to all knowledge, including philosophy and literature.''
Looks like you're one of the confused modern readers.
No, the material you quoted supports what I was saying. In the c
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If your content shows up in Google's results and they make any money off it, then you as the creator of that content should get a portion of that money. Otherwise why do we have copyright laws at all? In a fair world, google and bing should need to set up accounts for each website and pay back a portion of their revenue each time that site's contents appears in a search result with ads in it.
If your content shows up in Google's results, then Google is giving you advertising and publicity. Would you rather pay for that? Is your perfect model that Google pays you for indexing your data, and then you pay Google for offering that content in their searches?
Additionally, if you don't want to show up on their results because it's unfair that your website is making them so much money, I have a robots.txt to sell you, Mr Murdoch...
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If your content shows up in Google's results and they make any money off it, then you as the creator of that content should get a portion of that money.
You are. You're getting free advertising. If you want even better advertising, you can pay more for it. But only the utterly delusional/idiotic would think that they are getting NOTHING from having Google link to their content.
Otherwise why do we have copyright laws at all?
Originally? Or now?
The original copyright laws were to grant the author a monopoly for a fixed period of time to reward them for their works. Now, copyright laws are used to create a perpetual monopoly and act as cultural sledgehammer.
Look, if you want to be a complete jackass and pre
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Fair Use is an American concept, I'm pretty sure, and is upheld by a Supreme Court ruling.
This story is about France, a different country. I won't pretend to be an expert on their laws, but assuming they also protect Fair Use the way that American law does is probably not a good idea. The way the court ruling went, I'd wager that they actually don't recognize Fair Use whatsoever.
It's stupid, yes. But those are their laws over there. American law presently has a lot of stupid stuff in it (e.g., DMCA), bu
Now if only Sarkozy would be found guilty. (Score:4, Interesting)
After all he violated his own laws 3 times, and now, according to his own laws, should be thrown off the Internet.
He even did it with intent. As he asked the media industry first, then they denied the request, but then he used it anyway.
Is long as Sarkozy is not behind bars and off the net, this whole thing is a farce.
Way to kill a minority dialect (Score:2)
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And now after this -- (Score:2)
|| ...the highbrow Editions du Seuil publishing house, argued that publishers and authors were losing out in the latest stage of the digital revolution." ||
They just ensured that they will continue "losing out in the latest stage of the digital revolution". Great thinking, yeah!
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Don't like it when the shoe is on the other foot I take it...
:Is it okay then to respond to evil with the exact same evil? Especially since this will likely hurt those that had no involvement with the evil in the first place.
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and now the EU is dishing it out to the Canadians
Wrong article? Or did Google move to Canada now for the more sane government?
Lol (Score:2)
I was thinking of the nice approach of the EU to Canada over IP stuff. It is all kind of part and parcel though. Google gets spanked, Canada gets spanked. Looks like they're going to throw their weight around a bit now.
Lets all remember, Europe, those nice fellas that enslave... er I mean enlightened the rest of the world! lol. ;)
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Yeah, its the end of the US lording it over the rest of the world for sure. We did make this bed though and now we're going to have to sleep in it. We could have gotten off oil 30 years ago when the handwriting was on the wall, stayed out of Vietnam, kept the CIA out of everyone else's business etc. Doesn't make us worse than anyone else, but we sure didn't make things better. Ah well, so it goes. Whoever's the next whip hand will get theirs in turn as well no doubt.
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Doesn't make us worse than anyone else, but we sure didn't make things better. Ah well, so it goes. Whoever's the next whip hand will get theirs in turn as well no doubt.
"With great power comes great responsibility." America developed into the greatest power, but it didn't exercise that power responsibly. Sure, there's lots of other countries that have crappy governments that would abuse great power too, but they never had much power, while America did, and abused it for its own self-serving ends. Now it
Yup (Score:2)
Sure seems like it. We could have risen to that but honestly I'm not terribly convinced the US is really the epitome of anything, except consumerism. Or ever was. Maybe power is overrated.
Re:Yup (Score:4, Insightful)
The US does deserve the honor of creating a very good form of government, way back in the late 1700s when Europe was still under the rule of monarchs. Sure, these days every decent country has some sort of Constitutional Republic, but back then it was a downright revolutionary concept. Even better, our form of government has survived ever since the ratification of the Constitution in the 1780s. Most other industrialized nations can't claim to have a form of government that's lasted as long and been so stable; they've all been interrupted by dictatorships (Spain, Germany, Italy), occupations by invaders (Poland, France, Belgium), had a complete change of government (Japan, China), etc. The closest would probably be Great Britain, which instead of some big unheaval like those others, slowly morphed from an absolute monarchy, to a monarchy with a Parliament, to a Parliamentary democracy with a monarch that's nothing but a figurehead.
Unfortunately, while what the USA's founders created was revolutionary and great, 230+ years of time and massive expansion and all kinds of social changes and upheavals have corrupted it greatly, and now it's not working so well and appears to be utterly corrupt at most levels.
It died long ago (Score:2, Insightful)
But I think the key issue may well be that we're stuck with a system that was at least adequate and maybe even ideal for a time that existed 230 years ago. Many of the principles were and are good, but the structure hasn't adapted to the modern world.
I think in many ways the British have it right. A system of government that grows, adapts and changes. Ours is fossilized.
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Most other industrialized nations can't claim to have a form of government that's lasted as long and been so stable; they've all been interrupted by dictatorships (Spain, Germany, Italy), occupations by invaders (Poland, France, Belgium), had a complete change of government (Japan, China), etc.
How much of that is due to distance? America's pretty far away from all of the big powers. Waging a war across an ocean is difficult and costly. I'm sure that other country's leaders have dreamed of taking over America to get access to our resources over the centuries, but none have been fool enough to put much effort into it (if any at all.) Border wars are one thing, but attacking a country across the ocean just doesn't make much sense.
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The Republic of the Seven United Provinces (currently known as The Netherlands) was recognized as an independent nation in 1648 already. Get off your high horse. (Before that, the Republic of Rome, etc.) Insightful my ass.
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Obviously, countries like France and Poland didn't exactly choose to be invaded, so there's really no way to know whether their systems of government from before WWII would have persevered to the present day without some other upheaval. So yes, part of America's success is probably due to its advantageous location.
However, you're wrong about no countries being "fool enough" to try to take over America with a war across the ocean: Great Britain tried it in 1812, and of course lost, though they did manage to
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And it ceased to exist on May 15, 1940 when Dutch forces capitulated to Germany and a pro-Nazi government was installed.
We're talking about continuous systems of government here. Almost none in Europe managed to successfully survive through WWII.
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France has gone through five republics and some semi-dictatorships since their revolution so GPs point still stands with regards to the fundamental stability of the US system.
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Netherlands were occupied by France after the French Revolution, and then later on by the Germany in WW2, however, and he specifically listed "invasion" as reason for exclusion.
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You conveniently forget about WWII.
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We could easily have done what the Russians did to Eastern Europe to Western Europe after WWII if we had wanted to.Or we could have absorbed Japan. Of any government that has held significant power at any time in the history of the world, the US has been the least abusive and most egalitarian.
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You're talking ancient history there. The USA conducted itself fairly well back then (though its involvement in the Phillipines wasn't too pretty). Check out the USA's actions after WWII instead; they got worse and worse and worse. Vietnam, overthrowing Latin American governments and installing puppet dictatorships, overthrowing Iran's democratically-elected government and installing the Shah, etc. We're certainly not doing anything noble in Iraq right now.
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Check out the USA's actions after WWII instead; they got worse and worse and worse.
They did? Can you quantify that?
Vietnam, overthrowing Latin American governments and installing puppet dictatorships, overthrowing Iran's democratically-elected government and installing the Shah, etc. We're certainly not doing anything noble in Iraq right now.
Oh, I see. You're just on the everything-that-America-does-is-bad bandwagon.
No, the US hasn't gotten any worse since WW2 - if anything they've gotten better. The only thing that's changed is popular opinion. If people in the 40's had thought the way that you do now, they'd have been condemning the US for turning Germany and Japan into puppet states, and would have been demanding that Truman be prosecuted for war crimes. That didn't happen because most people back then ha
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I don't think that's exactly the same thing. Taking territory from Mexico was westward expansion earlier on in the nation's history; what I'm talking about is the 20th-century involvement in Latin American countries that the US does not share a border with, and are much farther south. Plus, there's a difference to me in simply taking territory from another country (which is at least honest and not underhanded; remember, the US won a war with Mexico, and then purchased that territory with cash), and trying
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Sure, there's lots of other countries that have crappy governments that would abuse great power too, but they never had much power, while America did, and abused it for its own self-serving ends.
Granted that the US leadership over its history certainly was never a pack of choir boys, but damn... that's pretty ballsy to claim that they were the worst offenders of power in world history.
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It doesn't matter who's hand is on the whip. Everyone's hand gets smacked at some point in history. Some get anhilated before even having a hand on a whip. The world is a violent, rough place.
To be sure - the US has screwed up any number of times throughout history. It doesn't take a lot to come up with examples of these mistakes (and outright blunders). But at the same time, when delving in to these embarassments, let's not pretend like the field was layed out by the US. There were and continue to be
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Its Eurospeak - you adsd up 27 languages, and then divide by 27!
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I cannot help but smile at the karmic deliciousness of a "RIA" organization being sued for billions for infringement.
Don't be so sure! (Score:2)
Don't be too sure about that! President Sarkozy just got his third strike [independent.co.uk] as a party to copyright infringement!
So we have a giant asshole who has no trouble with letting his party infringe upon the copyrights of others, while pushing 3-strikes laws for everyone else. If he wants us to go along with that, he should ban his own political party from the internet on principle.
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Re:LMAO this is BS (Score:4, Informative)
That's nice and all to link to Wikipedia, but maybe you should read the articles before ... I will help you :
* there isn't any american air bases in France. It was decided by De Gaulle quite a long time ago : I quote the article linked in your post "On 23 October 1967, all foreign flags were furled and after 17 years all NATO forces departed France."
* France doesn't have any specialized bomber, but now a lot of planes can play the role : for example the Mirage 2000 is a multirole fighter.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh my, it's a good thing you posted here then. The actual title is "Google Found Guilty of French Copyright Infringement".
Hope this helped!
Re: (Score:2)
As some of you may remember there was a article here about a country that set up a site to start selling US movies and music online without permission because the US was fucking them over and they decided to get payback.
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The problem is that everyone thinks that digital works should be cheaper because there is no printing or distribution cost. Only problem is, printing and distributing books is very, very cheap. Altogether it might cost $4 to print, bind and ship a book today. Maybe $5 for some fancy hardcover books.
The primary cost of books is the editing and other content-management functions. The author doesn't get that much of it - but without the editing, formatting, marketing, and so on and so forth books simply do