French
This tweakers.net article tells about the French government having passed a law allowing them to cut people who download copyrighted content off from the Internet. This just proves again that the French are just plain weird.
Especially the clause stating that even when cut off those people will still have to pay their monthly fees to the internet provider is just ridiculous. As is the idea that the person who pays for the connection is responsible for what is done over it. Very few connections are used by only one person nowadays, and many of them are on insecure wireless networks.
And no, I do not think that not doing anything about the problem can be justified (and neither can the ridiculous salaries some people from music labels (etcetera) receive). People worked hard to create something, they expect to be paid for that, and they should be. But a ridiculous approach like this is not the way to go 
(For instance, just try making stuff less expensive… I have no objection against buying software and I regularly buy software if I think it is worth buying, but only so long as the price of the software is justified. Cost of development is no excuse, a lower price will lead to more sales and therefore provide at least as much income.)
A democratic government should represent the people. If it does, any decision the government makes can logically never be a controversial one, since the political ideas of the government and the people are the same. But that is clearly not what’s happening here. Apparantly the French government is no longer representing the people, and should step down right away because of that.
A similar issue I read about recently was a proposal to censor child porn websites. While in principle I have nothing against removing child porn from the Internet, it’s the censor – based on a non-disclosed list of blocked websites – that I don’t like. It is merely the first step towards blocking other content as well. The Internet is a free, open source of information and should always remain so 
(And of course, the Chinese government could learn a lot from that… they say it’s to protect their citizens, but if everything on the internet is so damn bad for the Chinese, why don’t we just cut off all Internet connections with China? Then they no longer have any bad content to worry about, and the rest of the world won’t miss it either as most Chinese domains contain viruses/malware, or are written in a language that nobody outside China understands.)
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