What is it about European countries that make them so reasonable and open to progress? This is great news, because for once there's actually a law on pirating that's based on research, unlike US laws centered around "job creators" losing money.
* The powerful copyright-industry mostly resides in the US. European countries that have somewhat of a copyright industry of their own (France, UK) are considerable less "reasonable".
* Success in European elections is way less dependent on corporate financing. Lobbying is way less effective if the politicians you target don't need your money. It's not less corrupt, but more about influence and favors, and the US copyright lobby has relatively little to offer in that respect.
In other words: the copyright mafia has less politicians in their pockets, and therefor less influence on public policy.
Of course, I don't hear a lot of negatives about Switzerland. Except from the IRS, of course :)
That's your opinion because you're not an "Ausländer" (foreigner) living in Switzerland. See:
* http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/Council_of_Europe_attac...
* http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Specials/Parliamentary_elections...
* http://www.humanrights.ch/en/Switzerland/Human-Rights-in-Int...
I was thinking of moving to Switzerland, but in the end I had the feeling that there's a significant portion of the population who would like to keep it "Swiss." Also, immigration laws are rather harsh.
s/significant/vocal and you're closer to the mark. The right wing party here routinely attempts to shift blame of every conceivable problem to the fact that there are lots of foreigners living here. It's not that there aren't real issues (e.g. abuse of asylum rights), but they tend to be blown vastly out of proportion.
Germany doesn't really have freedom of speech
A few European countries share these specific restrictions by the way (or at least some of them). Including Switzerland.
The only difference is that U.S. culture teaches you to believe that those exceptions "aren't covered by free speech", i.e. they don't count because we said so ... just as o1iver thinks about Holocaust-denying.
Unless you totally missed the words "conspire" and "advocate" in my post, I'm not at all sure what you're trying to say.
Besides, people die after someone shouts fire in a crowded theater, but it's still speech.
btw, I'm not necessarily advocating free speech at all costs. If I'm going after anyone in this thread, it's the U.S. for hypocritically advertising "WE H4Ve phR33 5P34CH!!! unlike u european 1o5erz" and not being upfront about how delicate the line is.
So conspiracy without an overt act is not constitutionally protected.
Yes, you can.
And I don't get that much criticism about the laws. Yes, Americans generally look quite astonished on any country perceived to have fewer freedoms (and "socialist Europe" certainly applies for that), but the Brits and French usually don't mock us for that. They tend to be quite more panicked whenever some neo-nazis appear, and if they were using the original symbols this might get worse. (Never mind that France has laws against holocaust deniers, too.)
But as you say, each place has its crazy idiosyncrasies, and in the grand total, Switzerland scores pretty highly in the list of countries to live in. Unless you hate mountains and/or chocolate, of course. (Or they won't let you in, which might be an issue)
Actually the Swiss Popular Party (SVP, the right wing party) didn't do too well in the most recent elections. While they hoped to achieve > 30% of the popular vote, they're hovering around ~26%. A lot of their candidates for the smaller house of parliament (Ständerat, would be the Senate in the US) got actually hammered.
So from a perspective of reason things actually seem to be looking brighter.
The problem isn't deportation per se (which lots of states have), but the specific bill. First of all, it made it automatic deportation, is likely to conflict with international and EU law and references a few crimes by names that aren't the proper legal terms. IANAL and this is from memory, but it went a bit over the top for most people not on the far right. And the campaign for the referendum was quite on the fear-mongering side, if not a outright racist.
I think right now it's still in a state of flux. It passed, but the legal bodies now have to properly determine for which crimes it really applies. Might take a few years yet.
People aren't used to GOP-candidate-level craziness from the Swiss… (It barely passed, and was generally rejected by the French-speaking part of Switzerland. I blame the German grammar, it seems to create some kind of envy against every nationality who don't have to learn that many cases, genders etc.)
I've never been to Denmark myself, I just have several friends from there who complained about how hard it was to get in. Apparently even marrying a Dane isn't enough to stay there if you're not from the EU.
>And the campaign for the referendum was quite on the fear-mongering side, if not a outright racist.
Oh for sure. The SVP posters have been really awful for a while but I think it's starting to backfire with the public, so hopefully that will stop.
>People aren't used to GOP-candidate-level craziness from the Swiss…
That's a bit of an exaggeration. The SVP gets pretty dirty from time to time but the GOP is a caricature of a right-wing fringe group.
>I blame the German grammar, it seems to create some kind of envy against every nationality who don't have to learn that many cases, genders etc.
Keep in mind that Switzerland has the highest "auslander" percentage of any western European country. That's going to create a big of backlash.
Nitpick: England has crazy libel laws.
It's probably one of the most expensive countries in the world to visit.
They probably hide a lot of the money of corrupt governments and world leaders.
Also this might be good or bad, but it's all very neat and tidy. All the roads in rural areas are all very good and all the grass is clipped. Makes the place feel totally tamed. (Though good roads is a plus, just makes for some not-as-interesting motorbike touring)
This is said by everyone about every country ever. Is this fact, or does my previous sentence cover it?
Apart from being a country that gets much of its wealth from hiding the blood money of dictators and criminals? Right.
What does this mean?
Take a look at the tax rates.