This always hit me a odd.

If I could, I would.

And it would be incredibly immoral to demand excessive profits for your downloadable if distribution was free.

The music industry's monopoly is luckily being eroded these days. Now they can try to work on market terms.

It's a joke on the actual advert, which was, "You wouldn't steal a car".

I would download a Chinese EV and drive it down the middle lane of the widest interstate I could find.

Depends.. you mean a physical one? Well then.. no not yet.

With the cost of storage media these days? No way.

No, you have to pay a subscription for a car :)

Oh yes, this happened on an episode of the simpsons.

What part of "Paying 0.055 EUR per GB of traffic sent to French residents" is well-intentioned? It's nothing but a nonsensical shakedown.

Also, left-wing governments are generally as corrupted and freedom-infringing as right-wing governments, at least in Europe.

Please stop pressing that down-vote button on anything outside the desired narrative. What nbajka says is true, corruption is universal. It is also true worldwide, not just in Europe. Corruption knows no ideological boundaries. Power corrupts, politics is about power, those in power sometimes abuse it. Yes, right-wing politicians are sometimes as corrupt as left-wing politicians. Yes, left-wing politicians are sometimes as corrupt as right-wing politicians. There's corrupt centrists as well.

An interesting quirk of how this works: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20100506-00/?p=14...

> Spain's work culture tends to lean towards treating people like humans

You clearly have not worked for the average Spanish employer.

Spain, the land of the Empresaurio.

>Also take into account that retired people have paid for their retirement.

No, they have not. It's a pyramid scheme. Whatever they put into the system when they worked probably doesn't even cover 5 years of retirement.

It's a bit more complicated than that. It can be argued that if there is a clear link between contributions and pensions, promised pensions based on past contributions are private property, with the usual protections. I don't know the situation in Spain, but Finland at least has made that choice.

If you choose that (or if your legal system determines that), you need to be proactive with keeping the pension system in balance. While you can change what you promise in exchange for future contributions, substantial changes to what you have already promised can easily require constitutional amendments.

There is no system where you can get more than a share of what the economy produces currently.

Paid contributions should only ensure that you get a part of that, a bit more if you paid more, less if you paid less.

If workforce/economy halves when pensioners double, you will get 4x less than you "expect".

The argument is ultimately constitutional. If pensions based on past contribitions are private property, the government can't avoid paying them when it's no longer economically sustainable. The obligation remains even if the government is no longer capable of honoring it. Political choices and ordinary laws can't change that. The only way out is amending the constitution and socializing the private property.

They stole your data? Like, they took the text you wrote on the internet and removed it and kept it to themselves?

Worse; they shredded it so no one else can ever read it. [0]

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2026/08/17/ai-comp...

So you are disavowing the concept of intellectual property?

Only been hoping to abolish it for my entire adult life.

Yes. I’ve been against copyright my entire life.

Well as long as we are all aware we’re hurdling towards techno communism. Better not fuck it up and end up ruled by fascists. Not looking great on that front so far.

...presumably

That’s exactly what I fear may happen in Europe.

I don’t want to give a cent to European manufacturers because of the prices they want to subject us to, but I’m sure Europe will eventually do something about the Chinese allowing poor people to own cars.

European cars are expensive not just because the manufacturers are greedy, but also because we want them to pay their employees a proper living wage, human working hours, sick leave, a few weeks of vacation every year, healthcare... Those don't come for free.

Also you have to add that cars sold in Europe (regardless of manufacturer) require by law much more expensive extras compared to other countries.

But the labor costs of manufacturing are still tiny compared to material costs. If labor was free for European manufacturing that would only drop the price a token amount, not the £10,000+ that Chinese autos have over current cars.

So-called materials are manufactured, too, and usually not in China. Might be Poland or Hungary or Portugal though.

Would I want Firefox to include my personal email in the headers of my requests just because the website politely asked for it? No, absolutely no, never. This is bonkers.