Norwegian Lawyers Must Stop Chasing File Sharers 186
Skapare sends word from TorrentFreak that Norway's Simonsen law firm has lost their license to pursue file sharers. "Just days after Norway's data protection department told ISPs they must delete all personal IP address-related data three weeks after collection, it's now become safer than ever to be a file-sharer in Norway. The only law firm with a license to track pirates has just seen it expire and it won't be renewed." Skapare adds, "Sounds like Norway's government treats privacy seriously. Maybe they've been watching the abuses in the USA. More info on the Norwegian perspective in this Google translation from Dagbladet.no."
Election year (Score:5, Informative)
Don't expect this to be the last word on the matter, the politicians just don't want to rock the boat right now.
The Minister of culture has openly supported the vigilante tactics of the "pirate-hunters", but this is probably not the right time of the 4-year election cycle to do anything drastic.
During the last election the same man promised to re-legalese file sharing. The statement was retracted only days after a surprising high turnout of young voters won him and his party the election...
Re:So, for the Norwegian Slashdotters: (Score:4, Informative)
1. It's OK. Mostly in finance and oil industry. Java (SOA) is heavily used.
2. Business is basically English (even for Norwegian companies). My company has Swedes (lots), Sri Lankan, Englishmen, couple of Indians/Pakistani, French. Coding/documentation is in English.
3. About like Bay Area.
All that, and we get standard 5 weeks of paid vacation, paternity/maternity leave (husband/wife get to share how much they spend at home the first year), strong currency (relatively cheap to buy stuff when you travel), beautiful Swedish women.
Minuses: a socialist government and Jante Law [wikipedia.org] ingrained in the Norwegian psyche.
Re:So, for the Norwegian Slashdotters: (Score:3, Informative)
1. Soso. Opera's doing very nicely these days at least. :p Also, I think we're a leading force in micro/nano technology.
2. Norwegian is kinda hard to learn as you can't learn it well by studying alone. It has so many ways of expressing yourself that wouldn't make any sense in eg. English. I guess it's the same for most languages, but Norwegian is considered a hard language to learn because of all the irregularites. Something we learn in school is "EVERY rule has an (many) exceptions." :p English and Norwegian is in the same language familiy though (Germanic). But hey, what do I know about learning Norwegian from scratch, as I'm a native speaker :p
3. Expensive, in fact, VERY expensive, but the wages are pretty good (even if you don't have a high class job, you can still earn a lot), so I guess it evens out. Just avoid Oslo, as it's the #2 (or #1?) most expensive city in the world.
Re:How do I Immigrate? (Score:5, Informative)
Instructions [www.udi.no]
Re:So, for the Norwegian Slashdotters: (Score:5, Informative)
If you make a lot of money, and spend most of it on non-food, it is probably possible to pass 60 %, but that is rare.
I would also say the numbers are misleading without some information on what you get. Norway, like the rest of Europe, has universal heath care so there is no health insurance to pay, no matter what preconditions you may have. The taxes also include unemployment benefits, a pension plan and 100 % pay for a year if you can't work due to illness. Comparing tax rates without accounting for insurances you absolutely need to have is not fair.
Re:Half-right... (Score:3, Informative)
All in the name of war against terror, of course.
Re:So, for the Norwegian Slashdotters: (Score:3, Informative)
Because a native might provide information on the secondary taxes not listed on that page.
It is a great page, but it doesn't come close to the total tax load.
In the US, the stated tax rate is 28% on the page.
In reality, it's much higher.
So I know that the rate on that page doesn't include.
Social security Taxes (7.5%) -- except for rich people.. who it can be .1% or less (esp if they structure their income as dividends) .1% or less (esp if they structure their income as dividends) ...
Employer portion of social security (7.5%) -- except for rich people.. who it can be
Sales Taxes (5-8%-- higher some places)
Metropolitan bus service taxes (1%)
Gasoline taxes (low because they forgot to index for inflation)
Property taxes
cigarette taxes (now more than the purchase price of the cigarettes in many states)
alchohol taxes (usually over 10% but under 50% of the purchase price)
Car taxes (usually fairly low)
Telephone taxes (higher than the bill portion of my land line)
Electricity taxes
Water Taxes (not the water bill- the tax portion usually phrased as a sewer fee)
Mud taxes
Trash collection taxes
There are over 50 common taxes the last time I saw the list.
---
Our tax system is regressive on people in the middle-- about $20k to about $80k.
While they are highly aggressive against people below $20k- they also have tax credits for them which mitigates the hit a bit.
---
Then when you include corporate taxes which corporations usually pass straight through to the consumer, the rate is almost always over 50% tax load.
They've just found a lot of ways to hide it.
Just like in our last election, they had bills to "vote yes to give permission to sell 50 million in 10 year bonds to cover police pension funding, old people, children, new schools, free beer for everyone"... when what it really meant was "vote yes to raise taxes by 50 million dollars over the next 10 years so we can give out these benefits".
Re:How do I Immigrate? (Score:5, Informative)
Before we scare away all the nice people, it's a traditional christmas dinner but not the most typical. Top three are pork ribs, Pinnekjøtt [wikipedia.org] and Lutefisk [wikipedia.org]. A minority has also adopted the english christmas turkey, smalahove is probably around 5th place. P.S. If you read anywhere that Pizza Grandiosa [wikipedia.org] is popular for christmas, it's for the kids that don't want the wierd stuff :D
Re:So, for the Norwegian Slashdotters: (Score:3, Informative)
You forgot Medicare taxes (2.9% of income?) too.
Re:This is not over yet... (Score:3, Informative)
It is that what is police business is now pretty much outsourced to a private entity. An entity with a very strong economic stake in said business.
The ip addresses this firm has collected has for instance been used to demand personal information on users from ISPs. They want to have the right to acquire that sort of information -without- involving the courts. That is completely unacceptable. What makes this even worse is that what is currently happening and could become legal precedence in Norway is the practice of one private entity demanding information on the customer of another private entity against this private entity's will.
The courts are the -only- entity that should be allowed to extract this sort of information. A private entity should not be given the rights of a court of law.
I'd love to be more clear and eloquent in my writing but I've spent 12 hours in a hot metal box testing hardware
Re:So, for the Norwegian Slashdotters: (Score:3, Informative)
In isolation, no. However, taxes have a unique status among all other expenses: they tend to affect all companies equally. So if you make widgets, and your tax rate increases, so does the rate of all other companies making widgets. Result: price of widgets increases by some margin. The supply-and-demand scenario you mention does not apply here.
It'd be nice if you would address this before being so quick to declare a "fail".
Re:Half-right... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How do I Immigrate? (Score:1, Informative)
Come on. How could Haggis even be on the list, with corn smut, natto, and civet coffee around?
I mean, is there even anything in haggis any more disgusting than a typical hot dog? Or any other sausage, for that matter?