Since the user did not approve it, it sounds like mass copyright violation to me.

Not in the EU it doesn’t, unless they got the user to review that Agreement and agree before the sale took place.

After the implicit contract which is the sale has been agreed to by both parties (the buyer gave the money, the seller took it), one of the parties can’t force the other party to agree to a new contract before they’re allowed to get the contractual benefits of the original contract (i.e. the buyer getting to use the product they bought, the seller getting to use the money they got).

It doesn’t matter if the seller has such power de facto - legally they most definitelly can’t blackmail the buyer by denying them their side of the contractual rights they got in the Act of Sale by blocking their use of the product they bought until they agree to a new Agreement from the seller.

It’s my impression that it’s actually a lot more about national pride for Spain than about Gibraltar’s fiscal paradise status, since Gibraltar as not part of a member country can just be treated the same as any other offshore fiscal paradise, such as the Bahamas, which includes it being added to black lists. In this day and age, it’s not geographical proximity that matters when it comes to fiscal paradises.

This makes sense since Britain too doesn’t really gain much from having possession of Gibraltar so holding on to it is mainly a question of national pride for the UK - it would be strange if Spain’s motivations were wildly different.

PS: Also it’s funny how during the Leave campaign a lot of the “reason” why the EU would give Britain quasi-membership rights (without the responsabilities) after leaving the EU were a lot like this, about how those other countries or interests inside those countries would do it because they stood to gain monetarilly from it in the short term. All that turned out to be mainly wishful thinking and a serious misreading of the motivations of the leaders and people in said other countries.

Just found it funny how there are still people around thinking other countries are mainly motivated by the short term gains in sovereignty affairs, even whilst Britain itself again and again keeps doing things motivated by national pride when it comes to such affairs - one would’ve expected that “they’re a lot like us” would somehow been figured out by now.

I’m sorry but the UK is the entity we’re talking about, not actual persons - individuals can’t join or leave the EU on their own hence it’s the actions of the actual formal nation state that get judged when it comes to joining or leaving the EU.

Consider the possibility that it’s your nationalist feelings (and given the huge role of British Nationalism in Brexit that’s not actually a good thing) that are making you confuse the country and the actions of it by the hand of it’s elective representatives, with you yourself and people like you - the actions of the nation never really represent all people in that nation and it’s not really healthy (IMHO) to identify yourself with The Nation.

People being critical of a country seldom means they’re critical of everybody in that country, unless they’re nationalist far-right morons, in which case their problem is a lot bigger than merely talking in an acerbic way about a nation.

Indeed.

As the vote for new EU Members is one with veto rules, my bet is that it’s going to be an opportunity for all manner of EU members to make demands, such as Spain demanding Gibraltar back.

If I remember it correctly, members of the EFTA such as Norway have a vote with veto, and during the Brexit Deal negotiations they weren’t at all keen on having the UK joining the EFTA because it’s far bigger than all the others and would likely dominate.

The “conservatives” nowadays are just another far-right party, only they’re led by posh twats instead of rabble rousers and unlike in most of Europe (with noteable exceptions being Hungary and maybe Austria), in the UK are mainstream rather than fringe.

Nowadays they don’t really do “conserving”.

All it takes is for one member country, no matter how tiny, to say “No” and it’s no, and in some countries like Belgium even a single region (say, “mighty” Walonia) can block it.

For example, I expect that Spain will want Gibraltar back as a condition for a Yes on a UK Membership vote.

Only apparently in the EU power circles nobody wants yet another “special deal” like Norway or (even worse) Switzerland.

I’ve lived in a couple of countries of Europe, including the UK whilst it was an EU Member.

The spirit about the EU in the UK was always different, no “stronger as a group” mindset, always “what’s in it for me” and trying scheme after scheme to see if they could swindle the rest of the EU.

Then on top of it all there were all the many insults to the EU - and by extention the people in it - during the Leave Referendum and even afterwards, coming from amongst others top people in party in government, including the PM.

I remember how even the Remainers were running around with delusions of national superiority: for example one of their arguments were “We should stay and change the EU from the inside”, as if Brits knew better what the EU should be than the other 470 million people in it.

The EU doesn’t really need that kind of member nation, more so when we’re dealing with another one like that in our midst: Hungary.

Respect is earned, not due, and the UK has a lot of work ahead to earn it.

Euro, Schengen and no special exceptions.

The Leave Referendum and what happened during it and afterwards to the Tory party is a great lesson of what happens when a mainstream rightwing party starts adopting policies of the far-right.

(The present day Tory Party is far-right by continental european standards, only headed by posh twats rather than the more traditional rabble rousers).

Should be a lesson for similar parties in the rest of Europe, IMHO.

Error!

You must wear your User Attention Validation Goggles ^TM during the device initialization period.

Illiteracy does seem the most plausible explanation.

“spending thousands of dollars and millions of man hours installing and configuring Arch Linux on a rig that plays Stardew Valley…”

FIFY

I don’t remember ever hearing “Brit” or “Brits” being used for immigrants in Britain and definitelly heard it used for when Britons are living abroad as immigrants (in fact when living in The Netherlands I had some colleagues who were in their own words “Brits”)…

Always thought it was just another way of saying British and not going into the specifics of which nation in Britain did people come from (the whole “nations” thing for people abroad is generally irrelevant or even misunderstood).

Microplastics are only really an issue for micro penises.

Last time I checked, it was way easier in Windows to have a VM running Linux just for Python, than to get Python to reliably work nativelly in Windows.

It really depends on whether that SQL is the standard one (such as SQL92) or with the database specific extensions (such as PL/SQL).

The latter often adds up to a “real” programming language (were you can define your own functions and everything), depending on the database.

But yeah, the rest not so much.