The only real difference is that with AppleCare you can contact Apple directly instead of the seller. But as far as the rest is concerned, in most EU countries you have better warranty by law than what Apple tries to peddle as "service".

Apple has just made itself a high profile target with it's AppleCare Protection Plan, and it doesn't help that Apple is being systematically uncooperative when consumers claim their warranty rights.

Personally, I gave up on participating in any kind of activism about 10 years ago, partly because I didn't feel we were getting anywhere and the next generation didn't seem to care. I feel pretty uncomfortable about that now.

Also, "illegal" is not a constant, often arbitrary and usually serves only the interests of those that want to maintain the status quo.

If curiosity and creativity was constrained by what happens to be illegal at any given time, our society would look a lot different, and not for the better.

And please, unless what you do is explicitly aimed at the US, treat all users as equal. We're not "international users", just list the options equally for everyone.

(Which should be part of the checklist, check your friggin' logs instead of assuming you never miss anything.)

But yes, the fact that it's on by default is questionable.

However, most ISP-supplied consumer routers have firewall rules on by default, for very good reasons. Although I personally think this one should be opt-in, on by default is not necessarily evil in this particular use case.

Besides being a bit ham-fisted, there's nothing inherently wrong with an ISP offering filters against malicious content.

Also, with the user-accessible opt-out, it would even be legal under the Netherlands' much praised Net Neutrality law. Unlike most of these alarmist headlines, the ISP is not blocking anything.

From what I can figure out, this ISP merely provides a modem/router with a built-in optional adblocker.

I don't see anything wrong with that in particular, especially in the context where virtually all display ads violate European privacy laws because of cross-site user tracking without explicit permission.

It's just one more additional security/privacy feature on a consumer router to help ordinary users protect themselves.

Very few businesses are interested in getting paid once if they can get paid twice, so this pattern is perpetuated to the mutual benefit of everyone except the developers forced to spend 50% of their time building something they know won't work, and the other 50% rewriting it...

Google simply utterly ignores any kind of complaint. There is no worse way to treat people than to completely deny their existence.

I'm very well aware of the significant differences between the Deep South and the West Coast etc, but those differences pale in comparison to the vast centuries old cultural differences you can find in Europe even between towns only a few dozen miles apart. Hell, the differences inside the US barely compare to regional differences within small European countries.

This is not a matter of ignorance. Even in well educated and well traveled Americans seem to be unable to really comprehend the depth of cultural differences outside the US.

Yeah, I can infer the fact that it is non-DRM from the mp3 format, but other than that it's still shadier and less informative than the average piracy side.

Not to mention insulting and utterly useless to me and 16 million fellow countrymen in one of the richest Western nations, were, oh surprise, piracy rules.

Most "legal" services are either very vague about format, quality and DRM, not available in my country and/or have a limited collection.

The effort involved in buying something legally and DRM-free is just ridiculous, and the notion that I can trust pirates more to be honest, transparent and upfront about their offering really takes the cake.

Only in the copyright exploitation industry is the legal business more shady than the "criminals".

It's a political anti-regulation rant. Nothing more.

Get off it.

Entrepreneurs aren't worshiped like gods by default just for being entrepreneurs, that's all.