Can teens travel alone in the EU? I am a Slovak EU citizen. A bunch of my friends and I are planning to go on a trip to the UK for 2 months when we are 15. Our parents are fine with it, but are concerned about whether or not this is legal. How does EU-wide travelling work for persons who aren't yet 18? We'll all have passports and Slovak/EU IDs. Do we absolutely need to travel with an adult who will be legally responsible for us, or is it enough to have some sort of evidence/legal agreement that our parents let us?
There are no EU rules on whether and under which conditions unaccompanied minors are allowed to travel, and the competence hence rests with the Member States. You are probably more proficient with Slovak rules on the matter, but judging by the information provided by the UK Government, there should be no regulatory hassle. The most probable source of problems will be the airline, but at least BA lets persons 12-17 years of age travel alone.
at what point can you just leave? Is it always technically illegal in the UK to leave without paying the bill? Probably depends on what you mean with just leaving. If just leaving translates I haven't paid and I won't pay (because of the hassle with the card) then that's probably Making Off Without Payment, section 3 Theft Act 1978 (Thanks @bdsl). Could the restaurant just force you to wait until close of business if necessary? What if they still hadn't fixed the payment system by then? I don't think a restaurant can physically detain you. Not even the 45 min you have been waiting. But if you leave without paying and without an agreement with them how &amp; when to pay they can of course call the police because again that looks very much like making off without payment. According to your post, they did provide a payment system (cash) which was working all the time and that moreover has the special status of being legal tender. if you don't physically have the cash on you, you can be sued? You can be sued if you don't pay your bill (assuming the bill itself is correct) when it's due. In order to avoid endless hassle of the "I tried to pay via x, but they wouldn't accept this." type, legal tender defines ways of payment of a debt that the creditor/seller must accept. In many legislations, cash in the local currency provides such a fallback if other payment methods fail. Note that cash payment is very robust against internet failure, broken devices and power The UK (+ US) meaning of legal tender is that the restaurant must accept this means of settling the debt (at this time, the food is already eaten but not payed) - but they don't have to accept any other means of payment. (Note that e.g. for the EUR-countries there is at least a recommendation to make acceptance of legal tender mandatory also in retail, which includes simultaneous exchange food vs. payment). The 2nd important implication of this is that any argumentation along the lines that no reasonable means of payment were available would be very weak. You are not required to have sufficient cash with you to pay your bill if you can reasonably assume that some other way of payment will be acceptable to the restaurant. I see that like a spare wheel for a car: if you have a flat tire (card doesn't work) having a spare wheel (cash) allows you to deal with the issue with less hassle than if you don't: change your wheel vs. having to get your car brought to a workshop and wait until they put on a new tire (pay cash instead of waiting for the card to work again or a tedious hunt for another payment method). I'd like to point out that card doesn't work and not sufficient cash at hand (or forgotten purse) is something that happens quite often in general (rarely for any given transaction, but we have lots of transactions). I'd expect a restaurant or a gas station to be experienced in dealing with that. In any case, there are several possibilities to resolve the issue short of "just leaving": The key to all this is communication: talk to the restaurant to find a way to resolve the issue. Reassure them that you're not trying to use the opportunity to defraud them - that's what they are afraid of in this situation. "Where can I find an ATM?" Possibly offering a deposit: "And would you mind looking after my bag [phone] until I'm back?" Possibly showing them your ID card (or similar, if you have any) so they have your address: remember that so far you are an anonymous customer for them: which means that suing you for the money would be somewhere between too expensive and impossible. If you are a group, it should be sufficient if only one of you leaves in search of cash. Credit cards can be charged in a total offline way (MOTO = mail order/telephone order) where the credit card data is entered manually by the seller: the restaurant may be able to charge your credit card if fill in a paper credit card payment form. They may accept settlement via other payment systems: paypal &amp; Co. wire the money via your online banking account (even if that doesn't give an instantaneous transfer, ask them if that's OK with them if you show/forward them the "transfer accepted message" for now) allow them to withdraw the money from your account via direct debit or something similar I'd not expect a restaurant to accept this possibility as they're probably not familiar with it and it means a lot of hassle for them with their bank to get listed to receive money that way. if you are in a region where cheques are still in regular use, that may be a solution as well. Restaurants like any other business can write invoices. They usually don't like this because their risk of having costly trouble to get the money is high. While your printout bill is technically an invoice already, it can be turned into an invoice (+ copy for them) giving your name + address and specifying how and when you'll pay. Which would keep track of how you (pl. = you + restaurant) decided to settle the bill under the peculiar circumstances. This works even in case of e.g. a power outage that prevents you from getting cash from an ATM in the neighborhood.
This has been addressed over at Travel StackExchange: Does one need a visa to visit Antarctica? and Non-AT country citizen visiting Antarctica by non-AT country registred vessel (yacht) — do I need a permit and why? To summarize and expand on those two links: If your home country is a signatory of the Antarctic Treaty, or your expedition departs from such a country, or your ship is registered in such a country, you generally will require a permit from the appropriate authorities in that country in order to visit. These are needed so that these countries can comply with Article VII.5 of said treaty: Each Contracting Party shall, at the time when the present Treaty enters into force for it, inform the other Contracting Parties, and thereafter shall give them notice in advance, of (a) all expeditions to and within Antarctica, on the part of its ships or nationals, and all expeditions to Antarctica organized in or proceeding from its territory; ... In general, cruise ships that travel to Antarctica will take care of these permits for their passengers. However, if you are traveling by private vessel, you will need to apply for such a permit in the pertinent country or countries. If, on the other hand, you are neither a citizen of, traveling on a vessel registered in, or departing from a country that is a signatory of the Antarctic Treaty, it is basically terra nullius for you. You can travel there without any permission whatsoever. It is, however, not recommended. Note also that most of the countries that are in any way "close" to Antartica are signatories to the treaty. I suppose you could leave from Madagascar or Namibia if you really wanted to avoid getting a permit. Edit: The laws that govern actions in the Antarctic are individual to each country. This means that if you do something in the Antarctic that you shouldn't have done, and your expedition is for whatever reason governed by one of the AT signatories, it is up to the law enforcement officials of that country to prosecute you. As an example, let's take Canada. As part of the ratification of the Antarctic Treaty system, Canada enacted the Antarctic Environmental Protection Act. The laws in this act require any Canadians or Canadian vessels visiting Antarctica to acquire a permit; prohibit mining; prohibit activities that harm or disturb native plants or animals; prohibit damaging historic sites; and regulate many other things as well. Penalties for violating these laws include fines up to 2,000,000 CAD for individuals and up to 12,000,000 CAD for corporations. Individuals can also be imprisoned for up to five years. (These are the maximum penalties for second &amp; further offenses; penalties for first offenses are generally lower.)
The Utah Department of Professional Licensing does not issue licenses for travel agents, and there seems to be no evidence of a statutory requirement for licensing. Therefore it's unclear what status this license has. I did see a number of online places offering to train people to be travel agents, and perhaps one of them offers a certificate of training. There is such a thing as an IATA number, and some hotel might require providing one's IATA number. If a person does not have an IATA number and the hotel does not verify the IATA number, then it would be fraud to falsely make up a number in order to obtain a benefit. The person could be sued to recover the amount of the discount. If the person has an IATA number, then there nothing obviously fraudulent, but you would have to inspect the conditions for using an agent discount. IATA requires you to work at a registered agency to get an agent number, and the proof requirements are substantial enough that it would be surprising if a person could get away with just claiming to work at a travel agency. The organization would certainly be in a good position to sue a person for falsifying the application (note also that the application is subject to binding arbitration by the Travel Agency Commissioner). So it depends on who gave the discount, what the required, what if any accreditation was used to get that discount, and what the actual facts are (i.e. does the person actually work for an agency making at least $10,000 a year).
So I can block children under 13, but I can't tell them that? You can tell them after they fail, you cannot tell them on the asking screen. Then what is the correct way to block children under 13 to access my website and still comply with COPPA? I agree with you that it is odd that they recommend using a cookie but they do!* So you have a entry page with a simple question, "Please indicate your age" and then block based on the response. That's it. Note that the rule is neutral. This means that you do not need to disguise your purpose or try to trick people into entering their correct age. *I think that what is happening here is that any parent who wants to complain to their legislator can be met with the response, "If your kid is so sneaky that they are using different computers to lie about their age what do you want us to do about it?" The fact is, this scheme keeps innocent kids from seeing stuff they shouldn't; the sneaky ones are going to find a way.
Content Warning: this post mentions rape / non-consensual sex and discusses (in some non-explicit detail) coercion of minors. As of Tuesday, March 1st, 2016, according to the Indonesian Penal Code (translated version; I cannot read Indonesian), Indonesia's age of consent is 16 years old (18 for homosexual acts). Indonesia also does not have close-in-age exemptions (for example, in Canada, the age of consent is 16 years old, but a 14-year-old can consent to a partner less than 5 years older, and a 12-year-old can consent within 2 years). I cannot verify this source but according to Wikipedia, which cites this PDF, the age of consent could be raised to 18 years under the Child Protection Act arguing that sexual acts can cause bodily or mental harm and &quot;child&quot; is defined as anyone under 18 years of age. As an example, according to Wikipedia, a court case in 2009 (Sydney Morning Herald) saw this used to convict an Australian man. There is nothing weird about this law. I left this as a comment, but let me elaborate in an answer. Your misconception is that persuasion is an innocent and ethical thing. The harsh reality is that children are, on average, more ignorant than adults and lack judgement, foresight, and rationality at times, and there are disgusting individuals that will exploit this fact to get children to do things they otherwise wouldn't such as sex, or drugs. Additionally, age comes with a power imbalance - think a teacher using their power over a student to convince or coerce them into having sex with them. That is not strictly violence, nor telling lies, or &quot;forcing&quot; in the strict sense, nor trickery, but a reasonable individual would still consider that to be not real consent. The fact is that children can only consent if it is entirely of their own accord and judgement and there is no extrinsic pressure forcing or persuading them to. In fact, I argue that adults are subject to this too and persuading or coercing an adult into having sex is also disgusting (but doing this to children is far more abhorrent). But since children are considered by law to lack the judgement to protect themselves against coercion and realize they should reject and get away from their persuader, the law instead protects them. Persuading someone is not necessarily non-consensual. It holds a high chance of being non-consensual, and consent is only considered real when it is a) not coerced, and b) the subject is legally capable; that is, not intoxicated, not a minor (by whatever the age of cosnent is), etc. If all obscene acts with a girl under 18 are illegal, why doesn't the law simply say don't do obscene acts with a girl under 18? Because sex with people between 16 and 18 is legal (in Indonesia) under the right conditions. Although I must say, since you word it as &quot;obscene acts&quot;, then of course they're illegal. Obscene acts are, by definition, morally reprehensible and/or legally incriminating, so illegal things are illegal, is basically what you're saying. Just say &quot;having sex&quot; if you mean &quot;having sex&quot;. Why does the law prohibit persuading girls to do obscene acts but does not prohibit the actual doing of the obscene act itself? Kind of weird. This makes no sense at all, and hopefully after reading my answer you understand why this makes absolutely no sense. How in the earth anyone can have sex with someone without persuading? He walks the street and accidentally plug his penis in? ... Rape? There are many ways to have sex with someone without persuading them that I don't think I have to list. Your main mistake is still conflating persuaded / coerced consent as real consent. In summary, persuasion is not some innocent matter of convincing someone in a friendly manner to have sex. It includes coercion, abusing one's power, exploiting a child's ignorance and limited judgement or foresight, and other reprehensible factors. Consent cannot be given if the individual is too young, impaired, unable to legally give consent, or coerced into it.
Is it legal to cross the channel in a private rowing boat or sailing boat? Yes. Can he land on any old beach, or does he have to go to a port to identify himself? It depends. Who is on board, where did they come from, what have they got in their pockets, etc. This may be helpful Notice 8: sailing your pleasure craft to and from the UK When arriving direct from a country outside the EU (the Channel Islands are regarded as outside the EU for this purpose), you must phone the National Yacht line on Telephone: 0845 723 1110. You will need to inform the Yachtline if any of the following apply: etc etc Since France is in the EU, whether you need to phone the NYL to report your departure from the UK depends on a complicated bunch of conditions you can read in the link above. Maybe the French have similar rules? The RYA say Some countries specify ports of entry (ports where one may lawfully enter a country), which should be used by a vessel arriving from abroad. It is often a requirement that you proceed directly to such a port of entry on entering territorial waters. A vessel arriving in a country from outside its customs territory should fly the Q flag until it has been given clearance from the authorities. Even once clearance has been given, some countries may ask to inspect the vessel’s papers periodically, for example at each port of call. and so on.
european-union (germany, spain, uk) The cookie consent law is the ePrivacy directive, which was implemented as national laws by all EU member states (including, at the time, the UK). Later, GDPR changed the applicable definition of consent so that implicit consent is no longer allowed. A notice in fine print as in the given example is not sufficient to meet this definition of consent, so any non-necessary cookies set in that context would be a violation. But it would be the national ePrivacy implementation that would be violated, not the GDPR. Thus, the GDPR's famous 4%/EUR 20M fines are not relevant here. Instead, each country can set its own fines. In Germany, this would probably be up to EUR 50k (§16 TMG) though German law doesn't implement this aspect of ePrivacy correctly. In the UK, PECR penalties are determined by more general data protection penalty legislation. Notable instances of cookie consent enforcement include the Planet 49 (ECJ judgement, German BGH verdict) case which basically affirmed that yes, the GDPR's definition of consent applies. Thus, any case law regarding GDPR consent is also applicable to the issue of cookies. Furthermore, the Spanish AEPD has issued an interesting fine due to insufficient cookie consent, but due to much more subtle violations than the outright disregard in the given example. E.g. in the Vueling action (decision (Spanish, PDF), summary, listing on enforcementtracker), the Vueling airline's website had a consent banner but ultimately told the user to reject cookies via their browser settings. This violates the requirement that consent must be specific/granular, since the browser settings are all-or-nothing if they're available at all. The airline was fined EUR 30k, the maximum possible under applicable Spanish data protection law. But what kind of risks would some blog run into that just sets cookies without appropriate consent? If the service is outside of the EU, enforcement is difficult. I am not aware of cookie consent enforcement against non-EU services. National data protection authorities can investigate the violation and issue fines, subject to their respective national data protection laws. They generally only do this when there are lots of complaints. Some authorities like the UK ICO have indicated that cookie consent enforcement isn't a priority for them. Independently, individuals can generally sue the service for damages. Some lawyers might send out cease and desist letters to non-compliant websites in the hopes of collecting fees. So aside from the last point, the risk is likely somewhat low, especially for a smaller site. At this point, it is worth reminding that ePrivacy/GDPR doesn't require consent for all cookies, and is not just limited to cookies. It is more generally about access to and storage of information on a user's device, unless that access is strictly necessary to provide the service explicitly requested by the user. Thus, functional cookies can be set without consent. However, consent does become necessary when cookies or similar mechanisms are used for analytics, tracking, or ads. Even though GDPR is involved, the cookie consent requirements apply regardless of whether the cookies involve any personal data.