At 02:55 5/6/2012, Tobias Conradi wrote:

If a majority in a given country does not observe what the law mandates, I would ask on the tz mailing list, whether the information for that area should be changed.

Not sure if this adds to or distracts from the conversation, but when I set out to provide accurate time zone borders for North America and eventually realized any such effort needed the sort of caveat I include for <http://ontimezone.com/>http://ontimezone.com: Ours is really just an "interpretation" of time zone data, because current time zone boundary data is elusive. And once you think you have nailed down the official "legislated" time zone, you learn about differences between that and the locally "observed" time zone... Wherever locally "observed" time differs from official, the main borders in OnTimeZone.com follow the observed time - which is what a traveler is likely to actually encounter. A problem with that is that unofficial "observed" differences typically follow vague "areas of influence" which defy precise definition. But we had to draw them somewhere. Usually these borders are in very lightly settled areas - and we took pains to draw them on the correct side of any area which may have businesses or services. That was our intent anyway - corrections appreciated! Wherever these areas are in the US, the official border is also drawn in green, for reference purposes. No attempt was made to do this for other countries, because distinctions between official and unofficial blur a bit in the various political subdivisions within most countries. In the US all official time zone borders are well and clearly documented by a single source - the US Dept. of Transportation. But be aware that within an area where observed practice differs from official, there are often internal exceptions such as Polling places, Post Offices or other federal offices, and sometimes law enforcement or various other levels of government -- who may observe official time even if the rest of the community does not. Commonly bars or liquor stores in these areas observe official time. This can provide quite a competitive advantage for properly situated bars, when last-call sojourners migrate across an official time zone border to cadge one more hour of bliss. Cheers, Steve Jones