Richard's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
from the favorites-favorites-and-more-favorites dept
This week’s favorites post comes from Richard, who’s from the UK, but will hopefully forgive my removing of the extraneous “u’s” from the word “favorite.”
This is the first time I've done the favorites post, so it is a
bit of an adventure for me. I've decided to start with the "Good
News" because there was actually quite a lot of it this week.
Firstly, on the legal front, there have been a number of good
decisions in the courts. In an echo of what happened to ACS law in
the UK earlier in the year Righthaven has been slapped down a number
of times, and there is some
possibility that this could go further than just losing the cases.
There are (as I write) actually three Techdirt stories on this, but
the biggest (and most commented on) is this
one. The key point about this particular story is that the judge has
not just rejected Righthaven for lack of standing, he has also
indicated that even if Righthaven had standing they would
still lose on grounds of fair use. Sadly the comments on this story
are swamped with largely irrelevant arguments, but you can get it down
to a small number of useful contributions by selecting only
insightful comments.
My second favorite piece of legal good news came early in the week with the
in New York that safe harbours can apply in pretty broad sets of
circumstances. It is really important that the creep of
secondary liability is arrested before it gets too far, and this
ruling draws a useful line in the sand.
Another kind of good news is when someone who previously had a
reputation for IP maximalism takes a new direction. This category
contains the somewhat unlikely combination of J.K.Rowling
and the Mexican
Congress. The Mexicans have apparently decided to reject ACTA,
which is surprising, given Mexico's extreme copyright length of
life+100. J.K. Rowling's good news is a move into ebooks with no DRM.
Given her previous history, this is something to be celebrated.
Of course, it can't all be good, and so I have decided to institute
the "Victor
Meldrew Award" (for those outside the UK or unfamiliar
with the TV character, his catchphrase was "I don't believe it!"
and the character saw himself as a "normal man in a world full
of idiots"). Righthaven figures in this category too in the
guise of a bizarre
argument made by "Plessy Ferguson" that the
Righthaven rulings somehow threaten Open Source licenses. Clearly the
author of this argument didn't understand Copyright law, Open Source
Licences or the Righthaven ruling because it makes no sense on any of
these counts. Righthaven lost because they attempted to transfer the
right to sue without transferring any other exclusive rights. Opens
source licenses don't even attempt to transfer these rights. The
copyright for each component of an open source system remains with
its original author (unless explicitly assigned to someone else such
as the FSF in a separate transaction). Finally, Copyright law does not
require you to hold the rights to every part of a program in order to
sue for a breach of the license. You only need to hold the rights to
some of it. Sadly, many commenters didn't seem to understand these
points either, so the comments were full of "educational
material"!
On a side issue regarding Righthaven's dealings with Stephens
Media, it seems to me that the transfer of the right to sue only
enables one scenario, which is as follows. Someone infringes on the
Copyright (still held by Stephens Media). Righthaven can't sue them
(according to the court ruling) but what if Stephens media sues them?
Well, they've transferred the "right to sue" to Righthaven –
so now Righthaven can sue Stephens Media for infringement of their
right to sue! The net effect of the legal knot created by the deal is
thus to effectively put the original material into the public domain
because no-one can exert the copyright! I'm pretty sure that wasn't
the intention of Stephens Media when they set this scheme up…
bizarre argument was put forward by a small UK lobbying
organisation, claiming that a lack of software patents was damaging
the UK software industry. Well, apart from the fact that the UK does in practice
actually have some software patents, the logic here was unbelievable
and the evidence lacking.
Other Meldrew contenders this week included the Winklevii, yet
again pursuing Facebook after only recently
appearing to give up and
our usual suspects Apple
and Disney
who seem to think that there
should be (is?) one law for them and another for everyone else!
Microsoft was caught playing the same game last week – but that's
outside my brief! Those who are familiar with Victor Meldrew will
remember that the show had its darker side, and indeed finished in
that mode. This week saw a "dark Meldrew event" when a
woman was arrested
by police for filming them from her own property. The
of the TSA are often in the
same vein and would probably win this award quite frequently if it
was run every week.
This leads us on to events that
are worrying — but not bizarre enough to be surprising. There's
usually quite a lot of this unfortunately, often from Sony
who seem to be determined to
stop any creative use of their equipment from happening. Abuse
of the patent system is
another common cause for concern; in this case BitTorrent is being
sued on the thinnest of pretexts. Then there is our old friend the
copyright lobbyist. The UK variety is in the news this week with an
to set up web censorship behind the public's back. The
minister concerned, in a move reminiscent of Pontius Pilate, seems to
want it to go ahead — but without (visible) government involvement,
presumably so he can give the lobbyists what they want but avoid the
blame from the public. US lobbyists have been active too, this time
to shift the cost of the Herculean task of copyright enforcement onto
the public purse. Of course
international lobbyists have not been quiet either, trying
to get a monopoly on the process of deciding the exceptions to
copyright.
After all this
negativity, I thought I would end on a positive note with my personal
favourites from the “DailyDirt” postings. The
sorting robot seemed
appealing, until I realised that the video
is hugely speeded up. So my personal selection here is the post on
Source Hardware. I've long
believed that Open Source software really needs to run on open
hardware, but this video
showed how the collaborative ideal is extending beyond computing into
other fields. Have a look at it. It will cheer you up!
Comments on “Richard's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week”
Here, let me just save the trolls the trouble
richard your just Mike’s teachers pet this week. Will you ever become a techdirt “writer”. Is that what your aspiring to be? Well youre doing a good job so far, by being mikes little pet and all
Forget the fact that you have a Ph.D. in physics and and I can barly spell the word physics because nothing I’ve done even comes close. Forget the fact that Mike can create a successful blog and I can’t
Richard is a follower of Mike and he doesnt think for himself
Re: Re:
Wow, even I can’t shilltroll that well. Kudos.
Re: Re:
lol and you can think for yourself? Your non-conformity is conformist. Welcome to the club.
You are so filled with anger that you come here on a Saturday and post on a blog you hate. But at least you are true to your name.
Re: Re: Re:
I think your sarcasm meeter needs some adjustment.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
My sarcasm meter is just fine. I detected no sarcasm in the original post…He came across as 100% serious.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Quote:
Hmmm…I see that as a sign of sarcasm, it was just me?
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
The post above was me, I forgot to type the name sorry.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
(my misspellings and poor grammar were intentional).
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
>(my misspellings and poor grammar were intentional).
They all say that.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
My Firefox comes with spell check, I have no reason to misspell anything.
Re: Re: Re:6 Re:
The curse of the spell-checker?
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
And that is why it’s always important to check a commenter’s username before replying. Because no matter how 100% serious he sounds, I don’t think someone named “ShillTroll” actually means what he says 😉
Re: Re: Re: Re:
that or he’s playing along…
though i’ll admit that’s less likely.
Re: Re:
Here, let me just save the trolls the trouble
And I will save them some trouble before the whole koolaid thing is brought up again and let them know that, since it’s Summer, I took the liberty of freezing all the Techdirt koolaid onto sticks.
Sort of a Intellectual Popsicle, you could say.
Re: Re: Re:
So does that mean you’re giving away free Koolaid popsicles. Because if you are, being the freetard that I am, I’ll have some.
The Dark Meldrew Award?
“This week saw a “dark Meldrew event” when a woman was arrested by police for filming them from her own property. The antics of the TSA are often in the same vein and would probably win this award quite frequently if it was run every week.”
I’m in favor of this award.
Re: The Dark Meldrew Award?
I’m pretty sure this infringes on something for me, somehow. Trademark? Publicity rights maybe?
Either way, I’m hiring Righthaven to go after you and any churches that don’t hate you….
Re: Re: The Dark Meldrew Award?
NEVERMORE!
“you can get it down to a small number of useful contributions by selecting only insightful comments”
made my day right there.
Don't worry he's from the UK..
This week’s favorites post comes from Richard, who’s from the UK, but will hopefully forgive my removing of the extraneous “u’s” from the word “favorite.”
Hi, here is this guy, he is not from around here, so I will DUMB it down for you Americans.
He is from the UK so we’ll make sure we act suitabilly better than he is.
I will change the spelling for you so you can understand his stainge foreign language.
So allthough he is ‘sub-human’ compared to us “Americans” we’ll let him have a say, but not before I correct he’s screwed up english.
you never know he might be an eater of black pudding and a master of “ekky thump”, be a skinhead and walk around in his trade ‘Doc Martins’, or “bother boots”. 😀
Re: Don't worry he's from the UK..
“I will change the spelling for you so you can understand his [strange] foreign language.”
Irony…
Re: Don't worry he's from the UK..
Its the ‘extraneous’ description that gets me.
They are MEANT to be there, it’s called ‘English’
PS its not ‘bother boots’ its ‘bovver boots’
Re: Re: Don't worry he's from the UK..
Or Smeggin’ Docs.
Re: Re: Don't worry he's from the UK..
lol your right “bovver boots”
smeggin docs works for me too 😀
Re: Re: Don't worry he's from the UK..
I would have said ‘bovver’ but I felt if they cannot understand the colourfull spelling I though “bovver” might be a bit beyond them, as to what I was talking about.
Lets hope your mum does not have a moustache having naivety, and wearing pyjamas in a furore and an aluminium arse, followed by a bogeyman in an aeroplane.
speciality being a scallyway, getting titbit’s of colour, and flavour, with honour of my neighbour, but its a rumour and labour is humourous.
oh wait,,
What about
SPACE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR
(or the Australian Labor Party !)
Re: Re: Don't worry he's from the UK..
Actually it was only Dr Johnson who put in those spellings – to emphasise the Latin roots of words – before him no-one really cared how words were spelled.
I’m not bothered with Mike adjusting my spellings to match the standard ones used on the site – it does make sense for consistency when searching.
Re: Don't worry he's from the UK..
Hi, here is this guy, he is not from around here, so I will DUMB it down for you Americans.
He is from the UK so we’ll make sure we act suitabilly better than he is.
I will change the spelling for you so you can understand his stainge foreign language.
And I thought you Aussies were supposed to have a sense of humor (humour).
Re: Re: Don't worry he's from the UK..
NAh, that’s just the distinct lack of elbows and kness at play. They can’t be humerus.
Re: Re: Don't worry he's from the UK..
That’s right we know nothing about humour, but satire is another thing alltogether.
It’s like comparing Monty Python with Tim the toolman! orh orh orh orh!!!!
that or he’s playing along…
NEVERMORE!
favourite ways of spelling
This week’s favorites post comes from Richard, who’s from the UK, but will hopefully forgive my removing of the extraneous “u’s” from the word “favorite.”
So, why not extraneos?