Brian Schroth 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (103) comment rss

  • On the post: Jake Gyllenhaal Threatening Websites For 'Defamation By Photoshop'?

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 25 May, 2011 @ 01:24pm

    Aren't the lawyers shooting themselves in the foot? If "anyone can tell from a cursory examination" that the picture is fake, wouldn't that mean that it's not defamation (by the defamation equivalent of the "moron in a hurry" test)?

  • On the post: Singer's Ex-Boyfriend Demands Royalties For Inspiring Songs About Their Relationship & Breakup

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 25 May, 2011 @ 12:34pm

    When I consider that Adele is probably going to be very wealthy, I can't help feeling that this guy could have had it all, if he hadn't been such a jerk.

  • On the post: The Only Eight Senators Who Think Extending The Patriot Act Deserves More Discussion

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 24 May, 2011 @ 07:26am

    So who were the 18 Senators too cowardly to attend the vote?

  • On the post: Not Every Theater Owner Fears Competing With Your Home Theater System

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2011 @ 08:45am

    Of course, if my friends are Mike Nelson, Tom Servo, and Crow, this theater will provide a much worse experience than a home theater.

  • On the post: Don't Mess With Texas When It Comes To Protecting Free Speech

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 26 Apr, 2011 @ 07:16am

    Re: Re:

    Apparently as hard as it is for you to understand the use of periods.

  • On the post: New RIAA Evidence Comes To Light: Napster Killed Kerosene Too!

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 21 Apr, 2011 @ 08:52am

    Also, consider this: In 1986 there was one fledgling Internet, and there was one global class 7 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl.

    Now in 2011, we have Internet2 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet2 ), and we have had a second class 7 nuclear disaster at Fukushima.

    We must destroy all internets if we want to prevent a nuclear holocaust.

  • On the post: Feds Tell Supreme Court They Should Be Able To Stick A GPS Device On Your Car Without A Warrant

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 20 Apr, 2011 @ 10:27am

    The government has so many holes in their case it's ridiculous it ever made it anywhere.

    1. Your car is your property. Even if it is legal to track your movement 24/7, the government does not have the right to deface your property.

    2. Not everywhere your car goes is "public". You can drive on private roads and private land. Since the device will not magically know the difference between public and private areas, even if it were legal to track everything done in public, this will inevitably track things done in private.

    3. The idea that anything done in a public area has no expectation of privacy because "what's public is public, duh" is absurd. Your cell phone broadcasts signals over public airspace- that does not mean your phone conversations can be listened to without a warrant. The ruling in Kyllo v. United States struck down this absurd idea that everything in public is public information, when it said that the heat emanating from a home, despite emanating into a "public" area, was still private information and reading it would be considered a search for 4th Amendment purposes.

    All of these factors should make this case a decisive loss for the government, but somehow incompetent judges have botched it.

  • On the post: Music Is Collaborative: Jay-Z To Sugar Hill Gang To Al Jolson And Back Again

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 20 Apr, 2011 @ 08:02am

    Re: Re:

    The 8 note scale you speak of may be the basis for almost all music in mainstream culture today, but it is not the basis for "all music". 440Hz A concert pitch is not the only tuning system in existence. Even in mainstream music this is inaccurate as there are 12 notes, not just 8, and there are many, many different scales besides the major scale- minor, harmonic minor, blues, diatonic, chromatic, whole tone, pentatonic, etc...

  • On the post: Judge In Google WiFiSpy Case Trying To Determine If Packet Sniffing Open Networks Is An Illegal Wiretap

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 20 Apr, 2011 @ 07:35am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    That can be true. Of course it can just as easily be true that one might use an analogy because one's audience doesn't understand the advanced concept. I can explain an advanced concept to someone, only to have them raise irrelevant objections. I can then explain why those objections are irrelevant, but because the audience doesn't understand the concept, they might respond with what amounts to "nuh-uh, it is relevant". That's when the analogy becomes useful as maybe the situation can be simplified to something they understand.

  • On the post: Judge Slams Righthaven's Legal Tactics, Unseals Document That May Undermine All Righthaven Cases

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 18 Apr, 2011 @ 08:46am

    If the facts are on your side, you pound the facts. If the law is on your side, you pound the law. If neither the facts nor the law is on your side, you pound the table. And if the jury isn't on your side, you go to pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

  • On the post: Why Google Should Buy The Recording Industry

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 15 Apr, 2011 @ 12:05pm

    Re: Whither AAPL?

    Apple is not an "internet company",they're a hardware company. Though with the iTunes store and their lame "Ping" thing they are at least more internet-y than other hardware companies.

    More conspicuously absent: Facebook.

  • On the post: Technology Trumps ICE Domain Seizures: Browser Plugin Fix Created In Just Days

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 15 Apr, 2011 @ 06:42am

    Don't the seized domains still exist accessible via IP address? It seems that rather than relying on "If a site seized by ICE sets itself up on an alternative domain", the plugin could just redirect to the underlying IP.

  • On the post: Being Successful With New Business Models Still Means Hard Work

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 15 Apr, 2011 @ 05:56am

    Seems like all the good musicians are coming out of Canada these days. Hey Rosetta!, Arcade Fire, Dan Mangan, etc...

  • On the post: From Tasini To The Winklevi: Greed, Retroactively Breaking Deals And Feeling Entitled To What's Not Yours

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 14 Apr, 2011 @ 10:47am

    "What's Winklevossian about Tasini's suit...we're becoming a nation of Winklevosses"

    If "Winklevoss" is now synonymous with "greedy entitled prick" in our national lexicon, I approve.

  • On the post: Senators And Reps Grandstand Against Online Pornography Which Is Destroying Our Social Fabric

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2011 @ 12:45pm

    "forcible rape"

    As opposed to...friendly rape?

  • On the post: Over 250 Top US Legal Scholars Condemn The Treatment Of Bradley Manning

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2011 @ 12:25pm

    Re: UCMJ

    "As a previous poster noted, Manning is in the United State military and is covered by the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

    Once he signed on the dotted line and took the oath, he surrendered a number of his rights. I would like to know how many of these 250 legal scholars are schooled in the UCMJ?

    Probably none of them."

    How could I forget the 28th Amendment, which states "Oh yeah, and none of this shit applies to people in the military".

  • On the post: Tenenbaum Appeal Heard: Is It Okay To Make Someone Pay $675,000 For Downloading 30 Songs?

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2011 @ 09:46am

    Lawyer:"It's more than that, your honor. It's really the complete undermining of the copyright. What I mean by that is you can't just isolate what's going on here as if it's an individual's, by copying it, has not gone and bought the work on iTunes or not bought the work in a record store when we used to have record stores. What happens is, by distributing it to others, there are... the viral nature of this technology, really has a substantial impact on the value of the work. And the way I'd ask you to think about it is this: one, I think, relevant question in a statutory damages case is, what would it cost to get a license for what the defendant has done. And, if all the defendant had done was making a copy and that was it, then maybe an analogy to just getting a copy off of iTunes would be appropriate. But here, by distributing it... if someone wanted to go to one of the record companies and say 'we'd like to do what the defendant did in this case,' the value of that license would be essentially the value of the entire copyrighted work. Because the effect of putting this work up on peer-to-peer technology is essentially you take a copyrighted work, and put it in the public domain."

    Judge: So when a work is shared on P2P networks, you essentially lose the entire value of that work?

    Lawyer: Yes, exactly!

    Judge: And would it be safe to say that nearly all of your company's works are currently being shared on P2P networks, if not by this defendant than by others?

    Lawyer: Yes! It's destroying our industry!

    Judge: So since you have lost the entire value of all of your works, your revenue for the past year was $0, right?

    Lawyer: Um...

  • On the post: Band Complains About Massive Downloads Destroying Sales; Researchers Can't Find Any Downloads

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2011 @ 06:31am

    Re: Re: makita

    OK, I laughed, but it's kind of a shame to see all the ridicule of Canadians, if only because what is certainly the best band to come out in the last decade, Hey Rosetta!, is a Canadian band. Canadian music deserves some respect. Another Canadian, Dan Mangan, is also pretty damn good.

  • On the post: Samsung Accused Of Installing Secret Keyloggers On New Laptops 'To Monitor Performance' [Updated]

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 31 Mar, 2011 @ 06:29am

    Hmmmm...

    "he ran a scan and [b]found an installation[/b] of StarLogger, a commercial keylogger program. It's a rather nefarious piece of software:

    This key logger is [b]completely undetectable[/b]..."

    DOES NOT COMPUTE

  • On the post: India's Plan To Block .xxx Shows The Pointlessness Of Specialized TLDs

    Brian Schroth ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2011 @ 12:52pm

    Well, this convinces me that the government should listen and privatize ICANN. Because if there's one thing you never hear about private companies doing, it's focusing on making money instead of doing useful things.

Next >>