JackHerer 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Record Label Says That Pulling Music From Spotify 'Protects Artists'

    JackHerer ( profile ), 11 Aug, 2011 @ 01:48am

    100 years ago...

    Sales of horse can carts are dropping off everywhere automobiles are available, therefore we at Blogs and Co Horse Buggies inc. will refuse to make automobiles to "protect" our business and workers. Of course physical media sales are dropping off, what the hell would i do with a CD anyway, i can't remember the last time a blew the dust off my CD player and even if my phone had some sort of way to play CDs, why would i want to carry some massive bag of CDs about when i can just pay ?10 a month for Spotify and have access to 8 million plus tracks. What planet do these morons live on.

  • On the post: 1984 Case Shows Abuse Of Phrase 'Public Performance' Has A Long, Ugly History

    JackHerer ( profile ), 10 Aug, 2011 @ 09:36am

    Re: Re: Re:

    a movie theater (you know a place that accessible to any member of the public who has the money to buy a ticket) = public place.

    A room in my house, that contains my TV. Accessible only to me != public place.

    If i allowed general access to the public at large to my living room, even if that was on the basis of one person at a time then you could possibly argue it is "a public place".

    See how it works?

  • On the post: Google Tried Bidding Geeky Numbers For Nortel Patents; How About $3.14159 Billion?

    JackHerer ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2011 @ 07:15am

    Re: Don't read too much into it

    Oh i forgot, their SEC filing for the IPO said they wanted to raise $2,718,281,828. e roughly = 2.718281828

  • On the post: Google Tried Bidding Geeky Numbers For Nortel Patents; How About $3.14159 Billion?

    JackHerer ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2011 @ 07:13am

    Don't read too much into it

    Google do this all the time, they floated 14,142,135 shares in their IPO. That is pretty much the square root of 2 (1.4142135).

  • On the post: Art Authenticator Sues The New Yorker, Claiming Profile Defamed Him

    JackHerer ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2011 @ 03:52am

    All your bases are...

    "no bases in reality"? Does he really say that?

  • On the post: Apple Goes After Open Source Startup For Daring To Use The Term 'App Store'

    JackHerer ( profile ), 23 Jun, 2011 @ 04:44am

    How about "Application Store"?

  • On the post: UK Lobbyists Claim UK Software Industry In Trouble Because It Doesn't Have Software Patents

    JackHerer ( profile ), 23 Jun, 2011 @ 02:08am

    Bollocks

    As a software developer working for a software company in the UK, I thank the heavens every day that we don't have software patents here. The idea that sitting down and thinking up a solution to a problem on my own my be infringing someone's "intellectual property" is crazy to me and everyone else I know in the industry. Only lawyers like software patents.

  • On the post: NY Stock Exchange Claims Trademark On Any Depiction Of Trading Floor, Threatens TPM

    JackHerer ( profile ), 27 May, 2011 @ 09:01am

    Who owns your knowledge

    I say this on the BBC site today http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13570725

    As far as I can tell PayPal are trying to claim ownership of the knowledge in a former employees brain and are suing google for employing him. If the guy took documentation or code with him then fair enough, if he had a contract that that said he couldn't go work for google or whoever then fair enough. But suing google for employing someone who has useful and relevant knowledge is crazy. All google is doing is competing for employees the same as all firms do constantly. I am a software developer and before working in my current role i had no experience of Dynamics CRM development. Now i have lots and demand for my services does my current company get to sue if i get a better job elsewhere.

  • On the post: Portuguese Politicians Want To Make Creative Commons Illegal

    JackHerer ( profile ), 09 May, 2011 @ 09:00am

    Not Illegal

    At the risk of being a pedant this would not make creative commons illegal, it would just mean that cc licenses could not be legally enforced, i.e. they would be null and void.

  • On the post: EMI Dumps ASCAP For Digital Licensing

    JackHerer ( profile ), 04 May, 2011 @ 08:28am

    More complex licensing

    Presumably this relates to EMI music publishing rather than EMI the record label as ASCAP licenses copyrights for the composition rather than the sound recording.

    Anyhoo this is not really a win for people wanting to license music (unless it results in much licensing cheaper costs from EMI) because it has just added an extra party to negotiate a deal with. Existing licensees who have a license with ascap, now nead to renegotiate with EMI in order to carry on using EMI owned compositions. New licensees now have an extra party to negotiate with.

    For all their many many bad points collections societies like ASCAP do at least make licensing more simple by reducing the number of parties you have to negotiate with. Under current copyright laws, without them trying to do anything at all with other peoples copyrighted musical compositions would be almost impossible.

  • On the post: UK Newspaper Drops Paywall After Less Than 10 People Subscribe

    JackHerer ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2010 @ 09:02am

    Very small papers

    Bear in mind these are tiny tiny papers serving tiny comunities of readers. They contain minor local interest news stories and not any kind of news interesting to anyone under the age of 60 or that has a job or any kind of real life.

    That said i think the Times paywall is going to be a disaster.

  • On the post: Syphilis (Or Was It Facebook?) Blamed For People Not Understanding That Correlation Does Not Mean Causation

    JackHerer ( profile ), 25 Mar, 2010 @ 08:48am

    Bad Science

    Ben Goldacre, author of the Gurdian's weekly Bad Science coulmn has been trying to get to the actual evidence all week. You can follow his progress on Twitter http://twitter.com/bengoldacre, but be warned it might give you gonorrhea ;-)

  • On the post: Michael Powell A Bit Quick To Claim Google Broadband Is Viable Competition

    JackHerer ( profile ), 19 Feb, 2010 @ 04:31am

    I think it is important to get away from the idea that all government intervention/regulation of a market inhibits/distorts a free market. In a market where you have former monopoly incumbents the market is already distorted and government regulation can be used to effectively restore a more free market. It can be a difficult ballance treading the fine line between under and over regulation but if you look at the competition in the broadband and telecoms markets in the UK you can see what can be achieved. Where I live in the UK I can chose between 30+ braodband and fixed line telephone providers and probably many many more than that for just fixed line telephone. The market is extremely competitive with providers ranging from huge incumbents like BT and Vrigin media to small regional and niche providers all competing on different levels from price, to service, to speed and anything else they can think of to offer over and above the competition.

  • On the post: House Of Lords Has Serious Concerns About Digital Economy Bill

    JackHerer ( profile ), 12 Feb, 2010 @ 04:35am

    Helpful but could be ignored

    As much as it is helpful that the lords are exmining this bill closely, they are ultimately toothless. Through the Paliament Act the house of commons can overrule the Lords and push through any legislation with a majority vote.

  • On the post: Second Life Gang Using Copyright To Stop Discussion Of Its Tactics?

    JackHerer ( profile ), 03 Feb, 2010 @ 04:45am

    "it's a bit upsetting that Typepad automatically sided with those making the copyright claim".

    This boils down to a simple business decision. The party claiming copyright infringement can has a valid claim to sue the service provider if they do not take down alleged copyrighted content. The user who the claim is against cannot sue the service provider for taking down content due to a spurious takedown request. The only sensible option is to take down the content, and avoid getting into the legal complexities of copyright law in order to work out if the takedown request is valid.

  • On the post: Intuit Lobbying The Government To Make It More Difficult To File Your Tax Returns

    JackHerer ( profile ), 25 Jan, 2010 @ 12:50pm

    Why not copy the UK

    If you are paid a salary by an employer, then your tax is automatically calculated and deducted out of each months pay. If you have no other income, you don't have to file a return. 90% of people go there entire lives without having to file a tax return.

  • On the post: In A World Of Bottom Up Technology, Should IT Support Your iPhone?

    JackHerer ( profile ), 21 Jan, 2010 @ 04:37am

    Depends...

    If the phone is provded by the companty then of course they have to support it. If the phone is purchased by the user then that is different. I think it is reasonable to allow user's to hook up the iPhone (or other smartphone) to the company's email, contacts etc and to provide basic instruction and information about how to do it for common phones. However you cannot expect an IT department to have the skills and knowledge to provide user support to a potentially unlimited number of different kinds of devices. This is why companies standardise technology, so that you are supporting a finite and controlled set of technologies that you can make sure you have the skills and resources to support.

  • On the post: How The Record Labels Are Killing Innovative New Music Services: No Money, No Content

    JackHerer ( profile ), 22 Oct, 2009 @ 10:57am

    Which post to comment on.

    Someone is asked to pay an upfront fee so that they can receive a much larger amount of money that is in fact totally illusory. Not sure if this comment should be on this post or the previous one about advance fee fraud. Seems a pretty similar scam either way.

  • On the post: AP Convinces Newspaper That Watermark Will Stop Mythical Evil Copiers

    JackHerer ( profile ), 22 Oct, 2009 @ 04:09am

    What spam sites.

    I am an avid online news reader, i must spend an hour or 2 each days reading news online. I have never knowingly encountered a spam site. If i am particularly interested in a story i usually search for multiple articles to try and get an even view of the story.

    The best ways to attract my eyeballs to your new site.

    Have an RSS feed.
    Quote and link to other sites with more detailed info
    Allow others to do the same to your articles.
    Have a free and open comments system where the journalists engage in the discussion.

    Not doing the above things is the biggest threat to news, not some mythical spam sites that hardly anyone ever reads.

  • On the post: UK Channel 4 Putting Full TV Shows On YouTube

    JackHerer ( profile ), 16 Oct, 2009 @ 07:02pm

    Already online

    Just to be clear, channel 4 already puts all this stuff online for free in the UK as part of its 4od service, http://www.channel4.com/programmes/4od

    The news here is simply that it is also putting them on youtube. As such this is just a logical next step, even if google was paying nothing for all this content, channel 4 is just getting a shit load of free video hosting for content it has online for free already. It's a no brainer really.

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