Devin Moore 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: ASCAP, BMI And SESAC Continue To Screw Over Most Songwriters: 'Write A Hit Song If You Want Money'

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2009 @ 09:12am

    It's only a matter of time

    Any day now, a 100% independent artist will release an album of hit songs and totally circumvent this system. When this happens, the labels will completely freak out and try to steal the music or pull shenanigans, at which point the artist will sue them out of existence. Just keep digging deeper, folks.

    By the way, did Elvis write any of his songs? Would he have been turned down at open mic night because of some stupid attitude about singing original songs? What do these folks think of: American Idol, the "Rock Band" game, etc.?

  • On the post: The Moral Argument In Favor Of File Sharing?

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 07 Nov, 2009 @ 04:09am

    infinite goods are going to be shared eventually

    It's not that infinite good should be shared necessarily, but because they are not scarce, there is no physical penalty for sharing them in the way that one loses a physical item when one shares it. Therefore, given an infinite timeline, all infinite goods will be shared between everyone because there's no penalty to society as a whole in terms of haves vs. have-nots for doing so.

  • On the post: Fake Car Noises Being Added To Many New Cars… May Be Required Soon

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2009 @ 10:48am

    Safety first?

    How about a bill to increase the direct safety of new cars i.e. requiring disc brakes?

  • On the post: Austin Police Chief To Go After Anonymous Commenters

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 23 Sep, 2009 @ 05:16am

    That is actually a crime

    Impersonating a police officer is a serious crime under any circumstances. At the very least, it amounts to documented fraud -- the easiest kind to prosecute, once you can positively I.D. the person who posted the fraud (and that's pretty easy with digital forensics).

  • On the post: Video Games And Influence

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2009 @ 07:26am

    A detailed explanation

    Violent video games are an issue because in the games, the violence is the solution to the game's obstacles. This is behavior you don't want kids to emulate.

    Music video games are an issue because in the game, NOT creating music is the solution to the game's obstacles. This (NOT creating music) is behavior you don't want kids to emulate (i.e. you want kids TO create music or at least to value the creation of music).

  • On the post: Can You Copyright Homework Titles?

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 28 Aug, 2009 @ 04:43am

    you cannot copyright a title

    To address the article heading, you cannot copyright "titles" of any kind. A phrase or word can be trademarked and used as a title that way for protection, but there does not exist any protection over "titles". Can you copyright homework assignments? Of course, anything uniquely produced by a person has an automatic copyright on it. One could argue that teachers should condone abuse of copyrights of their works, but that doesn't mean the teachers have to condone it. Until copyright is wiped out, it is the law.

  • On the post: Murdoch Now Demanding Names Of Kindle Subscribers

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 07 Aug, 2009 @ 07:22am

    End of an Empire

    We are witnessing the end of an empire -- I don't think that NewsCorp will survive this attempt to monetize the Internet.

  • On the post: iPhone Haters Are Stick-Shifters In An Automatic World

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 31 Jul, 2009 @ 10:21am

    Re: But, there are two kinds of automatic transmissions

    My brand new saturn gets 28/35 and it is one of the cheapest cars for its size to get that, all because it has a manual transmission. Everything has its tradeoffs, hardly anything is just objectively and universally better than all other options.

  • On the post: Is It Cheating Or Is It Collaboration?

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 21 Jul, 2009 @ 10:14am

    Re: Re: What Cheating is

    None of the ones you ask about relate to my definition of cheating ("a person may not be capable of doing the work that they were hired to do"), but some of them are pretty funny.

  • On the post: Is It Cheating Or Is It Collaboration?

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 21 Jul, 2009 @ 10:12am

    Re: What Cheating is

    Furthermore, cheating means you probably can't prove the validity of your answer. What's the corporate response to a screw up where the person who screwed up just copied the answer from someone else? One person tried and failed to get the right answer, and the other one parroted that response without the ability to check it themselves. That sounds like a red flag to me.

  • On the post: Is It Cheating Or Is It Collaboration?

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 21 Jul, 2009 @ 10:01am

    What Cheating is

    Cheating matters because it means that a person may not be capable of doing the work that they were hired to do. As a result, cheating typically also means that the cheater is taking credit for someone else's work as a result.

    This article talks about what cheating is not, but it does a disservice to how collaboration invites cheating and why schools need to go to extra trouble to enforce anti-cheating rules when collaboration is required.

    Collaboration to the lazy student means "someone else is going to do the work for me" plus "it will be harder to tell that I didn't do my share of the work". Having been on teams since the 8th grade that functioned this way, I can tell readers matter-of-factly that by college, many students are experts at not contributing to teams. Furthermore, they think it is perfectly normal since no one ever stopped them.

    The quote mentions that "thinking skills are the problem", and "In NO industry is collaboration considered cheating", but then it says correctly that "Passing off someone else's work as your own is clearly wrong".

    Thinking skills aren't the problem, cheating is the problem. Students will cheat rather than have to reveal their inability to complete their work at the appropriate level of quality. Collaboration provides a method for cheating anytime there is not a VERY proactive attitude towards equal work output from the other team members.

    If not turned in by their team members, and without extreme monitoring by teachers, crafty students can pass a team-based class without having done anything -- and more dangerously, without having to prove that they may not be able to do the work at all.

    Collaboration is absolutely cheating in any industry, whenever the collaboration is lopsided but the attribution is equal. That situation cheats the majority contributors out of proper credit for their work. Exposing cheating should be the priority of any student on a team for the cheater's own good. Cheating at work can mean fraud or any number of other illegal activities intended to cover up a lack of ability to do the job. To say that this is not a serious thing in the workplace is to condone the worst offenses as long as you have good enough workers to clean up the mess.

  • On the post: As Jammie Thomas Seeks New Trial, RIAA Claims (Incorrectly) That She Distributed 1,700 Songs To Millions

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 07 Jul, 2009 @ 08:01am

    Isn't that the entire argument though?

    Isn't the RIAA's entire argument on a judgement like that based on that this person must have actually and directly caused a loss of income equal to $1.92 million, i.e. distributing millions of copies of music without permission? If she really could only be proven to have distributed 24 songs each one time, then wouldn't actual damages from the crime amount to the retail losses on those 24 proven distributions?

  • On the post: Palin Threats To News Organizations Seem Misguided

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 06 Jul, 2009 @ 03:41am

    FBI 'not' investigating?

    Nothing about her could be more odd than the FBI publicly stating over the weekend that they are 'not' investigating her on public corruption charges. Now she threatens to sue over defamatory statements? She defamed herself the entire government of Alaska by quitting her term early with no plausible explanation, and now she tries to stop the ocean of criticism with a broom. She should have said she was quitting to take care of her new kid (whether that was true or not) -- no one would be able to make any comments on that.

  • On the post: Tens Of Thousands Of Students Have Signed Up For Choruss… Even Though No One Knows What It Is?

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 12 Jun, 2009 @ 02:59pm

    Already irrelevant

    The article indicates it is a p2p legal music sharing system, which means it may just be the first one to be destroyed by its best competition: the legal p2p version of itunes, once that comes out.

  • On the post: Patent Lawsuit Over Shazam Highlights The Difference Between Invention And Implementation

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 27 May, 2009 @ 07:33am

    Necessary evil

    Granted, this may be a special case, but patents are meant to protect the ideas vs. implementations for a very good reason. Without such a protection, an individual's idea could be implemented by a company with no implied license on the idea itself, meaning companies could steal ideas left and right. In the case where someone 'just so happens' to have patented the same idea, that's a risk that companies should hedge against by researching patents BEFORE they go to market with an implementation. It's easy for Apple to come back now and say this is garbage, but wouldn't they say that even if they really had stolen this guy's idea? That's why patents exist, Ford had to pay an engine patent in the beginning and Apple should pay this patent if it is a legitimate claim. They will still make money and the true inventor will get reimbursed for their original innovation.

  • On the post: The Infringement Age: How Much Do You Infringe On A Daily Basis?

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 12 May, 2009 @ 11:02am

    Fair use and transformative works

    The article assumes that copyright somehow has a universal application, which it does not. Almost all of those examples are fair use or transformative works, and even under current supposedly "strict" copyright laws, they would be easily defeated and the accused would go free.

  • On the post: Coldplay Denies Copying Satriani In Federal Court Filing

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 16 Apr, 2009 @ 09:40am

    8-bar sample vs. melody copy

    There is an 8-bar "gimme" rule in music where if you want to sample (i.e. exact audio copy) a song, you can usually get away with it, with a wink and a nod to the originator. Unfortunately, if the melody and lead are the same in a "new" song, giving the impression that it is not meant as a sample, and that becomes a platinum hit... for future reference, you better make sure the original author is dead before you try that.

  • On the post: Copyright And Classical Music: The Exact Opposite Of The Intended Purpose

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 12 Mar, 2009 @ 10:25am

    Copyright increases profit opportunities

    Copyright doesn't increase the production of content at all. From your example, it clearly increases the profit that you can get from existing "good" content.

  • On the post: Audiophiles Run And Hide: Growing Number Of Young People Prefer The Sound Of MP3s

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 03 Mar, 2009 @ 08:38am

    mp3's used in studio

    The reason this is happening: more artists are producing songs and listening to the mp3's themselves, and optimizing their music for mp3 playback. If the artist can make it sound good on grooves on a record/mp3/cd/etc, then more people will be able to enjoy that medium, regardless of whether the absolute quality of the medium is better. And for the record, fresh vinyl on a big system is incredible, but high-def cd's are definitely a close second.

  • On the post: Michael Jackson and Rihanna Both Get Sued Over a 1972 Tune

    Devin Moore ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2009 @ 07:31am

    Hook

    So what you're saying is that I should be able to borrow the hook from any song for free. So I should be able to just take "She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah" and put it into a song without paying anyone anything? Can I just take some Jimi Hendrix solos and add them for free into my songs? That sure would make it sound like I knew how to write great hooks, if I could "borrow" others' hooks for free and profit from that.

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