TtfnJohn's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
from the all-sopa-all-the-time dept
Welcome to John Wilson's (TtfnJohn) Picks of the Week.
It's been, according to one of our most recognizable Anonymous Coward trolls, an all-SOPA-all-the-time week so, I'll continue to annoy him with this post.
This will probably annoy him even more. Our very own Mike Masnick has hit 40,000 posts. Congratulations, Mike!
Perhaps the best news came Friday with the SOPA markup running out of time and getting pushed back... maybe to next Wednesday or hopefully to 2012. Maybe it's time to come up with a reason to visit your Congresscritter's office, fill up their appointment book or make phone calls just to remind them of whom they serve and, perhaps, explain some of the intricacies of the Internet to them or, failing that, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Oh, and wish them happy holidays as well.
This hot on the heels of the totally shocking news (really?) that Congress hasn't the faintest idea what they're trying to regulate in Thursday's markup. Not at all a good day for them if they were trying to improve their standing with the electorate or their general grasp of information.
The CCIA went after Representatives, who have attacked their member companies, and others for opposition to SOPA -- including the claim that three normally vicious competitors (Yahoo, Microsoft and Google) have joined together to lobby for and to defend a free and open Internet. These opponents account for a much larger proportion of United States (and global) GDP than the entertainment industry can even hope for -- and far more full time employment. Also, add the developers and engineers who built the internet to the growing list of those in the tech industry who oppose SOPA/PIPA. Not that Dianne Feinstein has noticed. Maybe she will note the excuse that "I don't know nothing" has worn very thin.
Righthaven lost yet another court case, which is starting to remind me of SCO vs Novell, vs IBM, vs Linux vs the world, something I followed in detail over on Groklaw. Groklaw's founder and web master PJ must be almost as unpopular with the copyright purists as Mike and Techdirt are. (Groklaw led me here, by the way.) It's also why I'm not at all surprised at documents that come out almost completely redacted.
From one part of the fantasy software world to another, is a New York law firm's claim to have developed some sort of magical data mining, analyzing and wonderful software that can identify every "rogue" site out there. Or so they say. Thing is, it doesn't seem to be finished yet. Under active development is what the site says. Not only magic, but magic vaporware too.
Back to some good news. There seems to be a place in England where seized counterfeit designer clothing is donated to a charity for distribution to the poor, homeless and vulnerable.
On the cultural side of things was a post linking to an article entitled No Copyright Intended. Today's young people are doing what human cultures have done since, well, forever: remixing and sharing things over the pirate infested waters of the Internet. Whether they need a good spanking or a hearty congratulations for creating new experssions of old ideas depends on where you come from in this debate. It also proves the point that creative people don't always need to be assured of being paid in order to create.
If there has been one good thing to come out of SOPA/PIPA, it's an increase in awareness of what used to be the esoteric world of copyright. And the awareness that people don't like what they're seeing. An education is always a good thing and the American public is getting a crash course on copyright and intellectual property law, thanks to the furor over SOPA/PIPA.
I've left things out I'd have loved to have added but time isn't there, and I doubt attention spans are either. All in all, I'd say on the SOPA/PIPA front this may be looked back on as a very good week. And a very, very bad one for one of our Anonymous Cowards.
Re:
Oh please, he's not going to stop now. He's always right you know even on subjects he knows less than nothing about and even has to twist his comments on what Mike said rather than the post he's responding to. I know we shouldn't feed the troll but OOTB has just become such a big target of ridicule over the years there are times I'm sure he's impervious to it.
Re: Number of people employed at McDonald's may be all-time high too.
The gem concisely states history that Mike wants to ignore: that after entirely new gadgets became commonplace and the related law cases were worked out in courts, then legislatures made statutes based on common law.
Then some people need to understand the difference between statue law and common law. Statue law is what legislatures run through their mill, often in some sort of who got to lobby me last BS whereas the Common Law consists entirely on the outcome of court cases and the precedents set there. I'd sooner trust the vast majority of courts than any collection of politicians to come up with something sane.
It is comforting, in a sad sort of way that some things never change such as the dubious though highly interesting and amusing readings of law be it of patents or copyrights that erupt from OOTB's fertile brain. Not to mention OOTB's almost total lack of knowledge of the movie and music industries which all boils down to the fact that musicians, actors, technicians and so on are almost always part time. Hate to tell you this, OOTB, the Studio system died way back in the 1950s, probably long before you were an undreamed of zygote.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The wooden duck on wheels traces it's ancestry back to the Aztec and Mayans so there is prior art therefore it's not patentable.
Re: The point of the system?
Trying to "predict" the past is fraught with all the dangers of trying to predict the future. That said there were no software patents when Apple, Microsoft, Compaq, Dell, Borland, Lotus, Radio Shack, and countless others jumped on Apple's platform or IBM's mostly by people who were too young to know that such things weren't doable and certainly not as a revolution. Yet the revolution came.
Another young man at CERN invented a subset of a markup language gave us HTML and tore the text based things off the Internet which one day allowed us to discover IRC, newsgroups, and so much else. Would we have ipods and other gadgets? Yup. Would we have smart phones which have virtually replaced the gadgets and we can make calls besides! All less expensively than we'd have dreamed imaginable. I feel no ne4ed to prove it. I've watched it happen over the past 38 years something I feel blessed to have witnessed and to witness it happen for a longer period of time. Somewhere out there still are young men and women who don't know they can't start another communications and computation revolution. Maybe some of us older folks too, cussing under our breath that we don't care but this something just HAS to work. We may not be able to have it all but if what we have now is very close to all compared to, say, 1969 when none of it existed.
Re:
For all the bile directed at Gates and Co in this thread, most of it well deserved, remember that Gates and Microsoft opposed the entire idea of software patents insisting copyright was enough warned about the damage they could, and do, do. But now that they're legal they've built up a "defensive" wall of patents as have IBM and others.
Re: Microsoft copying
MS never swiped Apple's first OS though they did base Windows 1.0 through 3.0 on Apple's GUI which isn't the same thing. And after the Lotus vs Borland case it's doubtful that you can protect a "look and feel" which is what a GUI is in many ways any more than you can copyright a recipe for cinnamon toast. Lotus lost that one on the way to the destruction both of themselves and Borland if you recall.
Everyone copies when they're doing things like this it's just a matter of how good or bad the copy is. Jobs figured the copy of the GUI MS shipped and continues to ship was and is ugly in comparison with what Apple produces and IMHO he's right. And it's for a host of different reasons that I find it hard not to choke on the use of words like ethics and lack of deception and Microsoft in the same sentence or even story.
And next time you plant a garden please try to convince me that you don't look around and copy the best features of those near you and so on. Apple paid for the access to XEROX PARC material and got a deeper understanding and better feeling for it which has spread through the Apple, BSD and UNIX /Linix world while MS's is still pedestrian and ugly.
For now MS is still on top but like all things that won't last forever. It may just seem that way ;-)
Re: Re: Re: Gates learnt a lot from DEC also
I keep losing my log in darn it! So I gotta replty to myself! LOL
Re:
It certainly goes a long way in explaining the Apple vs MS debate which is so often framed in religious terms by fanboys of both.
Re: My biggest complaint about your post . . .
I'm not going to complain about using focus groups as a verb. That's just how English change and grows. I'm thinking about Shakespeare who broke just about any grammar rule that you can imagine and invented a few dozen words along the way, too.
On the topic I'm inclined to believe that the system of government in a country determines whether or not "short term pain for long term gain" will work or not.
In the early 90's the Jean Chretien majority faced down Canada's horrid debt by cutting services, transferring responsibility for others to the provinces and jacking up taxes. Keep in mind that Canada is a parliamentary democracy where the governing party needs only to maintain the confidence of the House of Commons and steer clear of violating the Constitution. They were challenged and lost a couple of cases dealing with the division of powers between the Feds and the provinces.
By the time an election came around the debt was going down rapidly, taxes were slowly being reduced, business was doing much h better and we were doing very, very well thank you. Chretien's Liberals stayed in power till they got decimated in 2009 by the Conservatives.
As the Tories settled in they repeated the formula and we escaped by far the worst effects of the bank caused recession/depression that followed the banking crash. Our taxes are going down again, our trade is going guns and, as a country, we're confident and looking at a prosperous future.
Oh, and we never deregulated the banks.
In Chretien's time the formula was controversial but it worked. With Harper now, we accept that the formula works even if we grumble about the short term pain part.
Both leaders have maintained the confidence of the House in both majority and minority situations while we've done this.
And both have campaigned on it and won.
It leads me to the conclusion that the differing systems have as much, or more, to do with our divergent economic situations at the moment as much as anything else.
That, and a Tim Horton's at every second section in Canada.
Re: My biggest complaint about your post . . .
I'm not going to complain about using focus groups as a verb. That's just how English change and grows. I'm thinking about Shakespeare who broke just about any grammar rule that you can imagine and invented a few dozen words along the way, too.
On the topic I'm inclined to believe that the system of government in a country determines whether or not "short term pain for long term gain" will work or not.
In the early 90's the Jean Chretien majority faced down Canada's horrid debt by cutting services, transferring responsibility for others to the provinces and jacking up taxes. Keep in mind that Canada is a parliamentary democracy where the governing party needs only to maintain the confidence of the House of Commons and steer clear of violating the Constitution. They were challenged and lost a couple of cases dealing with the division of powers between the Feds and the provinces.
By the time an election came around the debt was going down rapidly, taxes were slowly being reduced, business was doing much h better and we were doing very, very well thank you. Chretien's Liberals stayed in power till they got decimated in 2009 by the Conservatives.
As the Tories settled in they repeated the formula and we escaped by far the worst effects of the bank caused recession/depression that followed the banking crash. Our taxes are going down again, our trade is going guns and, as a country, we're confident and looking at a prosperous future.
Oh, and we never deregulated the banks.
In Chretien's time the formula was controversial but it worked. With Harper now, we accept that the formula works even if we grumble about the short term pain part.
Both leaders have maintained the confidence of the House in both majority and minority situations while we've done this.
And both have campaigned on it and won.
It leads me to the conclusion that the differing systems have as much, or more, to do with our divergent economic situations at the moment as much as anything else.
That, and a Tim Horton's at every second section in Canada.
(untitled comment)
The Hollywood Reporter, which Mike links to in his write up, doesn't appear all that concerned that the ads are untruthful as they have a link to YouTube video of the ad. If it's true that the TV stations didn't do their fact checking and ended up as part of a lawsuit as a result I'd be certain that the Hollywood Reporter did.
I doubt attack ads are going anywhere soon, no matter how many people complain about them, because political operatives are utterly convinced that they work. Sadly there is no evidence that the don't work. At least with the so-called "base".
Equally, though, the target ought to be able to sue if the ad(s) is factually incorrect. Keeping in mind, of course, that any suit will only attract attention to the original ad(s). Which will more than likely be the case with this one given that election day in the USA is so close and the case(s) will likely not be heard before then and that the damage, if any, will be done.
Re: Re:
The governmental peer pressure came from Mexico and other Latin American countries bordering the Pacific as well as smaller countries on the other side of the puddle. It's not like the USA was wanting us there at all.
Truth be known I don't think they did and when we and Mexico joined we were given a card table down the door from the conference room and not let in. We're there in our own interests and those interests include increasing trade with nations other than the United States.
Our interests in this are different than American interests. The US is having to contend with the one massive player who isn't at the table at TPP who may overtake them as the largest player on the Pacific Rim in the next decade. China. And China has no interest in playing this silly game. (Though I bet Chinese intelligence has all the documents down to the last comma and accent grave in them so far.)
In fact, TPP is a large joke without the Chinese there.
As for Hollywood -- stuff it.
Re: usa
Ahhh, trish, please read what I just posted. I expect that I speak for better than 30 million of us, in both official languages, when I say that we don't want a say in that mess.
For all the control you say the Americans have over our current government Hollywood and it's Canadian allies, including the CBC, lost big time on C-11 so it's not as great an influence as many seem to think it would be.
Changing that would mean the opposition parties would have to get their acts together so there was an option too. We'll have to see what the NDP have to offer now that Jack Layton's gone. The Liberals are a totally lost cause for one or two more elections if not permanently.
Re:
Last time I looked, Average Joe, Canada was NOT the 51st state and we have zero desire to become that. Nor are we part of or subject to American regulatory processes, your lunacy or that of the so-called entertainment industry.
As for the jobs and dollars can you at least come up with one, just one, reputable study that shows that before spouting off again? Do take your time. It's gonna take a long time to find one that fits in with your view and that of Hollywood.
Jackass.
Re:
It may also eliminate the need for France to raise taxes for a few years!
Re: Re: Re: All the News that's Fit to Print
You have to admit that fighting craigslist and kijji by putting a paywall around THEIR classifieds is something only a madman would think of!! :-)
Re: Er, if in place presumably 100% of those charged would /be/ stopped.
The problem is that no one is being charged with anything. Three strike rules don't charge, they suspect that ootb is engaged in piracy so after three "warnings" ootb, a complete innocent, is cut off the Internet.
Perhaps a complete innocent in that torrenting and http file transfer are both too hard for him.
All silliness aside. Charging means something entirely different than suspicion. It also indicates that the person charged has the opportunity to challenge the evidence protected by the presumption of innocence.
Just don't bother the MPAA and it's phantom polling firms down under to figure that part out. Legality gives them headaches.
(untitled comment)
The reality is that it's easier and offends fewer vested interests than tackling the entire patent system. Keeping in mind that the courts are a significant part of the reason it's broken.
That said if there's good reason to pressure the ITC over one (some) patents there's an even better reason to press for going over the entire broken system.
Judge Posner had some valid points about actually cutting the number and type of "inventions" qualifying for patent protection down. You had some good responses.
I'd also point to the term of patents these days. Cutting it in half to 10 years even in Pharma wouldn't hurt much and limiting renewals would hurt even less.
As has been pointed out by both you and Judge Posner is that patent protection is possible in the tech sector even if it is largely prior art, well known and practised or considered obvious by practitioners. And there it hangs till it gets challenged and invalidated or worked around.
And I'm just barely beginning. Like telling patent trolls that unless they're actually MAKING what the patent covers they're gonna lose it in short order and it'll go into the public domain.
And more.
Re: All the News that's Fit to Print
It's even less than that.
Once you get by concentration of ownership, if you can, you'll find that most investigative reporting tends to avoid challenging the power structure which is what Woodward and Bernstein did. Though, to be honest, print still covers more deeply than TV does. And more than most blogs do.
As others have mentioned newpapers have been in cost cutting mode long before craigslist or blogs appeared so that their ownership could pay off the debts established building huge chains of papers. And the easiest way to do that? Lay off your most seasoned and experienced staff and hire people on the cheap. Pay AP not your own staff. Hire stringers. Specialize in "he said, she said" stories and pretend that's objective and penetrating journalism. And if there's no blood for the "if it bleeds, it leads" truism, find a way to create some.
And as you said, reprint, almost verbatim, corporate and government press releases without investigation or even a hint of rewrite to them.
As for craigslist or Kijji, the most recent response to that around these parts has been to put the classifieds behind a paywall!
Re: Re: Missing Steps
So, put another way, the people uploadng to pirate sites are either employees who have stripped debugging code and other dreck before sending it off into the great torrent cloud in the sky or someone along the way has reverse engineered the software and done the same thing.
Either way, someone isn't understanding Step 4 so no matter how big a stick they use at Step 6 that won't change.
(Waving my 36" chain saw in air menacingly at any nearby stickes carried by the Average Joe's of the world.)