Richard’s Techdirt Profile

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  • Jan 23rd, 2012 @ 10:56pm

    Terrorist Senators

    Surely if a senator wanted to execute a truly diabolical terrorist attack on America, they would just vote for SOPA/PIPA?

  • Jan 17th, 2012 @ 2:32pm

    Furthering interests

    Seriously, who honestly thinks that Wikipedia, Reddit and others are shutting down their sites to "further their corporate interests?"

    I can clearly see that shutting down your own site is furthering your own corporate interests, just like not offering movies for rental for 2 months after release for sale is furthering their own corporate interests, the similarities are there.

  • Jan 14th, 2012 @ 7:28pm

    I'm worried

    I'm worried about these blackouts... as someone who lives in Australia, will I be forced to go without all these sites as well, or are they only going to block Americans? :P

  • Nov 13th, 2011 @ 2:52pm

    Social Media is killing the advertising industy

    I wonder, given that virtually every industry is saying "social media is the advertising of the future", when the advertising industry will start to complain that things like Facebook are killing their business? Obviously, there is advertising on Facebook, but if they're losing those lucrative TV dollars because companies start thinking they're better served putting their money into social media, which might not even be handled by the advertising company!

  • Nov 11th, 2011 @ 4:16am

    (untitled comment)

    Mike, I believe it is called American Democracy.

  • Jul 26th, 2011 @ 2:02pm

    (untitled comment)

    I realise that the record labels and the RIAA are virtually indistinguishable from each other, but the thing I find interesting is it is never usually an individual label that is doing the suing, it is the RIAA. So when a top employee of a label tells said label that what the RIAA is doing is wrong and counter-productive, why is the response to trust in the RIAA and not their own over-paid employee?

  • Jul 9th, 2011 @ 2:20am

    (untitled comment)

    Given that people tend to watch the news that reflects their views, and not watch news that doesn't, I don't really see how this means anything at all anyway. If all the tv/newspaper etc news in an area is putting forward one point of view, then people who agree will read it and say "yes, you're right!" and people who don't will either not read it, or read it and say "no, that's complete BS!"

  • Jul 9th, 2011 @ 2:13am

    (untitled comment)

    Wait wait wait, I think you're missing the most disturbing part of that ruling, as I read it anyway.

    Apparently, it is ok, because the GPS never reported a position that wasn't a public place. That's how I read that little snippet. So apparently, so long as it's only reporting the public places (like a street, or outside an address) that's ok? But if it reported a private place (like the inside of a private garage) then it would be bad? Given that cars rarely tend to go to truly private places (parked on the street, public parking, etc) that means there is apparently no grounds at all for a GPS placed on a car to be an invasion of privacy?

  • Jun 28th, 2011 @ 5:40am

    (untitled comment)

    I actually read another article on this story last night (was on ITNews.com.au, don't have a link) where they were saying that the filter was not going to be using the ACMA blacklist, but rather the Interpol list. I actually have a better time accepting that list, as my impression (without research) is that it is maintained by international law enforcement, rather then governments. It has it's flaws (for example, definition of "underage" has been done "by comittee" and so is therefore 13, not the 18 it commonly is in Australia and other countries) but I see it as being a kind of neutral 3rd party, rather then something controlled and run by our government, who definitely have a vested interested in what the people see in the media.
    I am a little concerned that Telstra might decide to start filtering the internet for their wholesale customers as well, thus ISPs who actually don't wish to enforce this filter on their customers will end up doing so simply because they use Telstras hardware. Although I'm not entirely sure that's how it can work, so feel free to point out my error any techs out there.

  • Jun 28th, 2011 @ 5:14am

    (untitled comment)

    I had a sudden thought when I read this.

    Blocking by country is, I assume, done by IP address. Certain countries have certain IP addresses that they use, so if you block that range, you block that country. Simple enough to get around with proxies in other countries. But that was IPv4.
    IPv6, from what I know about it, assigns "IP"s based on the devices MAC address (as well as some random number for security/privacy purposes). Because of this, and the size of the IPv6 address range, the doling out of IP addresses by IANA is quite simply unnecessary. Thus, there will presumably be no "country range" of IP's. Thus these country blocking attempts will quite simply STOP WORKING once we finally make the big switch over to IPv6 (which despite the fact that we officially ran out of IPv4 addresses sometime last year, is probably still ages away).

  • Jun 26th, 2011 @ 3:38pm

    (untitled comment)

    Honestly the scary thing to me is the fact that this isn't being required by law, and Tel$tra and Optu$ aren't known for their strong beliefs in moral causes, and still they're doing this. I understand when "religious" ISP's block these kind of lists, but when a bog standard corporation does it, the mind boggles.

    And if people think that a change in govt back to the libs will actually change anything, maybe you're just not as cynical as me. Or do you think the democrats will make a showing this time? or worse... the greens...

  • Jun 24th, 2011 @ 2:54pm

    (untitled comment)

    So the ruling basically states that the US Government is not able to regulate the release of sensitive information? So then surely they can't make documents classified and thus restrict their release?

  • Jun 16th, 2011 @ 9:23pm

    Re:

    If the actions are identical, then it is quite easy to draw a comparison. Much like people who oppose the death penalty call it murder.

  • Jun 16th, 2011 @ 9:19pm

    (untitled comment)

    I always thought that China had a bit of a "We don't care" attitude to the policies the rest of the world would like to impose on them. Funny then to see them using the same "We must live up to our international obligations" line seen so often in the West.

  • Jun 14th, 2011 @ 6:00am

    (untitled comment)

    it is certainly nice to see the US government supporting such projects

    So, you don't believe that these efforts to ensure "freedom" for other countries internets is to encourage the people in those countries to go the route of Egypt, etc and over throw their governments, or at least start a civil war. At which point the US, acting as the worlds police force, steps in to "peacekeep" and "rebuild". They've realised, probably a while ago, that just assassinating a leader in a foreign country will results in far too much bad press for them, or if done very subtly an influx in conspiracy theories.

    I don't know, maybe I'm a bit too conspiracy nut myself, but that seems to be the obvious reasoning behind wanting to "help freedom" in other countries, regardless of home policies.

  • Apr 18th, 2011 @ 7:33pm

    Re:

    Maybe Righthaven will actually end up fighting for good in this case, and get the ICE domain seizures rejected?

  • Feb 6th, 2011 @ 2:53am

    (untitled comment)

    You know, the number of people who have pointed out "buildings keep their stairs locked" makes me think Sam NEVER uses the stairs in any building he goes to.

    He also clearly did not consider the implications of "shaming" a legitimately handicapped person EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIVES if they happen to work/school/live in a building with his elevator.

  • Jan 25th, 2011 @ 6:52pm

    (untitled comment)

    So if this is accurate, then the copyright holders stand to make very little and could end up losing a significant amount if most recipients don't settle. Seems like an odd deal to make.
    Sounds like a standard record industry contract to me, complete with record industry accounting.

  • Nov 16th, 2010 @ 6:35pm

    Re: bloging

    Maybe this is actually the careful planning of the newspapers, who also support hot news laws. Sure, the paywall may not bring in much cash, but if another publication with deeper pockets then a random blogger was to run with the story as "new" they could be open to copyright lawsuits :D

  • Sep 30th, 2010 @ 3:02am

    (untitled comment)

    Maybe the french are just still annoyed over the whole "search for 'french military victories' and google suggests 'did you mean french military defeats?'" thing that 4chan did ages ago.

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