Adaline 's Techdirt Comments
Latest Comments (17)
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On the post: Bad Idea From Famed First Amendment Lawyer: Press Should Sue Trump For Libel
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On the post: IMDb Sues The State Of California Over New 'Ageism' Law
Adaline ( profile ), 11 Nov, 2016 @ 07:10pmJust like a matter of "artists not getting paid", Hollywood would rather lobby for a law that restricts everyone else (even though pretty minimally in this case) rather than fix the wrongs deeply embedded in its culture.
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On the post: What The Election Means For Stuff Techdirt Cares About?
Adaline ( profile ), 09 Nov, 2016 @ 02:07amMy omniscient gut tells me it's going to be relatively easy to convince Trump to side with the entrenched industries on intellectual property issues. Among the many talking points that have been echoed ad nauseam over the years, some seem to fit nicely with Trump's views:
- Copyright and patents are good for American businesses.
- Copyright and patents foster American jobs.
- Every year, American creative industries lose inexplicable amounts to filthy foreign pirates, many of which are from countries on the Special 301 list.
- The Chinese make knockoffs of American products without respecting intellectual property laws.
- The amount of patents a corporation owns is proportional to its worth.
As has often been said, while Clinton is perhaps just as likely to cosy up to large corporations (not least since Hollywood is in a Democrat state), it may be possible to persuade/pressure her through petitions and protests to accept different viewpoints or compromise. (And before the usual partisans show up, no, I wouldn't have voted for her either. I'm not even American.)
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On the post: Marc Randazza Emasculates Pick-Up Artist, Legal Counsel In Hilariously Brutal Response To A Bogus Takedown Demand
Adaline ( profile ), 18 Nov, 2014 @ 06:21amRe: Re:
Why not? What is the basis in law for curtailing free speech based on that criteria?
That he hasn't been barred from peddling his speech in the US probably means what he does isn't (as of yet) breaking US law. (And maybe nobody ever sued him to see whether a court will find him guilty. Who knows.)
However, this doesn't mean he has broken no law in the countries that refuse his presence. Such blatant misogyny and racism, coupled with promoting sexual harassment, may very well run afoul of laws in certain countries. But let's put aside our opinions whether such laws should be valid or not and focus on your examples vs. his speech.
Some parents/teachers/politicians may disagree with me, but most books, games, and other forms of consumable media that "provide highly detailed instruction on how to commit crimes and how to evade detection/apprehension" present fiction, and the reason they provide such details is that they try to be realistic.
If you want to make a military-themed FPS game like Call of Duty and be serious with it, you'll have to make your guns realistic. You could have players shoot marshmallows and incapacitate enemy combatants by overloading them with sweetness (okay, maybe there's such a game somewhere, I have no idea), but if the rest of the game were serious, it'd be ridiculed for being unrealistic.
Similarly, even with a decidedly unrealistic, fantasy game like Skyrim, you need to make swords look like swords: sharp and able to cut things in two. You could have players whack dragons with something that wouldn't hurt if used to hit others in real life, such as a pillow, but barring intentional easter eggs and the like, your game would be ridiculed for being unrealistic.
Simply put: meticulous details, which sometimes emphasise on violence, are often needed for realism in such cases. The goal of including such details is not to promote the violence within (again, some parents/teachers/politicians may disagree).
To teach people to get laid or even be a pick-up artist, one does not need any details promoting sexual harassment (not beyond verbal actions, at least). You don't tell your friend asking advice to approach a girl to consider assaulting her as a Plan B. You don't tell him to consider coercion if his earnest approach failed.
Blanc chose to include details relating to ways to conduct sexual harassment in his presentation meant to 'teach' men on dealing with women. He chose to suggest white men to use their God-given right for being white to use as a 'leverage' to lord over Japanese women. (I chuckled as I wrote that sentence. Having some Japanese acquaintances myself, it makes me wonder if Blanc has actually socialised with real Japanese women other than strangers he promotes to harass or fictional characters.)
Yes, instructions relating to something like self-defence are bound to give ways to disarm and incapacitate (among others) an attacker. I won't dispute that something like that does have an element of violence. But beyond the health advantages mentioned by another poster above, martial arts and self-defence techniques have the obvious purpose of defending yourself.
How to make use of them is the user's discretion, but it's no different from guns or even explosives (mining, destroying decommissioned buildings, etc). They are tools: in the right hands, they and the knowledge to use them have their use.
Your hypothetical is the same. There's the issue that self-defence instructions focused on protecting women from men like Blanc probably wouldn't be rich in details on the attempted harassment itself, but even if it were, and even if the details pertaining to harassment -- meant to educate women to be ready in various situations -- ended up being abused as a manual by similarly depraved men, the self-defence instructions themselves have their use. Just like guns and explosives, there will be abuses and misuses, but that doesn't invalidate the good uses.
Sexual assault/harassment techniques and the knowledge to apply them in certain situations have no valid use in whatever situation.
Let's put it this way: he's free to express his views and opinions on women, racism, misogyny, and sexual relationships. He's free to say it loud and clear that he thinks Japanese women are nothing more than sex slaves for sexually depraved white men. He's free to claim that people like him should hold total control in sexual relationships just because they're white males. He's not the only such person in the world.
What he may find himself in trouble for is encouraging sexual harassment/assault and promoting ways to do it. I'm free to openly say I detest people of certain races, religions, ethnicities, etc, but I shouldn't expect my platform to be there for me to speak on when I start saying things like "look, here's how you do it: walk up to this person of that ethnicity and punch them straight in the face. It's fine because they're ethnically inferior to us and we can do whatever the heck we want." -
On the post: Kaspersky Publishes (Then Deletes) Article Claiming 'If You're Doing Nothing Wrong, You Have Nothing To Hide'
Adaline ( profile ), 30 Aug, 2014 @ 02:42amRe: cold-war tactics?
I've got two concerns:
1) What are the odds this won't be applauded? "See, even one of the biggest security companies agrees with us until its opinion got shouted down by those twenty-something-in-their-mom's-basement hippie terrorist appeasers!"
2) If 1 is true, or even if it isn't, what are the odds this is indicative of Kaspersky -- and probably others -- already whitelisting state-sanctioned malware/exploits/etc?
Oh, by the way, Mike, I think you missed a "such" here:
Either way, it seems flat out ridiculous that an internet security company would publish [such] an article. -
On the post: EasyDNS Tries To Balance Bogus Requests To Take Down Legit Foreign Online Pharmacies Against Truly Rogue Pharmacies
Adaline ( profile ), 26 Aug, 2014 @ 06:02amI'm sure there'll be more bending over backwards in an attempt to either portray this as a 'proof' that easyDNS isn't as customer-friendly as people think, or that since they decided to terminate a rogue pharmacy site there's no reason they can't exercise the same judgement on 'pirate' sites.
Of course, court order or no court order, here we have the US FDA providing evidence that someone actually died. There can be legitimate concerns raised about the validity of the FDA, but at least it's a government agency tasked with this kind of thing.
If the comparison we have is the City of London Police's extra-judicial, based-on-Hollywood's-say-so requests, or those from the ICE -- which does not stand for Immigration and Copyright Enforcement -- then I'd say there's a reasonable line to draw in between.
Now I just hope that easyDNS and other such companies actually standing up for their customers won't get bankrupt weathering all the complaints and lawsuits. -
On the post: Elon Musk Destroys The Rationale For Patents, Opens Up All Of Tesla's
Adaline ( profile ), 12 Jun, 2014 @ 01:23pmIt's great that they've decided to open up the patents. I'm the opposite of a patent system fan, but now that this has happened, I think it might be a good thing that Tesla holds the patents. Otherwise, if the inventions were never patented to begin with, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility for a big auto company to appropriate and patent all the technologies despite having no hand in making them happen.
Yes, prior art and all that, but that's never really stopped slimy patent attorneys from adding one or two sentences to make their application 'unique', now has it? Even if it causes enough bad PR and the misappropriated patents get invalidated, they can still do tremendous damage while they're alive. -
On the post: Only John Oliver Could Make Net Neutrality So Sexy That TMZ Wanted To Cover It
Adaline ( profile ), 06 Jun, 2014 @ 07:06pmRe:
Oops, forgot to close the tag, it seems... HTML 101 fail.
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On the post: Only John Oliver Could Make Net Neutrality So Sexy That TMZ Wanted To Cover It
Adaline ( profile ), 06 Jun, 2014 @ 07:05pmThat's an epic comment by Oliver. However, on the whole, I don't think it's net neutrality itself that got TMZ interested at all. I mean, of course an entity like TMZ would sensationalise headlines, but in my view, the way they titled the interview ("Comedian John Oliver?s bringing down of the FCC?s website makes him a powerful American!") shows what they're really interested in.
It's as Oliver himself says. "Net neutrality"? Boring. But a comedian taking down a government agency's website? And what are the odds TMZ's readers won't misinterpret that headline to mean that Oliver DDoS'd the FCC's website?
"What, his call to action brought about the downtime of the FCC's website? So he mobilised a bunch of people which resulted in that downtime? Does that mean he's part of Anonymous?"
Or maybe I shouldn't be giving them ideas. -
On the post: Google AdSense's Idiotic And Hypocritical Morality Police Force Us To Remove Ads On News Stories
Adaline ( profile ), 29 May, 2014 @ 06:13pmRe:
I don't think your predictions are by any means far fetched. Google has been gradually appeasing the whims of the entertainment industry. Besides, with Google being one of the primary proponents of Encrypted Media Extension, they may very well already be on their way to merge with/bow down to/lord over the entertainment industry.
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On the post: King Cries Trademark Over The Banner Saga
Adaline ( profile ), 25 Jan, 2014 @ 07:23pmRe: Re: Re:
With regards to Romancing SaGa, actually the entire SaGa/Final Fantasy Legend series dates back even further to 1989... and 1990 had the first game primarily titled as "SaGa" released: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SaGa_%28series%29
Funny, just a few days ago I was playing the DS remake of SaGa 2. "Ridiculous" is the first word that came to mind to see King doubling down by trying to trademark not just "candy" but also "saga" now. It's not like classical RPGs have been around for three decades... -
On the post: Moral Panic Over Google Glass: White House Petition Asks To Ban Them To Prevent 'Indecent' Public Surveillance
Adaline ( profile ), 06 May, 2013 @ 06:39amRe: "the technology is coming one way or the other"?
So according to the premise of OOTB here, you should all just shut up about DRMs getting cracked! It's coming, inevitable, you can't stop it with your "moral panic" on the outdated notion that customers shouldn't own what they purchased. Sheesh.
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On the post: Moral Panic Over Google Glass: White House Petition Asks To Ban Them To Prevent 'Indecent' Public Surveillance
Adaline ( profile ), 06 May, 2013 @ 06:01amRe:
That might be exactly why the Google Glasses sound like such a big deal. People wearing them are likely aware of their camera-like capabilities. This awareness may be a fatal blow to a long-term Orwellian plan to install nanoscopic cameras on glasses and market them as usual glasses so people will unknowingly be walking surveillance machines.
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On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Adaline ( profile ), 06 May, 2013 @ 02:56amRe: Re: Re: Wrong as usual. FUNNIEST is (not coincidentally):
So you'd rather hear him say "everyone calm down and watch as I push this magic button to stop all the problems caused by the broken copyright system" with confidence?
The closest thing to having a magic button that makes all the problems caused by copyright vanish is abolition of the system. Unless that is what you're secretly advocating? -
On the post: Moral Panic Over Google Glass: White House Petition Asks To Ban Them To Prevent 'Indecent' Public Surveillance
Adaline ( profile ), 06 May, 2013 @ 05:52amCan't wait to see more politicians grandstand against this. "See, we're trying to protect you from these devilish glasses that would record everything you're doing. It's not like we're in favour of dismantling your privacy rights."
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On the post: Mozilla Sends Cease And Desist Letter To Commercial Spyware Company For Using Firefox Trademark And Code To Trick Users
Adaline ( profile ), 04 May, 2013 @ 07:19amRe: Re: Re: Trademarks as marks of origin
No, not Ask Toolbar. It was there on my clients' computers (of course) along with other shady software, but it wasn't what I had in mind.
I actually managed to remember one: MyPlayCity. I don't know which software actually installed the nasties (the site offers free games, but it doesn't look like the uninstalling the games instantly removes the crapware as well), but it also hijacked browsers' homepage and default search engine.
I don't know, maybe it doesn't mean much in terms of legal grounds, but it does manage to confuse and trick people. Not that I wouldn't blame them for being too gullible either, though... -
On the post: Mozilla Sends Cease And Desist Letter To Commercial Spyware Company For Using Firefox Trademark And Code To Trick Users
Adaline ( profile ), 04 May, 2013 @ 05:18amRe: Trademarks as marks of origin
I wish there were more examples of this. I believe trademarks have a better chance than copyrights and patents to be used wisely. Google could probably learn from Mozilla. I've cleaned some computers whose users apparently installed some shady software that changed their browsers' default search engine to random sites. Some of those (can't really remember the address) really look like carbon copies of Google sans the logo. I've been thinking, can't Google bring a suit against those Google copycats (or they have, but I'm perfectly unaware)? After all, the people whose computers I fixed (who, you guessed it, aren't very tech savvy and probably don't pay much attention to URLs as opposed to just the web page) were perfectly tricked and didn't realise it was -not- Google.
On another note, I'm certain this isn't the first time this is being asked, but should companies like Gamma stay legitimate? Maybe a lot of companies need some sort of surveillance system for their offices, but doing so through deceitful means like this while also selling products clearly intended to help governments curb free speech?
Re: Re: Trump not 1A threat
Regardless of his position, if he keeps suing people for Constitutionally-protected opinions, he uses the government (court system) as a bludgeon to threaten speech based on content. If he wins a case, he creates a precedent which may be cited by other courts in the future. This can gradually add caveats to otherwise strong speech protections. And even if he never wins any case, the threat of getting sued -- costing very significant amounts of time, money, and mental distress -- alone will deter people from voicing negative opinions about him. Just see the ABA.