Dave Cortright 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (71) comment rss

  • On the post: FBI Director Still Won't Say Which Encryption Experts Are Advising Him On His Bizarre Approach To Encryption

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 16 Feb, 2018 @ 08:04am

    Once Wray is done balancing encryption concerns…

    he can then tackle balancing the lascivious proclivities of pedophiles against the desire for children to not be raped.

  • On the post: ESPN Still Isn't Quite Getting The Message Cord Cutters Are Sending

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2018 @ 12:41am

    Innovator's Dilemma

    Cannibalize your current cash cow for the future, or ride it into the ground and watch an upstart do it to you.

    There aren't too many orgs with the fortitude to pull that off. I doubt ESPN will be able to. Netflix comes to mind, but hey, they freaking *named* the company with the vision they wanted, even when they were shipping physical disks in the mail.

  • On the post: Minnesota Supreme Court Says Unlocking A Phone With A Fingerprint Isn't A Fifth Amendment Issue

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 30 Jan, 2018 @ 06:16pm

    Public service announcement: press the iPhone power button 5 times on any encounter with police, TSA, ICE

    iOS now has a reasonably easy way to disable fingerprint unlock on the fly. 5 presses of the power button, and it will reject all touchID attempts. I don't have an X, but my guess is this works for FaceID too.

  • On the post: FBI Director Chris Wray Says Secure Encryption Backdoors Are Possible; Sen. Ron Wyden Asks Him To Produce Receipts

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 27 Jan, 2018 @ 08:01am

    Re: Re: Are you willing to conduct all of your personal banking with this backdoor encryption system, Mr Wray?

    Maybe he should talk to Todd Davis…
    https://www.wired.com/2010/05/lifelock-identity-theft/

    "Apparently, when you publish your Social Security number prominently on your website and billboards, people take it as an invitation to steal your identity.

    LifeLock CEO Todd Davis, whose [social security]number is displayed in the company's ubiquitous advertisements, has by now learned that lesson. He's been a victim of identity theft at least 13 times,…"

  • On the post: FBI Director Chris Wray Says Secure Encryption Backdoors Are Possible; Sen. Ron Wyden Asks Him To Produce Receipts

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 26 Jan, 2018 @ 05:09pm

    Are you willing to conduct all of your personal banking with this backdoor encryption system, Mr Wray?

    When it comes to literally putting your money where your mouth is, I would like to see any person who is proposing a backdoor encryption model move all of their personal banking, stocks, bonds, loans, retirement accounts... really all financial data over to using that encryption. Given all the bad actors out there, do they really trust all of their money with this system? I think we all know the answer...

  • On the post: New York City Hotels Say Obnoxious $25 'Destination Fee' 'Improves The Customer Experience'

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 07 Dec, 2017 @ 03:35pm

    What are you gonna do…?

    go to AirBnB instead?

    Oh wait, you are. Shit. Come back please! We'll give you reward points (whatever those are good for) and a mint on your pillow!

  • On the post: Days Before Doing Verizon's Bidding, Ajit Pai Gives A Talk At Verizon

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 05 Dec, 2017 @ 01:45pm

    If I had $1,000,000,000…

    It's fun to fantasize the stuff I could do with a lot of money. One awesome scenario would be to find out the company that provide internet service to the FCC, buy them, and then "free market" the heck out of their connection. Completely block all traffic to and from Verizon, AT&T and all the other big telcos unless they buy the "just desserts" package for only $999,999/month. Any maybe just randomly slow down service, accidentally misdirect emails over to The Intercept and Wikileaks, have unschedule service windows during peak business hours... What are they going to do, sue me? Ha!

  • On the post: Dennis Prager Sues YouTube For Filtering His Videos In A Way He Doesn't Like

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 28 Oct, 2017 @ 02:41pm

    Re: Re: YouTube is not a public forum

    Citation needed.

    I know there have been some cases of shopping malls being declared public venues, but then the precedent was stepped back in later rulings. And now it seems that—while a few states have passed more expansive free speech laws on private property—the federal government has not.
    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2003/03/why_can_shopping_malls_limit_free_speech.html

  • On the post: Dennis Prager Sues YouTube For Filtering His Videos In A Way He Doesn't Like

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 27 Oct, 2017 @ 07:35pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    And your point is? YouTube said that to explain to its community what happened and what they should expect in the future. The phrase "improperly censored videos" is regarding YouTube's own internal policies, and not some legal definition.

  • On the post: Dennis Prager Sues YouTube For Filtering His Videos In A Way He Doesn't Like

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 27 Oct, 2017 @ 01:47pm

    YouTube is not a public forum

    IANAL, but the fact that YouTube is not a public forum means they can curate and moderate however they see fit, right? I mean all that other stuff about section 230 is nice and all, but shouldn't it start and end with the fact that YouTube has the right to refuse service to anyone, just like restaurants?

  • On the post: The Good News: You Can Download Hawking's PhD For Free; The Bad News: It Took 50 Years To Make It Happen

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 26 Oct, 2017 @ 08:52am

    This is *EXACTLY* why HTML was created

    I thought it was funny that here they are sharing a physics paper on the internet, nearly 3 decades after physicist Tim Berners-Lee specced and implemented HTML, specifically for sharing documents.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML#Development

  • On the post: DOJ Continues Its Push For Encryption Backdoors With Even Worse Arguments

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 16 Oct, 2017 @ 07:49am

    I'll be in your base killing your dudes

    If you have a known back door, anyone who really wants to is going to get through it. So only the ill-informed or lazy would ever use it.

    Meanwhile, the rest of the world—which last I checked the US still does not control—will continue to use the real thing. So the US would essentially be putting themselves at a huge disadvantage.

    SMH

  • On the post: Internet Archives Liberates Old Books Using Never Used Before Provision Of Copyright Law

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 13 Oct, 2017 @ 07:38am

    Re: Mickey Mouse

    I had the same idea. Maybe not Steamboat Willie—which is actually a cartoon, not a book—but some other obscure book or comic book from that era that includes Mickey or any Disney character. I would absolutely contribute to a legal defense fund when the 'Mouse lawyers come out to play.

  • On the post: Members Of Trump's Admin Team Using Private Email Accounts Because Of Course They Are

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 02 Oct, 2017 @ 11:18am

    The NSA collects it all, right?

    The NSA should have access to all of this email. If they cared to go dig it up. Which they probably don't because these are the same guys who can influence their programs and funding. But for the next leaker out there, maybe throw these into the archive as well before you walk out the door...

  • On the post: Case Dismissed: Judge Throws Out Shiva Ayyadurai's Defamation Lawsuit Against Techdirt

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2017 @ 09:05pm

    Please write another article about how Shiva didn't invent email

    In fact, you should write one every week. Just like Bruce Schneier has his Friday squid blog post, you should have a weekly "Shiva STILL didn't invent email" post. You could crowdfund some of the writing. I'd pay $20 to get a particularly purple descriptor published:

    Shiva—who even narcissists refer to as a completely delusional, self-absorbed waste of his constituent atomic elements…

  • On the post: Alex Mauer Gets Another Game Taken Down From Steam Via DMCA As She Sends Imagos' Lawyer Death Threats

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2017 @ 03:56pm

    I'm not sure another soundtrack will help…

    If Alex has shown such blatant disregard in false DMCA takedowns, then I'd bet even odds that she'll also DMCA the new soundtrack, just because that's the kind of scorched earth tactic people like her tend to do. She'll rationalize it saying the new soundtrack was derivative of her work or some other such BS. Conatus had better be prepared to go to court.

    That said, if Steam doesn't have its own system for appealing a takedown and filing evidence to reverse it, then they are equally complicit in this problem. At least with YouTube, whenever I've had claims on videos I've uploaded, I can send supporting documentation and in all cases I've had them reversed.

  • On the post: Appeals Court Agrees Government Can Tell NSL Recipients To STFU Indefinitely

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 18 Jul, 2017 @ 11:40pm

    Oh darn, we were hacked. Those pesky Russians sure are annoying

    Says the savvy company that wants to leak their NSL to the press and have plausible deniability about violating any order.

  • On the post: Latest EU Parliament Votes On Copyright: Fuck The Public, Give Big Corporations More Copyright

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 17 Jul, 2017 @ 12:22pm

    robots.txt

    It seems worth mentioning in all of these "you need to pay me for advertising our content on your search engine" articles that anyone may opt out of unauthorized snippets simply by configuring their robots.txt file and then doing licensing deals for people who want to pay. Of course they'd rather get all the same traffic AND some extra for free cash too and let the govt manage the deals.

  • On the post: Three Thoughts On EU's $2.7 Billion Antitrust Google Fine

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 28 Jun, 2017 @ 01:05pm

    If I ran the world…

    I admit a company probably would never do this, but why can't Google just say, fine we won't have a business presence in the EU? They can still absolutely sell services and ads that are targeted to that local. Just require the transactions to take place on US servers using US $. and of course people will still be able to get to Google. And they will, unless governments start Draconian blocking. Google basically did this with news in Spain. I don't see why they don't just do that in this case as well.

  • On the post: Game Music Composer Goes On DMCA Blitz Against Innocent YouTubers Over Contract Dispute With Game Publisher

    Dave Cortright ( profile ), 27 Jun, 2017 @ 11:44am

    Mauer's Last Symphony

    And thus ends the music composition career of Alex Mauer, whereby no rational, background-checking entity will ever hire her to clean their floors let alone create music for them. It amazes me how people can be so shortsighted as to not see even one step beyond where things stand right now.

Next >>