That Anonymous Coward's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
from the no,-not-that-one dept
No, not that Anonymous Coward, but That Anonymous Coward is handling this week's favorites....
Everyone on board the short bus!
I'm your tour guide, That Anonymous Coward but you can call me TAC.
So I was as surprised as you now are, when Mike asked me to write the Favorites of the Week post, but like moss I grow on you, given a chance. Everyone buckle up and lets review the short week as we ride the short bus.
If you look to your left, you can see Facebook whining because someone made their button illegal in Germany. They seem to be bothered that it is no longer the awesome tracker (read: money machine) they intended it to be. Who cares about silly laws, this is Facebook we are talking about.
Coming up on the right, just past the smoke from the fire and brimstone burning in the moat, you can just catch sight of the MPAA offices. After getting a court to decide the length of the cable matters in determining infringement, they then decided to put out some more "unique" uses of math showing losses to "piracy". They really aren't trying very hard any more to look remotely serious in their statements.
Now we turn the corner and zut alors! - France has decided Copyright is more important than Human Rights. I guess when you're sleeping with a model/singer you get a little confused. Oh and if you can't get the people to lay down to accept you screwing their rights, just sneak it in. (And let us not forget that they violate copyright when its convenient for them.)
Hold tight as we speed up to get past the villagers getting their pitchforks and torches ready to pay a visit to the capitol... and on your left we have, no wait, look away.... nothing to see here.... just making sure there are no terrorists hiding inside that nice lady's vagina.
And now we come to the Copyright Troll Cul-de-sac, over there you can see the new house being built by lawyers representing a religious group. It seems they were upset over some former members saying unkind things online. They couldn't get their names as they forced material down, so they filed for a copyright and boom the doors opened wide. Copyright is a great tool for bypassing those silly freedoms people expect.
Oh there is a moving van over at the USCG McMansion. They are considering shopping for a court that will blindly rubber stamp their lawsuit so they can "settle" with alleged copyright infringers. Little known fact: one of their clients is Uwe Boll, voted the worst director in history. Even Uwe saw the benefit in turning one of his "fantastic" films into box office gold by scaring people into paying on fairly questionable evidence.
And Swatch, this odd little shack seems just jammed into the neighborhood. We record our announcements so we can claim copyright if you report too much. This makes only slightly more sense than getting arrested for filming cops in public.
This little burned out quonset hut is the EMI "ranch". It used to be nice, and there were hopes the new owners would fix the property up. Instead they have some lawyers chasing kids out of their yard.
Holy Hell!... A huge new section has been added to the Cul-de-sac, as if overnight it just sprung up before our eyes. It's as if someone waved a magic wand and made every copyright holder's wet dream come true. Those fires burning over there?... Oh those are just the things now made illegal by the public domain being gutted.
Because it's my tour, I want to give a shout out to Steele Hansmeier LLC and their little stick house. So what if its on Ars... its my tour and I'm driving. Why yes your honor, we lied when we said the IP address would let us name the infringer... now let me search all the computers in the house because he refuses to settle. We'll huff and we'll puff and we'll blow our own damn house down.
Oopsie the cul-de-sac's private security force, those nice officers from ICE, are taking aim at us, and so we drive on....
Hey is that a wrecking ball heading towards the Cul-de-sac? I think that is being driven by Judge Bernard Zimmerman. He seems to be heading towards one of the smaller houses.
Look over there, ohh sweet a double rainbow... what does it mean? Yeah, I don't understand, and neither does he.
Who here is from America, no hands... ummm I can tell some of you are pretending to be Canadian, I can understand why. When we aren't secretly forcing other countries to do things we can't do here, and shilling for Microsoft, we are getting the money flowing back here... for content holders...making laws up as we go along... just to support those who don't pay their fair share... and want everyone else to pay to protect their content.... Well, I dunno what to say about that, eh?
Oh crap, pretending to be Canadian won't cut it any more. What else can we pretend to be?
*bump bump*
Oops sorry folks, just a speed bump as we run over Ubisoft screwing their customers yet again and finding new ways to fail.
And that gleaming spire there on the horizon... that's the number of "Patriot Act Warrant Requests", I guess drugs are terrorists too.... It is ok give us unlimited powers with no oversight or responsibility... we won't misuse it... Trust Us.
Intellectual Property is our greatest asset, it is a great slogan on that billboard over there. The shame is, they seem to only want to apply that to some people's IP. When the people who actually make the new jobs, instead of cling to a crap business model, are against it, isn't it worthy of some debate? If you really wanted to fix the whole problem with Imagin... I mean Intellectual Property, shouldn't you keep people from having to find new way to do the same thing each time?
And here we are... safe and sound at home again. I hope you enjoyed the tour as much as I did giving it. Thank you Mike for the use of the bus, and letting me take your readers hosta... I mean for a ride. It shouldn't take much to get the steering column repaired from me hot-wiring it.
I am and remain....
TAC

Re:
Personally I see Dr. Tuteur in a better light, simply because she isn't running from blog to blog complaining how everyone is just out to get her and be mean.
The court ruling has a chance to change the landscape in a dramatic way, that benefits many more than these 2 bloggers in their fight. I see much of the escalation as being driven by 1 parties need to be the correct martyr that the bad people want to silence. Sadly that seems to be the typical reaction nowdays when someone disagrees with someone else.
(untitled comment)
Oh Mike, I know your loathe to do it but dear Nora has me curious where in IL or FL the ip address is or was it run through Mulvad.
Steele pookie, put on your big boy pants and at least put your name on things.
How does it feel having your ass handed to you by a bunch of anonymous people on the internet?
Re: more than one judge?
hola sharp...
I do hope that the Judge in the Harris case finds Mr. Harris's outrage appropriate for the situation and overlooks some of the more colorful wording.
Re:
Hey now thats unkind...
He might be subhuman scum, but he's still a people...
:D
(untitled comment)
Its ironic I think...
How Wikileaks was treated was cheered by these same journalists... and now they are shocked when its done to them.
Re:
If I stole your identity and used it to carry out fraud on the court in an ongoing fraudulent enterprise I'd end up charged with something...
These lawyers did that, and skated out with a note send to their moms.
Re: Re:
Mr. Cooper was NOT a party to the case in Judge Wrights courtroom. He was a 3rd party asked to appear and offer testimony. He or his lawyer are not being paid for those appearances.
In the MN case, Cooper filed alleging they stole his identity and to hold them accountable for that. As the Prenda train derails someone would have attempted to sue Alan Cooper who signed the copyright transfers for the shell company and Mr. Cooper would have been left holding the bag for a company he knew nothing about.
She literally did NOTHING to help Mr. Cooper, because she failed to read and understand Judge Wrights order and predecided that Cooper was a bad guy like the other people.
(untitled comment)
Isn't there a screen shot somewhere of Gina asking her little army of supporters to also send DMCA notices? Pretty sure I saw one, anyone but Gina is allowed to correct me as her grip on reality seems more focused on making herself a martyr.
Oh and Gina, because its clear you can't let any mention of your name go past without injecting your woe is me tale, it is awfully hard to rewrite history on the internet. It never forgets.
Oh and again this story isn't so much about you as it is about a process ripe for abuse and a court ruling about that issue. Your fall is just icing on the cake you whackjob.
(untitled comment)
Wow... This Judge baffles me.
After they stole Cooper's identity, used it in copyright transfers in what was found by a court to be fraudulent activity, and the defamation suits to shut up Mr. Cooper and his lawyer... she told them no dessert and go to your room.
Anyone still wonder why Pretenda was able to operate for so long (and is still running even with the finding of facts by Judge Wright?).
Re:
You left off that her 'crime' is much lesser than a man who beat his wife who they still keep around.
Funny videos get you fired, beating your wife gets you a job promoting the team.
Maybe Mr. Wirtz needs to goto the penalty box called forced separation from employment (or whatever stupid terms they use to avoid getting sued).
(untitled comment)
Still not shocked at the actions.
What would be shocking is a certified check showing up.
(untitled comment)
Gee and its not like we ever saw them using these notices to remove reviews they didn't like... er wait.
The system is broken so long as there is no punishment for getting it wrong or allowing them to just say oops. These are legal documents that if ignored carry punishments for the recipients, so why do the senders get to claim oopsie time and time again?
(untitled comment)
Why do we allow them to strip away our rights in the name of saving our rights?
It is very confusing, unless the endgame is just to make sure no regular citizens have any rights, then no need to waste time protecting them.
(untitled comment)
The issue is they can't see the problem...
So this is a case of the blind screwing the blind.
And on a fun note, why hasn't anyone called them on the carpet yet? They complain how people are 'stealing' money from them, and yet they have opted to ignore entire segments of the population and their dollars. If times are that rough, why aren't scrambling to obtain another revenue stream.
(untitled comment)
She got more hits on YouTube than Hull's ex-wife.
To soon?
Re: Re: Re: There you go
No no no your confused...
I'm the gay one.
Re: Re: How droll
crap, must mean its an American.
North is Up after all...
Re: Re: Re: How droll
So extorting thousands out of people who quite possibly are totally innocent is okay in your world, but exposing them carrying out the extortion is the same as bombing a public place.
What fucking planet are you from, and can we take up a collection to send you back?
(untitled comment)
OHAI SJD!
I'm happy for once I beat you to a prize, I got my posts of the week before you got yours. :)
Of course you still have more mentions by Judges in footnotes than I do...
With all of the recent stories, some crossing over the barriers between interest groups, it is nice to see that there is more notice being paid to copyright and the extra rights the monopoly holders demand everyone else give up to protect imaginary profits.
With Steele/Pretenda getting much wider coverage than ever before, I think people are finally cluing into the idea that the system might actually be flawed and the cries of but piracy are just a nice smokescreen to hide the cartel membership not wanting to adapt to the current market.
As always it is a joy to 'see' you... looking forward to Monday...
Re:
The case would have fallen apart before then.
This subpoena request was an attempt to obtain the name of the blogger 'Die Troll Die'.
DTD runs the blog DieTrollDie.com where Copyright Trolls get exposed.
They also sought the name of 'Sophisticated Jane Doe', but the registrar was different and much less US based.
This was the 3rd(?) failure in this case to unmask anonymous posters/commentators and just visitors to the 2 blogs.
They contend that me calling them a half step up from Nigerian Scammers was defaming them, I think I gave them to much credit.
This was about trying to discredit those people who were calling out Pretenda et al. (they've had so many names past, present, and future) as evil people out to sully the name of these fine upstanding lawyers who were protecting pornographers.