Lisa Westveld’s Techdirt Profile
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About Lisa Westveld
My friends call me Lisa. My enemies can refer to me as the Dutch Ice Princess from Hell. Fortunately, I have no enemies. :-)
Yeah, Dutch, female, young, intelligent and I have a girlfriend, which makes me a Le..ia. and proud of it!
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Re: Re:
Actually, he's getting 1.3 million for a single tune that's heard in the anti-piracy jingle on each and every DVD published by the Dutch market. It's a few seconds long, probably less than a minute and the narrator talking through the jingle isn't part of the song.
And no, not Dutch movies, but any movie that's sold after 2007, possibly all over the world too. As long as it has been produced in the Netherlands. It's been proven that his music was used in at least the anti-piracy spots of over 77 DVD's but more likely even more songs.
Rietveld has his own website at http://www.mbrproducties.nl/ where he explains (in Dutch, sorry) what's exactly going on.
Re: Re: He didn't resign
Maybe, then again, I live there. Corrupt politicians, board members and other top people seem to be supporting each other a lot so he won't disappear. He'll probably end up with a different job somewhere else. He'll have to stay low for a few years but then this will probably forgotten ot some other board member will be exposed.
Problem is, no one knows if what he did breaks the law. If it didn't then people will soon forget again and he'll be back. Besides, he has his own company and plenty of financial resources and at times of a financial crisis he'll will be welcome everywhere...
No matter how corrupt he is.
He didn't resign
Jochem Gerrits didn't really resign but stepped down for the duration of some internal investigations before he'll be allowed to return to his old position again. Basically, they're just waiting for the news story to blow over and then they can continue to enrich themselves.
Re: Re: Justin Bieber's love Child is more important!
At first I wondered how that woman had gotten pregnant anyways. Lesbians can't become pregnant from each other! :-)
But now I realise that Justin is secretly a boy. Well, that's a great hidden secret. :-)
Justin Bieber's love Child is more important!
To be honest, I'm not a citizen of the USA. I don't even want to visit the USA during holidays. I'm from the Netherlands so US legislation is mindnumbingly boring to me. And it's unlikely to have any effects on me. But if some woman has the love child of Justin Bieber then I want to know every detail of this whole story! So, please tell us more about little Bieb... :-)
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Love the penguin in the top of the article. :-)
Re:
Not smoking, okay. Not drinking, okay. No sex??? You're still a virgin? Wow! Are you a monk or priest? :-)
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This reminds me of the Dutch Psychology professor in the Netherlands, Diederik Stapel. Recently, he published a report which told that people who eat meat are salfish bastards. He explained that meat eaters are basically the scum of the world and Vegetarians are just nice, friendly people.
He should not have done this, though. People distrusted this report and asked for facts, scientific data and whatever more. There was none...
Then they started asking for facts and research data for his other publications... Still none.
And now this Professor is suspended, probably to lose his tenure and all his publications are now suspected to be untrue.
So, this research looks like Diederik Stapel wrote it. Then again, he's probable not the only unreliable professor. As long as these people are encouraged to just publish a lot, there will always be some fraudulous publications just for the heck of it...
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I have a DVD collection of nearly 800 titles, collected over a period of about 8 years. So on average, I buy 100 DVD's per year. Most of them in discount stores for EUR 5 or less. I rarely spend more than 10 Euro on a single DVD, unless I really want to see that movie.
To be honest, I reserve about 50 Euro per month for new DVD's and since I have a nice income and no big expenses, I can easily set aside that much.
If MPAA thinks I'm willing to buy twice as much DVD's then they'd first have to lower the prices a lot! About half their current price, I'd suggest. Then it still fits within my budget. :-)
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Just wondering... Wouldn't those Justin Bieber video's be more popular now, since they're mentioned in various articles? How many people here have personally checked if those video's are up and running again? Isn't this similar to the Streisant effect? Justin Bieber is mentioned, thus Justin Bieber becomes more popular. What more can this girl wish for? ;-)
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Actually, "Real Alternative" is not likely to be freeware, but just illegal software. The creator of this software copied files from RealNetworks, combined this with some open-source files that were also from RealNetworks, added an icon from RealNetworks to make it look more like the Real software, and then distributed it as if it's freeware.
"Free Alternative" is very likely to be illegal, but no court has been able to judge this since no defendant can be found. This also means that no default judgement is possible, since courts don't even know which court would have proper jurisdiction...
RealNetworks is likely going to use Edskes as defendant for Real Alternative. When this happens, the software could be declared illegal. Right now, many site owners have already removed the software out of concerns for legal consequences.
Re: Re: Re: Caching DNS !!!
You don't understand the DNS system, do you? Sure, it's main purpose is to translate domain names to IP adresses. You do so with an A (IPv4) or AAAA (IPv6) record. You can also add TXT records for textual information or MX records for mail purposes. And there's the CNAME record which redirects a local subdomain name to a different server.
I myself use Google Apps on my personal domain, which is very nice but it requires me to add a few subdomains with a CNAME record which point to ghs.google.com and thus... Well, Edskes did something similar by redirecting mirror.edskes.com to another site. The additional path that you add would translate to the same path on the other server.
If Edskes would remove mirror.edskes.com from the DNS, that subdomain would still be in several caches for up to 48 hours. And thus anyone who uses such a cache would still notice that any link within the subdomain just continues to work.
Btw, if Real had instead typed his IP adress instead of his domain name, then they would NOT have seen his site! Edskes uses a shared host for his site, thus hundreds of sites share the same IP address. The webserver running those domains just filters all incoming calls, extracts the domain name, then decides which domain is going to handle the request. Go check for yourself. The IP address for edskes.net is 95.211.20.135 and if you go there... Tadaaaa! That's his host you're seeing!
Are you willing to acknowledge that you're mistaken or are you just trolling here to claim that Mike is wrong?
Re: Caching DNS !!!
Let's explain what went wrong with the DNS and it's caching...
Edskes used the DNS settings for his own domain to redirect links to the Real Alternative application on another system. Thus he did not host the software himself but it was hosted (mirrored) through Edskes domain.
The DNS system is a network of thousands of computers and each has to replicate any relevant DNS information. To do so, each DNS server will keep a copy of records inside it's cache. As a result, any change in DNS records is only effective once the old records are cleaned from the many caches and replaced with the new values. This could be done within minutes, or it could take up to 48 hours. It just depends on how often the DNS record has been used. Considering the popularity of Edskes site as freeware provider, you can safely assume it's heavily used, thus cached in a lot of places.
Unfortunately, since the software is outside Edskes server and the cached DNS records point to this outside source, those cached records will thus continue to allow people to download the Real Alternative through the link on Edskes domain for as long as the cache isn't cleared.
RealNetworks ordered Edskes to remove the link and he complied. Now all that was needed is time until those DNS caches are cleared. RealNetworks was a bit impatient, though.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Also, RealPlayer is also available for Linux and the Mac. And they also offer products for mobile devices like smartphones and iPads. Plus, RealNetworks is behind a gew game sites like Zylom and GameHouse. They offer Cloud services for multimedia services. And Verizon offers Verizon Video services for Android users, but those services are courtesy of RealNetworks. AT&T also works together with RealNetworks to offer video services. In Europe, RealNetworks provides ringtone services for Vodafone.
As it turns out, RealNetworks is quite big and chances are that you're already using RealNetwork products. Even if you don't use Windows.
I hoped RealNetworks would be nearly dead after RealPlayer was caught as spyware/malware but as it turns out, RealNetwork just managed to grow while staying away from the media. Real nasty!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Hey, you're smart enough to not get confused. I'm not easily confused by it too. Then again, we're above-average in our intelligence. But lesser-intelligent people also use the Internet. They would be confused by something using the name and logo of Real, while it's not endorsed by RealNetworks.
Anyway, even if most people aren't confused by this, it's still a trademark dispute which would leave the final word to a Judge and Jury.
If only they can find a defender...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I think it should be a violation, yes. Else a lot more trademarks will end up with companies using similar names to offer competing products. People wouldn't be able to see the difference between real and fake anymore. Trademarks exists so customers can recognize their products. Allowing this type of misuse would practically end the trademark value.
Re: Re: Re:
Real Alternative hasn't been declared illegal anywhere, yet. But that's because of technical reasons, since this software has no defender to bring to court. Also, which court should handle this case? No one even knows where this software has been created so the proper jurisdiction is unknown. All RealNetworks can do is to go after the distributors and in this case, they apparently did.
Re: Re: Re:
Even for a default judgment, you still need a defendant. John Doe might qualify but you also need to know the proper juristiction. No one even knows where Real Alternative was created! In the USA, Europe, Russia, China, Lybia? No one knows...
Without defendant there's just no case. A default judgement has no value if the defendant isn't even an US Citizen...
Re: Re:
Well, what I mean is that it appeared as if he was offering the software from his own server. On the Dutch IusMensis some guy discovered that a google search for Edskes name combined with Real Alternatives turns up quite a few sites referring to the site of Edskes where the software could be directly downloaded. His site was considered a mirror, probably up until the moment it's official distribution channel stopped distributing it.
Re: Time to boycott RealNetworks
Many people already boycotted RealNetworks because their software behaves like malware or spyware. It's almost impossible to remove again from your system. It even amazes me that this company still exists...