"I think Dan Brown's books are very dangerous. The quantity of hours that people read these action novels. It becomes a reality of some sort, and that's a part of it. It really comes down to educating schools and parents. To say 'you know what, you can't read that, sorry, I'm just not going to let you do it'."
"His entire adult life has been dedicated to taking advantage of others, using his computer expertise to violate others' privacy, to embarrass others, to build his reputation on the backs of those less skilled than he,"
Funny how this quote could, with minor grammatical modifications, be applied to the "victim", AT&T...
My 2013 is so much better now that Bev has appeared in it. She never ceases to amuse me. Some of the other commenters seem to want to associate new terms with her name. However, I am confident that she would be able to do so without any outside help.
I'm a little disappointed that Mike didn't take the time to explain exactly how to file a DMCA takedown notice. They might need help with that, and I think the result would be even more entertaining.
Of course the traditional publishers have more overhead. They have to protect against devaluation. That PC on the desk? They pay $2000 for it, because they wouldn't want to devalue the PC by paying less. Long distance phone calls? They pay 12 cents a minute for the same reason. What's that you say? They don't do that? Then why do they think consumers would want to do it?
@Mike: The problem isn't that "competes" is the wrong word. The problem is how you are reading the phrase. Try it this way: Kevin Smith competes...with piracy!
This article is just crazy talk. Of course you should squeeze every last bit of value from something you create! A bunch of movie studios are missing out on this. You know those previews that take up the first 15 minutes of every cinema experience? They should be charging viewers for those. Let's face it, if it is a comedy, that's usually where the best jokes are anyway.
Having a charitable component is kinda cool. Yes, in this case it's after-the-f cool.
To me, that it is after the fact makes it even cooler. It means that he's giving to charity because he wants to, not to drive sales. That's pretty high up there on the mermaldad heirarchy of commercial charitable giving:
From lowest to highest esteem
For every purchase you make, we'll make a gonation to the Central Ypsilanti Network for Infants, Children and Lepers (CYNICAL), up to $100,000.
My reaction: That's nice, but if you really wanted to give, you wouldn't put a cap on the amount. This is more about sales than a desire to give.
Help us raise money for CYNICAL by donating at the cash register.
My reaction: I'm glad that you are supporting this cause, but when you present the oversized check, will you remember to mention that the money was donated by your customers?
We are donating $100,000 to CYNICAL.
My reaction: that is nice. No gimmicks, just a nice gift to a worthy cause.
I had much the same idea as Mr. Smart***, although it sônded like he was talking. about patent trolls. We need some organization to put out a special report of its own, identifying the "rogue"players, individuals and organizations who do the most to distort and abuse copyright, patents, and trademarks from their original purposes. there should be a separate report for each form of IP.
...Oh, I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about the latest attempts to justify PROTECT IP. Nevertheless, I did notice a glaring omission in this article, on the first line, no less.
The guy's name was actually François Magnavoix. The spelling was mangled when he filed for a trademark, and the misspelled name stuck.
Just wanted to do my part to maintain the high standards of veracity expected on Techdirt.
A dark stranger entered the saloon. The murmur in the room subsided as all in the room paused to study him as he walked to the bar.
"Whiskey," he growled at the bartender.
The bartenders hands shook a little as he pulled out a printed paper and a pen. "Sign this," he said to the stranger.
"What is it?"
"It's a registration form. If you want a drink, you're going to have to sign it. It says that you will abide by our Terms of Service and agree to our Privacy Policy, which are in these here documents." The bartender slid two thick piles of papers toward the man.
The stranger's registered anger, then resignation. "All right, I'll sign," he said as he scrawled an X on the page. "Just give me my whiskey."
"Not so fast, partner. You didn't check the box that says you have read and agree to the terms of the TOS and Privacy Policy." The bartender pushed the stacks of paper a little closer to the stranger.
"Bah," he said, pushing the piles aside, "I never read those." He made the check mark and slid the paper back toward the bartender.
"Thank you," said the bartender as he poured a shot and set it down in front of the stranger.
If I ran a minor newspaper in Belgium I would sign a deal with Google giving them a free license to link to (and cache) my website in accordance with my robots.txt file. The deal would also include paid advertising on Google.
I bet you could beat out the majors and become the go-to news website in Belgium.
Regarding the Puffin article: "It has no flight ceiling—it is not air-breathing like gas engines are, and thus is not limited by thin air—so it could go up to about 9,150 meters before its energy runs low enough to drive it to descend."
Uh, doesn't it produce thrust using propellers? I may be mistaken (I'm just an aerospace engineer), but isn't a propeller limited by thin air?
All in all, an interesting article, but some of the claims are rather hype-filled.
Let me be absolutely clear here, Alex Petrov (the plaintiff) is in no way associated with gay porn. When you think of Alex Petrov, don't think about lewd acts. Do not associate Alex Petrov with bestiality. If you are a human, don't make these associations. If you are a search engine spider, don't link these terms just because they appear near each other in so many reports and comments across the Internet.
And definitely don't even think of Alex Petrov and Bev Stayart in a porno together...
This ends my public service message.
Mr. Petrov, you don't need to thank me. I'm just doing my public duty.
I'll confess. I have used a monitoring tool to spy on one of my children. This happened a few years ago when Child was in high school. My wife and I had begun to notice that Child was lying to to us...a lot. Based on other observations, we were pretty certain that Child was hiding something big. I installed the software to find out what I needed to know and then disabled it. It turned out that child was getting into something that could become cery serious, so I don't regret my actions.
That said, I agree with Mike that routinely monitoring your kids is not the way to build a trusting relationship, or indeed to teach them how to handle the Internet.
I pay my ISP for access to the Internet, but here is where things get into semantics. I make a Skype call. Is that "content" that I am accessing? What I am seeking in that instance is interaction with the person on the other end. If you define that as content, fine. But it is content that didn't exist before I sought it.
If there were no content on the web, it would be a sad place not worth visiting. However it turns out that there is a lot of content on the web. Some of it is unique, most of it is not. If Techdirt were to cease to exist tomorrow, would I be able to find another site offering similar stories and discussions? Sure. Not exactly the same, but similar.
Sorry, someone had to do it...
"I think Dan Brown's books are very dangerous. The quantity of hours that people read these action novels. It becomes a reality of some sort, and that's a part of it. It really comes down to educating schools and parents. To say 'you know what, you can't read that, sorry, I'm just not going to let you do it'."
Et tu
"His entire adult life has been dedicated to taking advantage of others, using his computer expertise to violate others' privacy, to embarrass others, to build his reputation on the backs of those less skilled than he,"
Funny how this quote could, with minor grammatical modifications, be applied to the "victim", AT&T...
Ahh, Bev
My 2013 is so much better now that Bev has appeared in it. She never ceases to amuse me. Some of the other commenters seem to want to associate new terms with her name. However, I am confident that she would be able to do so without any outside help.
Too far is not far enough
I'm a little disappointed that Mike didn't take the time to explain exactly how to file a DMCA takedown notice. They might need help with that, and I think the result would be even more entertaining.
Legacy players
Hmmm, I just thought of a new business model for the legacy music and movie industries...
A minor nit...
This just a minor nit, a flyspeck, if you will, but male mosquitoes are much *larger* than females, not the other way around.
overhead
Of course the traditional publishers have more overhead. They have to protect against devaluation. That PC on the desk? They pay $2000 for it, because they wouldn't want to devalue the PC by paying less. Long distance phone calls? They pay 12 cents a minute for the same reason. What's that you say? They don't do that? Then why do they think consumers would want to do it?
Competes with piracy
@Mike: The problem isn't that "competes" is the wrong word. The problem is how you are reading the phrase. Try it this way: Kevin Smith competes...with piracy!
crazy talk
This article is just crazy talk. Of course you should squeeze every last bit of value from something you create! A bunch of movie studios are missing out on this. You know those previews that take up the first 15 minutes of every cinema experience? They should be charging viewers for those. Let's face it, if it is a comedy, that's usually where the best jokes are anyway.
The part I disagree with
Having a charitable component is kinda cool. Yes, in this case it's after-the-f cool.
To me, that it is after the fact makes it even cooler. It means that he's giving to charity because he wants to, not to drive sales. That's pretty high up there on the mermaldad heirarchy of commercial charitable giving:
From lowest to highest esteem
For every purchase you make, we'll make a gonation to the Central Ypsilanti Network for Infants, Children and Lepers (CYNICAL), up to $100,000.
My reaction: That's nice, but if you really wanted to give, you wouldn't put a cap on the amount. This is more about sales than a desire to give.
Help us raise money for CYNICAL by donating at the cash register.
My reaction: I'm glad that you are supporting this cause, but when you present the oversized check, will you remember to mention that the money was donated by your customers?
We are donating $100,000 to CYNICAL.
My reaction: that is nice. No gimmicks, just a nice gift to a worthy cause.
I'm with Mr. Smart***
I had much the same idea as Mr. Smart***, although it sônded like he was talking. about patent trolls. We need some organization to put out a special report of its own, identifying the "rogue"players, individuals and organizations who do the most to distort and abuse copyright, patents, and trademarks from their original purposes. there should be a separate report for each form of IP.
Filled with omissions, half truths, and outright lies...
...Oh, I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about the latest attempts to justify PROTECT IP. Nevertheless, I did notice a glaring omission in this article, on the first line, no less.
The guy's name was actually François Magnavoix. The spelling was mangled when he filed for a trademark, and the misspelled name stuck.
Just wanted to do my part to maintain the high standards of veracity expected on Techdirt.
Ah yes, the wild west...
A dark stranger entered the saloon. The murmur in the room subsided as all in the room paused to study him as he walked to the bar.
"Whiskey," he growled at the bartender.
The bartenders hands shook a little as he pulled out a printed paper and a pen. "Sign this," he said to the stranger.
"What is it?"
"It's a registration form. If you want a drink, you're going to have to sign it. It says that you will abide by our Terms of Service and agree to our Privacy Policy, which are in these here documents." The bartender slid two thick piles of papers toward the man.
The stranger's registered anger, then resignation. "All right, I'll sign," he said as he scrawled an X on the page. "Just give me my whiskey."
"Not so fast, partner. You didn't check the box that says you have read and agree to the terms of the TOS and Privacy Policy." The bartender pushed the stacks of paper a little closer to the stranger.
"Bah," he said, pushing the piles aside, "I never read those." He made the check mark and slid the paper back toward the bartender.
"Thank you," said the bartender as he poured a shot and set it down in front of the stranger.
Ooh, ooh, can I get in on this?
Is the server back up?
If I ran a minor newspaper in Belgium...
If I ran a minor newspaper in Belgium I would sign a deal with Google giving them a free license to link to (and cache) my website in accordance with my robots.txt file. The deal would also include paid advertising on Google.
I bet you could beat out the majors and become the go-to news website in Belgium.
Regarding thePuffin Article
Regarding the Puffin article: "It has no flight ceiling—it is not air-breathing like gas engines are, and thus is not limited by thin air—so it could go up to about 9,150 meters before its energy runs low enough to drive it to descend."
Uh, doesn't it produce thrust using propellers? I may be mistaken (I'm just an aerospace engineer), but isn't a propeller limited by thin air?
All in all, an interesting article, but some of the claims are rather hype-filled.
Let me be absolutely clear here...
Let me be absolutely clear here, Alex Petrov (the plaintiff) is in no way associated with gay porn. When you think of Alex Petrov, don't think about lewd acts. Do not associate Alex Petrov with bestiality. If you are a human, don't make these associations. If you are a search engine spider, don't link these terms just because they appear near each other in so many reports and comments across the Internet.
And definitely don't even think of Alex Petrov and Bev Stayart in a porno together...
This ends my public service message.
Mr. Petrov, you don't need to thank me. I'm just doing my public duty.
There is a time and a place...
I'll confess. I have used a monitoring tool to spy on one of my children. This happened a few years ago when Child was in high school. My wife and I had begun to notice that Child was lying to to us...a lot. Based on other observations, we were pretty certain that Child was hiding something big. I installed the software to find out what I needed to know and then disabled it. It turned out that child was getting into something that could become cery serious, so I don't regret my actions.
That said, I agree with Mike that routinely monitoring your kids is not the way to build a trusting relationship, or indeed to teach them how to handle the Internet.
(untitled comment)
If I were in charge of a rival bank, this patent would feature prominently in my next ad campaign.
Define content
I pay my ISP for access to the Internet, but here is where things get into semantics. I make a Skype call. Is that "content" that I am accessing? What I am seeking in that instance is interaction with the person on the other end. If you define that as content, fine. But it is content that didn't exist before I sought it.
If there were no content on the web, it would be a sad place not worth visiting. However it turns out that there is a lot of content on the web. Some of it is unique, most of it is not. If Techdirt were to cease to exist tomorrow, would I be able to find another site offering similar stories and discussions? Sure. Not exactly the same, but similar.