PaulT 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (29334)

• On the post: Thanks Complicated Music Licensing Schemes: ‘Alan Wake’ Updated To Remove Bowie Song From Credits

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2024 @ 06:32pm

  The idiocy of copyright maximalists never ceases to amaze me, but it's never more clear than when they try to apply physical analogies. Stephen King likes to use song lyrics in his books. Nobody ever broke into my home to rip out those pages. That's because the licence was for the fixed work of art he created with the use of the lyrics, and that work remains even after someone decides that they don't want to let him print another copy. Same here - a licence expiring should mean that the licencee no longer has the right to sell with the licenced content, only an insane person would think that it means that every copy that has been sold (yes, sold, not leased as in your poor analogy) needs to be altered.

• On the post: Thanks Complicated Music Licensing Schemes: ‘Alan Wake’ Updated To Remove Bowie Song From Credits

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2024 @ 06:26pm

  Ironically, Bowie was actually a forward thinker and quite a fan of digital media. He'd probably be disgusted by this move if he were still with us.

• On the post: Robert Reich’s Ridiculous Response To Elon Reminds Us That Censorial Instincts Have Infected Both Parties

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 05 Sep, 2024 @ 10:21am

  You had to verify that you lack reading comprehension by reading another comment?

• On the post: Elon Musk’s Ridiculous SLAPP Suit Gets Green Light from Partisan Judge

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 05 Sep, 2024 @ 10:17am

  If you think that judges ever approve ridiculous cases, I congratulate you on your first week of grade school. It doesn't get better from here, sadly, that kind of naiveté isn't lost easily but it's necessary that you do to cope with the real world.

• On the post: Elon Musk’s Ridiculous SLAPP Suit Gets Green Light from Partisan Judge

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 05 Sep, 2024 @ 10:15am

  "I could give myself more credibility but I don't want to" isn't a particularly great retort. Not that signing into an account is automatic credibility, but it at least allows people to track your claims instead of obscuring them.

• On the post: Elon Had SpaceX Defy Brazilian Supreme Court Order To Block ExTwitter, But Then Backed Down

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 05 Sep, 2024 @ 10:13am

  If you think Greenwald has any remaining credibility after the last few years, you probably need to get your news from something other than Musk's failing platform. I can name several previously credible people whose current positions aren't worth the paper the awards are printed on, and Greenwald is definitely in that group. In the meantime, i'll just note that you didn't even link to Greenwald's claims, let alone a credible source that backs him up, and that the "attempt to ban X" is pretty much just "X refused to comply with a country's laws so they took further action", which as I recall is less odious than what the US has recently ordered against TikTok (i.e. every American based social media site is doing what people complain about TikTok doing, but they're forcing a sale because it's not a US company). If you want people to change their opinions, bring receipts, preferably ones not based on what someone did years ago.

• On the post: David Boies’ Baseless Lawsuit Blames Meta Because Kids Like Instagram Too Much

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 05 Sep, 2024 @ 09:41am

  Yeah, I hate it when people who are hateful say things that are acceptable, but that's just reality, nobody's completely virtuous or completely evil. But, on that subject, there was a Twitter account that regularly tweeted out the Declaration Of Independence. Because it was in the chunks required by Twitter and people saw parts of it before they realised what it was, they decided it was communist. https://apnews.com/general-news-united-states-government-45c9fd6838a8450a849d95ff7daefa34 Given that, I have absolutely no doubt that some people would consider infinitely scrolling any of that stuff, or even the Bible, to be harmful because social media doesn't guarantee you start at the beginning of the thread, and Karens don't stop to consider context.

• On the post: Drag Performers Collect $100k Settlement From NH State Rep Who Smeared Them As Sex Offenders

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 05 Sep, 2024 @ 09:34am

  If you think that wearing a dress or skirt is automatically sexual, that makes me worry way more about you being around schoolgirls than drag queens dressing the same way.

• On the post: Drag Performers Collect $100k Settlement From NH State Rep Who Smeared Them As Sex Offenders

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 05 Sep, 2024 @ 09:31am

  Then, why is it that when people are found to be committing actual sexual offenses it's almost always Republicans, church leader or similar and almost never drag queens? Why is it that drag has been an artform for centuries, including in specifically child entertainment such as pantomime, and yet when so many entertainers were discovered to be child molesters in the UK during the 70s and 80s, it was almost exclusively not the ones in drag? You'd get way more traction if you not only had evidence, but at least enough to outweigh the priests.

• On the post: Logitech’s ‘Forever Mouse’ Idea Pulled Back After Backlash

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 13 Aug, 2024 @ 03:30am

  I'm not in that sort of market, but there are high-end mice for things like gaming where some people spend a lot of money for high performance and high levels of customisation, which includes software customisation of buttons, sensitivity, etc. When I heard this reported, I just assumed they were talking about that sort of niche market, but it was badly communicated and caused people to have visions of needing to subscribe to be able to use the basic functions on the mouse they maybe replace every 10 years for use with Excel.

• On the post: Top EU Court Says There’s No Right To Online Anonymity, Because Copyright Is More Important

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 05 Aug, 2024 @ 05:01am

  Actually, that's sort of backwards. The whole point of the public domain is that the public domain is where all culture has always existed belongs. Nobody had ownership over anything other than the physical medium on which it's stored (which is a separate set of legal ideas). Copyright was historically introduced as a compromise when copying works became easier. The public agreed to cede access for a limited amount of time, so that the original artist has more ability to make a living directly from the work, and thus is incentivised to create more. That has of course been corrupted now, so that a member of the public may not see a work created within their lifetime enter the public domain, and the copyright is held by corporations who long outlast the original creator. But, our Finnish idiot here has stated in the past that he thinks that history and culture should be deemed inaccessible if not destroyed outright, so that new works have less competition. His answer to his inability to compete is literally outlawing the competition. He makes the stupid mistake of asking people to find the copyright holder for something that's by definition not in copyright, because he doesn't care about public domain. He just knows that his inferior output doesn't have a chance of finding an audience unless they only have one option.

• On the post: Ding Dong KOSA’s Dead (For Now)

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2024 @ 01:46pm

  "Should platforms stop children from seeing climate-related news because climate change is one of the leading sources of anxiety amongst younger generations? Should they stop children from seeing coverage of international conflicts because it could lead to depression?"

  As much as I usually hate Paul and his movement's childish Libertarian ideals, this hit for me. I grew up in the UK, where I discovered the "greenhouse effect" and the fundamentals of climate change in my first year of high school, if not before. I also saw numerous conflicts, from the Cold War to the Irish "troubles" the the Falklands to the first Iran/Iraq war, among others, not to mention the Thatcher attacks on miners and the working class and so on that hit more locally. There was certainly depression in those years and beyond, but nothing that matches the fact that I saw collaboration get rid of CFCs and rescue the ozone layer, but constant international expansion of polluting tech elsewhere. Or, the Troubles finally ended but then re-ignited by the folly of Brexit. Or fascist and racist coming back after we'd thought we'd mostly got rid of them. If kids are "depressed" by the world the earlier generations are leaving them to handle, the fix should be to do what you can to make it better, not to pretend it will be better after you escaped. Basically, all of the climate concerns and most of the conflicts were there when I was a kid to some degree. KOSA was bad for many reasons, but the idea that you can just make the world a better place by hiding things for children while not making it worse for adults is itself childish.

• On the post: Remove Your Tinfoil Hats, Everyone; Social Media Mishaps Aren’t Always Billionaire Election Stealing Plots

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2024 @ 01:34pm

  "Nor is it election interference when Elon Musk shares a doctored video of Kamala Harris on his widely followed ExTwitter account"

  I was with you until then. A person pushing a false video to an audience he knows might believe it and use it to influence their election decisions definitely counts as election interference. Which should also put the rest of us on guard for the future in many ways. If people believe the sillier "deep fakes" and ML generated photos, and they're getting offended about autocomplete not typing for them, what's going to happen when the tech gets good enough that the rest of us can't tell the difference? Now, whether it's a crime, can be prosecution, in incompatible with the First Amendment, etc... I'm not so sure. But, colloquially at least, I think it counts as an attempt to interfere with the election. Right now, it's not necessarily anything other than surge protection when Twitter blocks a hugely successful campaign or direct interference when Musk chooses to amplify obvious fake video, but I fear that the only thing protecting us from certain outcomes is the fact that Musk cratered his audience and we might not be so lucky once the tech improves to where we can't tell the difference (and, sadly, I fear it will before 2028)

• On the post: The Batshit Crazy Story Of The Day Elon Musk Decided To Personally Rip Servers Out Of A Sacramento Data Center

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2024 @ 01:17pm

  Nobody's life "depends" on Twitter in the sense that it would affect their ability to live if it disappeared. However, it's currently a Nazi hangout with people making a lot of dangerous comments about but Kamala Harris and those who would vote for her, as well as incitement to "do something" about it. Although Musk has publicly said he's backing off Trump support, it doesn't take too much to inspire some people to action in his favour. The 11 month old article you commented in might not indicate lot of danger, but the current level is not zero...

• On the post: Kamala, Coconuts & The Impossibility Of Content Moderation At Scale

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2024 @ 01:04pm

  Yeah, it's still two countries separated by a common language. It seems pretty clear to me - the Harris memes were supportive based on something she actually said and not necessarily racially based (unusual for some parts of the US but hey). Whereas the other attacks in the UK were more about the "white inside, brown outside" attacks which are usually explicitly racial and aimed at people who came from the Commonwealth but need to be told they don't belong in either, similar to how "Oreo" and other words are used in the US. Such is the problem with trying to create a global platform - even the same words can be very different depending on where you are, and because of that the fix for the moderation problem is not to just replace the automation with people.

• On the post: Sims 4 Updates To Include ‘Safe To Stream’ Setting Because Copyright Is Broken

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2024 @ 12:56pm

  "prevent copyrighted music"

  This is the problem. Under modern rules, everything is copyrighted when you record it. So, unless you make everything CC or public domain (which most won't do), you're under the same rules as Eminem or Springsteen.

• On the post: Sims 4 Updates To Include ‘Safe To Stream’ Setting Because Copyright Is Broken

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2024 @ 12:53pm

  "they could have required all songs to be licensed for game-streaming"

  That's literally impossible, due to the nature of copyright. Even if they licensed the major labels, there would be no agreement between them and indie labels, international labels and just random people. Copyright is automatic, which means you could get a licence for everything ever recorded (impossible, by the way, due to orphaned works), and then I could create a new copyrighted tune that wasn't in the licence.

  "some good bands would agree"

  But, their music would still be copyrighted, unless they made it public domain, in which case anyone could use it, not just the guys who paid them for this game.

  "Music companies used to pay (illegally) to get their stuff on the radio."

  They also used to understand that a lot of their fans would tape the songs off the radio and not pay a dime until they were old enough to buy merch and concert tickets.

• On the post: Struggling Americans Drop Internet Access After GOP Kills Low-Income Broadband Program

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2024 @ 12:41pm

  If they can't afford internet, then they can't afford to participate in a lot of things, which keeps them poor yet they'll still talk to people who can have those things about how how to vote. A person might not be able to directly access talking points, but their neighbour who watches nothing but OANN (because Fox is too liberal now) might be able to convince them of something. Then, they're less likely to stumble across real news if they can't afford to turn the TV on.

• On the post: Struggling Americans Drop Internet Access After GOP Kills Low-Income Broadband Program

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2024 @ 12:36pm

  Is there a "happy" medium where a person who doesn't have the ability to pay for cable or internet gets access to actual news instead of commercial propaganda? I only ask because there's so many things today where internet is actually a required utility that some people will choose to pay whatever ransom is required, but then choose to get their "news" from Twitter, YouTube and whatever instead of just watching Fox. Which isn't an upgrade... Cable might be expensive, but their toxin is free so long as you have internet access, and since you now need internet access for everything from banking to job applications in many places...

• On the post: Struggling Americans Drop Internet Access After GOP Kills Low-Income Broadband Program

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2024 @ 12:31pm

  "subsidizing it to the point where you are totally reliant on the subsidy, or else it becomes unaffordable"

  Lol. If you weren't a well-known local idiot I'd ask why you think the blame in that case rests on the the government and not the private company who insists that the connection isn't affordable without the subsidy, but I remembered who I'm addressing.

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