PaulT 's Techdirt Comments

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• On the post: Don’t Expect The US Government To Actually Stop Elon From Buying Twitter

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2022 @ 03:42pm

  True, but I don't think he's got to the murder stage yet. Who knows, though... At least he's not eligible to be the next Trump unless the SCOTUS is that far bought off by the right wing.

• On the post: Fifth Circuit Criticizes Pretextual Stops After Cops Kill A Man Because His Kid Threw A Candy Cane Out Of A Car Window

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2022 @ 02:51pm

  Weird, I was just reading on other articles here that the problem was defamation against cops and not their actions. I mean, the people claiming that it's all fiction and that the people trying to correct the situation are paid Soros employees (which, weirdly, is probably a defamatory claim) should surely be able to show why these repeated claims of unnecessary harm are false. I'd be more sympathetic to the problems of patrolling dangerous areas in the US where people are more commonly armed than many other democracies, but if you can't be sure that you won't die by simply complying I'm not sure what else can be done. If someone else reading this disagrees - I'm interested in hearing a) what required summary execution here and b) why the rest of the community should feel safer for having these officers around.

• On the post: Don’t Expect The US Government To Actually Stop Elon From Buying Twitter

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2022 @ 02:36pm

  The crypto stage, the running for office stage or the murdering his neighbour stage?

• On the post: No One Has Any Clue How Texas’ Social Media Law Can Actually Work (Because It Can’t Work)

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2022 @ 02:35pm

  "Sure, and equally tendentious woke claims too, like the 1619 Project" "I’d probably crib the rules from Wikipedia, or just make the references all be to Wikipedia and sponge off them" Honestly, if you're anywhere near as honest and upfront about any biases then most people would support you. It's when people shove outright lies and pretend they're being "fair and balanced " when people tend to get annoyed. If you're trolling or trying to rewrite stories to push an agenda, that's you're right under free speech, just don't try telling those of us who recognise the spin that you're neutral. You'd use the "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License" that they freely advertise on their site and allow people to reuse content under? I'm sure they'd be OK with that, so long as you obey the rules provided. Oh, and the thing with Wikipedia is that intelligent people understand that it's not a primary source, as with all encyclopaedias it's a first step. That's why "citation needed" is a popular meme. It's a good step, but if you want to make real arguments you need to refer to the primary sources references, and copying those references to a site where you try to spin the citations another way won't cut it. As the saying goes, reality has a certain bias, and there's a reason people ask for citations a lot when claims are made - and it's jot because they thing that a Wikipedia article alone is gospel.

• On the post: Copyright Absurdity Rules Over Amazon’s ‘The Rings Of Power’

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2022 @ 02:25pm

  I risked my browser to have a quick look and... probably. The story linked is about how a building funded by the Chinese will feature some artworks from George Lucas, and how it changed location due to concerns about its size in other cities. I'd be interested to see some citations about how the building is actually intended to do something other than that, but I'm guessing that "Chinese" and "sci-fi" combined some random thoughts in a part of the internet that only occasionally arrives in these saner parts of the net.

• On the post: Copyright Absurdity Rules Over Amazon’s ‘The Rings Of Power’

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2022 @ 02:19pm

  If you don't like something, the easiest way to send a message is not to watch it. Imagine if you're the majority you claim to be, and you simply don't watch the series or cancel your accounts because you might be exposed to something horrific like... fantasy creatures not being portrayed by a specific human race of actor or writers taking artistic licence with an adaption.... I mean, I appreciate you people explicitly stating that you're fascists, but I'd prefer it if you let the free market so many of you claim to support take control with things like this. If you stuck to what you wanted to see and encouraged the market to make more of them instead of complaining about how sexy the new M&Ms are and the fact that a character that everyone knew was gay was finally able to state it, we'd all be better off. There's so many more important issues at hand

• On the post: Chicago Sun-Times Kills Its Paywall; Makes Its Content Free For Everyone

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2022 @ 02:11pm

  "They also did not face the competition from search engines and social media for advertisers" They didn't, but also they didn't have those same companies sending them traffic for free as they do now. 20-30 years ago, they sold ads based on how many people would read a copy without paying for it, estimating several times more than they sold. Now, they're blocking people who go to their sites without ever having been there before and expecting a subscription before reading the content. An old school paper would assume 4 people in a break room would read a copy, now they try to charge all 5 people and whine that they don't have as many readers. "large tech companies were taking a cut" You mean... when Google send them free traffic and supply the ads they take a cut of both of those services? Truly shocking. Obviously, the answer is to give new readers a screen that tells them to click the back button and go to another source for the story they wanted to read... The dumbest thing about these arguments is when people try to pretend that all the search and ad services don't provide value or cost anything, especially when it's so easy and free to opt out if papers wish to do so. I understand some of the whining about "big tech" (which somehow always excludes ISPs, telecoms and other major networks), but if it's "they want to be paid for the traffic and ads they provide when someone uses a free service to see your content they wouldn't have seen otherwise", I'm not particularly sympathetic. I still see physical free newspapers on the regular, and I'm sure they have bigger overheads than the online platform who rewrite AP feeds and get free viewers from search engines and link aggregators.

• On the post: Don’t Expect The US Government To Actually Stop Elon From Buying Twitter

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2022 @ 01:59pm

  The thing is, although certain people whine about Twitter being some kind of monopoly, it's not true. It's one of several mainstream outlets where speech occurs, and people who haven't been hateful morons still have accounts on multiple competing platforms. If Musk manages to do the things he promises - promote the far right who had previously been kicked off, make the platform more profitable through various subscriptions, etc., then I 'm not sure if most current users would follow. I don't engage much there, but I'd imagine the accounts I generally follow, from entertainment news and podcast to actual IRL friends would easily find another platform. Similarly with Kanye buying Parler - I somehow doubt the audience he thinks he'll get will be the one that's lucrative. All power to them if they do find their niche and hopefully without formenting problems in the physical world, but I dare say that at least in my experience, these move are going to remove a lot of people in favour of the competition the buyers pretended they didn't have. I hope that Musk's Russian connections and West's delusions don't lead to too many real life problems outside of those platforms, but I think they're kidding themselves if they think there's a widespread mainstream customer base waiting to pay them money. I suspect that instead we'll have a situation where the people who agree with Kanye's manic anti-semitic episodes and Musk's tantrums are a diminishing pool, and decent human beings will go elsewhere. After all, despite their claims, people who aren't hateful bags of crap have way more choice.

• On the post: Copyright Absurdity Rules Over Amazon’s ‘The Rings Of Power’

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2022 @ 12:35am

  "Without copyright, though, said estate could still sell licenses, as could anyone else" Erm, I think I know what you're trying to get at, but that's wrong. If copyright didn't exist (or these books were public domain), what the hell do you think a licence would be for? Everyone would already be allowed to do whatever they want with the material. I think that what you mean is that without copyright, Amazon would be able to do what they wanted with or without the blessing of the estate. They could work with Amazon to create something closer to what they thought the author would have wanted, make a deal so that it could be advertised as the only "official" adaptation, or do other things to make they version stand out. They just wouldn't be able to stop others from doing something with the material as well.

• On the post: Publisher Wiley Lets Libraries Offer eTextbooks Again… But Only For Nine Months

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 17 Oct, 2022 @ 01:59am

  Such progress is to be lauded, but it's still somewhat depressing that these are to be considered wins (at least the last 2 points). IIRC, the stuff that entered the public domain in 2022 was recorded before 1923. When that music was published, the agreed deal with the public was 28 years (with a possible extension to 56 years). So, it's a "win" that the law "only" potentially robbed an additional 72 years of published recordings from the public domain in comparison with the law when it was recorded instead of the proposed 137 years. Still a very sad state of affairs, even though it could always be worse if someone else kowtows to the people pushing for effectively infinite copyright.

• On the post: Chicago Sun-Times Kills Its Paywall; Makes Its Content Free For Everyone

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 17 Oct, 2022 @ 01:45am

  Paywalls on general news outlets has always been somewhat mystifying for me, anyway. They make sense if you visit a site on a regular basis, but with so much news being shared through social media and originating from an AP or other feed, it's not unusual to be following a link through to a site you've never been to before, and/or never will again. It all depends on your personal usage and how often you visit a site, but I'll never quite grasp why some outlets choose to block all casual traffic that could grow their readership, while banking on a shrinking pool of existing regular readers to keep them afloat. It's tempting to blame an old school business mindset, but even in the heyday of the printed newspaper, they still understood that way more people would read a copy than paid the cover price or subscribed. Kudos to them from changing in this case, though as others have noted it seems to be a specific type of ownership change that triggered it here, and not a sign of some wider understanding from the industry.

• On the post: Texas’ Ridiculous Content Moderation Bill Put On Hold Until The Supreme Court Can Consider It

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 14 Oct, 2022 @ 02:50am

  That doesn't mean they're not in the GOP's pocket, it just means they weren't willing to expend long-term political capital to placate Trump. There's a time limit on Trump now - even in the worst case scenario where he gets re-elected in 2024, he will cease to be of any importance on the day he leaves office, and the smarter money is on him being incapacitated due to ill health or legal/financial issues before then. There's no benefit to the GOP's long-term plans to have made any different decision, and it could be harmful to them by setting precedent that could be used against the GOP in the future. Better to make the clearly correct decision in this specific case, and continue working behind the scenes to elect a competent fascist and overturn more civil rights.

• On the post: Dumb GOP Propaganda Long Ago Conflated Essential Infrastructure With ‘Socialism’

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 13 Oct, 2022 @ 07:21am

  "If it’s stupid but it works, it’s not stupid." If I stick a knife into a power socket to dislodge something and don't get electrocuted, that's still very stupid even if I got lucky and didn't connect live circuits down my arm. The fact something works doesn't make it not stupid, just effective in the short term. The problem is, all this dumb stuff does is create more issues further down the road, which tend to be bigger and harder to fix. Opposing vital funding and maintenance might give Republicans the warm and fuzzies and more silly voters, but it's stupid even after they were forced to accept a compromise with adults. The current work needed is way more extensive and expensive than it needed to be has things been funded and maintained properly, and they've taught their voters to reject further expenditure when needed, even though that would be way cheaper in the long term.

• On the post: Employees Reveal Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Vision Is A Clunky, Boring, Ego-Driven Mess

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 13 Oct, 2022 @ 05:24am

  "This year, he urged teams to hold meetings inside Meta’s Horizon Workrooms app, which allows users to gather in virtual conference rooms. But many employees didn’t own V.R. headsets or hadn’t set them up yet, and had to scramble to buy and register devices before managers caught on"

  That says it all, really. People shouldn't be "scrambling" to buy something they need for work before managers notice, they should be supplied by the company, with managers chasing up supplies for staff who haven't got them yet. A culture where employees' needs aren't met just for the basics of what they're being told to do, and instead encourages people to keep secrets from managers and go behind their backs, is not a healthy one. As for the VR meetings, it probably makes sense with an ego-maniac used to filling rooms with paid sycophants like Zuckerberg, but unless they get their message worked out, it's less then useless. People already struggle with Zoom/teams meetings, but at least you can still participate through audio only or chat if something screws up. Then, most meetings don't require 100% of a person's attention, so you can work on another screen while someone spends 10 minutes rambling through something you already knew and could have been an email. With VR, it seems to me that it's the worst of both worlds. You have to drop everything to go to the room where the meeting is taking place, wait around for everyone else to turn up and being unable to silently continue working, as with a physical room. But, now you have additional peripherals and setup, waiting for people to connect and work out minor tech issues like you do on Teams, only this time without a solution to replace whatever's so unique and exciting it has to be done in VR. This just seems like something that sounds cool to a boring guy who doesn't have anything fulfilling in his life outside of boardroom meetings and playing around with tech that looked amazing in whatever 90s movie he wants to emulate.

• On the post: No One Has Any Clue How Texas’ Social Media Law Can Actually Work (Because It Can’t Work)

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2022 @ 05:24pm

  "For what reason (other than “they’re bigger”) do you always make this complaint about Twitter and Facebook but never about Gab, Parler, and Truth Social?" It's always about audience size. The problem has never been that they can't speak, it's that they can't force others to listen. I suspect that the reason this has become more of a problem now than it was in the physical world (where it's always been the case) is that they got a taste of a real audience. But, rules apply to make the platforms comfortable to everyone, and somehow they keep getting banned and relegated to smaller platforms with less grifting opportunities. They had a taste of music arena numbers, now they're playing the local bar scene. That must be annoying, but no band has an automatic right to arenas.

• On the post: No One Has Any Clue How Texas’ Social Media Law Can Actually Work (Because It Can’t Work)

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2022 @ 05:13pm

  "Censoring opinions because you don’t like them won’t make the truth any less true" But, it will make many places more comfortable for people to use. Some people are of the opinion that all LGBTQ+ folk are demon worshipping pedophiles trying to groom children to join their ranks. If they try expressing that opinion, they will be moderated to oblivion in most places where normal people are trying to converse. Them being blocked does not make their opinion true, no matter how honestly held. "People who believe in free speech must be prepared to hear their most cherished beliefs denied, and ideally should be prepared to change their minds if that’s the direction the evidence leads." It must be nice to live in a world where trolls and bigots don't exist. Where the rest of us live, there's problems with demanding that the victims of attacks have to defend themselves against people who are not arguing honestly in ways that would make them accept factual data as a way to stop their abuse. "You have determined for yourself that woke gender ideology and critical race theory and such are the truth" I'm not sure where you're getting your propaganda, but for most people "being aware of inequality in society" and a college-level course that addresses systematic issues with the treatment of minorities are not demons to be slayed. "because you know that huge numbers of people disagree with you, you are furious and want those opinions silenced every place they can be" Which is why your idiotic ass has been banned from the only platform he can control directly. Wait...

• On the post: No One Has Any Clue How Texas’ Social Media Law Can Actually Work (Because It Can’t Work)

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2022 @ 04:53pm

  "people who think this forum is Wikipedia and say stupid things in square brackets" While the famous xkcd meme was inspired by Wikipedia, asking for citations for claims is not something that originated there. This should be a natural part of any debate - if you claim something, then you should be prepared to back it up if challenged. If you can't, then the obvious follow up question is - why not? The medium you're using to communicate allows you direct access to the vast majority of what you could possibly need to assert your claim.

• On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2022 @ 03:09pm

  "But I really dont give a hoot. For the simple reason that neither matters, its just WHO is getting the money." If only it were about money alone. There's a definite movement to install a Christian theocracy and/or a white supremacist leadership. Money is a factor, but I doubt that it's the main issue right now, even though removing private money from US politics would be the best possible move in many ways.

• On the post: Vietnamese Government Pushes Plan To Restrict Dissemination Of News Stories By Social Media Platforms

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2022 @ 01:42pm

  Define "presence". Some governments have interesting ideas about that.

• On the post: No One Has Any Clue How Texas’ Social Media Law Can Actually Work (Because It Can’t Work)

  

  PaulT ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2022 @ 01:36pm

  The issue is that he might face consequences for things he chose to do or say, and because the right don't seem to have progressed part adolescence mentally that's bad for them. I used to have big hopes for the future, right now I'm mainly hoping that adults regain the control of society.

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