arkiel's Techdirt Profile

arkiel

About arkiel

arkiel's Comments comment rss

  • Feb 04, 2015 @ 11:47am

    Competition. Right

    He isn't unbundling last-mile. He isn't regulating rates. There will be no new competition.


    This... appears to do very little from a consumer standpoint. Big win for Netflix, completely neutral for any Netflix user.

    This wouldn't be so god damn annoying if he hadn't made a statement about his 1980s company that competed unsuccessfully with AOL largely because telephone lines were subject to old Title II and his cable-based service was not. He invoked the equivalent of unbundling last-mile to explain a law that would not unbundle last-mile. What. The. Shit.

  • Feb 03, 2015 @ 10:07am

    Ad nausea

    As nausea: (modern meaning) the point at which repetition or frequency of advertisements turns a convenient legal platform into an inconvenient platform relative to its illegal counterpart.

    I've taken to streaming from sites other than Hulu because hearing that shit over and over is starting to affect my brain. I hear that shit while I'm trying to sleep. OP cable's plan is just going to make cable the more inconvenient option... And with fixed schedules and ads on top of the huge monthly fees, it was pretty fucking close to begin with.

  • Jun 03, 2014 @ 07:34am

    Re: Re: Misinformed jokes

    "I am not sure that this accomplishes anything. Oliver's report, while entertaining, contained some pretty big factual errors. As an example, Comcast did not downgrade or block connections that would have allowed more Netflix onto their network (as one of their peering providers suggested) but rather stopping ADDING extra bandwidth to support Netflix business model, which is incredibly expensive for an ISP to support. The alternative would be high customer rates for service, which everyone would yell about."

    The equipment required to expand Netflix support was offered by Netflix itself for free. Your 'incredibly expensive' claim is uncited and unsupported in fact. Comcast declined to receive free hardware from Netflix until they reached a monetary agreement because Comcast is shit.

  • Apr 08, 2014 @ 10:10am

    Given the amount f resources we've poured into the TSA, making case law based on the abstract intangible element of human competency isn't a sound analysis anymore. Courts need to start acknowledging that airline security might have needed those rules in the 1970s, but now we're throwing billions of dollars and voiding our privacy interests in our own bodies in the name of safety when a corresponding level of danger doesn't actually exist. It's the TSA's entire job to make sure there aren't windows of weak security.

  • Apr 03, 2014 @ 06:05am

    Re: illegal already

    Seems like there'd be constitutional issues with that. Due process issues revolving around the government's seizure of private rights.

    The notion that private companies would have to bring copyright infringement claims is absurd. And impossible. It isn't like the DOJ has the time to review where companies have been studiously monitoring for infringement.

    Worst case scenario, the TPP passes and content creators create a new derivative work licensing scheme philosophically parallel to Creative Commons, but replicating the status quo, except people wouldn't have to worry about bring dragged into court to justify fair-use.

  • Apr 03, 2014 @ 05:07am

    Re: Ah, nuts!

    Everything at comiket is basically infringement.

    Fan-fiction is presumed to be derivative work, which means you could be dragged into court and have to justify fair use. Visual fan-work probably has a heavier burden to meet than written fan-work, but even then it's hard to see how most of it wouldn't satisfy the fair use factors. No negative impacts on market (except maybe direct novelizations), etc.

  • Jan 21, 2014 @ 05:38pm

    One of the root causes of killer cops? Strong policeman unions that back pieces of shit like this cop. Seeing as how cops do nothing but work within exceptions to the Constitution (i.e., the Constitution allows people to be arrested, etc) it seems kinda silly that they would even be allowed to unionize. I guess we should let the army and national guard union up too?

  • Dec 27, 2013 @ 05:13pm

    Re: Re:

    Sorry, I meant carrier, not ISP. The metadata your phone sends to the carrier should not fall under the third party exception, because there is no second party. Or rather, the metadata is a first-second party transmission. Stuff like phone number is obviously available to the recipient. Knowledge of your exact location may be disclosed by you, but doesn't show up on the screen when you call someone.

  • Dec 27, 2013 @ 04:45pm

    This barely merits coverage. No way is this going to change short of SCOTUS. The third party doctrine is a garbage exception that should be paired with the "spirit" of pen register laws to work in a way that makes sense. Furthermore, metadata is not third party. Only the ISP gets it. We need to recognize a blanket exception to alleged third party doctrine when the communication is predicated on a private contractual relationship. This reasonable expectation garbage leads to absurd results, and introducing a warrant requirement won't stop competent police work, and big data has been a big fat dud in detecting actual crime.

  • Dec 13, 2013 @ 08:08am

    Great, now I have another video to add to my 'good cops' folder. The only other video in there is the one where the policeman gets climbed by an aggressive kitten and doesn't totally lose his shit.

    Yep. Two videos.

  • Nov 15, 2013 @ 10:51am

    What they should be doing is make talking on the phone illegal. I'm tired of nearly getting into fights when I have to clearly tell these people to Get. Off. The. Phone.

  • Oct 30, 2013 @ 03:38pm

    Mike Rogers: "If we don't have a spycam in there, how are we supposed to know when we know when those women are available to be sexually assaulted? What? So long as we're in there, they can't get screwed by anyone else. Wouldn't you rather they be fucked over by us than some hypothetical ethnic strawman rapist? This is the, the, the only way to protect our women!"

  • Oct 17, 2013 @ 09:44pm

    So is it that our sense of outrage over police corruption has faded, or that after 50 years of pretending parents aren't responsible for the murderous freaks their action and inaction has spawned, we've decided that at least threatening them with liability for the actions of their, frankly, evil children is acceptable?

    People like these need to be shamed and remembered for the evil their child did, because they're the reason the kid is like that. They are the proximate cause of the bile that kid was spewing.

  • Oct 17, 2013 @ 09:09pm

    I like this guy, if only because he's echoing what everyone thought when the parents played the "hacked" card. I don't have much problem holding them vicariously liable either... but only because they've gone to such lengths to establish that they were monitoring the account on a regular basis. Hell, maybe someone, somewhere will read about this and actually start paying attention to what their own kid is doing as a result.

  • Oct 08, 2013 @ 12:29pm

    Clapper is right to be worried. Without their metaphorical 20 pieces of silver, what incentive do his employees have to continue selling out the American people?

  • Sep 13, 2013 @ 08:21am

    I'm liking the fake transmitter idea a lot. There's no way those things have any proprietary tech that would make them hard to make.

  • Sep 13, 2013 @ 07:58am

    Build faraday cage. Break circuit when you need to pay. Easy.

  • Sep 11, 2013 @ 06:46am

    Re:

    Yeah, I feel dumb now o.x

  • Sep 10, 2013 @ 02:56pm

    Look, we need to keep our names and pronouns consistent here, right? So we should be calling Chelsea a "her," right?

  • Sep 05, 2013 @ 01:30pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Registration is a good affirmative step to give notice of your copyright, but it is only necessary insasmuch as you can only claim attorney fees in the course of an infringement claim if the copyright is registered.

    You can still assert copyright that isn't registered, but yeah, you have to prove more and pay for the lawyer out of the damages awarded.

More comments from arkiel >>