Zangetsu 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: BMI Says A Single Person Listening To His Own Music Via The Cloud Is A Public Performance

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 12 May, 2011 @ 09:59am

    Goodbye Kinkos

    Marvin L. Berenson states that Also, BMI argued that MP3tunes has the necessary volition to be liable for copyright infringement since it set up the service and solicited the customers and provided the necessary infrastructure for the infringements to occur.
    So, isn't this what Kinko's can do for you? They have set up a service (photocopying), solicited customers (I've seen the ads) and provided the infrastructure (heck, they'll even do it for you).

    I could go on, but it seems as if Marvin L. Berenson wants to roll back time and pretend that many advances of the past 50 years had not occurred and that this discussion had never happened before.
    In a graduating class, someone always has to be at the bottom and yet, he's got a job somewhere.

  • On the post: Barry Diller Tries To Explain To Ari Emanuel That He's Wrong About 'Piracy' Being A Problem For Movies

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 12 May, 2011 @ 08:47am

    Wait a minute ...

    ?You can?t say piracy is not an issue,? he said. ?I don?t believe it?s going away, it?s a big issue. The government has to get involved.?
    OK, let's change the topic.
    ?You can?t say criminal stupidity is not an issue,? he said. ?I don?t believe it?s going away, it?s a big issue. The government has to get involved.?
    Oh, wait a minute, that's what getting us deeper into this mess in the first place.

  • On the post: TV People Realizing That The Internet Is Global

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 26 Apr, 2011 @ 07:47am

    Crunchyroll as an example

    Ars Technica had a recent article on how the amine scene realized this fact more than two years ago. Indeed, the ability to view anime is, in some respects, better in the rest of the world than it is in Japan. It's good to see that some people understand the changes and are working to integrate them into a new business model.

  • On the post: Another Loss For Righthaven: Court Explains That Its Demand For Domain Names Is Silly

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 19 Apr, 2011 @ 05:53am

    So, what if ...

    ... the domain owners that had their domain names seized over "pirating" (aka copyright infringement) by ICE sued over the fact that Congress never authorized this as a remedy for infringement?

    I kind of wish the EFF had enough resources to take this on.

  • On the post: Is It Time To Form A 'Rogue' Party Instead Of A 'Pirate' Party?

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2011 @ 11:56am

    Perhaps this name?

    Why not a "Common Sense Party"? Their platform could be:


    • a political party for the people, not the corporations

    • a political party that would shift the cost of copyright enforcement from the government to the copyright holders

    • a political party that understand that just because there is a patent on a drug does not mean that it should cost a lot

    • a political party that understands that Patent reform is about patenting *new* things, not items found in nature (genes) or digital versions of physical items

    • a political party that understands transparency in government means you need to share more information and not penalize whistle blowers for doing what you asked them to do

    • a political party that understands the word "secular" and how it should be applied

    • a political party that understands that the federal budget would be a lot closer to being balanced if the special interest projects were removed

    • a political party that understands if the government is shut down then they shouldn't be paid either.

    But, then again, I'm not sure the public is ready for such a radical choice.

  • On the post: Amazon Launches Digital Music Locker, Even As Legality Is Still In Question

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2011 @ 07:58am

    Amazon is asking to be sued

    If the digital music locker was as legal as Amazon would like people to believe, why is it only available in the U.S.? While I personally see no issue with it (after all, isn't my music mine?) I see this as Amazon baiting the RIAA and asking to be sued. I have no doubt that Amazon lawyers have already prepared their arguments as to why this is legal.
    Does this mean that music purchased through Amazon will become more expensive as the recording industry "penalizes" Amazon for introducing a business model from which they are not getting their "fair share"?

  • On the post: Zappos Gives Up On Canada Due To Customs Problems

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2011 @ 10:06am

    So many comments ... so little information



    First of all In addition, we have struggled with general uncertainty and unpredictability of delivering orders to our Canadian customers given customs and other logistics constraints. The customs transition between the U.S. and Canada is not labourious. The problem comes in the handoff between USPS and Canada Post. I ordered sewing patterns for my wife that took 29 days to get from California to Alberta through USPS and Canada Post. I order a cane, as a prop, from Indonesia and it took 61 hours to get to me via DHL courier. Shipping cheaply is the wrong way to go when trying to ship between countries. This is one of the primary reasons why organizations set up shipping centres in Canada so that this hassle can be avoided.


    Second, many American companies have Canadian subsidiaries or have given exclusive Canadian distribution rights to another company. In those cases Zappos is legally bound not to ship to Canada unless it purchases the product through the Canadian subsidiary or distributor. This is due to the manufacturers requirements, not Zappos or the Canadian government. Failure to follow these requirements can result in having the products seized at the border at the request of the company or distributor. There are tens of thousands of items on Amazon.COM that Amazon will not ship to Canada due to these requirements. Does everyone follow these rules? No, but there are risks as my brother found out when trying to buy some electronic gear last year that was in short supply in Canada. It was seized at the border and he lost his money.


    Third, TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). Free Shipping and Free Returns cost money and that is factored into the cost. It's worse when you are being ripped off. For instance the same parcel that Zappos could ship within the US for $14.95 costs $35.50 to ship to Canada. On the reverse side, that same parcel would cost $23.50 to ship from Canada to the US and $15.35 within Canada. Inter country shipping agreements are costly and, based on some high level research, one country seems to be making an abnormally large profit margin on shipping.


    I could go on, but hopefully you see my point: Canada Customs is actually the least of the issues between Canada and the US, USPS is actually much bigger.

  • On the post: It Took The NY Times 14 Months And $40 Million Dollars To Build The World's Stupidest Paywall?

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 17 Mar, 2011 @ 11:50am

    Canuck weighing in here...

    Hang on a minute. Gravy on french fries is good, if you've got the right gravy. KFC gravy with McDonalds french fries actually works best. Something stupid is putting cheese curds AND gravy on french fries. Poutine? Why bother. NY Times? Why bother.

  • On the post: Craigslist A 'Cesspool Of Crime'? Or Are Bad Reporters A Cesspool Of Repeating Dubious Research?

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2011 @ 08:21am

    Excellent response by Craiglist

    IBTimes posted the response from Craiglist here.

  • On the post: Music Publisher Discovers A Song In Its Catalog Has Been Heavily Sampled For Decades… Sues Everyone

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 04 Feb, 2011 @ 02:15pm

    Is there a limit to the number of songs mankind can write?

    Has anyone done a study to determine how many different bars of music you can actually create? Sure you can put those bars of music together in different manners, but at the base you still have x notes being played. Don't we, mankind, run out of music at some point? Are we at that point? If you want to make a record sound like 50's music, don't you have to "plagarize"?

  • On the post: Homeland Security Domain Seizures Raise More Questions: Is Embedding A Video Criminal Infringement?

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 02 Feb, 2011 @ 03:36pm

    Re: the site was known to obey takedown requests

    So, because you say there is a problem with the law that means we should ignore the law all together? Ignore due process? Ignore "innocent until proven guilty"? Ignore what millions of Americans throughout the years have fought for? If the penalty for copyright infringement was death, would you let the MPAA and RIAA determine who lived and who died? Let's check your Visa and Mastercard statements and see who supported them the most for the past year. Top 10% get "accused" of copyright infringement and put to death. That will do wonders for their business model.

  • On the post: Homeland Security Domain Seizures Raise More Questions: Is Embedding A Video Criminal Infringement?

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 02 Feb, 2011 @ 03:29pm

    Re: ICE Press Release

    Now I'm even more confused. Isn't Google a "linking" site according to their definition? Bing? Yahoo? TechDirt?

  • On the post: How Would US Politicians Respond If Spain Seized Domains Of American Companies?

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 02 Feb, 2011 @ 11:21am

    More confusion

    The activities of the site seized were legal under Spanish law and illegal under American law.

    And I guess so much for "innocent until proven guilty". What ever happened to "O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave". Free? Brave?

  • On the post: How Would US Politicians Respond If Spain Seized Domains Of American Companies?

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 02 Feb, 2011 @ 11:18am

    Totally confused

    I am confused by some of the comments:

    If a US company was facilitating infringement of Spanish IP and Spain decided to seize that company's .es domain, the US wouldn't think twice about it.

    Mike's comment did not say anything at all about IP, he said that "the company had violated the law". What if Spain had a law that said anyone promoting the sale of American products was violating the law? With this law they could seize the domains of almost any American company. Not IP law, but a different law. Or what if they had one that said spitting on the sidewalk was illegal and a company posted a video of someone spitting on the sidewalk? They could take away the domain due to contributory infringement.

    None of this has anything to do with IP law. Yes, the reason why the site was taken down was probably due to an American company complaining that the site violated their IP, but the process that is being undertaken does not restrict itself to IP issues. What if, due to the discussion of these topics, TechDirt.com was seized by ICE? No actual infringement, but merely talking about the infringement.

    Just because the company that merely registered the domain name is located in the U.S. does not mean that it is U.S. property. Does a patent registered with the U.S. Patent Office now belong to the U.S. government if it wants to appropriate it?

    This does highlight a bigger issues, however, in that there is a problem with Verisign being the "owner" of .COM. Welcome to a world where the U.S. government runs the Internet. Let's bring back the Internet Kill Switch. Let's give the MPAA and RIAA the reins to the country. After all, we know what a good job they did with their own market.

    Welcome to the United States of American Corporations?. Please register your DNA as you enter so that we can make money from you.

  • On the post: What Corruption Looks Like: 87% Of Congressional Reps Supporting Comcast/NBC Merger Got Money From Comcast

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2011 @ 10:44am

    What about the rest?

    OK, so 87% of those who signed got money from Comcast. So what? ComCast probably contributes money to a lot of politicians. Maybe they contributed money to 90% of the other representatives but none of them signed? This is only half a story. You need the other half of the story to sensationalize it.

  • On the post: Where Record Labels Ran Into Trouble: Monoculture

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 21 Dec, 2010 @ 01:46pm

    Is it really adaptation to recorded music?

    For a long time I've been thinking that perhaps we are looking at the RIAA the wrong way and this article, in some ways, validates what I have been thinking.

    Don't think of their "monoculture" as being recorded music, but think of their "monoculture" as being the type/quality of recorded music. I, personally, stopped buying recorded music when my wallet hit me in the head and asked me to justify $20 for 2 good songs and 8 bad songs. As a result, I stopped buying. A lot of my friends stopped buying as well. Our tastes had changed and the music industry was slow to adapt. Their propensity to pump out an album, regardless of how bad it was, led to that decision. When they flooded the market with trash the market responded by saying "We're not buying it."

    Quality music still sold. The bell curve shifted but the music companies did not respond. They still believed that the public wanted 20% quality and 80% crap.

    The public showed them a thing or two. When 80% of what you sell is wanted by so few people, it's amazing that your sales don't fall 80%. Think about it: the greatest hits album is usually two or three songs from each album the group has made. If all of their music was so damn good, why isn't every album a greatest hits compilation?

    The music industry, or rather, a lot of the smaller players, the indie companies, the little guys out in Seattle with a steampunk band, those guys are giving the people what they want. Different music, quality music. Exposure is their problem and that is the one thing that the music industry can provide and that is, almost, their sole reason for survival.

    The talk for so long has been about piracy and "theft" and people not buying music. People are still buying music, but the 80% trash isn't selling and if your economic model is based on selling trash then you better be prepared for the worst.

  • On the post: Sherman Fredericks 'Steals'* From Me

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 13 Dec, 2010 @ 01:23pm

    You might want to ...

    Have you thought about hiring Righthaven to enforce the copyright on that one single article? It would be poetic to have him sued over using a comment from TechDirt about using Righthaven to sue.

  • On the post: Woman Claims Legal Loophole Means She Now Owns The Sun… And She Wants You To Pay Up

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 03 Dec, 2010 @ 07:58am

    Old science fiction story covers this

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Sold_the_Moon

    Robert Heinlein published a story 60 years ago about how to "own" the moon. I'm not surprised that people keep trying to do this. I'm personally working on a way to trademark the period, then I'm going to stick it to the book publishers. After that it I am going to publish a song with a single note and then sue everyone using that note saying that they are making a derivative copy of my work. I figure at $750 per song I could live quite comfortably while doing nothing.

  • On the post: Botched TSA Pat Down Leaves Traveler Covered In Urine

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 23 Nov, 2010 @ 09:58am

    Adam Savage and the TSA

    You really need to see this. Adam Savage (Mythbusters) shows how none of this is actually working: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3yaqq9Jjb4

  • On the post: Court Rejects Probation Rules On Teen That Ban Him From Using Social Networks Or Instant Messaging Programs

    Zangetsu ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2010 @ 10:57am

    Re: well...

    I don't know about you, but the last time I went into a bank was 3 years ago for my mortgage. I haven't step foot in one since. Everything is done through banking machines or the Internet, where encryption is used between my browser and my banks servers.

    I also do a fair amount of shopping over the Internet, buying items that I cannot normally find up here in Canada. Each site has an SSL certificate that encrypts data.

    I have an application on my machine that stores the 150+ different web sites to which I have a userID and password. It stores both in an encrypted file so that it is not exposed to the world.

    More crimes are committed with the use of phones (both land lines and cell phones) and yet people do not normally get a prohibition on using their phone. It is considered an "essential" service. With todays world, the Internet and encryption, are also "essential" services. I want to look at my daughters report card? I need to go online to get it through an encrypted link. Various government services are only available online, through an encrypted link. In the province where I live you can apply to any of the Universities and Colleges in the province through a single web site that uses encryption. You can then go to another encrypted web site to apply for a Student Loan. There is a push to take a look at e-voting (through encryption) although people are concerned about the lack of security and non-repudiation involved in the process.

    Let the punishment fit the crime. If he received stolen goods make him perform community service so that he can see the impact that crime has had on others. Like one of the other comments listed above, these restrictions seem to have been put in there by his parents, not by the judge.

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