Adam Bell 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Iceland: Going From Protecting Free Speech Online… To Setting Up Their Own Great Firewall?

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 15 Feb, 2013 @ 08:07am

    Porn Blocking

    To block anything, you have first to define it very carefully. "I know it when I see it" doesn't cut it for an automated censor looking at a crowd of bits, so the minister clearly doesn't understand the impossibility of the task. Politicians simply can't get their heads around the Internet. Even when I was a teenager (60 years ago), there were phone numbers that would reach someone to "talk dirty" to you. No one ever figured out how to stop them either.

  • On the post: On This Internet Freedom Day, Download A Free Book: On Internet Freedom

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 18 Jan, 2013 @ 07:27am

    I'm not interested in renting a book even if it's free. I agree entirely with the first comment. Marvin Ammori blew it.

  • On the post: Lawyers For The One Case Where There's Proof Of Warrantless Wiretapping Decide Not To Appeal To Supreme Court

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 04 Jan, 2013 @ 05:13pm

    US Constitution

    Among the constitutions of democratic countries around the world, the U.S. Constitution is not held in high regard (Google is your friend) because it is nearly impossible to amend and is therefore badly outdated; based on the thoughts, mores and intents of people living more than two centuries ago. Have a squint at these examples chosen from the many in a Google search:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/us/we-the-people-loses-appeal-with-people-around-the-world.html?_r=3&partner=MYWAY&ei=5065&

    http://www.geneveith.com/2012/02/10/is-the-u-s-constitution-obsolete/

    Some of the problems that arise when a defining document such as the U.S. Constitution is found to be irrelevant to the times are perhaps best exemplified by the current constipation of the Congress of the USA and the the gun laws of the US. Clearly, given that the 4th amendment seems to be dead in the US, the Executive has simply chosen to begin ignoring the parts it doesn't find relevant to today's problems.

  • On the post: NYT Paywall Working Better Than People Expected, But That Doesn't Mean It's Working

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2012 @ 01:27pm

    Ditto. Further, I used to pay for an annual subscription to NYT Crossword Puzzles and I let that lapse because it really annoyed me that I was already paying NYT a substantial sum (~$60/yr) for that privilege and felt that I should have had free access to the rest.

  • On the post: Yes: Breaking Web Articles Into Multiple Pages Is A Pain

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2012 @ 08:27am

    More annoying to me are video ads that cannot be stopped. Clicking on the Microsoft ad at the top of this page starts a video that cannot be stopped except by leaving this site.

  • On the post: Don't Downplay The Importance Of Tweakers In Innovation; Excerpt From 'The Knockoff Economy'

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2012 @ 03:18pm

    Re: Don't pollute the history: Edison was a tweaker

    "Nearly all of Thomas Edison's inventions benefitted from prior art."

    You can leave Thomas Edison out of that sentence. Nearly all inventions are combinations and evolutions of prior art. In 40 years as a Mechanical Engineering consultant and professor, I've only seen two or three completely original, i.e., unprecedented, ideas.

  • On the post: The Secret To Better Education… Is Dumb Robots?

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2012 @ 04:59pm

    I taught Mechanical Engineering for nearly 40 years and my wife taught Kindergarten and grades 1 & 2 for 35. Even in those widely spaced venues in a young person's learning experience, "having people continually ask you questions to clarify their own understanding forces you to truly understand the subject yourself at a much deeper level than if you're just a 'student" is true. In university and grade school alike, it's sensitivity to the questions and empathy for the "I don't get it looks" in the room that separates a good teacher from a bad one.

  • On the post: EU Commission VP Neelie Kroes Explains Why Copyright Is Broken: It Was Made In An Age Of Gatekeepers

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2012 @ 11:24am

    More than just creators.

    It is not just copyright that empowers gate keeping. Think, for a moment, about higher education. Long the provenance of universities, they now find themselves competing with online courses. MIT has been doing this for a while, but others are joining the effort to make higher education available to anyone with access to an Internet portal. Yes, gatekeeper copyright gets in the way of that too, but it's slowly being overcome as more researchers put their work online. There really is a revolution.

  • On the post: The Content Industry Keeps Penalizing The People Who Actually Pay

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2012 @ 10:37am

    AC's standard comment #4

    I'm like Mike -- I've never pirated and I've stopped buying.

  • On the post: Bait & Switch: Buy A Lifetime Account For As Long As We Exist Or Until We Get Tired Of You

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 17 Aug, 2012 @ 03:45pm

    They're not all like that...

    Many years ago I was an early paying subscriber to dynDNS.org, now DYN.com, a DNS organization on the promise that by subscribing, I would become a lifetime member. That was more than 10 years ago and I'm still listed as a VIP member, a status that now costs $20/year.

  • On the post: It's An Olympics Tradition: How Difficult Can NBC Universal Make It To Enjoy The Olympics?

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 27 Jul, 2012 @ 05:55pm

    CTV Olympics

    In Canada, CTV has the franchise and even better, has an iPad app that showed the opening ceremony (actually about 15-20 seconds later than it was on TV). Having looked at the show on TV, I discovered that the iPad 3 image was actually better on the Internet. Unfortunately, CTV's desktop machine access is the pits for me -- it uses Silverlight and looks really bad; smearing images, etc.

    Mike could use his Toronto connection to have a squint.

  • On the post: Canada's Own Justice Department Worried That Digital Locks Provision Is Not Constitutional

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 27 Jun, 2012 @ 08:15am

    DRM is really useless and this law doubly so.

    The thing about the prohibition of DRM circumvention that amazes me is that it is virtually unenforceable. If want a backup copy or a clone for my car to protect the original from the kids, I can make it in a few minutes and no one will ever know. I have done no harm. If I try to sell my copy at the local flea market, then I am doing harm.

    What this kind of law does do is to promote and educate a whole generation of scofflaws. I think a lot of folks make an internal distinction between the laws of the land and their own moral compass. When they perceive that these clash, i.e., when breaking the law is not even slightly immoral or harmful, but is rather convenient, they do. Draconian laws simply move the boundary in their calculation in the wrong direction. Further, outlawing the tools to defeat DRM will be as effective as the war on drugs has been or prohibition was; an underground supply quickly rises.

  • On the post: Nina Paley Explains Intellectual Disobedience

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2012 @ 02:01pm

    Isn't she just articulating a "reasonableness" rule? When a law of any kind seems to be totally unreasonable, most of us feel morally justified in breaking it. Like Mike, I try to avoid breaking copyright but I'm not above it. In the event, for example, that Canada enacts a law that says I can not legally circumvent DRM, I'll ignore it when I want to move something from one medium to another. I think most folks will.

  • On the post: Proposed Licensing For Newspaper Snippets Could Threaten Users Of Blogs, Facebook And Twitter In Germany

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2012 @ 07:38am

    Pay for Snippets

    Isn't this a really counter-productive solution for the newspapers? After all, part of their "community" is out there with the bloggers and commentators. They're simply cutting off some of their readers and they're certainly screwing themselves for linkers to their site and starting a war with their most avid readers; the bloggers. There's no need for a boycott; they're walling themselves in.

  • On the post: ICANN Confirms That It's Going To Make It Easier For Governments To Seize Domains Around The Globe

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 21 Mar, 2012 @ 11:33am

    Alternate DNS Not Likely

    A dark net or alternate DNS system could be stymied pretty fast by simply enacting a law saying that every ISP filter out all but DNS requests made to their own servers.

  • On the post: European Commission Blames Social Networks For ACTA Failure; Worried About Its Imminent Directive On Copyright Enforcement

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 13 Mar, 2012 @ 01:26pm

    Re: "We, the people" is not something they can comprehend.

    This is the crux of the whole matter -- governments are only gradually coming to grips with the notion that the Internet has given ordinary people an instantaneous voice. The old school still believe that they were elected in place of the people who elected them, that their judgement replaces that of their electors and that they don't have to worry about the electorate until the next election. That was the way it had to be when it took weeks for goings on in a government to propagate to the electorate.

    The solons in our governments haven't yet understood that today it is only a matter seconds before we know what they're saying and doing and that a few minutes after that, we know what other people (often quite knowledgeable) are parsing and thinking about it. The 'net is full of chaff, but most people who care about an issue will encounter thoughtful takes on it in minutes; takes that change their thinking about it. It's really quite wonderful.

  • On the post: Righthaven Screws Up (Again); Appeal Dismissed

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 28 Dec, 2011 @ 05:04pm

    These antics are rather typical of a person who has a serious addiction to something -- the pressure to act builds to the point that they need relief from the stress and the overdone "relief" renders them inoperative.

  • On the post: Would Obama Veto SOPA? Extremely Doubtful

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2011 @ 03:08pm

    Cloud Storage

    Cloud storage, backup and inter-computer sychronizing via the internet is becoming a big business, much of it in the USA. SOPA/PIPA will move that whole market to Canada and offshore -- who will want to store anything they value or rely on in the US when the site can be shut down entirely arbitrarily and without any warning? Now that the US is rapidly transforming itself to a corporate oligarchy with a financially stressed population, why would I trust any computer service that resided in the USA? Why would I even want to open a branch there?

  • On the post: SOPA Supporters Learning (Slowly) That Pissing Off Reddit Is A Bad Idea

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 22 Dec, 2011 @ 03:17pm

    Can we call this SOPA Spring?

  • On the post: Yes, SOPA Breaks The Internet: By Breaking The Belief In Trust And Sharing That Is The Internet

    Adam Bell ( profile ), 16 Nov, 2011 @ 11:28am

    It's a matter of proportion

    Bureaucrats don't seem to have any sense of proportion. As a university admin years ago, I had to stop the Registrar's office from putting in place a draconian set of checks that would have rendered on-line registration an agony for the students it was supposed to benefit. The problem? Some registrants lied about their credentials and had to be thrown out of classes when this came to light. I asked how many. The answer turned out to be about two per thousand. The whole user-friendly system would have been subverted for 998 students to catch 2. SOPA, in my view, is the same.

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