Richard 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: White House's IP Strategic Plan Not Nearly As Bad As Expected; But Not Great Either

    Richard ( profile ), 22 Jun, 2010 @ 07:53pm

    Stronger IP laws DO help American jobs and interests

    That is, stronger laws in OTHER countries, where it serves to stifle innovation in THOSE countries, serves to help American interests by allowing the (admittedly, not very) laxer laws in America to help Americans.

  • On the post: Court Says Police In Ohio Can Just Guess How Fast You Were Going And Give You A Ticket

    Richard ( profile ), 10 Jun, 2010 @ 11:27pm

    Re:

    There have been a lot of comments about how "speeding tickets are just revenue raising" and a few arguments over proper grammar (please, don't pick on mine) but none bring up another of Mikes favourite lines, and this post is similar enough for me to use it as an example.

    The example is simple, if a police officer "estimates" a speed on a regular basis, and is proven wrong or has the ticket removed on a large number of those tickets, eventually someone will take notice and that particular officer will have his credibility called into question. This is very similar to the "full disclosure" examples Mike is fond of, where if a blogger continually claims "this product is excellent" simply because they got it for free from the manufacturer, their credibility will being to go down the toilet.
    I'll admit, fighting tickets is a pain, and I personally don't do it, but if enough people are outraged, and enough people do fight them, and enough people get vindicated, then eventually an officers entire reputation may be put on the line, and it may have an impact on every case they were ever involved in.
    Cold comfort I'm sure.

  • On the post: Convicted Serial Rapist Goes To Court To Forbid Newspapers From Reporting On His Whereabouts

    Richard ( profile ), 05 Jun, 2010 @ 05:53am

    Re: Why is this any different ....

    Maybe his legal fees are being secretly bank-rolled by the Actors Guild for just this reason?!?

  • On the post: Convicted Serial Rapist Goes To Court To Forbid Newspapers From Reporting On His Whereabouts

    Richard ( profile ), 05 Jun, 2010 @ 05:52am

    Re: Grounds for more lawsuits

    There's something wrong with that...

    Mainly that would set the precedent that either the press or the courts are responsible for your own safety. "The newspaper didn't tell me to lock my doors when I went on holidays, so it's their fault I got robbed"

  • On the post: Police And Courts Regularly Abusing Wiretapping Laws To Arrest People For Filming Cops Misbehaving In Public Places

    Richard ( profile ), 05 Jun, 2010 @ 04:57am

    So, why didn't LAPD just get the Rodney King tape thrown out? Fairly sure those officers wouldn't have consented to being recorded.

  • On the post: When Reporters Write A Story You Don't Like, Perhaps Don't Impersonate Them Asking For Sexual Encounters Or Nude Modeling Jobs

    Richard ( profile ), 04 Jun, 2010 @ 02:10am

    "Apparently, someone doesn't know when to quit."

    Oh, that made me laugh. Someone who, by the looks of it, is trying to make themselves unemployable "doesn't know when to quit"

  • On the post: Confusion Over Liability Extends To The Real World, Rather Than Just Online

    Richard ( profile ), 27 May, 2010 @ 11:33pm

    Re: Ummmm

    I was going to make a similar comment. There are no, as far as I'm aware, safe harbours for offline. If the can establish that in case law, then it will help them push to get it removed from DMCA.

  • On the post: US Copyright Official Pretends That Concerns About ACTA Are Unfounded; Mocks Legitimate Concerns

    Richard ( profile ), 27 May, 2010 @ 04:44pm

    "noting that it's ridiculous to say you'll support "any" action designed to stop file sharing"

    Quite true. Mr Bengloff will have quite the egg on his face if some totalitarian state decides to go out and execute "file sharers"* in their homes and someone points out he said he would support anything.

    * "file sharers" in this country are defined as anyone who transfers a file across the internet, which would be everyone or anyone the government decides to enforce this against.

  • On the post: Anti-Piracy Group Says: 'Child Porn Is Great' Since It Gets Politicians To Block File Sharing Sites

    Richard ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2010 @ 03:22am

    Re: hmm

    Yes, that is very odd, did the blogger sit on this for 3 years? Also in all the comments on that article (although I admit, most of them are in another language I can't read) I can't find anyone else questioning the date.
    I'm having trouble finding "first hand" information about this event, to try and find out WHEN it actually happened, 2007, a seriously typo'd 2010 or not at all???
    Or is this a very late April fools?

  • On the post: Historical Association Claims Copyright To Scans Of 100 Year Old Photos

    Richard ( profile ), 26 Apr, 2010 @ 10:14pm

    Written Permission

    I assume the website contains a bit of writing, authorising you to store the image in your web-browsers cache, otherwise you'd be breaking the copyright they're claiming by storing it. Also I assume every company that owns a server or whatever that acts as a conduit for internet traffic has also either contacted CCHA for authorization to transmit those images, or has blocked their transmission. Unless I've missed something where they all get an "implied" authorization, despite the fact that they never personally visited the website in order to see that they weren't authorized?

  • On the post: Duh, Don't Leave A Thumb Drive With Child Porn Plugged Into A Shared Computer

    Richard ( profile ), 22 Apr, 2010 @ 03:26am

    I would expect someone who found an unknown thumb drive attached to a computer to have a look through the files. I actually have a file in the root of my thumb drive that says "I belong to . Please give me back".
    I believe a better analogy would be a piece of paper left in the out tray of a printer. You would simply expect people to read it to find out who printed it so that it could be given to them.

  • On the post: Escapist Website Mass Bans (Then Unbans And Guilts) Users Who Mention Adblock

    Richard ( profile ), 20 Apr, 2010 @ 11:45pm

    Here's a hypothetical:

    Say you go to a website, about knitting, which bans you from it unless you disable your ad-blocker. So, given you want to access the site, you disable it, and are then free to enjoy the forum on knitting.
    But then some evil hacker gets into the ad company, and inserts child porn into the ads.
    Now, all of a sudden, you go to your knitting site, and download child porn.
    You did have a way to avoid this, but the website forced you not to, so in a way, the website has just forced you do download child porn.

  • On the post: Google Releases Stats On Country Info & Takedown Requests; Leaves Us Wanting More

    Richard ( profile ), 20 Apr, 2010 @ 11:40pm

    Maybe Google are afraid of being accused of generating your favourite "Streisand effect" by pointing out what content is being taken down and by who.

  • On the post: As Cyberbullying Moral Panics Heat Up, Actual Rates Of Cyberbullying Decreasing

    Richard ( profile ), 10 Apr, 2010 @ 11:39pm

    Funnily, I got a letter from my local member today, talking about "cyber protection" and including topics like "cyber bullying". The statement that stuck with me the most was "Most often, cyber bullying is just another tool for the person who bullies face-to-face. However, it is becoming more common for those who are being bullied in the playground to retaliate online." From what I understand of that paragraph, that means that it is entirely possible that if your child is being bullied online, then they might be an ACTUAL bully at school.

  • On the post: Google Sued For Using The Term 'Gadgets'; Tiny Company Afraid People Will Think They Support Google

    Richard ( profile ), 31 Mar, 2010 @ 02:12am

    They were able to trademark "website gadget" ??? seriously? That's not generic enough for you? I think I might go out and trademark a drink call "Orange drink" and sue coca-cola.

  • On the post: Obama Administration Warns Australia About Its Internet Censorship Plan

    Richard ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2010 @ 03:43am

    They might carry more weight if the Senator behind the legislation (Stephen Conroy) paid attention to them too. In a recent radio segment he was asked specifically about the US raising concerns about the filter, his response was "I haven't been told anything". Which makes sense, there are channels that have to be followed, so the US guys would be talking to Australias foreign affairs people, not to the communications minister. Still, you'd think somebody might have passed on a memo.

  • On the post: Because NBC Could Never Have Figured Out How To Put TV Shows On The Internet By Itself…

    Richard ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2010 @ 01:48pm

    Surely this guy should be suing the scene "pirates", you know, the ones who for many years before Hulu were putting up TV shows.... on the internet!

  • On the post: UK Police Tell Cybercafe Owners 'We're Not Asking You To Spy On Users… But Spy On Users'

    Richard ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2010 @ 03:11am

    I've been to cybercafes that have their systems setup to automatically wipe the hard drive back to a "fresh install" state. My school does the same thing to their computers every night as well. I would be surprised if it wasn't a common practise, as it protects their customers from other customers, and keeps their machines running well.

  • On the post: Why TV Everywhere Will Fail: Because It's Based On Taking Away Value, Not Adding It

    Richard ( profile ), 24 Mar, 2010 @ 02:12am

    Foxtel here in Australia have a similar option. They advertise it as "watch your favourite tv shows on the internet!" so when we missed a show on Lifestyle that we wanted to watch, we thought, great, watch it online. Yeah... No. Theres a grand total of 4 shows available for that entire channel. I haven't done a count, but even though there's a huge amount of repeat showings, there must be over 100 shows on that channel, and they give us 4? C'mon, you're not even trying to make it worthwhile.

  • On the post: Warner Bros. Latest Movie Release Strategy? Confuse The Hell Out Of The Market And Prop Up Blockbuster?

    Richard ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2010 @ 11:08pm

    Maybe Warners plan is to show "see, if we can prop up an obsolete business model, why can't the govt prop up ours?"

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