Chris-Mouse 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (538)

• On the post: NCAA Found To Violate Antitrust Laws In Preventing Schools From Sharing Licensing Revenue With Student Athletes

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 11 Aug, 2014 @ 05:39am

  Re:

  there's a good reason why the highest paid state employee is usually the head coach at the state's largest university or college.

• On the post: Intelligence Community Warns That Releasing CIA Torture Report Details Might 'Inflame Anti-US Passions' In Middle East

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 11 Aug, 2014 @ 10:41am

  So Mr. Clapper. Is that your least untruthful statement about the report?

• On the post: After CIA Angrily Denied Spying On Senate, CIA Admits It Did And Apologizes

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 31 Jul, 2014 @ 12:35pm

  Re: Lying by the CIA

  The CIA was exactly correct in this statement. When compared with the spying, monitoring and hacking that the CIA does elsewhere, the spying done on the SSCI really isn't a tremendous amount.

• On the post: Reclassifying Broadband Under Title II Becoming Politically Feasible

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 31 Jul, 2014 @ 05:28am

  Re: Removal of Fascists

  The moment you start equating FCC regulating decisions with treason, you begin to sound so much like a crackpot conspiracy theorist that any valid points you might raise are simply dismissed as yet another crackpot theory.

• On the post: NY Port Authority Claims To Own The NYC Skyline: Tells Store To Destroy Skyline-Themed Plates

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 31 Jul, 2014 @ 09:29am

  This should make short work of the lawsuit.

• On the post: Amazon To Hachette And Authors: Here, Let Us Explain Basic Price Elasticity To You

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 30 Jul, 2014 @ 07:39am

  Re: Great arguments

  However, they do miss one issue, which is the question of potential market size. That is to say that for every book, there are only so many people who would be interested in it, a non-specific but certainly finite number of people who will part with money to purchase the product at all.

  Amazon hasn't missed that at all. That portion of the population who wouldn't buy the book at any price are simply not part of the potential market, for any book, at any price, and in any format. The potential market is the rest of the population who might buy the book. Amazon has shown, with the facts to back it up, that the actual market varies with the price of the book, and has shown exactly where the point of maximum profit is.

  Lowering the price takes the biggest part of the profit right off the top, it rarely changes the costs.

  You're assuming that the fixed costs are set in part by the number of books sold. They're not. For ebooks, the cost of selling one book is the same as the cost for selling 100 books. If I can drop the price to 1/10th the original price, and sell 100 times as many books, I come out way ahead. The bottom line is that Amazon's pricing results in the book publisher getting MORE money for the same amount of work. There's absolutely no way that can result in less profit.

  Surprised that nobody has jumped all over this. Everything in the law right now points to the concept that E-books are likely to be subject to first sale rights, which means that yes, they will at some point be able to be resold.

  The courts have already said otherwise. See this story. Resale of an electronic document is a violation of copyright, no matter how careful you are to ensure that the original is destroyed after the sale.

• On the post: CIA Tells FOIA Requester That He Needs To Know Everything About The Emails He's Requesting Before He Can Request Them

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 29 Jul, 2014 @ 09:34am

  Of course the CIA can't search their email system. The only guy who could find anything on the computer is currently in Russia on a leave of absence.

• On the post: Mayor Of Arizona Town Publicly Shames Lousy Broadband Service Provider With Apology Letter To Hotel Guests

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 18 Jul, 2014 @ 11:09am

  Re: Re: Re:

  If the service contract specifies speeds 'up to' a given value, the the town may not have grounds for a lawsuit. One bit per week would still meet the terms for 'up to' one hundred megabits per second

• On the post: Copyright Lawyers Prime The Pump For The Return Of SOPA

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 14 Jul, 2014 @ 09:31am

  What would happen if the entire internet were to take the ABA at its word, and fire off a request for written permission to click that link?

• On the post: Google Restores Some Links To Articles Removed In 'Right To Be Forgotten' Mess

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 07 Jul, 2014 @ 06:54am

  Re: Re:

  A better way would be to over censor on a massive scale. Any time an individual or company requested removal of a document, remove ALL documents containing the name of the individual or company that made the request, and keep them out of the database permanently.

• On the post: Dangerous Ruling: Judge Lets Microsoft Seize & Redirect No-IP Domains Without Notice

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2014 @ 11:02am

  Can I do that?

  I've been having to fight off hundreds of malware attacks as a result of the company owning the IP range 64.4.0.0/16. Can I get a court to let me take over that range of IP numbers so as to put a stop to the malware?

• On the post: Study: Half Of All Young People In UK Think Digital Content Should Be Free To Download

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 26 Jun, 2014 @ 09:25am

  What this story seems to tell me is that Tomas Macaulay was correct in the prediction he made in 1841 The whole speech is worth reading, but the very last paragragh perfectly describes what this study has discovered.
  
  

  On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress?

• On the post: Court Says The Process For Getting Off The No Fly List Is Unconstitutional

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2014 @ 08:05am

  here's hoping the court expands that removal process to cover ALL watchlists. Otherwise someone will be on the no-fly list because they're on another terrorist watch list. They can get removed from the no-fly list any time, but since they can't get off that other watchlist, they get put right back on the no-fly list.

• On the post: UK Government Ignores European Court Ruling On Data Retention: Tells Telecom Companies To Carry On Spying

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2014 @ 04:10am

  Since when is the "gotta collect it all!" crowd worried about minor things like obeying the law?

• On the post: Stingray Documents Show Law Enforcement Using 'Terrorism' To Obtain Equipment To Fight Regular Crime

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2014 @ 04:14am

  But..but... Won't somebody think of the terrorist children!

• On the post: US Marshals Have A Classic CC/BCC Error And Reveal Bidders For Silk Road's Bitcoins

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2014 @ 02:52am

  No surprise that the US government would make a 1990's era computer mistake. They've always been a couple of decades behind the times when it comes to technology.

• On the post: How Do You Know The Public Domain Is In Trouble? It Requires A 52-Page Handbook To Determine If Something Is Public Domain

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2014 @ 09:54am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  The Authors name being on the cover or somewhere on/in the work should be good enough for that.
  
  An elderly author writes a novel. Knowing he is not likely to live long enough to benefit from the term of copyright, he sells the rights to Company A. At some time after the death of the author, Company A goes bankrupt. Company B picks up the rights as part of the bankruptcy auction.
  
  At some point after all this, you decide to make a movie of the book. Knowing only the name of the author, how would you figure out who to license the rights from?

• On the post: Six Officers Charged In Police Pursuit That Ended With 137 Shots Being Fired At Suspects In A Little Over 20 Seconds

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2014 @ 07:44am

  Re: Re:

  I would add (3) always check downrange area where missed shots will go.

• On the post: How Do You Know The Public Domain Is In Trouble? It Requires A 52-Page Handbook To Determine If Something Is Public Domain

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2014 @ 07:37am

  Re: Re: Re:

  A big part of the reason for the registration process is so that it becomes very easy to track down copyright holders.
  the lack of a registration process is what has created the whole 'orphan works' problem.

• On the post: Marc Andreessen Thinks Snowden, Administration Are To Blame For Backlash Against US Tech Industry

  

  Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 05 Jun, 2014 @ 04:08pm

  Giving secret documents to "everybody on the planet" is aiding the enemy. You have to remember that to the NSA, "everybody on the planet" *IS* the enemy.

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