Chris-Mouse 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (538) comment rss

  • On the post: DC Dumps Bill To Force Uber Into High Prices; Complains That The Bill Was To Help Uber

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 10 Jul, 2012 @ 11:02am

    Re:

    So you're asking for a system to censor those you don't want to hear from?

  • On the post: Chinese Companies Again Using Patents To Punish Foreign Competitors: Apple Sued Over Siri In Shanghai

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 09 Jul, 2012 @ 01:14pm

    Re: So wait...

    What percentage of 'American' devices are made in Chinese factories and shipped over to the USA?

    What happens to all those American companies if Chinese patents mean those devices can no longer be manufactured in China?

    How long do you think it would take to rebuild all the manufacturing capability and expertise that got outsourced to China?

  • On the post: Big ISPs Expected To Start Six Strikes Program This Weekend [Updated]

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 27 Jun, 2012 @ 07:40am

    Re: Re:

    But according to the MPAA, simply linking to infringing items is itself infringing, thus the entire Pirate Bay site is infringing.

  • On the post: Why Do The People Who Always Ask Us To 'Respect' Artists Seem To Have So Little Respect For Artists?

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2012 @ 12:14pm

    Nina did have trouble giving her work away

    He's right in one respect. Nina did have trouble giving her work away. Of course, it wasn't because nobody wanted it. It was because of greedy gatekeepers, but that's a minor point.
    Of course, pointing that our really doesn't help his whole 'respect for artists' thing, now does it.

  • On the post: A Broken System: Einstein Wouldn't Have Been 'Qualified' To Teach High School Physics

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2012 @ 06:12am

    Re:

    I think a big part of the problem is the schools themselves. It's too hard for them to determine if a teacher can actually teach. It's much cheaper, and easier to point to a piece of paper and say that this means they can teach.
    It's a way of outsourcing staff evaluation and training to a third party who does not have to deal with the consequences of mistakes in the evaluation process.

  • On the post: Apple Steps Into Patent Fight To Unnecessarily Silence A Little Girl

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 13 Jun, 2012 @ 10:07am

    Re: Re: Re:

    The product is not known to infringe on the patent. Until such time as a court rules that the software is infringing, the status is not known, and assumed to be non-infringing.
    Until that court ruling, or an injunction from the court, Apple has no legal requirement to do anything.

  • On the post: Toronto Mayor Wants Residents To Report Graffiti Via iPhone, And Pay For The Privilege

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2012 @ 11:42am

    Re: Ford is a Fool

    You forgot to mention that he followed it up by cancelling an $8 billion transit plan that had been developed over the last ten years. Cancelling that plan cost the city $49 million dollars in cancellation fees.
    Then he tried to push through a subway only plan that would have cost the city $1 billion dollars more than the amount of money available, with the expectation that developers would cough up the extra money to finish it.
    Funny how after a year of trying, nobody has been willing to commit anything in the way of donations to the project.

  • On the post: CISPA Sponsor Mike Rogers Says Protests Are Mere 'Turbulence' On Landing

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2012 @ 12:46pm

    Pilots who ignore 'turbulence on landing' frequently crash and burn.

  • On the post: No, Violating Your Employer's Computer Use Policy Is Not Criminal Hacking

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2012 @ 06:33am

    Re: Re: I do have some issue with this...

    But then why use the CFAA to prosecute? If the former employee violated an employment contract, then that would leave him open to a civil suit for breach of contract, would it not?

    The only reason I can see for using the CFAA is to get the taxpayer to pick up the legal costs of enforcing a civil contract that may or may not exist.

  • On the post: Bohemian Rhapsody Video Taken Down Again, This Time By The Drunk Guy Himself

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2012 @ 02:26pm

    Re: Actually he does

    I don't think so. Copyright doesn't exist until the work is fixed. You can have the right to create a performance of a previously fixed work. You can have a copyright on a recording of a performance, but the performance itself is not fixed, so there can't be a copyright on it.
    Unless there's a written agreement to the contrary, the copyright to the video would be held by the operator of the camera, not the performer.

    Which leads to another question. Given that the camera is fixed in place, and operating totally automatically, is there enough creativity in the recording to qualify for any copyright at all? It looks to me like there's a good case to be made that the only copyright involved is the songwriter's copyright on the original music.

  • On the post: Why Do The Labels Continue To Insist That 'Your Money Is No Good Here?'

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 20 Mar, 2012 @ 10:22am

    Re:

    The artist has the copyright, has either signed a limited distribution deal for Austria, or has assigned rights to another distributor who isn't offering the product in the US yet.

    As note, I did a test using the label's own site, and they were more than willing to sell me the EP for just under 3 euros (via paypal processing).


    If the artist has signed an exclusive distribution deal with a company in Austria, isn't selling directly to the customer a violation of that deal? If it's not, or there is no exclusive deal, why are they refusing to sell the product in the first place?

  • On the post: When Entertainment Industry Numbers Are More Suited To Comedy Than Analysis

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 16 Mar, 2012 @ 11:31am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Probably not enough math geeks here to get this ...

    Creating a derivative work would be a violation of copyright.

  • On the post: Authors Can Sleep Easy Now; Paypal Reverses Its Censorship Decision

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 15 Mar, 2012 @ 07:57am

    I'm not sure Paypal did anything wrong.

    Morality had nothing at all to do with the decision to block the hardcore porn books. Money had a lot to do with it.

    When someone disputes a charge on their credit card, the credit card companies generally reverse the charge, and absorb the loss as a business expense. For whatever reason, this type of porn has a much higher percentage of such disputed charges than other books, or pretty much anything else. To compensate for the extra losses, the credit card companies have to charge a higher transaction fee for that category of merchandise. Paypal set up their merchant accounts with the credit card companies with the intent of selling general merchandise, which has a much lower chargeback rate, but then got into the porn business by providing services for these publishers. Now, should the credit card companies be forced to absorb higher losses simply because Paypal is lumping all transactions under the same 'general merchandise' category? The credit card companies chose instead to tell Paypal that the transaction fees on all transactions were going to go up to reflect that higher rate of losses.
    This left Paypal with a couple of possible solutions. They could refuse to do business with companies generating the higher fees, they could increase all transaction fees to cover the extra expense, or they could completely rework their system to charge different transaction rates to different merchants, like the credit card companies do.
    Paypal chose option A. It was the cheapest, and quickest solution to their problem. Option B would annoy most of Paypal's customers, while benefiting only a small minority of those customers. Option C would involve a lot of time and expense on Paypal's part, without giving them any real benefit in return.

    Did Paypal make the best possible decision? Probably not, at least, not long term. Did they do anything wrong? I would have to say no. While it may have given the appearance of morality based censorship, the reality is that the decision was one of refusing to deal with a class of customer that was causing more problems than they were worth.
    Is there a way to avoid problems like this in the future? Sure, create enough online payment options that competition will make it much harder for credit card companies or online payment processors to wipe out businesses by refusing to deal with them. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon.

  • On the post: Kim Dotcom Gives TV Interview Where He Insists The Charges Against Him Are A Joke

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 02 Mar, 2012 @ 08:55am

    Re:

    How hard is it for them to see the files that are most often accessed on their server and use common sense to determine that it is infringing.
    As it turns out, the answer is 'very hard'.
    To start with look at the easy part, 'fair use.' You can probably make a pretty good guess at whether or not a use is fair, but that's all you can do. Fair use is something that ultimately needs to be decided by a court.
    The harder item to determine would be licensing. In order to determine whether or not a file is licensed, you would need to A) know the copyright status of the work (and this can vary with country!) B) know who the copyright holder is, and C) have access to the terms and conditions of every single license ever granted for the use of that work.
    Good luck building that database. Even the creators of the work are finding they have to use a lawsuit in order to pry that information out of the big studios.

  • On the post: FBI Turns Off About 3,000 GPS Devices Following Supreme Court Ruling

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2012 @ 03:22pm

    Re: @FBI: Need your devices back? Just get a warrant to use them properly.

    Of course, since the FBI knows which vehicles it attached the devices to, it could always simply contact the vehicle owner and ask for permission to recover the devices without needing to involve the courts at all.

  • On the post: Elsevier Backs Down, Removes Support For Research Works Act As Elsevier Boycott Grows

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2012 @ 02:07pm

    Re:

    It sounds pretty much like the business model of most of the copyright maximalists

  • On the post: Key Techdirt SOPA/PIPA Post Censored By Bogus DMCA Takedown Notice

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2012 @ 12:31pm

    Re: Re:

    Section 512(c)(3)(A)(vi) also requires that the complaint must include:

    A statement that the information in the
    notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury,
    that the complaining party is authorized to act on
    behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly
    infringed.
    Failing to check before complaining might get a handslap from a judge. Being called on it, and still claiming copyright in the work cannot be anything other than willful action, and that would leave the complainant open to a perjury charge.
    Of course, the big question is, as always, "is nailing this company worth the expense of going to court?" Unless you're willing to put a lot of money on the line in an attempt to set a precedent, the answer is probably "no"

  • On the post: Indiana Court Says Anonymous Commenters Deserve High Standard Before Being Exposed, But Aren't Necessarily Protected By Shield Laws

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2012 @ 07:46am

    Re: Re:

    What about your right to arm bears?

  • On the post: ICE Considered One Of The Worst Places To Work In The Federal Government

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2012 @ 11:55am

    Re: Re: Focus on morale? Ha!

    How do you violate the constitutional rights of non citizens?
    Might I point out that the United States constitution does NOT apply to American citizens, so they have no constitutional rights either.
    The constitution of the United States applies to the United States Government, and if the constitution says the government shall not do something, then it shall not do that something. The citizenship status of the people involved simply does not apply.

  • On the post: How New Internet Spying Laws Will Actually ENABLE Stalkers, Spammers, Phishers And, Yes, Pedophiles & Terrorists

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2012 @ 10:49am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: But there is no database!

    The point is in a room of 100 people, if you can identify the 97 who are completely innocent, you can spend your time looking at the last 3. Requiring ISPs to keep logs of customer logins, IPs, and simple stuff like that (not actual surfing history) is a step to help you know which of the 100 people are in the 97, and which are the last 3 you need to spend time looking at.

    um no. It does not. Knowing that someone connected to the internet, and used a given IP number at the time does not in any way help narrow down who is and is not a criminal. Not unless you're willing to assume that simply connecting to the internet is an indication of criminal activity.

    Further, by setting standards by which this data is collected and made available, the law makes the first step much easier on law enforcement, and would let them focus on the potential criminals instead of the truly innocent citizens. One less step to take to court for no reason (as the courts will almost always approve the request), and no more dealing with ISPs with incomplete records or who willfully do not collect such data.

    Setting standards does nothing to help when the very data covered by those standards does nothing to help determine whether or not further scrutiny is required.

    I cannot see any true expansion of scope, rather an attempt to make ISPs (in Canada) to work in a similar manner, and to make needed information available on a timely basis and in a manner that does not intentionally hide potential criminals.

    Giving law enforcement officers additional authority is by definition an expansion of scope. The questions that need to be asked are "Is this expansion needed?" and "will this expansion help?" The number of recent news stories about arrests for online criminal activities would seem to indicate that the police are doing just fine without this extra help. The number of cases of mistaken analysis of the data they already have would seem to indicate that what law enforcement needs is better ability to analyze the data it already has, not more data to make that analysis problem even worse.

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