Chris-Mouse 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: More Canadian Universities Opt Out Of Access Copyright's Skyrocketing Tariffs

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2011 @ 06:23pm

    Re:

    Next time read the article a bit. The story is about a Canadian copyright collective and Canadian universities. Last time I checked, both Yale and Harvard were located in the United States.

  • On the post: PayPal Agrees To Help IFPI Cut Off Funding For Sites IFPI Doesn't Like Without Judicial Oversight

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2011 @ 03:43am

    This sounds like something typical of the recording industry tactics. If you can't get what you want by getting the laws rewritten, do an end run around the law. They will do anything to get what they want, anything except prove that they've been harmed.

  • On the post: Anheuser-Busch Trying To Trademark Area Codes For Local Beers

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 21 Jul, 2011 @ 04:46am

    Didn't Intel discover that you can't trademark a number?
    Has the USPTO changed their policy on this in the last decade?

  • On the post: Vague Law + Vindictive Law Enforcement? Hide Your Veggies!

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 18 Jul, 2011 @ 09:41am

    Re: Re:

    I think we could bury the AC troll up to his neck in Julie Bass's front garden he is living and with his brain I doubt much above plant life.


    But would the AC's brain be considered 'suitable' plant life?

  • On the post: Vague Law + Vindictive Law Enforcement? Hide Your Veggies!

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 18 Jul, 2011 @ 07:35am

    First, the dismissal was "with prejudice," so the charges can be brought again. But...

    If the dismissal is 'with prejudice', then the charges cannot be brought again. The original article has it listed as 'without prejudice,' meaning the charges can be brought again.

  • On the post: You Don't Own What You Thought You Bought: Verizon Breaks Phones; Turns Off Feature

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 12 Jul, 2011 @ 10:11am

    It will be interesting to see what Verizon does if Sony loses that lawsuit over remkving functionality from the PS3.

  • On the post: ISP's Five Strikes Plan: Railroading, MPAA/RIAA-Style

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2011 @ 01:48pm

    Re: Let me swear for once.

    Marcel, that's part of the problem. This *isn't* a law. It's a private agreement between the ISP and the MPAA/RIAA. About the only way you could get this killed would be to show it's a violation of an existing law, like anti-trust law.
    Other than that, once your ISP has agreed to it, and incorporated it into the terms of service, you're screwed. You either have to agree to accept this load of crap, or else you don't get an account with that ISP. Given the list of companies signed up for it, that would mean no broadband access to the internet.

  • On the post: American-Statesman: Suspect Position, Bad Example, Another Bad Example, Debunked Statistics, Contradiction

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 08 Jul, 2011 @ 09:01am

    Re: Re:

    If you look at almost any system, you can "find the good". The question will always "is the good really worth it"? In the case of piracy, the answer is pretty much no.
    This may, or may not be true. It's also pretty much irrelevent. In the 13 years since the DMCA passed, the recording industry has tryed sueing P2P software companies, sueing internet downloaders, DRM, and "education" campaigns. The one thing that all the attempts at stopping internet copyright infringement have in common is that they have all failed.
    It's more than past time for the recording industry to recognise that they can't win that particular battle, and they need a new approach if they are going to stay in business.

  • On the post: Major US ISPs Agree To Five Strikes Plan, Rather Than Three

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 07 Jul, 2011 @ 04:30pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Only the web!

    Not really. The use a VPN will likely be a trigger for further checking, especially if you are moving a large volume of data over that connection.
    How exactly are they going to go about doing this? The VPN is encrypted, so at best they'll be able to identify endpoints for the link.

  • On the post: Monkey Business: Can A Monkey License Its Copyrights To A News Agency?

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 07 Jul, 2011 @ 09:08am

    What about photos taken by machines?

    Just out of curiosity, what about automated systems like security cameras and webcams? I suppose there could be a claim of some minimal creativity involved in the initial setup that determines the framing of the pictures, but other than that, the entire process, from lighting levels to the exact timing of the picture is automated. Does that initial setup involve enough creativity to allow for copyright on images that may be taken years later, or are all those automated pictures automatically in the public domain due to lack of creativity involved in taking them.
    For that matter, would the courts decide that the machines do have some creativity, in which case, who owns the copyright, the machine's owner, the installer, or the programmer who wrote the computer code that controls everything?

  • On the post: Another Fair Use Debacle: Photographer Settles Bogus Copyright Threat From Artist

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 06 Jul, 2011 @ 11:00am

    Re:

    Fair use doesn't include resale rights. Trying to resell the image on a stock photo site without a release for the main subject of the photo is risky. Legally, he is very likely to lose.

    Fair use doesn't mean "any use".

    Fair use can, but doesn't always, include any and all rights that would otherwise be restricted by copyright. The question isn't qhich right is being violated, but whether or not it's fair, and fair can include commercial resale if the other three factors in the test are decided in the defendant's favor.
    The problem is that deciding wheter or not a use is fair has to be done by a court, and, win or lose, you're still going to be out a big pile of money by the time the dust settles.

  • On the post: Rupert Murdoch's Journalists Accused Of Hacking Into Murdered Girl's Voicemails, Deleting Some

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 06 Jul, 2011 @ 08:14am

    Re:

    Make all of their mail - voice mail, email, paper mail, all of it, completely public and published on a government website. And give everyone access to delete their message or file them wherever.

    Treat their privacy like they treat others.

    While it's a nice idea, there's a problem with it. Email involves the privacy of two people, not one. the sender and the recipient. After this sort of privacy violation, the 'reporters' involved don't deserve privacy, but the sources they are in contact with do.

  • On the post: WikiLeaks Planning Legal Action Against PayPal, MasterCard & Visa

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2011 @ 10:54am

    The mail still works, fedex still runs, the banks still cash checks, etc. Yes, Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal are more convenient, but they do not control the money movement market.
    Visa and Mastercard do control some 95% of the online payments market, and this is the area the plaintiff requires access too in order to remain competitive in business.
    It is also clear that the Wikileaks people have been slippery with the truth, using third party companies, less than honest addresses, and the like to get their processing done. Third parties accepting Visa transactions requires that the company have a sort of IPSP account (for allowing third party transactions), and each third party must be directly approved by Visa. Without it, the processing can be stopped without warning.
    This third party procedure is not 'slippery with the truth' It's a standard business practice, as you even admit to when mentioning the procedures required for it. What's more, the company plainly stated up front that they were going to be processing payments for WikiLeaks.
    ...wikeleaks legal status is somewhat in question.
    There is no question at all about the legal status of Wikileaks. One individual has been in custody for almost a year over the major leak that has embarrassed the US government. In spite of the long delay, that individual has not yet been charged with anything. wikileaks has not yet been charged, let alone convicted, of any offense whatsoever. Unless you are willing to throw out the basis for the entire legal system in the western world, Wikileaks has to be considered as innocent until guilt is proven in a court.
    This story reads more like Wikeleaks being more than slightly desperate for attention, as fewer and fewer people (and the media) are paying attention to their spew anymore.
    It sounds to me like WikiLeaks is fighting back against a government determined to kill it by any possible means.
    If WikiLeaks does win this case, then Visa and Mastercard are going to be caught between a rock and a hard place. If they don't restore service to WikiLeaks, they'll get hammered by the EU legal system, but if they do restore service, they'll get hammered by the US political system. Either way, the companies can't win unless they can show in court that there's a specific, legal, reason why they terminated the service.

  • On the post: That Didn't Take Long: Turntable.fm Blocked To All Non-US Users

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 27 Jun, 2011 @ 10:19am

    The recording industry is in it'd death throws, people like Marcus are just trying to throw them a frickin' lifeline!

    The recording industry keeps throwing the lifeline back because it's not _their_ lifeline, and they don't get paid when someone uses it.

  • On the post: TSA Takes Security Theater On The Road: Mobile Groping Teams Can Pop Up Anywhere

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2011 @ 02:47pm

    Re: Re:


    And if there's a bombing at a school or a house, would you want the TSA there too?

    Nope. I'd want someone competent to show up.

  • On the post: Giant Breweries Get Laws Passed In Wisconsin To Make Life Hard For Small Breweries [Updated]

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2011 @ 10:39am

    Re: Even playing field

    ALL means ALL Mike, seems to me like a even playing field, one that does not favor either the big company or the small one, nor does it make it any harder for the small brewer to sell to a shop than a large one.

    what happens when the big middleman distributor tells the small brewery "your one truckload of beer a week is too small a shipment to be worth our time. Come back when you can ship five or six truckloads a day"

  • On the post: The Many Killers Of The Music Industry: The Analog Era

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2011 @ 05:52am

    I'm not at all surprised that a legacy industry has predicted disaster every time a technological change has disturbed the status quo. The fact is, that most of those changes were a disaster for some part of the industry, even though they ended up being very good for the overall industry in the long run.
    I'm much more surprised that, after a century long unbroken string of false alarms, that anyone still believes the latest predictions.

  • On the post: How Long Until Phone Numbers Are A Historical Relic?

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 14 Jun, 2011 @ 11:32am

    In any communications system, the node identifiers must be unique. Currently, the telephone system uses something like 14 digits to create a globally unique identifier for each phone. IP addresses are also globally unique. IPV4 addresses are only 12 digits at most, and there aren't enough of them to go around as is. IPV6 addresses are numerous enough to supply several to every person on the planet, but a 32 character 'random' hexadecimal string is much harder for humans to memorize than a string of digits.
    Humans are best at remembering strings of text, but there we have a problem. If we use random strings of characters as an ID, they're no better than the IP addresses. If we restrict ourselves to pronouncable strings to make memorization easier, there just aren't enough. I'd love to have a unique identifier of firstname-lastname, but I know of at least three famous people with the same first and last name as me, and I've got an unusual combination. even something like firstname-lastname-cityofbirth-country isn't enough to be unique for someone like Bob Smith of Boise Idaho, USA.
    I can see some sort of assignment of a unique individual ID consisting of an owner unique prefix combined with a two digit suffix to identify a specific device owned by that person, but that's still just a minor variation on the traditional phone number.

    Phone numbers are far from being perfect, but I don't see us coming up with anything better for a very long time, if ever.

  • On the post: The Best Time To Make A Decision Is… When You Have To Pee Really Badly?

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 14 Jun, 2011 @ 07:03am

    Honestly, it sounds like the study's applicability may be limited, but just to be safe, I think my new corporate management philosophy is going to involve forcing everyone to drink a lot, but keeping the bathrooms locked up for "cleaning" most of the time... It's foolproof.

    With a company policy like that, you just might end up getting pissed on by some pissed off employees.

  • On the post: Homeland Security Appears To Be Stalling On FOIA Requests Concerning Domain Seizures

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2011 @ 01:57pm

    Re:

    My guess is Sept 31st, 0% redaction.

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