Chris-Mouse 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Can A Contract Remove Fair Use Rights?

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2011 @ 06:22am

    Fair use and the CC licenses

    So, say I'm a student at UCLA (I'm not) and I get a CC licensed work that requires attribution. I decide to reproduce it for educational purposes with no attribution. According to this, that'll be fair use, and I can safely ignore the CC license, right? I mean, if this argument holds... which may not be the case.



    I don't see why this wouldn't be the case. With any work covered under copyright, you automatically have all permissions granted under fair use. With a CC license, you are granted additional permissions as long as you adhere to the terms of the license. If you fail to do so, your license disappears, and you're back to the copyright default, which is fair use.

  • On the post: FCC Planning To Crack Down On Cellular & GPS Jamming Devices

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2011 @ 08:07am

    Re: Private Property

    If it's my private property (say a nice family eatery), and I choose to make, as a condition of eating in my establishment, a rule that no one may use cell phones (kinda like the no crying children rule)... why can I not enforce that in the method I choose?

    How you enforce your rules on your property is your business, BUT you are still not permitted to operate an unlicensed radio transmitter, and that's exactly what a cellphone or GPS jammer is. Like any radio transmitter, the signal will not magically stop at the boundary of your property, so now you are jamming the neighbour's cellphone too, even if he wants people to be able to use cellphones in his store.
    If you really do want to completely stop cellphone use in your building, there is a very simple way to do it that's perfectly legal. Line the walls of the building with conductive metal foil. Cellphones, and any other radio receivers, inside the foil box will simply not get any signal they can use. This does not transmit anything, so is perfectly legal.

    As for cellphones interfering with your speakers, That's your problem. speakers are not intended to pick up radio signals, and should be designed not to do so. If your speaker manufacturer decided to save a few pennies per speaker by not doing this, that's something you'll have to take up with the manufacturer.

  • On the post: The PS3 Hack Injunction Shows The Problems Of Judges Who Don't Understand Technology

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 01 Feb, 2011 @ 10:36am

    Re:

    Sony purposely sells the consoles at a low price, and sells the software / games at a higher rate.
    This is entirely a business model decision that Sony made. They could also have made the console expensive and sold the games cheaply, or priced both so as to make a reasonable profit either way. It's pretty clear to me that Sony wants to keep the console locked down purely to protect the business model they chose, otherwise, why would Sony care about what I do with the hardware once I've given them my money.

  • On the post: DailyDirt: Looking To Improve Infrastructure Designs

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 21 Jan, 2011 @ 05:54am

    Flying cars would be a nightmare.

    If you think traffic jams are bad now, imagine what it would be like if the drivers have to watch for cars above and below them as well as beside them. Oh, don't forget that there's no such thing as a minor accident for an aircraft in flight. Even a minor fender bender will kill everyone on board when the flying car stops flying and falls out of the sky.

  • On the post: Senator Wyden Calls Out Content Companies For Wanting To Censor The Internet

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 18 Jan, 2011 @ 03:26pm

    Re:

    diverting money out of which economy? The counterfieters manufacture goods offshore, and keep the profits offshore to avoid paying US taxes. Guess what, those big companies do the exact same thing.
    There are reasons to want to stop counterfeiting, but the diversion of money out of the US economy is not one of them.

  • On the post: Fearmongering: Kindle Lending Feature Will Lead To 'Lost' Book Sales?

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 04 Jan, 2011 @ 06:06am

    Killing the Goose...

    Publishers seem to want to turn recreational reading into an activity that will require payment up front every time you want to read a book. They may even be successful at doing so. If they are successful, they will regret it.
    People learn to enjoy reading by doing a lot of reading for entertainment. This requires access to a lot of books. currently, people get these books by borrowing from the school library, borrowing from the local library, borrowing from parents, etc. Nobody pays up front for all the books they read while learning to enjoy reading.
    Those `freeloaders` then become the next generation of book buyers. If the publishing industry eliminates all the `freeloaders`, they will also find themselves without customers one generation later. This would be a huge loss, not just to the publishers who would go out of business, but also to authors who lose a distribution channel, readers who lose a source of entertainment, and even other industries, like the movie industry that would lose a ready-made source of popular stories.

  • On the post: Pilot Not Allowed Through Security After He Refuses 'Naked' Backscatter Scan

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 20 Oct, 2010 @ 12:40pm

    Body scanners are useless for security.

    This Video was posted on Youtube last january. It shows just how effective those scanners are. Turn on the CC for english subtitles.

  • On the post: Can The University Of Kentucky Ban Student Newspaper From Being Distributed At Its Stadium?

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 19 Oct, 2010 @ 08:55am

    > UK is not putting any restrictions on what speech is in the newspaper,
    > they're simply saying you cannot distribute the newspaper *at this
    > location*. The publishers are perfectly free to go elsewhere to
    > distribute newspapers.
    So if the president was giving a speech and the police banned all protesters anywhere near the site of the speech, that would be okay because they're not saying the protesters can't speak, they just can't speak anywhere near the president; they're free to go somewhere else and speak... would that be legal?
    Well, lets take your argument to the other extreme. Does the fact that UK is a government institution mean that the university cannot prevent people from distributing newspapers in lecture halls during the lectures? Freedom pf speech and freedom of the press are not, and never have been absolute. One of the things that has to be considered in deciding on the legality of any restrictions is the effect the restriction has on the effect of the speech. Restricting protesters to an area so far away from the target of the protest that the targeted individuals have no way of even knowing the protest is in progress kind of makes the protesting pointless. Banning distribution of a newspaper from a small portion of the campus merely means that the total circulation of the paper will be somewhat lessened. It does not make it impossible, or even particularly difficult for the publisher to reach the majority of the campus population, they simply won't have them all grouped together in such a convenient venue.

  • On the post: Can The University Of Kentucky Ban Student Newspaper From Being Distributed At Its Stadium?

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2010 @ 07:59pm

    Like it or not, I think the newspaper would have a hard time winning this battle. The first amendment does give you the right to speak your mind, but nowhere does it obligate anyone to provide you with a forum in which to do so. In this case, UK is not putting any restrictions on what speech is in the newspaper, they're simply saying you cannot distribute the newspaper *at this location*. The publishers are perfectly free to go elsewhere to distribute newspapers.

  • On the post: Candidate Sued By Fox Notes That Much Of The Content Is Public Domain

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 12 Oct, 2010 @ 08:03pm

    What's the cost of copyfraud?

    What exactly would be the punishment of someone found to be falsely claiming a copyright on material that's in the public domain? I live in Canada, and a quick search of the Canadian Copyright Act does not turn up any mention of 'public domain', 'false' or 'mistake' anywhere in the text. This leads me to think that the worst the legal system here would do to a false copyright claim would be to dismiss the case.
    If that really is true, then there really isn't much of an incentive for companies to check carefully before accusing someone of copyright infringement.

  • On the post: Apple Ordered To Pay Over $600 Million… For Patent Infringement Of Cover Flow?

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 05 Oct, 2010 @ 09:05am

    Re:

    It's Obvious most Courts don't have a clue as to what is "Obviousness"

    Of course they don't, nor should they. The court's expertise is in law, not technology. The real source of the problem is that the patent office is not only missing that clue, it's also got a financial incentive not to get that clue. Until that is fixed, the flood of bad patents will only get worse.

  • On the post: Nevada Politician Pitches $25 Passes To Let You Speed

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 08 Sep, 2010 @ 02:47pm

    Cool, a license to break the law!

    Let's see, $25 to be able to break the traffic laws.
    How about $50 to be able to ignore impaired driving laws?
    maybe $100 to ignore drug laws. $500 might get you a free pass to ignore break and enter, or theft. $5000 to ignore the murder laws? Whay not, it's all money in the governments coffers.

    this idiot should not be allowed to hold any position of responsibility, anywhere.

  • On the post: Can Antitrust Law Stop Abuses Of Intellectual Property And Free Access To Knowledge?

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 19 Aug, 2010 @ 06:54am

    I think that a big part of the problem is the lack of penalties for abusing IP Laws. The cost for a company to make the attempt to stretch the law to eliminate competition is trivial compared to the benefits of successfully eliminating the competition. If a corporation can risk only a few hundred thousand dollars in legal fees in the hopes of getting a complete monopoly on all after market support for their products, they'd be nuts not to take the chance. The only way this will ever stop is when the downside of trying and failing is much greater than the up side of trying and succeeding in stretching the law. Financial penalties would be a good start, but I'd let the judge include other penalties up to a complete loss of the IP rights involved in the case. That way the corporation ends up taking a true gamble instead of the "I may not win, but I can't lose" situation we have right now.

  • On the post: Paramount Sends More Bogus DMCA Takedowns On Fans Filming Transformers 3 Shoot

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 28 Jul, 2010 @ 12:54pm

    It's too bad nobody can afford to sue them over this. It would be interesting to see them prove ownership of the copyright on a video taken by someone with no connection to either Paramount or the film production company.
    They'd pretty much have to show some grounds for claiming the copyright, otherwise there's that whole 'under penalty of perjury' clause in the DMCA.

  • On the post: Time To Get Rid Of No Fly List Altogether?

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 22 Jul, 2010 @ 09:14am

    Re: True Security

    Have the passengers able to carry guns on board an aircraft? Let me know which flight that will be so I can take a different flight!

    Two problems come to mind right off the top of my head.
    One: passenger digs through carry-on bag looking for a snack, passenger in the next seat sees the gun in the carry-on and assumes terrorist.
    Two: A terrorist does try to hijack the plane, A passenger pulls out a gun and starts shooting. Result, one dead hijacker, and half a dozen dead passengers hit by the bullets that missed.

    There is NO need for anyone on board a plane to be armed. Even with a gun, the hijacker can't harm the aircraft if he can't get into the cockpit, and if he's trapped in the cabin with a couple of hundred angry passengers, he's not going to be a threat for long.

  • On the post: BP Hiring Scientists To 'Study' Oil Spill… But Prohibits Them From Publishing Or Sharing Research

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 19 Jul, 2010 @ 09:06am

    Is this about studies, or lawsuits?

    Given BP's reluctance to let anyone close enough to the spill to study it, I have to wonder why they're now looking for people to study the spill. Is it because they really want to know just how badly they've damaged things, or is it because they want to dry up the source of impartial experts to testify against BP in court? After all, it would be very easy to accuse anyone of a bias in favor of the source of their grant money.

  • On the post: Motorola Does Openness Wrong; Bricks Your Droid X If You Tamper

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 15 Jul, 2010 @ 01:10pm

    What's their disaster plan like?

    I wonder if anyone thought to ask the Droid design team what the disaster plan is like? Motorola is going to need a good disaster plan to handle the inevitable results when a buggy software update bricks a whole bunch of phones.
    The only people that will ever win from this are the lawyers.

  • On the post: Man Fined $400 For Impersonating A Moron

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 14 Jul, 2010 @ 07:14am

    "A. Moron" is someone's name

    A quick search of the online phone book turns up an entry for 'A. Moron' living in a beach community about three hours drive away from where this incident occurred. Given some of the names I've seen over the years, I'd have to say that no matter how stupid a name may sound, there's a good chance that someone, somewhere has that name.

  • On the post: Senate Candidate Angle Accuses Senator Reid Of Copyright Infringement For Displaying Angle's Website

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 06 Jul, 2010 @ 10:37am

    re: dont want you rwebsite seen

    Taking a web site off the net isn't an option, and hasn't been an option for years. If you really don't want you content seen on the internet, the only way to do it is to not put it up in the first place.

  • On the post: Prince: No Music On The Internet; The Internet Is Over

    Chris-Mouse ( profile ), 06 Jul, 2010 @ 09:19am

    For Prince, the internet IS over.

    Of course, the fact that Prince thinks the internet is over won't stop it for the rest of the world. Prince will just get left behind along with everything else that's no longer relevant in a digital world.

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