Coyne Tibbets 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: DOJ On The Verge Of Dropping Third Straight Espionage Prosecution

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2015 @ 02:08pm

    It's a matter of Rank

    No, no Raphael will be punished; the best she can hope for is loss of home, job, career, and income--assuming they drop the case--but she should probably brace for worse. See, she doesn't matter; not as a matter of rank.

    Unlike Petraeus and Clinton: they're too important to be punished because they do matter.

    At least, in our current broken legal system: where lower caste means higher penalties.

  • On the post: USTR Fishing For Academics To Astroturf In Favor Of TPP

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 17 Oct, 2015 @ 10:25pm

    Re: Re: Propaganda-in-propaganda-out

    I wrote that because I suspect there will be heavy financial rewards shoe-horned in there, somewhere, as well.

  • On the post: Reports: Department Of Transportation To Require All Drones Be Registered

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 17 Oct, 2015 @ 10:22pm

    They're banning our ... drones

    @Mike

    "I have no problem with using the law to go after people who use drones for illegal purposes in some way, but a registration-first system seems to assume that many uses will be illegal, and if they aren't now, it makes it much easier to criminalize lots of different uses."
    No offense, but you sound like the NRA.

  • On the post: USTR Fishing For Academics To Astroturf In Favor Of TPP

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 16 Oct, 2015 @ 05:07pm

    Propaganda-in-propaganda-out

    We know all the information on the USTR site is going to be propaganda, and that they're not going to be answering "any questions" in substance, because they're utterly determined that no one know what is really in the devil of the TPP details, until the ink is dry on those doomsday signatures.

    Further, we know that any professor who comes up with a serious analysis arguing against TPP is going to be round-filed so fast his paper will catch fire from the friction, saving them the trouble of tossing in a match. Why it's right there in the letter: "If you are interested to [develop materials] that highlight the benefits of [TPP]."

    So I guess they're asking the professors to do propaganda-in-propaganda-out.

    No discussion of benefits to the professor, though: it's so gauche to put such details in writing.

  • On the post: AT&T Lawyers Want You To Know That AT&T's CEO Will Never Listen To Customer Suggestions

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 14 Oct, 2015 @ 01:33pm

    Mirroring Greed

    It's a mirroring problem.

    If AT&T gave a suggestion to anyone else, it would expect major$ in return. Therefore, it expects that if a customer provides a suggestion, the customer will be demanding major$ in return (so forget it, we'll come up with our own ideas).

    That's what happens when you expect others to mirror your own endlessly greedy behavior.

  • On the post: Bobby Jindal Announces Violent Games/Movies To Blame For All Those Mass Shootings

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2015 @ 02:19pm

    Typical Republican...

    ...cause and effect challenged.

  • On the post: Former NSA Directors Coming Out Strongly *Against* Backdooring Encryption

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 08 Oct, 2015 @ 09:15am

    The Fox and the Grapes

    Snarky? You bet. See: The Fox and the Grapes (Aesop's fable)

  • On the post: Patent Owner Insists 'Integers' Do Not Include The Number One

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 05 Oct, 2015 @ 10:35pm

    Number One is not an integer

    I've recently watched several reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation and i can definitely confirm that Number One is not an integer.

  • On the post: Stanford Professor Insists Consumers Are Helped By Patent Trolls

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 05 Oct, 2015 @ 10:26pm

    Someone must be studying it

    I don't see anything there that says his intent is to curtail those "evils".

    Based on his arguments above, I would guess he is a leading proponent of using those tools for the advancement of the interests of incumbent corporations. Specifically, using them to "curtail opportunities", "slow economic progress" and "delay innovation" on the part of upstart corporations such as, for example, Uber.

    It shouldn't be a surprise: someone must be studying how to use these things to suppress competition.

  • On the post: Microsoft 'Addresses' Windows 10 Privacy Concerns By Simply Not Mentioning Most Of Them

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2015 @ 06:04pm

    In defense

    Microsoft: "Come on, what you don't know won't hurt you."

  • On the post: The Increasing Attacks On The Most Important Law On The Internet

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2015 @ 06:01pm

    There's gold in them there ISP's

    Ever hear of "joint and several liability "? That's the law that allows a car company to be sued along with the man who negligently pushed the woman's wheelchair into the street, so that the car company pays if negligence is found.

    That's what this is about: the theory is that when someone who is a pauper hurts my feelings by calling me "a pencil-necked geek" I should be able to sue them and the ISP, joint and several, and make the ISP pay me the cool million that the pauper will never have.

    Instead of section 230 being eliminated, it should be spread to other areas of liability.

  • On the post: Tennessee Voraciously Defends Its Right To Let AT&T Write Awful State Broadband Laws

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2015 @ 05:44pm

    Defending corporate greed

    If only we could get the states to defend their citizens' civil rights and comforts as avidly as they defend corporate greed, this country would be a vastly more wonderful place.

  • On the post: FOIAed DEA Disciplinary Action Log Shows Very Little Discipline, Lots Of Inaction

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2015 @ 05:27pm

    Excuses up front, please

    (When even the notoriously lax DOJ has concerns...)

    DEA spokesman Joseph Moses said that often happens because it's not until after the Board of Professional Conduct makes its recommendations that employees get to fully present their side of the story. That can prompt human resources officials ultimately to opt for lighter punishment.
    So, what are you saying, Mr. Moses? That there was a good excuse for "Distributing Drugs"? For "Falsifying Official Records"? For "Theft?" For a "Civil Rights" violation?

    Because what you're saying is that, yes, Board of Professional Conduct found they did wrong, but later on they told their side of it and they had a good excuse, so we let it slide.

    Maybe we need to import a variation on that caution from Great Britain, "You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your case if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on as a defense."

    If you save something from the Board of Professional Conduct, you should not be allowed to present it as an excuse later.

  • On the post: You Can Now Turn Off Ads On Techdirt

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 29 Sep, 2015 @ 04:26pm

    Thank you

    Thank you and everything, but as far as intrusiveness goes, you rank somewhere under the carpet.

    I swear, the other day when I visited a site, the screen scrolled up and a grasping hand came out wrapped around my neck and another hand came out and slapped me twice across the face; as a sepulchral voice said, "Now pay attention...!"

    (Or at least that's what would have happened if one of these infernal advertising companies could figure out a way to make it work.)

  • On the post: Court Says Fifth Amendment Covers Smartphone Passcodes, But It's Hardly A Victory For Constitutional Rights

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 28 Sep, 2015 @ 11:53am

    Papers, please

    I think we can come up with a reasonable analog to this problem in the physical world.

    Suppose a defendant is being charged with a crime, and the government wants certain papers that are presumed evidence. The government is certain the papers exist, as they were seen by another person and (without explanation) we'll also say the government is reasonably sure they were not destroyed.

    But suspecting an upcoming arrest the defendant has hidden the papers somewhere.

    The government can, of course, search anyplace the papers might seem to reasonably be, and has searched without success.

    The question is: Can the government compel the defendant to reveal the hiding place, without violating the defendant's Fifth Amendment Rights?
    To me, it seems the answer is no, because revealing the location of the papers inevitably leads to the defendant's incrimination. Therefore, to compel the defendant to reveal the location is to compel him to inevitably incriminate himself: a violation of Fifth Amendment Right.

    Likewise, as mentioned in the article, the password seems to lead inevitably to incrimination and should be subject to Fifth Amendment protection.

  • On the post: Snowden Treaty Launched: Effort To Get Countries To End Mass Surveillance

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 26 Sep, 2015 @ 10:24am

    Re: Re: Re:

    And yet I don't get to declare my massive consumer fraud a "simple training intervention to improve the intelligence of dumb consumers." Imagine that.

  • On the post: Workplace Commission In Australia: Unfriending A Co-Worker Is A Factor In Bullying Case

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 26 Sep, 2015 @ 09:11am

    Overreaction

    (Disclaimer: I was bullied as a kid---suffered all the creative ways they could think of to bully me including being threatened with a knife and choked to unconsciousness--so I have damned little sympathy for bullies.)

    I think this is an overreaction. The reality is that anything you do can be used as evidence against you in court, in the right circumstances. For example, buying a baseball bat is fairly innocent--unless you are accused of clubbing someone to death, whereupon it becomes very relevant indeed.

    I think a relevant question is, "In the absence of any other bullying activity, would unfriending constitute bullying?"

    Let me quote again, with edits, Josh Bornstein:

    "What the Fair Work Commission did find is that a pattern of [...]

    unreasonable behaviour, [and]
    hostile behaviour, [and]
    belittling behaviour

    over [a long] period

    which [features] a range of different behaviours...

    including berating, [and]
    excluding and
    so on,

    ...constituted a workplace bullying.


    Perhaps his statement isn't the clearest that could be made, but parsed out, it is clear that that it wasn't the unfriending by itself that got Bird in trouble.

    What got Bird in trouble was the (from the ruling) evidence of "18 separate instances of unreasonable behavior" against Roberts, just one of which was Bird unfriending Roberts on Facebook.


    So what is bullying?

    "Mr. Boyd was shocked by the actions and tone of voice of Mrs. Bird." When the third party visitor is shocked, that's evidence of bullying.

    When Roberts complains that a work item is deliberately left undone in an inbox for 9 days and Mr Bird is told it was filed "in the wrong folder", that's certainly of interest. But Roberts showed the request form to Mr. Bird on that date...did she get it from the inbox or from the "misfiled folder"? Evidence of bullying.

    Mrs. Bird willfully damaged Roberts' relationship with clients: evidence of bullying.

    When you accuse an employee of being a lesbian because the client is, when you tease the employee about sexual matters, that's evidence of bullying.


    Etc. Frankly, I think even these few are enough, so I'm not going to bother to continue.

    Unfriending is just icing on the cake.

    So taken on whole, yes unfriending can be evidence. It's not proof by itself, but if you're a bully then you will show lots of nasty behaviors (including maybe unfriending). When all that proof of your misbehavior is brought into court, you will--or at least should--get what you deserve.

  • On the post: DailyDirt: Breaking Bad… With Yeast?

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 25 Sep, 2015 @ 02:29am

    Hemp without psychoactives

    "Other scientists have coaxed yeast into producing THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), one of the psychoactive compounds in marijuana."

    What I've been waiting for is someone to produce a hemp plant without any psychoactive compounds. I think having such a variant would add a lovely level of confusion to the ban on hemp plants, because hemp is valuable for other reasons besides smoking.

  • On the post: Florida Moving Company Attempting To Sue Its Way Back To Yelp Respectability

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 25 Sep, 2015 @ 02:11am

    Settling doesn't mean a weak case

    Come on, plaintiffs in a lawsuit offer to settle all the time, even if the case is strong. In fact, especially if the case is strong, because it saves all those lawyer fees.

    We're all familiar with this approach, we've seen it on TV: "This is a nice little place; you wouldn't want anything to happen to it. Give us a little 'gratuity' to keep it safe."

  • On the post: ACLU, Lawyers Group Sue Cali Police Department Over $3,000 Fee Demand For Body Cam Footage

    Coyne Tibbets ( profile ), 21 Sep, 2015 @ 10:09pm

    Cheapskates

    What the world is wrong with Hayward PD? If you want an FOIA request to go away, you need to demand, like, $300,000. You gotta use the big hammer if you want these slimy snoops to crawl back under their rock.

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