Davis 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Apparently, Cybercrime Isn't Actually A Trillion-Dollar Business

    Davis ( profile ), 31 Mar, 2009 @ 08:43am

    You obviously aren't getting the same emails that I am. In the last two weeks alone, I've won over $1.5 billion in British and Dutch lottery, inherited another $300 million from various Nigerian dignitaries and have been promised another half a billion if I'd agree to assist with a couple of questionable money transfers. I figure if I'm earning $1 billion per week, there has to be at least a trillion dollars in free money out there.

  • On the post: Remixing Is Creating And Original — It's Not Just Derivative Copying

    Davis ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2009 @ 08:43pm

    LALALALALA

    "The world wouldn't have been a worse place without it."

    That's where you're wrong Harold, the world is a better place because of what Kutiman made. It not only brightened the lives of many listeners, but also had a profound effect on many of the creators. Read for yourself how one of the original creators actually felt.

    "*Recently on March 4th I found out that I was a part of the Thru-You.com. Basically a man named Kutiman who is awesomely skilled took 2 months to work on a project its called (This is the 1st Movement) and it is complexly wonderous full of different sounds I have never heard mashed together so skillfully. Basically what he has done is revolutionized youtube he mixes them together and creates wonderful sounds every song sounds like a different genre of music. I was lucky enough to be on the final track of his movement entitled (Just a Lady) it can be found on the following places."

    http://www.youtube.com/user/Songdreamer

    As a result of the exposure from Kutiman's amazing creation, Songdreamer has been discovered. Without it, she may have had just had a small group of fans on YouTube, now she's has been heard by the very music executives who seem to fear letting go of the content.

  • On the post: PRS Threatens Woman For Playing Radio To Her Horses Without Paying A Licensing Fee

    Davis ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2009 @ 01:06pm

    Whoaa Nelly

    This does seem a bit excessive. It seems pretty silly to force the courts to define what a public performance is, but with abuses like this, it may end up being necessary. I wonder if this means that I owe royalties for sharing ear buds with friends?

  • On the post: German Authorities Raid Home Looking For Wikileaks Info

    Davis ( profile ), 25 Mar, 2009 @ 04:05pm

    That which doesn't kill you

    The more they struggle against wikileaks, the more powerful they'll make it. The fact that they are now raiding peoples homes is a clear indicator of the success of the site.

  • On the post: Office Depot Employees Blowing The Whistle On Outright Scams

    Davis ( profile ), 19 Mar, 2009 @ 07:21am

    Bank Fee Scam

    Office Depot is so shady. Not only do they push high price warranties, but they also cheat their customers in other ways. I was in there a few weeks back and used my bank card to pay. The guy at the registered tried to get me to put in my pin, but I told him I wanted to pay for it credit so that I didn't pay my bank a fee. After protesting, he finally let me stick the payment processing fees to them and had me touch a blanked out part of the screen on the card machine. They literally had taken out the Credit button so that customers had to argue with a sales rep over it.

  • On the post: Social Pressure Can Solve The 'Copying' Problem Even Without Copyright

    Davis ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2009 @ 02:04pm

    Copying or Adding Value?

    User Friendly probably should have been more transparent over the inspiration for his comics, but I wholeheartidly support his copying of the content. It's a great example of how value can be added, even when its already been published. So what if he isn't creative enough to come up with his own material day after day. The mere fact that he takes the time to gather, illustrate and present that content to a new audience is transformative enough. If he was just doing a quick cut and paste I might view the behavior more dimly, but since he's presenting the comments in an entirely different way, I don't have problems with him lifting the jokes. I realize that not everyone will agree with me, but if I was the original creator, I'd be more flattered than upset. Hopefully, he learns to be more transparent from the flame up, but I'd be sad if he stopped illustrating these comments from the peanut gallery.

  • On the post: Judge Says Poker Is A Game Of Skill, Not Chance — Could Impact Legality Of Online Poker

    Davis ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2009 @ 10:10am

    Betting on a team to win or lose is considered chance because you can't personally affect the outcome. If an athlete was betting on themselves, it'd probably be different but since most of us don't play on the Lakers, it'd be consider chance. Since you have to play the game of poker in order to bet, you have a direct influence on the uncertain outcome.

  • On the post: Content Is Advertising; Advertising Is Content… On SNL

    Davis ( profile ), 13 Feb, 2009 @ 07:00am

    I don't disagree with your observation, but would point out that companies need to be careful in how they implement things like this. If you go back and watch the SNL show where they had these skits, you'll see that the crowd was laughing in the first skit. As soon as they realized it was an ad in the 2nd skit, they went absolutely silent all at once. The third skit didn't get any laughs.

  • On the post: Court Says It's Not Online Gambling If You Can Renege On A Bet

    Davis ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2009 @ 04:22pm

    Legalize it

    If they legalized online gambling, you wouldn't have to worry about shady people welching on their bets. Hats off to him for finding the loophole, but why not legitimize the industry, put strong consumer fraud protections into place and then tax the profits instead of letting all that money flow into unregulated offshore businesses? Whether it's legal or not, a significant chunk of people are going to gamble no matter what. We can either turn our citizens into criminals for doing something that is allowed in some states but not others or we can use their behavior to help pay for schools, roads and social services that the rest of the population can enjoy.

  • On the post: Unsigned Band Thrilled It's One Of The 'Most Pirated'

    Davis ( profile ), 27 Jan, 2009 @ 08:55am

    I did a bit more digging and it looks like they were not only thrilled to be on the top of the Pirate Bay, but they actually paid to advertise their torrents.

    http://www.p2pnet.net/story/18176

    This would help to explain the popularity discrepancy between platforms.

  • On the post: Unsigned Band Thrilled It's One Of The 'Most Pirated'

    Davis ( profile ), 27 Jan, 2009 @ 08:48am

    An interesting sub-plot to this story is that while they're popular on The Pirate Bay, their YouTube channel has all but been ignored. Why did one community embrace this artist, while another is still waiting to discover them? Is there just less competition on the Pirate Bay, so it's easier for an indie band to stand out or is there something unique about their sound or marketing that caused them take off on one site, but not the other? I don't know the answers, but would love to hear your theories.

  • On the post: Congress Slams Kevin Martin For Abuse Of Power

    Davis ( profile ), 09 Dec, 2008 @ 06:44pm

    You've got to be kidding me. A climate of fear at the FCC is preventing hearings from taking place? Does this sound fishy to anyone else? I bet that there have been plenty of CEO's who've been called to testify in front of Congress who were more then a little fearful and yet they still got supeonaed. If the oil companies only knew they could have avoided all that unpleasantness about an oil windfall tax if they would have just been afraid of talking to Congress, you can bet that they wouldn't have shown up. I'm not sure what the real story is, but something smells political about this slam job. If Congress really suspects that something wrong/illegal has occurred, then they should force people to testify and get to the bottom of this issue. It's hard to take reports like this seriously when no one seems willing to stand behind the allegations that they are alleging.

  • On the post: Hollywood Illegally Demanded Payments From Irish Kindergarteners

    Davis ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2008 @ 07:39pm

    Pay Fees and Innudate Them With Ads

    This is particularly outrageous because most children's programming are really covert advertisements. Not only are the kids entertained, but then they bug their parents to buy them the action figure, the video game, colouring book or whatever else the programmers decide to license their name out to. Considering that the revenues the content creators receive from these licensing deals is almost pure gross profit, it's seems pretty weaksauce to also tax the schools for showing it.

  • On the post: Zango's Latest Trick: Pitching Fake Batman MMORPG To Get People To Download Adware

    Davis ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2008 @ 10:16pm

    They Pull Dirty Tricks

    One of the most obnoxious things about Zango is when their pop up shows up, if you hit cancel too quickly it actually installs the software because they use a long worded question that basically says to hit OK to cancel and cancel to install. I could see how a lot of people download the program because they're clicking too fast and once it's on your machine say good night. At this point, I'm pretty much boycotting any site that has the Zango software as well as any site that uses interstitial ads (although that a different issue)

  • On the post: Removing Songs From iTunes A Great Way To Help Cover Bands

    Davis ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2008 @ 10:37am

    The Same Can Be Said For YouTube

    I've seen a number of small indie bands use YouTube cover songs to get their career to take off because the media companies keep pulling their videos off the site and people are finding the covers instead. If bands want to ignore the promotional value of having all that traffic tuning in that's fine, but this trend doesn't seem confirm their claims about being harmed by the "piracy" on the site. When small bands are able to take cover songs and turn them into record contracts and sales, it's clear that the studios are leaving money on the table. I hope that this trend continues because hopefully, it will encourage more bands to distribute their content online, instead of letting the indie bands eat their lunch.

  • On the post: Is An EchoStar Purchase Good Or Bad For Sling Media?

    Davis ( profile ), 25 Sep, 2007 @ 08:02am

    Not an "attractive" lawsuit

    Yes Dish has deep pockets, but anyone familiar with Dish's history knows that Charlie Ergen is crazy when it comes to lawsuit. Probably one of the few deep pockets that will take something all the way to the supreme court, even when it cheaper to settle. When TV Guide tried to sue them over patent violations related to their guide, Ergen ended up with a piece of their company. If Sling was going to be sued, it would have been before they had money. The studios would be more interested in shutting this down then trying to win damages.

  • On the post: Why A Mainstream Digg Wouldn't Dumb Down The News

    Davis ( profile ), 18 Sep, 2007 @ 02:02pm

    Not Dumb, Just Unpopular

    Digg does find some pretty good stuff, but there are a lot of stories that they miss. Because an article needs to be popular, in order to advance, unpopular opinions tend to get buried by the masses. Sometimes, it takes a good editor to choose what's newsworthy because they can be more objective about some subjects. It's not that the crowd is dumb, it's just that they would always pick candy, if you give them a choice. Some of the best articles I've read have been from people willing to think outside of the norms. If mainstream news relied only on the social web, these voices would be too hard to find. It's important that people care about the news, but it's also important to make sure that you can look at news from multiple viewpoints.

  • On the post: Peer-To-Peer Lending Sites Weather Credit Market Storms

    Davis ( profile ), 30 Aug, 2007 @ 01:06pm

    Not really the Antithesis

    I don't see how Prosper and Zopa are all that different from the credit crisis that we find ourselves in today. Essentially, what the hedge funds were doing was lending money at a higher risk level and then using their good credit to borrow at lower rates. Everything was fine until high risk money stopped paying, then everyone had to look more critically at the safety of the underlying loans. What made things so bad was how much leverage they used.

    With propser, essentially what someone does is lend out money at a higher amount then what they can borrow at. I've already seen several loans on the service for people who are raising money on the site, just to buy more speculative debt on the site. To me, this isn't really the antithesis of the hedge funds, it's some of the same tactics only on a smaller scale.

    If sub-prime borrowers are walking away from their homes, there is no reason why they wouldn't also default on other unsecured loans. Just like we don't know how much leverage the hedge funds have used, I'd also argue that no one knows how much of propser's business is coming from credit arbitrage. It's an innovative concept, but if you are going to take on that type of risk, you should be asking for equity instead of debt.

  • On the post: Accoona's IPO Postponed As Underwriter Drops Out

    Davis ( profile ), 23 Aug, 2007 @ 11:22am

    Another Sleezy Camera Store

    Between the credit crunch and John Battelle calling shenanigans on the site, I'm not surprised that Maxim pulled out. Take a look at their store front and their BBB record and you can tell that this was a disaster waiting to happen.

    http://donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores/0123.jpg

    http://bbbnewyork.org/reports/businessreports.aspx?id=4046&pid=44&page=0

  • On the post: Can The Ethanol Market Stand On Its Own Two Feet?

    Davis ( profile ), 03 Jul, 2007 @ 02:13pm

    Substitutions creating substitutions

    I have already seen a lot of companies move away from corn. Tostitos is trying to convince people that all flour tortilla chips are cool and I'm pretty sure that Doritos is using more flour in their chips now.

    It's funny to see the price of flour go up, because the price of corn went up, because the price of oil went up. Considering that there aren't a lot of direct substitutions in oil, it's almost surprising to see so much demand for a product create so many problems for other industries. I still don't understand why hydrogen hasn't been a viable solution, but that seems like the right way to go for me. Either way though, I hate to see the subsidies, taxpayers just end up paying it when they go to the grocery stores instead.

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