James Burkhardt 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (2642)

• On the post: Maryland Lawmakers Pass Bill That Mandates ‘Stalkerware’ Training For Law Enforcement

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 11 May, 2022 @ 11:55am

  At least they shouldn't be able to claim they don't know the law, on the basis that the legally have to have been taught the law? Like hopefully this provides a basis for officers being 'on notice' because they shouldn't be on the street without this training?

• On the post: Josh Hawley Introduces Laughably Stupid Copyright Term Reduction Bill

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 11 May, 2022 @ 10:32am

  The law retroactively applies to copyrights already issued. Under normal legal understanding, the duration of the copyright should be set by the legal framework at the time the copyright is granted. If that legal framework changes and those changes apply to copyrights issued 20 years ago, the law applies retroactively. The major opposition to copyright term extension was predicated on the same logic - extension of already granted copyright goes back in time and retroactively increases the term of copyright which should be set at the time of the grant of copyright (or in the current legal framework, the creation of the work)

• On the post: The Netflix Nickel-And-Diming Is Probably Only Just Getting Started

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 11 May, 2022 @ 09:30am

  Netflix can't replicate live TV. Comparing Netflix to hulu with live tv compares an on-demand service with a on-demand+live service. Same with a comcast comparison. Apples and Oranges. Comparing Netflix to Hulu with no ads is the better comparison, but it doesn't help you. $12.99 for Hulu with no ads provides 2 simultaneous streams. For Netflix with 2 streams, the cost is $15.99 before the password sharing upcharge. Its more costly with less valuable content. Try again.

• On the post: The Netflix Nickel-And-Diming Is Probably Only Just Getting Started

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 11 May, 2022 @ 07:28am

  I was going to come here to post this as a reminder for people who would make the same comment they always make, but I wasn't fast enough, so you'll do. The short response: I was under the impression the monthly charge I pay for Netflix was paying Netflix for its services. What am I paying for? The long response: I have a 4 screen netflix subscription. I could play netflix 24/7 in my home on 4 simultaneous streams and it would incur no extra cost on my part. But if I go on a business trip and both I and the other members of my household want to watch a few hours of netflix, my membership costs 3 extra dollars a month. This fee is not about Netflix "...[getting] paid for its services...". The fee is completely disconnected from the financial burden it supposedly generates. If it is profitable to run 4 US streams simultaneously 24/7 to the same household, its profitable to run 4 US streams simultaneously 24/7 regardless of geographic location within the US. Moreover, as you look at pricing options you see netflix forces me to pay for 4 simultaneous streams even if I only need 3. Forcing me to pay for more streams and denying me the ability to capitalize on what I paid for (4 simultaneous streams) is not about getting paid, its about intentionally forcing me to pay more for less. I had no issue with Netflix cracking down on simultaneous streams back in 2012. That was a sensible decision, and pricing which allows me to pay for only 1 stream and pay more for 2 or 4 simultaneous streams is great consumer choice option. An additional $3 for Netflix to be available on my lunch break isn't. And given that households are increasingly not single families but shared spaces of adults as living costs increase but wages do not, The likely hood that a household could end up, temporarily, with significant geographic separation due to not taking joint vacations beyond the traditional issues of work travel that would leave the rest of a single family household at home, means this policy would regularly require non-password-sharing households to nevertheless pay the $3 password sharing fee. Because this isn't about password-sharing households breaking the rules. And that leads me to the point that Techdirt has been highlighting the shift in Netflix messaging not simply because it is anti-consumer, but because it is a real time case study of a company responding to fiscal issues in a way that in the past has lead to a death spiral and how that is being caused by the market and capitalist demands.

• On the post: Judge Is Not At All Impressed By Trump’s Lawsuit Against Twitter; Dismisses It Easily

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 09 May, 2022 @ 10:58am

  or i suppose, trump won stormy daniel's ill advised defamation case against him.

• On the post: Judge Is Not At All Impressed By Trump’s Lawsuit Against Twitter; Dismisses It Easily

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 09 May, 2022 @ 10:57am

  He's won several. The ill-advised defamation case against Stormy Daniels, for instance.

• On the post: Disney Is Still Trying To Avoid Paying Its Writers

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 06 May, 2022 @ 11:07am

  One of the loopholes they play here is that Lucas retains the requirement to pay royalties, but because they don't sell the books so they don't have royalties to pay. Under your example, you'd still be left with the requirement to pay your loan, even when you no longer own the car. As I try (and likely fail to make clear) to point out in my comment, the issue is the copyright ownership transfer shouldn't be able to be separated from the requirement to pay. In your example, the finance company owns your car, not you. You can't transfer the vehicle without the agreement of the financier, generally requiring the finance obligations to follow the vehcile.

• On the post: Disney Is Still Trying To Avoid Paying Its Writers

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 06 May, 2022 @ 11:02am

  One thing that I keep looking at here is how it affects contract law more broadly. The contract between the author and lucas isn't fulfilled. The contract required ongoing royalties. We've seen multiple instances in recent years that the copyright ownership should revert to the author if the royalties stipulated in the copyright transfer are not paid. Lucas does not have the rights necessary to effect a binding transfer of copyright, because they do not own the rights free and clear. The asset they bought is the contract that provides Lucas ownership of the copyright, but that ownership was conditional. Cory Doctrow focuses on the implications for copyright, but I think the impact on any contract that creates an ongoing liability is huge, and that should scare everyone.

• On the post: Republicans Want To Make Sure Your Inboxes Are Filled With Spam (Unless The Spam Filters Block Democrats’ Emails)

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 04 May, 2022 @ 10:10am

  Yellow AC never said latino was a race. That said.... Funny note, a light skinned man with a "black" grandfather is "black". Light skinned, dark skinned, doesnt matter. Race is a construct and bigots are flexable when it comes to finding a group to 'other'. Jewish isn't a 'race'. As a label it is in fact two very different things, those who practice judaism, and those whose families are closely decendend from historic jewish/hebrew groups and have predispositions toward specific patterns of appearance but may no longer individually practice Judaism. Bigots don't make a distinction, and so the out group "jewish" exists, and the word we use to describe that combined cultural and ethnic group in modern times is 'race', because it is how the social construct of 'race' as come to be used as times have changed and so have the targets of bigotry and the language used against them. Your discussion of "There are white Latinos, there are black Latinos there are Chinees Latinos, there are Jewish Latinos there are ginger Latinos" actually highlights something else I imagine you wail about, intersectionality. That is to say, a white Latino has concerns that are different from a Chinese Latino, that are different from a Jewish Latino, that are different from a black Latino, but a concern for Latinos would be a concern for most if not all of them. And that is where your point is pointless. If someone is endorsing hatred of Latinos, their supporters generally don't care that you are a 'white' Latino or a 'black' Latino or a 'Chinese' Latino. And its not better when they accept you because you 'pass' for the in group, because if they ever need new scapegoats you might not pass anymore. And I don't see how your willingness to sleep with the orange-skinned man has any applicability to the desire of his supporters to see anyone they deem Latino removed from the country and deported, ragardless of citizenship, regardless of ethnicity, simply because the orange-skinned man told them Latinos are the reason for the economic struggles plaguing the predominantly white former middle class the US since the 80s.

• On the post: Republicans Want To Make Sure Your Inboxes Are Filled With Spam (Unless The Spam Filters Block Democrats’ Emails)

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 04 May, 2022 @ 09:30am

  Ebay sells classic ZX Spectrum hardware. I don't own one because they weren't built for a 60HZ electrical system, but I absolutely can purchase one that isn't supposedly a license to own the hardware. I have no idea with what that has to with your fever dream that a member of the Trump administration DOJ was also Twitters council and how that conflict of interest proves a left wing plot to suppress information

• On the post: Republicans Want To Make Sure Your Inboxes Are Filled With Spam (Unless The Spam Filters Block Democrats’ Emails)

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 04 May, 2022 @ 09:24am

  The legal definition of spam isn't really the issue being discussed in this chain. The question posed by red AC is whether emails designated as Spam by google filters were, by some metric, considered spam by users. The legal definition of spam doesn't factor into it.

• On the post: Republicans Want To Make Sure Your Inboxes Are Filled With Spam (Unless The Spam Filters Block Democrats’ Emails)

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 04 May, 2022 @ 09:19am

  I saw the humor. I'm also fed up with people shitting on the use of soft langauge to point out hypocrisy, in part because every time you shit on it you are also undermining some of the best ways to get a wedge into the thoughts of someone who has been trapped by irrational thought. Harsh language is more direct about the hypocrisy at issue, but it will in most cases cause a defensive reaction in someone who supports the hypocrite, making them reject the accusation. Soft language, by contrast, doesn't attack the hypocrite, and helps supporters digest the contradiction's existence. And as the same contradiction keeps coming up, the supporter can, slowly in most cases, come to the conclusion that Mike was right. But, the minor truth in our troll's complaints, a dedicated group of insiders loves to just immediately shit on any soft language and prevent that entire process and I'm sick of it.

• On the post: Republicans Want To Make Sure Your Inboxes Are Filled With Spam (Unless The Spam Filters Block Democrats’ Emails)

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 04 May, 2022 @ 08:48am

  When I said "anti-spam legislation always has to take care to carve out political messaging for a reason", I was mostly speaking of a legislative imperative. Like if I said "Democrats have to pass a minimum wage increase" I don't mean they physically must, only that passing the increase is perceived as critical for continued congressional dominance. (this is an example of how to read the rhetoric I used, and I place no weight on the truth of the statement on minimum wage. Debating me on minimum wage is not a good faith discussion on my point.) Your example is actually a great example about why I said what I said. Reading further into the article you've provided, No UK political party is compliant with PECR. Likely, much as happens in the US, MPs did not consider broader impacts of the changes made by the 2018 bill, in this case the impact on electioneering, and those that did seemingly some thought they had a legitimate use exception. Meaning, at least some of those who wrote or at least passed this bill assumed a political use exception existed either in the bill or was incorporated from elsewhere. So, I was only citing a political imperitive to include a political messaging exception, but your own evidence that such exceptions are not included hgihglights that Johnson and others in government assumed there was one, making this an exception that proves the rule.

• On the post: Republicans Want To Make Sure Your Inboxes Are Filled With Spam (Unless The Spam Filters Block Democrats’ Emails)

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 04 May, 2022 @ 07:25am

  I failed to include a line clarifying that my 50/80% numbers are entirely fictional, used simply to illustrate a point about how the gmail user was distorting numbers.

• On the post: Republicans Want To Make Sure Your Inboxes Are Filled With Spam (Unless The Spam Filters Block Democrats’ Emails)

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 04 May, 2022 @ 07:23am

  What a dishonest read. If I block 50% of democrat camoaign emails as spam and 80% of republican campaign emails as spam, I 'favor' democrats by 60%. It does not mean I filer "...essentially all Republicans [sic] messages..." (99 or 100%, depending on rounding) nor "no Democrats [sic] (0 or 1%)". You have, as it seems, increased the discrepancy by ~70 percentage points. However, since you haven't read any comments, you are unaware that you've failed a basic bias test. You've assumed that these emails could not be treated as spam. You've ignored whether differences in Republican (R) strategy and Democrat (D) strategy might result in more (R) emails sent out, (R) emails being more likely to be sent to non-subscribers, and (R) emails making more dire calls to action/appeals to fear that are a hallmark of spam emails. For your position to be accurate, you have to assume that emails sent by both sides are pretty identical in every way. Otherwise, it is completely reasonable one side might have an email campaign strategy that has broader appeal and is less likely to be flagged as spam, causing the discrepancies in filtering that have nothing to do with partisan bias on the part of google. And then you have to consider that conservative voters are in the minority in the US, based on party affiliation and decades of voting data.

• On the post: Republicans Want To Make Sure Your Inboxes Are Filled With Spam (Unless The Spam Filters Block Democrats’ Emails)

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 04 May, 2022 @ 07:08am

  Gmail’s market share is over twice that of Yahoo’s and Microsoft’s put together.

  A fact which I previously used to show how the bias may not the result of partisan influence from the provider. One read of the information is that Yahoo and Microsoft as email providers are more likely to be used by older and therefore conservative US users, given their long decline from popularity. Therefore, the personal preferences training spam filters are more likely to consider democrat emails spam, and therefore resulting in the filters labeling emails coming from those addresses spam, but that bias is not a bias of yahoo or Microsoft, but of the efforts of the users. The ubiquity of Gmail and the stark difference of results in the smaller sample size can actually help suggest that the results of a junk mail filter are based on the preferences of the users, not the companies. This is not fatal to claims of unfair partisan bias, it is still possible that a team of google programmers exist simply to identify and flag republican campaign emails, but with this possibility fitting the evidence just as well, it is fatal to the conclusion the evidence must show unfair partisan bias. The article is simply pointing out that to make the claim of partisan bias, the results of the microsoft and yahoo demographic must be accounted for.

• On the post: Republicans Want To Make Sure Your Inboxes Are Filled With Spam (Unless The Spam Filters Block Democrats’ Emails)

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 04 May, 2022 @ 06:39am

  *Assumption. Unproven.

• On the post: Elon Musk’s Starlink Still Can’t Seem To Answer Basic Customer Support Emails

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 03 May, 2022 @ 03:52pm

  Thank you. After making a carefully crafted statement intended to not antagonize those i was speaking to as part of a science-based approach to change recalcitrant minds, you’ve gone and insulted them making them defensive and shutting out the thoughts that can worm their way into logic as the future unfolds. Particularly when my words prove true. That was exactly why i wasted my time trying. So what’s the war strategy? i mean, if these people are so far gone that we can never agree upon anything and my attempt is so worthless that you felt the need to shit on it, i hope you have a plan when dogma eventually, inevitably leads to violence?

• On the post: Republicans Want To Make Sure Your Inboxes Are Filled With Spam (Unless The Spam Filters Block Democrats’ Emails)

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 03 May, 2022 @ 12:52pm

  You have noted that moderation of spam is reasonable. The difference in percentage points of emails caught by a filter is not a reasonable proxy for 'bias'. Doing so would assume the only or primary reason to filter campaign emails is partisan bias...not spam. So lets look at my subjective experience as an example of why that assumption is not necessarily accurate. A quick glance at the campaign emails I absolutely did not sign up for show that, explicitly, for me, campaign emails are spam because I did not sign up for the newsletters. I therefore flag every campaign email I get as spam. However, I get more republican campaign emails. Meaning the personal spam filter I have been training for years marks more Republican campaign emails as spam. Not as result of a partisan bias, on my part or Google's, but as a result of the anti-campaign email bias I trained. (the one exception i might want to mention for completeness is the newsletter of the senator where I live, which is written in a very different style to campaign newsletters and is not used for campaigning, which is why I don't generally include it in 'campaign emails') A look at those emails in my junk filter show a number of spam email indications. Heavy use of capitals. An email that highlights words and sentences that it looks like it was a used college textbook. Constant calls to action. Words like "last chance" or "don't wait" or similar language intended to instill FOMO. (Appeals to Fear). I'm still not even onto partisan criticisms. campaign emails are propaganda, and most are simply calls to action rather than an informative read. Indeed, anti-spam legislation always has to take care to carve out political messaging for a reason. There are assumptions you make about how comparable the demographics of Yahoo and Microsoft are. Yahoo and Microsoft are more favored by older demographics, for various reasons (i.e. Yahoo absorbed the email operations for a bunch of ISPs who merged over the course of the early aughts), and avoided by younger demographics, who either dislike microsoft, dislike paying microsoft for office 365, and are avoiding the privacy breech pit that has been yahoo. This means that microsoft and yahoo are more likely to have older, conservative users, as opposed to google who has a broader base of users, though likely skewing liberal. Meaning Microsoft and Yahoo filter fewer emails in general, because of a demographic that is less likely to flag spam, filter fewer conservative campaign emails because the customers are more likely to be receptive to those campaign emails, and filter more liberal campaign emails because the demographics are less receptive to those campaign emails. So, you haven't established a partisan bias. You haven't established that the bias is a result of partisan prefrence. You have simply established a bias. But any anti-spam system will be biased against spam. You have to establish a that the emails could not be considered spam, but as I note I have ended up on many campaign email lists without ever subscribing, not being in the appropriate district, not being in the appropriate state. They are by definition spam for me - unwanted, unneccisary, impossible to stop and do nothing but crowd my inbox. If conservative origin campaign emails are determined to be spam more often, you haven't begun to touch questions of what the source of that bias is. In a world in which no partisan bias is present, this result can still exist because the emails are not the same, how email lists are compiled are not the same, and the messaging is not the same, and all of those factor into whether an email is spam or not.

• On the post: Elon Musk’s Starlink Still Can’t Seem To Answer Basic Customer Support Emails

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 03 May, 2022 @ 12:23pm

  To those who think Twitter will be more transparent after Musk becomes CEO, think hard about how transparent Starlink is when it actually owes you goods and services you have already paid for. And then ask yourself, is Twitter going to be more or less transparent when Musk is trying to sell you as the product.

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