James Burkhardt 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (2642)

• On the post: DC Appeals Court To Cop: Yeah, It’s Obstruction To Delete Messages Telling Capitol Rioters To Delete Evidence Of Crimes

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2024 @ 08:42am

  Do you then have a suggestion about how Techdirt should change its style guide to avoid the ambiguity without having to list out " The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit" or are you just a pedant?

• On the post: Nintendo, Pokémon Co. Sue Pocketpair Over ‘Palworld’ For… Patent Infringement?

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2024 @ 07:43am

  International IP regimes and legal judgements will be respected by steam. There are significant differences in the Legal issues in play, the mediums at issue, and the realities of distribution in the modern era that materially affect the ability to breach patent law the way copyright was breached in the scenarios you discuss.

• On the post: Nintendo, Pokémon Co. Sue Pocketpair Over ‘Palworld’ For… Patent Infringement?

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2024 @ 07:10am

  Thank you. Taking the patent number JP7545191 from that, I used google patents for a UI I'm used to. Interestingly, It appears Palworld would be unaware of the patent because it was only granted this month.

• On the post: Nintendo, Pokémon Co. Sue Pocketpair Over ‘Palworld’ For… Patent Infringement?

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2024 @ 06:54am

  Every article I can find speculating on this indicates the US patent matching that description was not granted. Only the Japanese. the TLC is however the second person I've encountered who claimed there was a granted US Patent. I at this point can't be sure there aren't multiple US patents/patent applications being discussed. Its not worth the effort to search for a speculative patent that may or may not be valid, and may or may not be competing with another patent for similar things. I was hoping to get back to the sources of the claims directly.

• On the post: Congress Poised To Bring Back Unfettered Patent Trolling

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 19 Sep, 2024 @ 12:08pm

  And if judges decide that similar = the same, and just import the alice jurisprudence, you'll be right. If, as most observers expect based on history, judges will take new laws with new language and examine the differences inherent in describing the new language as 'similar'. For instance, does the law, by the inclusion of "on a computer" in the patent exclusions, has the law actually imported the Alice standard, or has it only barred patents that just has a clear clause to do something 'on a computer'. A new law means new language, and new opportunities for challenges under now very different and somewhat unclear standards for legal specificity. Could the flippent way drafters addressed concerns about 'on a computer' patents result in that clause being struck for being unconstitutionally vague? Probable. THe law isn't very clear about what is the threshold, given that, as the EFF describes, "...any process that 'cannot be practically performed without the use of a machine (including a computer)' will be eligible for a patent" under the new law. That's a conflict in the legal language, one the courts have to solve, and it could easily be solved by revoking the protections you blithely assume exist within the law.

• On the post: House Looks To Make KOSA And COPPA Worse

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 18 Sep, 2024 @ 07:48am

  To wit: we had someone yesterday suggest the big problem with bluesky was it wasn't policing behavior on facebook.

• On the post: Twitter’s Pre-Musk Plans Mirrored Elon’s Vision—Until He Abandoned, Trashed Or Ignored Them

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 18 Sep, 2024 @ 07:42am

  "My fundamental problem with Bluesky is it doesn't prevent the creation of alt accounts and can't stop things happening on other platforms".

• On the post: Twitter’s Pre-Musk Plans Mirrored Elon’s Vision—Until He Abandoned, Trashed Or Ignored Them

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2024 @ 11:56am

  COngradulations! THis is not follwing Musk's every owrd and reporting on one of his random bird site brain farts. This is a retrospective assessment of the actions of the richest man in the world, and serves as a case study in the ego of believing your own hype. Were Musk dead 6 months ago and twitter completely shut down, this is still newsworthy as far as commentary on tech policy goes. When can Techdirt talk about tech policy again? Musk is currently the 50 ft tall gorilla when it comes to 1A tech policy. But I suppose learning lessons isn't your strong suit.

• On the post: Twitter’s Pre-Musk Plans Mirrored Elon’s Vision—Until He Abandoned, Trashed Or Ignored Them

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2024 @ 10:17am

  Thus Musk exposes the core fault in bringing everything back to first principles. Captialism has been making deep cuts to eliminate bloat for decades. streamline everything to the bare minimum to maintain revenue. The bloat in most large operation has been massaged out to feed quarterly returns. Musk has been most successful in stagnant industries he can claim to 'shake up' by cutting the costs that everyone knows are needed long term, or absorbing the costs of destructive testing no one else would. But social media isn't a stagnant industry. Capitalism has been cutting social media costs for nearly a decade to achieve solid profits. The big costs left can't easily be cut. But Musk, thinking that his secret sauce was the ability to just be willing to make hard decisions, just keeps trying to find the bloat that makes it all not work, just keeps trying to find the barrier he can remove that unleashes the revenue, rather than understand he poisoned the revenue in removing those blocks.

• On the post: Unity Drops Its Controversial Per-Install Pricing Plan Entirely

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2024 @ 07:10am

  Correction: They promised they will totally never do anything like this a third time. This is the second time Unity has been caught making stealth modifications to the T&C to try to manufacture contractual consent for a move they knew was unpopular.

• On the post: Unity Drops Its Controversial Per-Install Pricing Plan Entirely

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2024 @ 07:05am

  Yep. $4.4 billion dollars in stock. And investors had to funnel an additional $2 billion of capital into Unity. Therefore, Unity had to issue $4.4 billion in stock, watering down the investment of existing investors, who have also had to dump more money into the company. The Unity investors had to turn away a $20 billion buyout from AppLovin to make this deal. What about the $4.4 billion being in stock instead of cash changes anything? Investors will want a return on that play.

• On the post: FTC Pushed To Crack Down On Companies That Ruin Hardware Via Software Updates Or Annoying Paywalls

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2024 @ 07:13am

  I apologize I haven't gamed out the precise legislation, but the word obsolete was rhetoric, not intended as a term of art. I am not proposing an obsolence standard. You are right - obsolete is a subjective goalpost. And while I can't give an objective line, we can see that a lot of recently retired tech isn't just not obsolete, it hasn't even hit a point where its functionality is degraded from what we expect from similar devices purchased new to have. There wasn't a sea change in the thermostat world that made nest thermostats ineffective. YOur argument reads like I proposed never allowing companies to abandon tech, because it will never be obsolete. My position was that the tech shouldn't be locked down, so that it can continue to be used after a loss of official support, like a retro gaming console or a sony trinitron. And if you want to lock your product down, the benefit of that tech lockdown needs to come with risk - the need to provide support for a time after first sale, up to and potentially including plans to unlock devices/provide so third parties could replicate the service in the case the company can no longer provide the backend services. My position is not that companies should be tied forever into support, but that if they choose to lock the hardware down with software, the hardware manufacturer should be forced to take on risk to encourage more open hardware.

• On the post: FTC Pushed To Crack Down On Companies That Ruin Hardware Via Software Updates Or Annoying Paywalls

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 09 Sep, 2024 @ 09:38am

  A repeated issue in the tech space right now is the adage of privatizing the profits, and socializing the losses. Right now, much of the risk of producing a new cloud connected tech device is on the users, who may be left holding the ball on expensive tech when companies decide they don't have the user base to collect enough recurring revenue to justify ongoing support. These business models are wasteful, and directly opposed to popular public policy. If a company does not want to take the risk of being required to provide updates for a product without a large, monetizable userbase, other business approaches could resolve the risk, at a cost to the customer capture the current model fosters. One is to simply not lock down the hardware, allowing for third party support, including custom bios. The hardware remains functional as long as a community exists to support it. Another is to separate functions which require network access from those that do not. Allow the system to operate without phoning home. That way a sudden collapse of your company doesn't leave users with an expensive paperweight. A third is to not require meaningless phoning home in the first place. Id fucking love those pill dispensers where you can fill a month's supply, program the dosing schedule, and track things. But They all needed an app that required a proprietary server and a subscription, to ensure you are using their approved medication provider. Because the business model was recurring revenue marking up medication, not a pill dispenser. If your business model requires dumping support long before the tech is obsolete, your business exists to create waste. you aren't fullfiling a need, you aren't producing a product. The fix is to require companies to start taking risk. And if those risks are too big for profit, perhaps attempting to capitalize the ideas is ill-advised.

• On the post: Press Happily Parrots Verizon’s Claim That Its $20 Billion Purchase Of Frontier Will Be A Huge Boon To Consumers

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2024 @ 08:21am

  The ire isn't on timescale. Your false dichotomy relies on the idea that the core issue mike is complaining about is timescale, but that's a strawman. The issue with fiber to the press release is the deployment described in the press release has little relation to the reality when the buildout is complete. You've taken the complaint that we give them lots of money, for a long time, and get nothing, and focused on the "long time", and not the lack of results. I want to believe you aren't trolling us, but it takes a really bad faith read of Mike's words to suggest that Mike's complaint is that it just takes too long to build out fiber, and not that the result is far less than we were promised when we gave them subsidies in the first place.

• On the post: AI Checkers Forcing Kids To Write Like A Robot To Avoid Being Called A Robot

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 05 Sep, 2024 @ 06:27am

  I was under the impression RECaptcha also was assessing how you interacted with the prompt, tracking your mouse cursor and such using the existing data used to support accessibility options, to assess for human behavior. Was that short lived?

• On the post: In YOLO Ruling, Ninth Circuit Cracks Open Pandora’s Box For Section 230

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 27 Aug, 2024 @ 01:22pm

  A “reform” that amounts to saying “OK, Zeran and these other cases are now federal law” seems like a worthwhile thought-experiment, at least.

  Literally, that is what precedent and the practice of common law are for. The key distinction between Statutory and Common law is that the common law is the incorporation of judicial opinions into the law. As the legal system currently exists, writing judicial opinions into federal law provides little in the way of extra protection from judicial fiat, which is what you are seeking. Nothing in the 9th circuit ruling would be undone by creating formal statutes out of SCTOUS rulings. The judiciary is just as capable of misreading legislation as they are precedent. More so, since misreading legislation doesn't result in a superior providing a smackdown explaining why you are wrong. The only legislative reason to create legislation out of a judicial ruling is to modify the existing common law. Either to fix a circuit split or fix judicial interpretation of the law outside the current understanding of legislative intent. In the realm we had such proposed legislation simply incorporating existing judicial rulings, plenty of games could be played to no benefit. Incorporting the wrong rulings. Incorporating some rulings, but not others. Incorporating overturned rulings. Ignoring precedent with from higher authority. By the end activists are fighting the details just as hard as a bespoke reform bill, but now having to also explain why this legislation they "wanted" to create statute out of precedent is not good reform. The best case scenario for the legislation you propose is status quo. Risking the death of 230 to be exactly where we now with the same threats to 230 seems like a stupid risk.

• On the post: In YOLO Ruling, Ninth Circuit Cracks Open Pandora’s Box For Section 230

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 27 Aug, 2024 @ 11:23am

  I’m… A bit uncertain how this is Pandora’s box here.

  A lot of unclear legal terms being left to future courts and opening up the law for bad faith rent seeking that drains the economy of productive output for years, and provides dozens of openings for higher courts to throw out existing liability protections in a Section 230 limiting ruling of a sort that dozens of politicians keep trying (and failing) to pass via legislation. Most people don't see the whole of the story of pandora's box. The best answer is to not open the box/spill the toothpaste/take the genie out of the lamp. But once the box is opened, you cant go back, and the only way to Hope is to wade through the evils unleashed to make sure the box is empty, not to fall into despair the box was opened. The claim doesn't appear to be that this pandora's box is the death of Section 230, just like the evils pandora's box didn't kill the good of the world. Rather, that opening pandora's box unleashes a parade of horrible legislation that vexes and strains the ability of Section 230 to survive. Perhaps, like in the myth, at the bottom of this box is hope for section 230. A legal environment where Section 230 is once again seen as a valuable protector against the evils of censorial judicial action, having weathered the slings and arrows of the complaints. Or Section 230 may be devoured by the evil, and shatter before it can be tempered. Which, we can not say.

• On the post: Whoops: FlightAware Exposes Sensitive Personal Data Of Millions Of Users, Pilots, And Plane Owners

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 26 Aug, 2024 @ 09:32am

  Id imgine the components that require identity verification, like authorizing individuals to bypass the FAA-backed flight data privacy scheme.

• On the post: Fifth Circuit Flips The Script, Declares Geofence Warrants Unconstitutional

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2024 @ 11:53am

  I see nothing about the defendants which put them in the rarified status of "Republicans that run these states". Similarly, other courts have failed to shut this down on the basis of hypothetical future GOP politicians being tracked. If these judges wanted to rule in favor of a two-teir justice system, a more narrow ruling would have better served to exclude the riff-raff. Moreover, the defendants are among the riff-raff that normally fall under the designation "everyone else". Or are you trying to tell me the ring leader was actually the DA? Like, fifth circut brain rot and corruption are serious issues. We don't need to fanaticize about some deep conspiracy where these street level criminals are actually GOP power brokers.

• On the post: Ad Execs Speak Out: Musk’s Lawsuit Makes ExTwitter Even Less Appealing

  

  James Burkhardt ( profile ), 15 Aug, 2024 @ 10:52am

  For the people you cite, the investment is either simply small enough that it is like every tech investment they make, a thousand to one longshot that may or many not make money. This is the Twitter Musk pitched, and the investment commits we saw in the buyout lawsuit were incredibly casual. It wasn't a serious investment for them. Confronting Musk now means admitting Musk was fundamentally wrong. Much better for the ego to simply let it play out, and in post say that the market has spoken and the investment was an experiment in alternative governance of social media from a solid foundation (pre-Musk twitter was break even) rather than try to build it from scratch. That they retain a commitment to free speech, and they now have important real world data to incorporate into their models of consumer behavior, yada, yada, yada. If they stay quiet and Musk pulls a miracle out, great. Always behind him. He fails? You pivot why you invested after the failure.

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