Derek Kerton 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Luma Labs Discontinues Popular Product Line After Competitor Gets A Patent… Despite Prior Art Going Back Over A Century

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 14 Nov, 2011 @ 03:39pm

    Re: Re: If they were aware it was pending, why didn't they fight it?

    ""The fee structure seems to indicate that this filing could cost as little at $65.""

    Well, it would cost $65, plus whatever resources it takes to constantly watch patent applications to be sure that any of your products aren't under threat.

    i.e. lots of money and resources.

    This is why we can argue that the patent system is a tax on innovation, and a diversion of resources from market incentives for making products, towards incentives to push paper, invest in legal services, and to lock down IP.

  • On the post: An Open Letter To Chris Dodd: Silicon Valley Can't Help Hollywood If You First Cripple It With Bad Regulation

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 31 Oct, 2011 @ 05:54pm

    Re: Circular arguments

    "If your business model relies on illegal behavior to make the profits you seek, you need to find a new and better business model."

    A tautology! If YOU guys make useful technology illegal, then it will be illegal.

    Should it be? That's the discussion in which we'd like to be included, both here and at the congressional level. Join us someday...or just spew BS, whatever.

  • On the post: Lawyer For Accused: DDoS Is A Legal Form Of Protest

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 04 Oct, 2011 @ 08:10pm

    Re: Re: Re: DENIAL of service

    Apoligist? Meh. I want to reserve my right to peacefully and lawfully interfere with somebody such that I might send a political message. I don't care about the guy in this case. I want to protect my right to expression.

    When striking workers picket a plant, one of their intents is to disrupt the flow of goods and resources in and out...usually in a legal way. Can you convict them for their intent?

    When workers organize a "work to rule" campaign, which means they follow every rule in the book to the letter, seriously reducing their efficiency, is it illegal because their intent is to disrupt the business?

    If French farm workers drive their tractors on the Champs Elysees (legally) with the intent to disrupt traffic, is it illegal?

    Hitting a publicly open and available server for information is not illegal. Doing so with intent to disrupt service should not be any more illegal.

    Screw the criminals who hack PCs to make botnets. But get them for the hacking, not the DDOS. And let's protect the citizens and their right to form a true grassroots protest.

  • On the post: Lawyer For Accused: DDoS Is A Legal Form Of Protest

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2011 @ 06:43pm

    A Theoretical Case

    Let's say Bono of U2, a massively popular dude worldwide, says at some globally simulcast concert: "I really hate Monsanto. They make it harder for poor people to grow food. I wish that on Sunday, everybody just hit that website all day, just to bring them down a peg. I mean, we need to send them a message that the world is watching. Now, this is not a rebel song, this song is...Sunday Bloody Sunday..." and cue the Edge.

    OK, so on Sunday, U2 fans from around the world, and other Monsanto haters, all ping the crap outta those servers. DDOS will result. But let's assume no botnets need be involved (it's my hypothetical case, after all).

    Questions for the class:
    - Is Bono a criminal for the DDOS?
    - If he didn't touch one keyboard or launch one packet, how is he responsible for a DDOS?
    - Did he yell "fire" in a cinema?
    - Is each individual who heeded Bono's call a criminal?
    - Was Bono just exercising free speech?
    - Is the DDOS on Monsanto just a legal protest so that they would "hear everyone's voices" of disapproval?

  • On the post: Lawyer For Accused: DDoS Is A Legal Form Of Protest

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2011 @ 06:33pm

    Re: Re: DDOS Doesn't Require Hacking

    Well, you're not disagreeing with me, just pointing out that a DDOS can be (and usually is) one guy with a ill-begotten botnet. I never suggested a single man with a single PC could pull a DDOS attack; if you read again, you'll see that I suggested a single man calling on 2,000 of his Twitter followers to use ALL their PCs could pull it off.

    I mean, of course I know one guy with one PC can't pull off a DDOS. My comment alone shows that I'm not an idiot. The first D is for distributed, which is important because if it's just one guy, the server easily detects it is getting bombarded from that IP, and reacts by ignoring it. Similarly, filters in any ISPs along the route could also block/ignore that ping. But when the attack is Distributed, it is harder to block.

    It is possible for someone with a big following to trigger a DDOS, with no bots - just many individuals actively pinging from one browser each. With enough people, DDOS!

    That is to say, the illegal part is the botnet, or specifically how it is created. The DDOS part is "speech", or a picket line.

    I dunno anything about this homeless guy's case. I just want to reserve the right for myself to take part in a DDOS, as just one person with one PC, someday, if I so choose.

  • On the post: Lawyer For Accused: DDoS Is A Legal Form Of Protest

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2011 @ 02:53pm

    Re: Re: Sit in protesters are arrested for trespassing

    "A sit in is a form of civil protest. It is peaceful, but that doesn't mean it is legal.

    Rather depends on where you sit, doesn't it."

    Right. When unions go on strike, there is a reason they walk in circles. Because standing still is often loitering. But there's no law against walking on the sidewalk.

  • On the post: Lawyer For Accused: DDoS Is A Legal Form Of Protest

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2011 @ 02:25pm

    Re: DENIAL of service

    OK, so if you contribute to a traffic jam by driving. That jam then denies me my ability to run my delivery business. Did you commit a crime?

    If a service is denied by virtue of offering service to any host that reaches out to it, and getting overwhelmed, which host is responsible for the denial. Every one individually? All of them in aggregate?

    BTW, the use of the word "DENIAL" comes from whoever named the form of "attack". If the web community had instead called it "Distributed Overwhelming Of A Server, I Say" (DO AS I Say), would you then have called it authoritarian? It seems very arbitrary to conclude that the made up terminology precisely defines the intent of the one guy accused.

  • On the post: DOJ Document Shows How Long Telcos Hold Onto Your Data

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2011 @ 02:17pm

    Angry With The Carriers

    You see, THIS is the kind of stuff that makes me angry with the carriers. Invasions of privacy. The fact that this info is not disclosed to the customers.

    If you lost an important Text message, do you think YOU could go to Verizon and have access to that archived information. No, silly customer. They don't retain it for YOU.

    I'm often at Techdirt sticking up for the carriers, because people lob mistaken accusations at them, like "Why doesn't AT&T invest in their network?!" But here's a list of things that should make you angry:

    - unnecessary retention of your data, messages, etc.

    - lack of disclosure as to what your privacy rights are, how they comply with law enforcement, how hard they resist to protect your privacy.

    - lack of resistance to protect your privacy

    - compliance with warrantless wiretapping, for which congress gave them retroactive immunity

    - most of their lobbying activity, which focuses on protecting oligopoly advantage

    - SIM locking MY phone, when we already have a contract with early termination fees. Yes, the phone is subsisized, but that's because I signed your contract. It's MY phone now. I'm OK with ETFs and contracts, but then locking the phone is like tying me up with a belt AND suspenders.

    - Charging extra for tethering. How is data passed through my phone different to the carrier than data passed TO my phone? I suppose with an unlimited plan, I can understand how tethering is like two people eating for one price at the all-you-can-eat buffet. But if you cap my service (which is fair), then you can't tell me what I can do with my 5GB!

    - Stop stuffing our bills. Stop acting like YOUR business expenses are government fees.

    - Figure out your billing, and don't waste so much of my time explaining your mistakes to you on the phone. I don't want to educate you about the difference between .01 dollars and 1 dollar. I don't want to pay twice for calls when I was roaming: once at 3:23PM in NYC, and once at 12:23PM for the same call from San Francisco. I don't want to teach you about time zones.

    I'm sure there are more. Let's not waste our voices on tangential (incorrect) issues.

  • On the post: DOJ Document Shows How Long Telcos Hold Onto Your Data

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2011 @ 01:38pm

    Re: Really?

    I'm not aware of the Kwame case at all, but if there was a warrant, the police could intercept all the messages, calls, data, and IP activity, and retain it indefinitely themselves as evidence.

    The list the Masnick presents here is just what the carriers keep when there is no warrant.

  • On the post: Lawyer For Accused: DDoS Is A Legal Form Of Protest

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2011 @ 01:25pm

    DDOS Doesn't Require Hacking

    A DDOS attack just means overloading a server with requests, to the point that it can't handle the requests. Mike makes a good parallel with the Obama request to overload a switchboard.

    This overloaded server cannot provide service to legitimate users, thus whatever service was hosted on it is blocked. This sounds a lot like a strike picket line, an blockade, a sit in, chaining yourself to a tree, etc. Sure, it's subject to arrest if trespass if that occurs, but that's not a serious crime.

    DDOS does not mean hacking in. It does not mean cracking security. It does not mean stealing information, nor providing false credentials. It does not mean sneaking past electronic locks. It just means "overwhelming". Are you guilty of DDOS when you get on the freeway and become part of a traffic jam? No.

    Calling up your 2000 twitter followers to execute a DDOS does seem like free speech, or legal action to me. In fact, I don't even see any sign of trespass. The server is there to accept requests from the Net, and you are doing just that. Perhaps you would be in violation of some Terms of Service or fair use guidelines, but there's no crime in that either.

    The only way DDOS should be seriously illegal is when executed with a botnet of hacked computers. At some point, those computers were illegally hacked. This, as we know, is the most common form of DDOS, but a DDOS could also be organized through computers you control legitimately, friends you organize, or a grassroots movement.

    I dunno what the homeless guy in the story did, but I don't agree that DDOS is automatically a crime.

  • On the post: Police Caught Tasing Teen Without Warning

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 27 Sep, 2011 @ 12:12pm

    Re: semantics are everything

    "The kid wasn't tased; he was _shot_ with a Taser."

    I disagree.

    A taser is very different from a gun that fires bullets.

    The Inuit have a hundred words for snow, because the difference matters to them. We should probably have a few different words for police weapons, since the difference also matters a great deal.

    People, like you, have an agenda when they try to change language to be less specific. You do so because your agenda is served by a conflagration of two different things. But specific language is far more useful, and more descriptive of truth and reality. By using "tased" there is no confusion about which weapon the cop ABused.

    Let people argue about whether tasers are lethal or not. Let them argue about whether that was too much force or not. But don't try to change the terminology to make it sound worse.

    I've seem a similar effort to expand the definition of "rape" to include things like molestation or groping. While I sympathize with the intent of the people using the word incorrectly, I do not agree with making language less specific, and less useful to suit any political agenda.

  • On the post: Criticize The Better Business Bureau… And They'll Pull Your Accreditation

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2011 @ 11:39pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    True enough.

  • On the post: Police Ticket Guy Who Helped Direct Traffic After Traffic Light Failure; Then Leave Without Handling Traffic

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2011 @ 04:43pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    "I can say they seem to have an innate sense of fairness"

    Bollocks. I say they have an all-consuming demand for fairness, especially whey they believe they have been treated unfairly.

    ...BUT their concepts of fairness are terribly immature, rudimentary, simple, biased in their favor, and dwell only on the short-term present time frame.

    Try picking one child up from school and buying her ice cream. Then pick up the second child, and go out for dinner. Now, only buy the second child ice cream after dinner. The first child think it's UNfair that she gets no ice cream. Even though they both did.

    I also played soccer with some 6 year olds. Some kept using their hands to stop the ball as an unintended reflex, others had the ball hit their arms by mistake. No matter. Both sets of kids would argue to their deaths that the ball did not hit their hands. Their "sense of fairness" told them that, since they didn't touch the ball deliberately, it was only fair that it doesn't count.

  • On the post: Criticize The Better Business Bureau… And They'll Pull Your Accreditation

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2011 @ 04:32pm

    What BBB Accreditation Means

    BBB accreditation almost always means this, but no more and sometimes less:

    The business in question has a fixed address and contact info.
    The business in question has paid its BBB bill.

  • On the post: Criticize The Better Business Bureau… And They'll Pull Your Accreditation

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2011 @ 04:30pm

    Re:

    So MBAs are inherently asshats, then?

    Businesses without MBAs can all be trusted? But when an MBA rolls in, it all goes to hell?

    I don't think a case has been made to prove that assertion, yet. Do you have any citations? Because I've seen douchebag MBAs, and I've seen non-douches. Seems to be a similar cut as the general population.

    I've certainly had plenty of folk try to rip me off, scam me, grift me, rob me etcetera who were not MBAs.

  • On the post: Harlan Ellison Sues Again; Because No One Could Have Possibly Came Up With The Same SciFi Ideas As He Did

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 19 Sep, 2011 @ 06:00pm

    Shit My Author Says

    He sounds like the guy from "Shit my dad says" on Twitter.

    The Shit My Dad Says guys should sue Ellison. Gotta protect their trademarks and fanciful characters.

  • On the post: Being First Isn't The Most Important Thing, Getting It Right Is

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2011 @ 05:26pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: A good salesman can sell ice water to anyone...

    Yeah, everyone says that until they find out my hobby is mime.

    Why doesn't anyone want to mime-workout over tablet video conference?

  • On the post: Hollywood Accounting: Darth Vader Not Getting Paid, Because Return Of The Jedi Still Isn't Profitable

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2011 @ 03:55pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Nobody here has a problem with the fact that the actor doesn't get paid for work done 30 years ago. Masnick isn't actually saying Prouse deserves money. The issues are:

    - the hypocrisy of the studio to say they just represent the actors and writers, etc, but don't.

    - the standard bad math skills and questionable accounting tactics of the studios.

    - the fact that the studios then go to DC with the same bad math and accounting, and try to tell us they don't make money because of piracy.

  • On the post: Being First Isn't The Most Important Thing, Getting It Right Is

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2011 @ 03:37pm

    Re: Re: A good salesman can sell ice water to anyone...

    I agree with your point on hypocrisy. However,

    "Samsung made a tablet that is essentially superior to the iPad in every way..."

    I've got a Samsung Tab 10.1 and an iPad. I have lots of hardware for the purpose of playing around/testing. Believe me, the Samsung is nowhere near as good as the iPad.

    Slow to respond to screen touches, slow to rotate when turned, slow to respond to keyboard (lag), buggy, many apps that 'Force Close', difficult to drag icons because you 'lose' touch with them, complete system hang occurs to me every couple of days from an unused standby state (locks with screen on, black, kills battery). It has dual cameras, but Skype doesn't do video, I need to use Google Talk where I have no contacts in the buddy list.

    Now, I know the specs are great, the hardware is slick, the weight and design are impressive. Battery seems strong, and the UI is even pretty good. But the UX is terrible compared to the iPad. And I am comparing it to iPad 1.

    And that's from a guy who claims to be impartial, but if you must know, uses Windows computers and an Android phone. Android phone is a much better challenger to iPhone than Android tablet is to iPad.

  • On the post: Being First Isn't The Most Important Thing, Getting It Right Is

    Derek Kerton ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2011 @ 03:26pm

    Re: Marketing versus engineering

    "It's all smoke and mirrors for the clueless."

    And that is awesome.

    I'll always bet on the (few) products that obscure complex technology, and replace it with "smoke and mirrors for the clueless." Do it well, and you sell 25 million instead of 2000.

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