direwolff 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Remember When Supreme Court Rejected Review Of FISA Amendments Act, Because It Was 'Too Speculative' That Plaintiffs Were Being Monitored?

    direwolff ( profile ), 10 Jun, 2013 @ 02:03pm

    They did!

    The ACLU filed a new lawsuit: http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/aclu-seeks-secret-court-opinions-authorizing-nsas-mass

  • On the post: Author Of The Patriot Act Says NSA Surveillance Is An Abuse And Must End

    direwolff ( profile ), 10 Jun, 2013 @ 12:12pm

    Only himself to blame

    First a question, why in Rep. Sensenbrenner do his opinion piece on a British news site (The Guardian) rather than an 'merican one?

    As for his version of what was intended, there was no lack of warnings from all of the public advocacy groups (EFF, ACLU, EPIC, CCR, et. al.), that the language rushed through in the Patriot Act could easily be interpreted as it has. They chose to ignore and fight vehemently to get this Act through at all costs with their most earnest convictions. To all of the Congress people who helped pass the Patriot Act, we should simply turn and give them the big middle finger knowing that regardless of their "intentions", they've messed with this country in more ways than imaginable.

  • On the post: Proposed Law: Privacy Policies Must Be Less Than 100 Words (Says 336 Word Bill)

    direwolff ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2013 @ 01:14pm

    This clearly falls into the camp of "doing nothing is better than doing something" ;)

  • On the post: Open Letter To Human Synergistics International In Response To Your Accusation That Techdirt Is Infringing

    direwolff ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2012 @ 10:25am

    Re: Ironic

    Her hubby or brother appears to be the Managing Director at the company, de.linkedin.com/pub/john-van-etten-ma/7/b58/684

  • On the post: Open Letter To Human Synergistics International In Response To Your Accusation That Techdirt Is Infringing

    direwolff ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2012 @ 10:23am

    This post needs a new title :)

    In reading this post, I was quickly reminded of the old SNL with Dan Ackyroyd's line to Jane Curtin in Weekend Update's point-counterpoint segment, with a slight modification: "Human Synergistics International, you ignorant slut!" :)

  • On the post: Pete Townshend Makes Required Annual 'Blame iTunes' Appearance, Global Deathclock Reset

    direwolff ( profile ), 10 Oct, 2012 @ 09:35am

    Don't forget the banks asking to be saved by the government...oh wait, that happened :P

  • On the post: Malaysian Government Holding Service Providers Liable For The Actions Of Their Users

    direwolff ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2012 @ 01:04am

    All service providers should just close down until the law is changed. Let's see how many gov't officials are OK with not having Internet access fm home or office for more than a day ;)

  • On the post: EU Court Says, Yes, You Can Resell Your Software, Even If The Software Company Says You Can't

    direwolff ( profile ), 03 Jul, 2012 @ 01:53pm

    Re: Impact

    I too think the impact will be low but for slightly different reasons. Now that more and more software is being delivered in a SaaS implementation, even where there is a client component to the application, these will need to "dial home" this aspect will be where the gatekeeping will take place. We are already seeing the software being distributed for free, with the licenses really tied to the "service" rather than to the actual app software code. Having said that, it is good to see this ruling and it would be nice to see U.S. courts recognize this too.

  • On the post: USTR Rejects Rep. Issa's Request To Observe TPP Negotiations

    direwolff ( profile ), 29 Jun, 2012 @ 02:45pm

    Unfortunately, given the recent attitude and irresponsible positions that Rep. Issa has taken with the "Fast & Furious" debacle, I can see this issue as being politicized as well. In other words, Issa has been showing a streak of political animosity towards the Administration, and I can imagine that his positions are now viewed with great apprehension by the various federal departments. While we may want to view his request as being on the side of angels, as clearly the transparency issue should be viewed, the fact that it's him doing it may be what's making the USTR very uncomfortable if not downright confrontational. Note that Issa's gesture here may have nothing to do with his nobility, but rather with his desire to detract Administration's objectives (however flawed).

    This may be a case of context, where Rep. Issa's interactions with the various federal departments is now being viewed in a larger context than the issues of any single department. Something to consider.

  • On the post: Would Bradley Manning Face The Same Charges If He Leaked Same Info To NYTimes Instead Of Wikileaks?

    direwolff ( profile ), 06 Jun, 2012 @ 12:51pm

    Re:

    In other words, Wikileaks isn't an arm of our gov't.

  • On the post: CISPA Is A Really Bad Bill, And Here's Why

    direwolff ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2012 @ 09:30am

    What our gov't has failed to appreciate is that as it has continued to violate our trust in how it applies various laws and how its representatives have behaved, we can no longer provide it a free pass on interpretations. To date, we cannot get the Dept. of Justice to provide its interpretation of the Patriot Act, which has been law for quite some time now. We also have seen threats of applying the Espionage Act in overly broad manners.

    Yes, it's clear there are issues that need to be addressed in order to properly deal and coordinate on "cyber" threats, but providing our gov't carte blanche cannot be an option, they have proven themselves unworthy of the trust endowed upon them.

  • On the post: Drone Attack: How We Might Willingly Embrace The Surveillance Society

    direwolff ( profile ), 16 Mar, 2012 @ 09:39am

    "The best we can do is to encourage people to think through the consequences of taking this road before we set off down it, accompanied by our swarm of personal drones."

    I'm not sure I understand this statement. To what end? So they think about it and our privacy is still invaded. Not just that of the drone owners' but also that of anyone who may not be a drone owner who is now being picked out by all the drones in the sky. Add facial recognition tech and now things get goofy. Gov't can get access to everyone's feed and piece together the movements of anyone whether they own a drone or not (oh yeah, try to stop them ;). Heck, this beats the London and NYC's efforts to stick surveillance cameras everywhere and relies on individuals' fears (oh yeah, it's for the children ;) much like the Patriot Act did, in order get this to happen w/o gov't mandate.

    What's even more ironic is that the control we hope to gain from having such surveillance is a fiction. What actually happens is that we lose greater control over deciding how this new information about our person is used. Don't forget, once digitized information is very very hard to control with or without laws guarding its use. We learned this lesson with how info about us is currently collected, stored, aggregated and disseminated online through all of these social services. The entertainment industry also learned this lesson with music, books and movies. It will happen with this drone data too.

    Hence, thinking about how we deal with our info online hasn't done any good other than increase its reach and distribution.

  • On the post: Whatever Copyrights Righthaven Might Actually Have Owned Now Transferred To Receiver For Auction

    direwolff ( profile ), 13 Mar, 2012 @ 08:29pm

    "Ding-dong the witch is dead, the witchie-witch, the witch is dead, ding-dong the witch-o-witch is dead..." :)

  • On the post: Study Confirms What You Already Knew: Mobile Data Throttling About The Money, Not Stopping Data Hogs

    direwolff ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2012 @ 02:58pm

    Three words, OVER-THE-TOP. If you consider that a good part of carriers' revenues come from voice and SMS traffic, and both of these are being disrupted by IP level services (ie. Skype, BBM, et. al.), then the carriers are looking at a bleak future where some very important revenue is slowly disappearing. If they don't capture this, then one day they could see all their users on the lowest level voice plan and taking advantage of the unlimited data plan to do everything they used to pay for before. From a carrier's perspective, I have to believe this is a tough situation to be facing, and it's not easy to see how they might address more gracefully. Of course, lying about their reasons isn't helpful, and telling the truth certainly won't gain them any sympathy, but thems the facts ;)

  • On the post: Another Reason We Need Open Government Data: To Avoid Information Asymmetries

    direwolff ( profile ), 01 Feb, 2012 @ 01:00am

    Wouldn't that lead to just a different set of eventually predictable behaviors (how people react to knowing certain info)? Separately, the idea of people reviewing the data presumes that they all know how to read it the same way and come to the same or similar conclusions. That intuitively feels unlikely, much the same way as stock market models lead different investors to different conclusions. The predictability concept also fails to inspire since it's always about what data is being analyzed and while there may be times that it correlates well, short of having perfect data sets for everything, it's unlikely that predicability will hold over the long term. Again, I hold hedge funds and other stock investors as demonstrations of this sort of systemic failure.

  • On the post: The Internet Begins Discussing What To Do With Its New Found Powers

    direwolff ( profile ), 24 Jan, 2012 @ 09:23am

    All things connected

    "We need to recognize that the internet, free speech and copyright are all connected."

    I would actually go further than that Mike. As a result of the digitization of information the drastic reduction in cost and friction around creating, distributing, aggregating and combining content (whether this be copyrighted material, personally identifiable information, software code, etc...), has thrown most of our economic, regulatory, social, and legal constructs into disarray. The oft used "paradigm shift" has never been more evident than in these past 7 yrs. We keep trying to describe what's happening online to physical world metaphors, but these are no longer working hence it's getting more and more difficult to understand what's happening.

    Whether it be copyright and patent issues, privacy issues, secrecy issues, funding issues, all of these are no longer what they once were and indeed we need to rethink the structures of the various systems for how we move ahead. I find it tough to discuss copyright issues in a bubble that doesn't include a discussion on the free-flow of private info (or for that matter, what the heck does "private info" mean?).

    Just some additional thoughts to include in your mix.

  • On the post: White House Comes Out Against The Approach In SOPA/PIPA In Response To Online Petition

    direwolff ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2012 @ 10:30am

    Positive development, but...

    While this is an excellent development, what struck me about the White House statement is that it's playing by the rules set by SOPA/PIPA proponents. They continue to treat the piracy issue as far more serious than it actually is. As you've previously done on this blog, and Julian Sanchez at CATO does in the following post, http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con-congress/, there's some serious debunking that has to be brought to light. The reset should not just be for some of the silliness that was being attempted in those bills, but also in the very premise that we should be spending this much energy and resources on something that does not raise to the level of importance of much more serious issues in our country today. The Entertainment Industry is the NOT the end all and be all of the U.S. economy. Their biz models have to change and they need to come to terms with reality. Just as the horse & buggy industry had to come to terms with the automobile and ice producers had to come to terms with the refrigerator makers, so must the entertainment industry come to terms with shifts in their world. Arresting, fining and vilifying citizens is NOT the answer.

  • On the post: Which Is Worse, SOPA Or PIPA? Answer: Both!

    direwolff ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2012 @ 09:40am

    Let's not forget...

    ACTA, the export and internationalization of our gov't's absurd mindset ;)

  • On the post: Shouldn't There Be Significant Punishment For Bogus Copyright Claims That Kill Companies?

    direwolff ( profile ), 29 Dec, 2011 @ 03:18pm

    DMCA

    I've always thought that the most basic version of fairness that you point out was introduced by Rep. Jason Chaffetz should have been part of DMCA. SOPA is wrong on too many levels for this to be an acceptable compromise. Having said that, if SOPA supporters are insistent on passing the current version of SOPA, then we should indeed fight very hard to get this amendment included some how.

  • On the post: Congressional Investigations Into Dajaz1.com Censorship Begin

    direwolff ( profile ), 12 Dec, 2011 @ 08:33am

    Politicians need to get the facts

    While I believe Rep. Lofgren to be one of the few fighting the good fight in the Congress, especially by bringing attention to these issues, it would be so much more effective if she didn't just ask questions on the basis of an article but actually contacted the affected parties so that she's strong on the facts, not on someone's interpretation of those facts. Her question lost its punch when she kept saying "I'm only reading from this article". Something real is happening here and she really should addressing its substance more thoroughly...IMHO.

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