DB 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Prosecutors Say Subpoenas Will Be Used For Serious Crimes Against Children, Use Them For Everything Else

    DB ( profile ), 20 Jul, 2017 @ 10:38am

    Just like Amber Alterts

    Amber Alerts were originally for kidnapping, and were explicitly not to be used for custody disputes.

    It turns out that there are vanishingly few stranger abductions, and the system's budget couldn't be justified. So they gradually broadened it. Today it's used almost exclusively in custody disputes.

  • On the post: From Sans Serif To Sans Sharif: #Fontgate Leads To Calls For Pakistan's Prime Minister To Resign

    DB ( profile ), 18 Jul, 2017 @ 10:57pm

    The Panama Papers are all faked

    The Panama Papers are all fiction. Someone simply created a few tens of thousands of internally consistent financial documents that superficially match the identity and dealings of thousands of people worldwide.. exactly.

    So you shouldn't believe anything contained in them. Because it's really easy to create convincing forgeries.

    Or just look at this story for an example of how difficult it is to create a short, single-topic document that doesn't, well, step on its own dick.

  • On the post: De-Escalation Works, But US Law Enforcement Hasn't Show Much Interest In Trying It

    DB ( profile ), 17 Jul, 2017 @ 05:06pm

    Re: Re: To be fair

    I don't know why you refer to that as "proper training".

    "Taking command of the situation" before you know the situation is likely to lead to conflict.

  • On the post: Desk Jockeying: FBI Puts Out The Call For 'Cyber Security Furniture'

    DB ( profile ), 13 Jul, 2017 @ 04:59pm

    I recall that when I worked at NASA we were delighted to get "Space Station desks".

    These were used desks from one of the canceled efforts to design a space station. The effort must have been lavishly funded, because they were much, much nicer than our 1960s-era dark gray steel desks that showed their decades of use.

  • On the post: Court Won't Let Patent Troll Dismiss Its Way Out Of A Lawsuit, Orders It To Pay Legal Fees

    DB ( profile ), 12 Jul, 2017 @ 05:15pm

    They will almost certainly come to a settlement agreement.

    To make that clearer, they will almost certainly push for a tax-deductible out of court settlement agreement rather than a non-tax-deductible judgment.

  • On the post: Taking The 'S' Out Of 'TSA:' Minneapolis Screeners Fail To Detect Contraband 94% Of The Time

    DB ( profile ), 12 Jul, 2017 @ 01:04pm

    I unintentionally learned a trick.

    Put a can of soda in your bag. The TSA clerk will be so enthralled with scolding you and confiscating the can they will completely ignore anything else in the bag.

    This once saved a Leatherman knife that I had forgotten to remove from my bag.

    Another trick is to go during a time with long lines. Sure, you'll waste a half hour in the security line. But the checks will be perfunctory, with most of the TSA effort going to yelling at people to remove their shoes/belts/jackets. (People that fly once every few years legitimately don't know the arbitrary rules. Yelling doesn't help.)

    The worst time is when there are few people, as the TSA intentionally slows down processing so that there is always a line. How does doing a triple-good search then improve overall security?

  • On the post: Bob Murray Demands John Oliver Be Silenced… While HBO Moves Case To Federal Court

    DB ( profile ), 06 Jul, 2017 @ 11:36am

    Re:

    Apart from critical national security issues during wartime, when has a gag order in the U.S. applied to the media in general?

    There have been a few cases in the past, but they have been superseded as precedent. Prior restraint on the media is constitutionally disfavored to the point of effective extinction. You can find a few attempts by corrupt local courts, but they are quickly reversed on appeal to a court with adults in charge.

  • On the post: Judge Tosses Woman's Lawsuit Brought Against Google Because A Blogger Said Mean Things About Her

    DB ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2017 @ 02:22pm

    Re:

    From the story, they already knew the identity of the blog author. They could have proceeded without involving Google.

    Instead they wanted to drag Google into their prune-fueled poo-throwing fight.

  • On the post: Judge Tosses Woman's Lawsuit Brought Against Google Because A Blogger Said Mean Things About Her

    DB ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2017 @ 12:58pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: You keep omitting that statute is "mere statute", not the whole of the law.

    There are good reasons for posting without registering.

    But it's common that people posting anonymously are here to troll or post (intentionally?) wrong information. Anonymous posts should always be view with suspicion.

  • On the post: Should Tumblr Be Forced To Reveal 500 People Who Reblogged A Sex Tape?

    DB ( profile ), 13 Jun, 2017 @ 02:20pm

    Danger of calling this "child porn" and criminalizing it.

    Most 17 year olds would pass for a young adult. They are unlikely to appear obviously underage.

    Does merely clicking a button after seeing a video, absent other action, makes them guilty of child pornography distribution? That's an absurd result.

  • On the post: Hospital Sends Legal Threats To Researcher, Then Asks For Her Help Identifying Breach Victims

    DB ( profile ), 13 Jun, 2017 @ 11:43am

    Re: Hmm

    It's likely that they have contacted law enforcement, which is pursuing this as 'receiving stolen property'.

    Turning over the names would serve the dual purposes of confirming 'possession' and limit the number of people they will need to contact.

    It's not important that there was no crime committed, and no conviction possible. Just putting someone through the criminal system is an effective punishment -- expensive, time consuming and embarrassing punishment.

  • On the post: Trump Lawyer Threatens To Report A Former FBI Employee To The Inspector General

    DB ( profile ), 12 Jun, 2017 @ 11:04am

    Re:

    Really? Comey and integrity?

    'It's our policy not to comment on ongoing investigations, unless it's in my best interest to do so.'

    That Comey?

    No integrity, and willing to jump into cesspool-level politics. That smell isn't roses.

    Trump comes out smelling better, despite having a track record. It's not so much that he lies. It's that what he says has no relation to the truth.

    Remember, a clock that spins backwards is right four times a day, while a stopped clock is only right twice.

  • On the post: Monkey Selfie Case Gets Even Weirder, As The Monkey's 'Next Friends' Are In A Criminal Dispute With Each Other

    DB ( profile ), 09 Jun, 2017 @ 10:42pm

    Re: Re: Re: PETA: Silly Is What We Do

    PETA has pretty extreme views about beekeeping as well.

    https://www.peta.org/about-peta/faq/whats-wrong-with-eating-honey/

  • On the post: The Music Licensing Swamp: Spotify Settles Over Failure To Obtain Mechanical Licenses

    DB ( profile ), 06 Jun, 2017 @ 10:37am

    Re: Re: Re: Not Complex in this case

    As a reminder, radio stations pay 0 (zero) performer royalties in the U.S.

    They do pay songwriter royalties, although only a small fraction of those payments end up going to the actual songwriters.

    There is no underlying principle of fairness to the artists. Royalties are only about who has the power to extract them at the time they are negotiated. If bringing up the image of a "starving artist" helps, it will be used as a pretense.

  • On the post: Congress 'Fixes' Child Porn 'Loophole' With 15-Year Prison Sentences For Teen Sexting

    DB ( profile ), 01 Jun, 2017 @ 10:07am

    Errrm, why is this under federal jurisdiction?

    Even in the case cited, it was beyond a stretch to make a federal case of it. The federal law relies on there being distribution that crosses state lines, or uses the mail system. Online distribution commonly is assumed to inherently interstate, but that isn't necessarily true. With no distribution, the cited case shouldn't have been in federal court.

  • On the post: Copyright Troll's Tech 'Experts' Can Apparently Detect Infringement Before It Happens

    DB ( profile ), 31 May, 2017 @ 10:51am

    This is one of the reasons that the court system is vulnerable to abuse: the plaintiff has asymmetrical power.

    It costs the plaintiff very little to prepare and file a cut-and-paste complaint. The defendant immediately needs to spend far more time and money to investigate and respond. When perjury such as this is discovered, the plaintiff gets to cut and run with no penalty, even when they have cost innocent defendants thousands in legal expenses.

  • On the post: NY Senate Passes Bill That Would Add Cops And Firemen To List Of Protected Classes Under State's Hate Crime Law

    DB ( profile ), 18 May, 2017 @ 06:58pm

    Re: Re:

    The web site above suggests that in the U.S. 30-40% of deaths are related to vehicles, and over half are non-pursuit single car collisions.

    There are few enough deaths that those percentages can be significantly skewed by cherry-picking a time window.

    You do have to check the information on that web site with other sources. There is an element of putting an 'on-duty' spin on questionable events, and not mentioning the at-fault aspects.

    From my reading, the single change that would most reduce police fatalities is having law enforcement obey traffic laws when not in an active pursuit or responding to an emergency.

  • On the post: NY Senate Passes Bill That Would Add Cops And Firemen To List Of Protected Classes Under State's Hate Crime Law

    DB ( profile ), 18 May, 2017 @ 03:38pm

    I suggest that everyone take a look at the specific deaths behind the statistics.

    There aren't that many deaths, few enough that you can look at them all. Even sampling a few shows that the numbers are very broad.

    The Officer Down Memorial Page is a good place to start. https://www.odmp.org/

    Until about a year ago, they freely mixed in police animal deaths, which bumped up the count but led to a few embarrassments when people quoted the numbers. They still have a very inclusive definition of "line of duty" deaths that include heart attacks while "on call" and single car accidents while off-duty in a government unmarked car.

    As quick sample, they feature the most recent five deaths on the main page. Two of the five were single car non-emergency accidents. Both were severe, suggesting speed well in excess of the limit.

  • On the post: US Court Upholds Enforceability Of GNU GPL As Both A License And A Contract

    DB ( profile ), 18 May, 2017 @ 03:10am

    Re: Re: Re: Meh, GPL.

    You missed the point: how is this not off-topic trolling?

  • On the post: Lawsuit Claiming Fyre Festival Sent Cease & Desist Letters To Online Critics Doesn't Show Any Actual Evidence

    DB ( profile ), 11 May, 2017 @ 07:44pm

    Don't blame...

    Concert promoters have always been hucksters.
    It's mostly about getting everyone to believe that the event will happen as planned, and that they will be paid after.

    If it works the first time, it's easy to convince the suppliers the next time and stage a bigger event.

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