Daniel Audy 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: San Diego Comic Con Gets Gag Order On Salt Lake Comic Con

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 22 Jul, 2017 @ 10:52am

    Re: Re:

    It would be ridiculous to rule that SDCC couldn't use Comic Con since it is a descriptive term regardless of their bad behaviour. It would be like making a (theoretically) litigatious Taco Bell take the word Taco out of their name for trademark bullying.

    Frankly hitting them with a declaration of descriptive or nominative use so that every other Comic Con in the world is safe from their threats along with a million in Salt Lake's legal fees should be plenty. That leaves them having wasted several million dollars to lose the tool that they've been suppressing competition with for many years.

  • On the post: San Diego Comic Con Gets Gag Order On Salt Lake Comic Con

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 22 Jul, 2017 @ 10:47am

    Re: Clues

    It is extremely typical for lawyers to present multiple, sometimes contradictory, arguments with the implicit claim that argument B is only relevant if the court has already disagreed with their assessment of argument A. So in this case they argued that it was an unconstitutional restraint of speech but even if the court thought that it wasn't the order should apply equally to both sides. It would be pretty stupid for the lawyers to lose on the argument that it was prior restraint and just go home rather than continuing to oppose any portion or its severity that they can.

  • On the post: Politician Uses Bad Cyberharassment Law To Shut Down Critic; Critic Hoping To Have Law Struck Down

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 22 Jul, 2017 @ 10:59am

    This doesn't necessarily seem unreasonable to me.

    Posting critical or embarrassing things online is completely legit but if the claims about the frequent harassing texts directly to him (particularly after being asked to stop) seem to meet a reasonable standard for what most people would consider harassment. Obviously, indirect posts should be legal since the 'victim' is opting in to seeing them if they choose to view them and legal remedies for false defamatory statements already exist.

  • On the post: Olive Garden Asks Olive Garden Reviewer Not To Refer To Olive Garden Due To Trademarks

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 21 Jul, 2017 @ 12:34pm

    Re: Re: Olaf Guardin'

    The breadsticks are strictly limited and while the servers also provide something that is tasteless and bizarre the ones at the White House don't have a dress code.

  • On the post: Senator Wyden To FCC Chair Pai: Hey, Stop Lying About What I Said To Undermine Net Neutrality

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 19 Jul, 2017 @ 01:13am

    Re:

    If anything it is relieving their pocketbooks of the burden of carrying around an (even more) massive amount of money extracted via monopoly and other anti-competitive behaviours.

  • On the post: Senator Wyden To FCC Chair Pai: Hey, Stop Lying About What I Said To Undermine Net Neutrality

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 19 Jul, 2017 @ 01:06am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wyden goes "over the top"

    So your claim is that vertical monopolies aren't anti-competitive? That is an ... interesting .... point of view.

  • On the post: Comcast/NBC Caught Intentionally Misspelling Show Names To Help Hide Sagging Nielsen Ratings

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 13 Jul, 2017 @ 10:52pm

    Re: Drop?

    The money is with the advertisers who pay a rate based on Nielens average viewership numbers. By cutting out a poor performing episode from the 'average' calculation it creates an artificially inflated value that the network gets paid for commercials during that show. If a news show that airs 5 days a week normally gets 500,000 viewers but only 250,000 viewers when scheduled against a football game 'misspelling' the shows name means that the rate they are being paid for commercial time during a week with a football game is at the 500,000 viewers/show rate (2 mil / 4 shows) rather than 450,000 viewers/show (2.25 mil / 5 shows) or roughly 11% more than they should be getting paid based on the contracts with the advertisers.

    It is the same strategy that some schools use by encouraging poor performers to drop out school to artificially inflate their test scores on the standardized testing. By eliminating (through unethical means) the worst performers the reported average goes up despite not actually doing a better job.

  • On the post: The FCC Insists It Can't Stop Impostors From Lying About My Views On Net Neutrality

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2017 @ 10:27pm

    Re:

    Unless you have a particularly unusual name, or there is other details that connect it to you, it probably is just someone who has the same name who, like almost everybody who isn't paid to believe otherwise, is pro net neutrality.

  • On the post: People Would Pay A Hell Of A Lot More If DRM Were Gone

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2017 @ 06:43pm

    Re: Re:

    Honestly you should consider yourself having been unwittingly saved a good chunk of change. Spore is 5 mediocre minigames stuck together with an interesting creature builder that is more fun when used outside the restrictions of the game.

  • On the post: Telecom Industry Feebly Tries To Deflate Net Neutrality Protest With Its Own, Lame 'Unlock The Net' Think Tank Campaign

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2017 @ 04:30pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Except that in practice the exact opposite is true. When true net neutrality exists and companies are forced to treat their own data equally instead of exempting them from artificially low caps the prices drop and the offerings improve because they actually have to compete now. Just look at European cell service after exempting certain types of data from the caps became illegal to see.

  • On the post: Facebook, Google Wake Up From Their Coma On The Subject, Join Wednesday's Massive Net Neutrality Protest

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2017 @ 10:09am

    Re: Re:

    But if we don't try it again it might just have been freak luck that made having a sociopathic billionaire with narcissistic personality disorder as President not work out. I mean no one could identify any reasons that it might not have been a great idea the first time so it should obviously be tested for replicability.

  • On the post: How One Game Developer Views Steam's Refund Policy As A Boon In The Face Of Over $4 Million In Refunds

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2017 @ 10:04am

    Re:

    This is very true.

    I picked up 'Battleborne' on Steam when it was released and spent about 4 hours attempting to play it and working with tech support to fix the persistent performance issues that was making it unplayable. I eventually decided that it wasn't worth my time to keep fighting with it when the first 8 supposed fixes made no difference and was able to refund it, despite being past the official 2 hour playtime limit.

    As a result I moved on with my life and bought 'Overwatch' instead. If I had been out the $70 that I'd paid for an unplayable game I would have been quite upset and left some nasty review about how the game was substandard and never risked buying a game from that developer again. Instead I still view the developer with a relatively positive attitude since they produce interesting games and might, if it is ever on sale significantly, try buying it again and see if they fixed the issues I was having.

  • On the post: How One Game Developer Views Steam's Refund Policy As A Boon In The Face Of Over $4 Million In Refunds

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2017 @ 09:58am

    Re: Re: Who is paying for the credit card refund fees?

    Based on how the system appears to work no one actual pays any additional fees for the refunds. Refunds go back into the users 'Steam Wallet' which will then almost always be used buying other games since most users aren't entering the Steam ecosystem just for a single game and cashing out is a pain. That just means Valve needs to track refunds and adjust their periodic payouts to account for them since it is quite unlikely that a game will ever generate negative revenue over a moderate period and they would have to get money back from the developer (something generally akin to getting blood from a stone).

  • On the post: How One Game Developer Views Steam's Refund Policy As A Boon In The Face Of Over $4 Million In Refunds

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2017 @ 09:49am

    Re: I agree

    It is also particularly valuable for games that offer a unique, but not universally enjoyable, experience - like Rust. For these games there is a huge amount of risk for an informed player going in because they know it is quirky and potentially unfriendly and that is part of the appeal for some players but many players won't risk spending $15 for something with high odds that they won't enjoy. If they can try the acclaimed but unusual game without risk the ones that DO enjoy it will stay while the rest will churn and the developer has a significant net increase in sales.

  • On the post: Germany Officially Gives Up On Free Speech: Will Fine Internet Companies That Don't Delete 'Bad' Speech

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2017 @ 11:18pm

    Re: The tool argument

    The thing is you could put this sort of expectation on a cafe too. Make them responsible for stopping unacceptable conversations and fine them millions of Euro's if they fail to do so. Sure it would be extremely expensive, intrusive, and still ultimately ineffective (just like it will for the internet) but you could insist on it all the same. Somehow people think that when you add the words 'on the internet' magic nerd fairies will swoop in and somehow all the problems that would exist if you applied the exact same rules to meatspace (subjectivity, multiple languages, volume of conversations, privacy violations) vanish like digital mirages.

    Applying rules that would be wildly impractical and ineffective in physical spaces to the internet will result in them still being wildly impractical and ineffective the vast majority of the time. If the government wanted to take on the role of policing comments then they could be held responsible for the massively expensive boondoggle it would turn into and get kicked out of office but by shifting the burden on to the websites there will never being any motivation to acknowledge the failure or rectify the mistake.

  • On the post: Germany Officially Gives Up On Free Speech: Will Fine Internet Companies That Don't Delete 'Bad' Speech

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2017 @ 11:06pm

    Re: Re:

    I couldn't decided between the 'Lol' button or the 'Flag trolling' button. The sad part is that this deranged little man probably believes his own bovine fecal matter.

  • On the post: Canadian Supreme Court Says It's Fine To Censor The Global Internet; Authoritarians & Hollywood Cheer…

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 28 Jun, 2017 @ 09:40pm

    Re:

    For all intents and purposes, at the moment, Google is the internet for the North America, Europe, and a good chunk of the rest of the world because they are so much superior to all the alternatives that there is no competition. There is a reason that no one bothers to sue Bing or Yahoo to delist anything since at the moment, no one is seeing the unwanted thing through them as they are sub-par services with practically no user base. If this trend continues of courts picking away at Google's ability to accurately return search results we may see other services rise in prominence since only by searching multiple services are we likely to get honest, un-censored results.

  • On the post: Cops Sent Warrant To Facebook To Dig Up Dirt On Woman Whose Boyfriend They Had Just Killed

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2017 @ 07:53pm

    Re: Re: Re: Maybe this is the wrong place to ask this

    If I recall correctly Compuserve was also showing TV ads in the year prior to Shiva's work that specifically mentioned that they offered EMail so it isn't unreasonable to think he might have seen those.

  • On the post: Cops Sent Warrant To Facebook To Dig Up Dirt On Woman Whose Boyfriend They Had Just Killed

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2017 @ 07:46pm

    Re: "Lesbian separatists"?

    I have to admit I'm now kind of curious what 'lesbian separatists' would be.

    Are they radical lesbians that want to form their own xenophobic nation? Or perhaps radical fundamentalists seeking to round up all the lesbians to keep them in camps so they don't 'taint' the rest of the population?

    It is the kind of crazy shit that someone just spouts off without thinking what the words they are smashing together mean that just makes me want to know more.

  • On the post: Cops Sent Warrant To Facebook To Dig Up Dirt On Woman Whose Boyfriend They Had Just Killed

    Daniel Audy ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2017 @ 07:38pm

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

    It is worth noting that many crime statistics are inaccurate and racist because the cops are racist. It has been proven repeatedly that drug use rates between white and black populations is nearly identical but blacks are investigated, arrested, and charged vastly more often because cops assume blacks are dealing/doing drugs and occasionally find them when searching and don't let them off with a scold for having a baggy of weed like they do white people.

    If the method of data collection is unreliable then the data it produces is worse than useless it is actually misleading.

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